Tag: hp

IT Pay Drops Slightly In Q1 2009

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Photo by Cayusa

A recently released study reveals that there has been a 0.5% decrease in the amount of money IT experts are being paid for services in the first quarter of 2009.

The study was conducted by Foote Partners, a research firm that actively monitors IT skills payment.

The main casualties are C++, AIX, dBase and AIX, which saw a 25% drop in pay when compared to Q1 2008. This isn’t as bad as PowerBuilder however, who’s coders’ pay declined by 50% when compared to a year before in the uncertified skills category.

Not all is looking down however – 46 skills actually rose in value in Q1 2009. Linux skills grew a whopping 28.6% in the uncertified skills category. As did Apache Web server skills and Java skills, whom also saw significant gains to 25% and 20% respectively.

The certified skills pay tell a similar story, with both major gains and losses. Pay for HP/Certified Systems Engineers grew by a solid 14.3%, with Sun Certified Java programmers and HP/Accredited Integration Specialists got a comfortable bump of 13.5% and 12.5% respectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, Prosoft Master CIW Administration payment fell by 25% – which is rather significant.

The full report is available here.

AppleInsider: Microsoft Extending Windows XP Downgrade To 2010

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According to a post by AppleInsider, Microsoft has reluctantly agreed to allow HP to give its customers a Windows XP downgrade option on new PCs until April 30 2010.

The announcement hasn’t been made publicly, but AppleInsider can exclusively report that according to a source within Hewlett Packard, Microsoft has granted the PC giant an extension to its existing rights to continue selling the nearly eight year old Windows XP on the company’s business desktops, workstations, and notebooks in place of Windows 7 for another year.

says the AppleInsider report.

You can access the little snippet here.

This is a surprising blow to Windows 7, as Microsoft seemed to be getting good feedback and general community excitement regarding the new release. After all, Windows 7 is simply a Vista fix-up (albeit what is turning out to be an extremely good one), even according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer,

“Windows 7 is Windows Vista with cleanup in user interface [and] improvements in performance.”

Be sure to not however that just because Microsoft is extending the downgrade option, free support for Windows XP still expires on April 14 2009.