Vista: The New Me?
Remember Microsoft Me? It was promoted heavily when introduced, but today Microsoft admits it was a bad operating system. "The worst operating system we ever developed," was the way one Microsoft employee explained it to me. I'm still waiting for the full version of service pack 1 to make a final decision on Vista, but this is beginning to feel like a bad case of deja vu. As much as I like Vista's Aero interface and some of the operational features of the operating system, Vista's sharp edges continue to cut. You know I've been undecided about Vista for months, hot one week and cold the next, and I've felt bad about that. It turns out that I wasn't alone. A class-action suit has brought to light nearly 200 pages worth of internal Microsoft e-mails in which even company insiders can't make up their minds. Maybe I should feel vindicated.
Sharp edges? Here's an example: I sat down to record the TechByter Worldwide podcast on March 1. After starting up Sound Forge, I did a microphone check, as I always do. Something clever like, "Testing. Testing. Level check." I played it back and the sound was fine. I then clicked the Record button and started talking. Then I noticed the volume indicator was indicating zero. No audio. I've seen this several times since upgrading to Vista because my expensive Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS is only "sorta-kinda" compatible with Vista. Creative Labs released a driver update that enables some of the sound card's functions, but not all. And sometimes recording just doesn't work at all. After nearly a dozen false starts, Vista was finally able to deliver audio from the microphone to Sound Forge again and I recorded the program.
The problems with Vista are many and varied. Microsoft wasn't able to state clearly what the basic hardware requirements were for Vista, hardware manufacturers seemed not to care that Vista was approaching, and the result has been a slow-motion train wreck that I don't want to watch, but one that I can't stop watching.
Among the 185 pages of text made public (3.5MB PDF) as part of the class-action suit is a "post-mortem report" by Dell (pages 13 through 26). The report cites code instability, a lack of alignment between Microsoft's and Dell's Vista Readiness tools used by consumers to assess the Vista capability of their machines, a lack of understanding by customers regarding the meaning of the word "capable", conflicting information, lack of time to deal with changes, lack of drivers, late code changes that broke drivers which had been working, ambiguous guidelines from Microsoft, the need for users to obtain hardware and software updates from vendors, and on and on and on. Wow!
Damned if You Do ...
Let's take one issue: The meaning of "capable". My aging Ford Explorer might be "capable" of carrying a ton of ready-mix concrete in bags, but that doesn't mean it would be a good idea to try it. When a PC is shown as "capable" of doing something, this means that it meets the minimum acceptable requirements for running the operating system or the application. A system with merely "capable" specifications will be able to boot Vista, but the user experience won't be good. Aero doesn't work on low-end machines and a lack of memory means that the system will be slow because of near-constant disk activity.
So, as Senior VP for Windows Engineering Steven Sinofsky asked in one internal message, "Is it true that Vista Ready doesn't necessarily mean Aero capable?" The answer is, of course, yes. Vista Home Basic doesn't include Aero, so a "Vista Ready" machine might be able to run Aero-deficient Vista Home Basic and it would still be advertised as Vista Ready.
Microsoft bowed to pressure from Intel, which wanted to keep selling its 915 graphics chipset, which wasn't capable of running Aero. Microsoft General Manager John Kalkman wrote that Microsoft lowered the requirements "to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded." Kalkman said that it was a mistake for Microsoft to change the original graphics requirements.
Sinofsky, the senior VP for Windows engineering, complained internally that he spent $2100 on a "Vista capable" laptop only to find it couldn't run the Aero interface. "I now have a $2100 email machine," he said. "[Intel's] 945 chipset which is the baseline Vista set barely works right now and ... their 915 chipset which is not Aero capable is in a huge number of laptops and was tagged as 'Vista capable'."
Trouble Near the Top
Jim Allchin, who reports directly to Steve Ballmer, told his staff in an e-mail: "We really botched this. I was not involved in this decision process[.] I supported it because I trusted you thinking through the logic.... [I]t is hard for me to step in now and reverse everything again."
CEO Steve Ballmer has cited a need to push Vista harder. Sales have been "solid", but hardly what Microsoft had hoped for and anticipated. In February, Microsoft dropped the price of Vista to the point that the Home Premium edition costs less than XP Pro. Marketing professionals question whether price cuts will do much for sales. The product is increasingly viewed as being badly flawed and people with "Vista-capable" now know that Vista might not run well on those machines.
Microsoft still plans to eliminate XP as an OEM option by the middle of 2008, so consumers will have a choice between Vista and Vista. Or maybe between Vista and Apple's OS X. Or between Vista and the open-source community's Linux. The best way to kill a bad product is to advertise it well.
Question: Why did Microsoft think it was more important to placate Intel than to do the right thing for its customers?
Stupid Spam of the Week
"Let us buy you a Vizio 52 Inch Plasma HDTV" Why do I have trouble believing that this is a valid offer? The first clue is the address that it claims to come from (PTP <PTP@xxhgh.palankakalvin.com>) and the second is that it tells me the offer isn't valid in Ohio. It gets better.
You already know the drill. I want to know where the link will send me. No matter where I might click on the page (whether I want more information or I want to be removed from the mailing list), the link is the same:
http://palankakalvin.com/1626684c1626684c85238041e1626684c&1626684c&4957798i&85238041e/
Where is palankakalvin.com? It's in the Netherlands.
The webroot is blank (what a surprise).
The link has "moved" (what a surprise).
And what about "Product Test Panel". If you perform a Google search, you'll find lots of comments such as this: First off: PTP isn't like gratis. There are no referrals. Secondly, at the time i signed up, the "sponsored offers" were very reasonable. To get my gift i had to: sign up for aol, efax, some time of skin cream, some type of diet pill, and get directTV. Total out of pocket expenses: 160 (plus 60 a month for directTV). I later canceled directTV, but i used it for awhile. I figured i needed some sort of TV, might as well get a free laptop/macmini. I saw the new sponsored offers and it doesn't seem like you can get any gift without spending something like 1500$ out of pocket, and for that price you might as well just buy the product. So i guess i must say: PTP is NOW a scam.
Rule #1a: If the offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. Nobody is going to give you an expensive digital camera, a computer, or anything else worth $1000 or more for free. Follow the links offering to do so at your financial peril.
Nerdly News
Dumb and Dumber: RIAA and the MPAA
Both the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have done their best to demonize on-line sharing of music and video, but the simple fact remains that the free advertising provided by peer-to-peer networking continues to do more good than harm.
For example, the MPAA says that on-line sharing of video is destroying the industry. You might find it odd, then, that the MPAA's website notes that in 2007 box office sales hit new all-time highs both in the US and around the world. On-Line sharing is really creating a problem, isn't it?
The MPAA's numbers prove that the global market increased a little less than 5% year over year to $26.6 billion. Within the US, the market was up a little over 5% to just under $10 billion.
Explain to me again how on-line sharing is destroying the market.
And here to do just that is Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the MPAA: "From the threat and eventual reality of a writer’s strike to the global impact of film theft to concerns over the economy, the film industry faced significant challenges in 2007, but, ultimately, we got our Hollywood ending. Once again, diverse, quality films and the timeless allure of the movie house proved a winning combination with consumers around the world.”
Does movie piracy cost the US economy $20.5 billion annually or does it increase revenue at the box office? A study by the Institute for Public Innovation suggests that "piracy" is responsible for the creation of 45,000 new jobs in the movie industry. Although the overall economy is dealing with more than a $20 billion annual loss, box office sales are up substantially.
Wrong Choice? Circuit City Gives You an Out.
Blu-ray won the HD format war for DVDs, but what if you made the wrong choice and bought an HD-DVD player? If you bought your HD-DVD unit from Circuit City, I have good news. You can return HD-DVD players for full credit for 90 days from the date you purchased it. Circuit City says it wants to take care of its customers. Watch for other big box stores to follow.
Toshiba has stopped making HD-DVD players and discs and Circuit City's Jim Babb says that the company will do what it can to help consumer deal with "the next generation of video disc formats".
Sony won the battle because it didn't want to be handed another Betamax-like defeat. Betamax lost out to VHS in the 1980s when consumers voted with their wallets for the technically less adept but cheaper VHS. This time around, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Company, Warner Brothers, and Twentieth Century Fox all selected Blu-ray.
The good news is that the decision has been made for you. The bad news is that you have a dead player if you bought the wrong device. That describes more than 1 million consumers worldwide. Circuit City says that it will extend its usual 30-day return policy for 90 days for HD-DVD devices. The policy is for players only, not for discs.
If you already own an HD-DVD player, you might want to keep it, though: The players will work with existing HD-DVD discs and they also improve the playback of standard DVDs.
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