Bad Windows

Microsoft has blundered with Vista in terms of its user interface approach, and it won't take long before Apple's gain in market share will become staggering, according to Don Reisinger in his C|Net Blog.

"Simply put, Mac OS X Leopard is one of the most significant operating system achievements we have witnessed in years," Mr. Reisinger wrote. "Not only does it add functionality that Microsoft could only have dreamed of, it does so in a snappy environment that doesn't annoy you with pop-ups asking for permission or all of those security threats we have come to know (and hate) in Windows."

Read more at the Mac Observer 

I don't know what's going on at Microsoft. They just can't seem to get anything right. Don't believe me? Read on…

Last week, Tom Spring wrote Vista Is Still Plagued by Incompatibilities. In the piece, Tom has evidence of hardware and software products that still aren't compatible with Vista.

Not too long ago, a woman sparred with Microsoft CEO Steve Balmar about how, as an early Vista adopter, she ended up switching back to XP. Read Mother's Ire Puts Ballmer on Defense Over Vista.

BTW, did you hear about this? Newest Windows Update Snafu Puzzles Microsoft. I'm never surprised when Microsoft doesn't have a clue. And instead of getting a clue, they start pointing fingers, as you'll see when you read Microsoft: We Didn't Change Automatic Updates.

Read more at PCWorld 

The sales rate of Microsoft's Windows Vista is gradually slowing down as the operating system reaches the one-year anniversary of its release to businesses, according to the company's latest financial results. The Redmond, Washington-based company shipped approximately 28 million copies of Vista in the latest quarter ended September, or 9.3 million copies per month. Though the Windows developer pointed to 27 percent growth in business licenses and noted that many home users were buying the more lucrative Vista Home Premium or Ultimate editions, the rate represents a decline from the 10 million per month reported early in summer. Shipments of the OS peaked in the first three months after its January release, when the company sold an average of 20 million copies per month thanks to a wave of early adopters and users waiting for Vista to replace older systems. Over 88 million copies of Vista have been shipped to date, Microsoft says.

Read more at Electronista 

With all of the recent OS X 10.5 coverage I was curious to see how many of the supposedly "new" features I could reproduce under Windows Vista (i.e. how many ideas they stole from the competition).

Take the much ballyhooed "Time Machine" feature. Vista users have had access to real-time backups for nearly a year now. It's called the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), a kind of limited journaling capability that's integrated seamlessly with the Windows shell. Right click on any file, select "Restore previous versions" from the context menu, and…Voila! You're presented with a selection of archived versions that you can restore with a simple mouse click.

VSS is a great feature. However, unlike "Time Machine" – which copies files to an external disk that can be unplugged and taken with you – VSS is restricted to making archival copies within the local file system. To reproduce all of "Time Machine's" functionality you need to involve another Windows Vista component: Backup.

Read more at InfoWorld 

No surprise that they aren't trying to port Vista onto the OLPC – they would have to call it the $1000 laptop if that happened!

This was always going to be a really ambitious project and compromise was going to be needed to make it a reality but I can't help thinking that with the increase in price and now the news that Microsoft is porting XP to the device – that this project is losing sight of some of the goals it set itself. Ok – maybe the price rise was inevitable – and who is to say it won't come down in time – but Windows? Negroponte, the man behind OLPC, made a real song and dance about how clunky and unyieldy WIndows was and why it wouldn't be on his laptop – but that all seems to have changed.

Read more at ZDNet 

Connectologist Tim Gee considers patient safety and HealthVault: Many have criticized HealthVault regarding privacy and security concerns, or perceived limitations of HV as a personal health record (PHR). I suspect that HV is challenged more by the market's perception of Microsoft's long running security issues than with any actual shortcomings of that type in HV. And since HV is not a PHR, but rather a "platform," criticisms about any lack of PHR features is not relevant. One topic I've not seen addressed is the safety and effectiveness of the data within HV – and I don't mean "safety" as in the data is secure from unauthorized access or misuse. I mean "safety" as in the utilization of data stored in HV by other applications won't result in an unsatisfactory patient outcome, you know, like death or injury.

Read more at Linuxmednews 

I've been using Windows since it was battling for desktop supremacy with GEM in the early 90s. In the mid 90s I spent several years producing newspapers on Apple Macs. Since the late 90s I've dabbled with Linux, but there have always been compelling reasons to return to, or stick with, Windows. No more, for two reasons: Vista, and Ubuntu 7.10 (ala Gutsy Gibbon).

Through all this time I have looked forward to each new version of Windows either because I expected it to be more stable, add better hardware support, or correct problems in some other way. Several weeks ago I took delivery of a brand, spanking, £1300-worth of notebook in the form of an Asus V1S desktop replacement. It's a lovely machine, if unwieldy. A quick tour of the stickers next to the keyboard reveals such delights as a SATA hard drive, GeForce 8600 GT graphics card with 512MB of video RAM, Core 2 duo processor and 1GB RAM. It also came with Vista which, after several weeks of concentrated use, has left me with numerous questions.

Read more at ZDNet 

After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA — something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.

Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.

You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code.

How can this crazy situation occur? Read on for the sorry tale.

Read more apcmag 

If you're running Vista and you need a multifunction printer, Brother's MFC-5860CN might seem like a great choice. After all, it's proudly sold as "Certified for Windows Vista."

But don't plan on scanning any documents to turn them into digital files. The 5860CN is capable of doing that, but the optical character recognition software that comes bundled with the printer, PaperPort 9 from Nuance, isn't Vista compatible. (Brother recommends that Vista owners use Microsoft Office's Document Imaging feature.) And the printer's Internet fax option? Forget about that, too. It works with XP, but not Vista.

This kind of Vista support, says Jim McGregor, research director at market research firm In-Stat, is more like torture by small incompatibilities. And nine months after Vista's commercial release, it's not at all unusual. Major software publishers and hardware manufacturers are dragging their feet when it comes to supporting Vista, analysts say. While vendors have developed new products for Vista, many are leaving customers who purchased hardware and software before they upgraded to Vista with crippled or inoperative gear, says Chris Swenson, analyst with the NPD Group.

Read more at PC World 

Microsoft has LINQ, which is intended to be the uber-XML language that will replace XQuery, XSLT, XML Schema, e4x and the kitchen sink. We've been here before – promise the moon, but rather than dealing with open standards create a proprietary technology that shows Microsoft's obvious superiority in this arena while working to make the Microsoft walled community just that much more opaque to the outside world.

Ten years ago, I was an ardent Microsoft advocate, but I watched this pattern occur time and time again, and with each such broken promise (always driven by the mantra "The customer doesn't want those features, without ever really defining who that customer may be.") I became ever more disillusioned with the company. I don't think that Microsoft is evil. I do think that Microsoft is embarked on a poor strategy to protect what they perceive of as a god-given monopoly rather than adapting to the needs and flows of the twenty first centuries.

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