InfoWorld’s “Save XP” Petition

 

“…Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don’t see a need to change to Vista. It’s like having a comfortable apartment that you’ve enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place — even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) — just doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’ll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don’t have any other reason to move.

 

That’s exactly the conclusion people have come to with Vista. For most of us, there’s really no reason to move to it — yet we don’t have a choice. When that strong desire to stick with XP became obvious in spring 2007, major computer makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard quietly reintroduced new XP-based systems (but just to business customers, so as not to offend Microsoft). Come June 30, however, even that option goes away.” Read the full story and sign the petition at InfoWorld.Com

Microsoft loses ‘Vista Capable’ appeal; more insider e-mails could emerge.

Microsoft Corp.’s attempt to reverse a lower court’s ruling in the ongoing “Vista Capable” lawsuit was denied by an appeals court on Monday. The decision means the case can resume.

It also means that new insider e-mails subpoenaed from Microsoft and nearly 30 other companies could be made public.

In a brief order dated April 21, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Microsoft’s request to overturn a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman in February that granted class-action status to a lawsuit that charges the company deceived consumers in 2006 with its Windows Vista Capable marketing program. Read the full story on ComputerWorld.Com

 

From Win32 to Cocoa: A Windows developer’s conversion to Mac OS X

“A couple of Gartner analysts have recently claimed that Windows is “collapsing”; that it’s too big, too sprawling, and too old to allow rapid development and significant new features. Although organizations like Gartner depend on trolling to drum up business, I think this time they could be onto something. “Collapsing” is over-dramatic-gradual decline is a more likely outcome-but the essence of what they’re saying-and why they’re saying it-rings true.

Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it-that’s the argument. The truth is that Windows is hampered by 25-year old design decisions. These decisions mean that it’s clunky to use and absolutely horrible to write applications for. The applications that people do write are almost universally terrible. They’re ugly, they’re inconsistent, they’re disorganized; there’s no finesse, no care lavished on them. Microsoft-surely the company with the greatest interest in making Windows and Windows applications exude quality-is, in fact, one of the worst perpetrators.” Read the full article on ArsTechnica.Com

 

Ballmer: Vista is ‘a work in progress’

 

As PC users clamor for Microsoft to continue to support Windows XP, company CEO Steve Ballmer called the Vista OS “a work in progress” at an annual Seattle event on Thursday.

“It’s a very important piece of work. We did a lot of things right and have a lot of things we need to learn from. You never want to let five years go between releases,” he said.

While Microsoft recently extended the date when the XP software will be available for low-cost PCs, it doesn’t plan to listen to some other complaints, including that Vista is too big. “Vista is bigger than XP and it’s gonna stay bigger than XP,” Ballmer said. Read the full story on MacWorld.Com

 

Vista Update Causes USB Problems

A recent Vista update is causing headaches for users with USB devices.
Microsoft last week re-released a software update intended to provide performance and reliability enhancements for Windows Vista -based and Windows Vista Service Pack 1-based systems. It was one of eight security bulletins and updates the company made available on April 8.

Users who installed the update, however, soon found their USB devices unresponsive, particularly mice and flash drives. Removing and re-installing the programs reportedly did not immediately solve the problem.

Microsoft confirmed the bug, but declined to provide further details. Read the full story at PCMag.Com found via Bink.Nu

 

Vista downgrading: What are your rights?

Talk about a catch 22. Did you know that in order to be allowed to downgrade Vista to XP on a new computer, Microsoft expects you to have one of the more expensive editions of Windows Vista that most OEMs don’t even put on their machines. It’s true. Have a look at this official Microsoft one-sheet explaining the intricacies of downgrading from Vista that’s come bundled with a new PC.

You’d have to add $180 to the price of a Dell Inspiron 530 in order to have the right to use XP instead of Vista.

See the one sheet on Microsoft.Com

Top Analysts: Windows collapsing under its own weight; Radical change needed

 

Microsoft’s Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20 years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile, Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will need radical changes.

That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald. Half of a full room of IT managers and executives raised their hands when asked whether Microsoft needed to radically change its approach to Windows. Read the full story on ZDNet.Com

 

Creative Labs shoots self in foot. Tries to stop the bleeding.

Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their Sound Cards as being ‘Vista Ready’. Unfortunately, as many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted that features such as Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(TM) signals and DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista. With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to ‘fix’ many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing many bugs.

Creative decided to put a stop to this. They removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who were posting links to the now banned drivers.”

The move backfired big time, generating a media firestorm and howls of protests from outraged users on technology forums across the web. Guess what, Creative has reinstated Daniel_K’s posts. Read the full story on TheRegister.Co.Uk found via SlashDot.Org

 

Microsoft Succeeds in Making Vista Even Worse

Windows Vista is already perhaps the most frustrating product Microsoft has yet heaved onto the computing public. But now its Service Pack 1 update, which is supposed to FIX holes and squeaks in the Vista code, seems to be making things worse — so much worse that venerable publications like Computerworld are running stories about how to get SP1 off your machine. InfoWorld has a piece about how Vista users are blasting Microsoft on Microsoft’s own Vista blog. Read the full story on SeekingAlpha.Com

Vista SP1: Threat or Menace?

“Popular wisdom says you should wait for SP1 before switching to any new version of Windows. Ironically, the question on the minds of current Vista customers iswhether it’s the right time to switch to SP1.

Vista SP1 reportedly wraps some 551 bug fixes along with performance, reliability, and compatibility enhancements. But given how customers who have upgraded from XP have struggled with driver and application incompatibilities, it’s no surprise that many are gun-shy of the latest update.” Read the full article on WashingtonPost.Com

Microsoft top brass ‘burned’ by Vista problems

“Private Microsoft emails unearthed during a US court case have revealed that even the software giant’s own executives struggled to get Windows Vista running smoothly.”

“…One executive, Mike Nash, complained he was “burned” so badly by compatibility issues he was left with “a $2100 email machine”.

Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows, struggled to even get his home printer working with Vista.”

“Jon Shirley, who experienced compatibility problems with his Epson printer and scanner and his Nikon film scanner.

He could not even get some of Microsoft’s own MSN software products to work on Vista and refused to upgrade his other computer to the operating system.

“I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers,” Shirley wrote to Ballmer.

Other emails from various Microsoft executives show that even they struggled to work out what “Vista Capable” and “Vista Ready” meant when buying a new PC.

“Is it true that Vista Ready doesn’t necessarily mean Aero capable? I got a Dell Latitude that is Vista Ready but doesn’t have enough graphics [hardware],” Sinofsky wrote.”

Read the full article on SydneyMorningHerald.Com.Au

See also this article on the NYTimes.Com

My nightmare trying to upgrade to Vista SP1

“Pity me. I’m trying to update to Vista SP1 and it turns out I’m one of the people on the Vista SP1 banned driver list. I’ve wasted hours of my life that I won’t get back, and still no SP1. I’ll show you what I’ve gone through, including screenshots, so that you don’t have to go through this mess yourself.” Read the full article on ComputerWorld.Com

Windows Vista SP1 wreaks havoc on some PCs, users complain

“…Microsoft on Tuesday made Vista SP1 widely available for the first time. The company has admitted it’s still not perfect.The service pack will not install on computers that use peripheral device drivers that Microsoft has deemed incompatible. The list includes a small set of audio and display drivers made by Realtek and Intel, as well as drivers from several other manufacturers.

Microsoft said it’s working to resolve the compatibility issues”

“…Other troubles reported by Vista SP1 users ranged from a simple inability to download the software from Microsoft’s Windows Update site to sudden spikes in memory usage. “Went from using 650 MB RAM idle to 1 Gig… I’ll be switching back,” said “Kurrier.” Read the full story on ITNews.Com.Au

Court docs reveal Microsoft’s TRUE motivation for relaxing Vista’s License Agreement

“…Microsoft finally relented in January and allowed Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium to be virtualized, company officials attributed the change of heart to a newfound “maturity in the industry,” in terms of being able to trust “what’s under the virtual machine.”But the real reason for Microsoft’s capitulation became clear on March 7 via a new joint-status report in the Microsoft-Department of Justice case. It turns out BIOS maker Phoenix Technologies (a long-time Microsoft partner) filed a complaint with antitrust regulators about Microsoft’s virtualization restrictions.” Read the full story on All About Microsoft

Windows Exploit leads to “amazing amount” of stolen Pentagon data.

“…the intrusion was first detected during an IT restructuring that was underway at the time. By the time it was detected, malicious code had been in the system for at least two months, and was propagating via a known Windows exploit. The bug spread itself by e-mailing malicious payloads from one system on the network to another. The messages themselves were spoofed and appeared to be legitimate missives from other employees. Once the recipient opened an infected e-mail, the worm sent that person’s password and other login credentials back to home base.” Read the full story on Ars Technica

Court docs reveal Vista requirements lowered to help Intel sell incompatible chipsets.

“So now that the “Vista Capable” lawsuit is a full-blown class action, the judge has unsealed all 158 pages of emails between Microsoft execs trying to sort out what went wrong with the sticker program. While bits and pieces have been blacked out, what remains is still fairly incredible — although Intel’s 915 chipset was initially rejected as incompatible with Vista, MS execs flatly admit that “In the end, we lowered the requirements to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded” and “We are caving to Intel.” Read the full story on Engadget.Com

McAfee warns of Trojan virus for your Windows Mobile cellphone.

“WinCE/InfoJack sends the infected device’s serial number, operating system and other information to the author of the Trojan. It also leaves the infected mobile device vulnerable by allowing silent installation of malware. The Trojan modifies the infected device’s security setting to allow unsigned applications to be installed without a warning.

The Trojan was packed inside a number of legitimate installation files and distributed widely. It has been distributed with Google Maps, applications for stock trading, and a collection of games” Read the full story on ZDNet
I still can’t believe Microsoft wants to be more involved in the medical industry and that Bill Gates said he would trust his LIFE to Microsoft powered hardware in a hospital.

Criminals Attacking Myspace, Facebook Internet Explorer Plugins

“According to the Washington Post’s Security Fix blog, cyber criminals are populating the Internet with Web sites designed to exploit several recently-discovered security holes in a half-dozen widely used ActiveX plug-ins for IE 6 and 7, most notably the one offered by Facebook and MySpace to help users upload photos. The sites, advertised via links in email and instant message spam, also ‘probe for other vulnerable IE plug-ins, including two recently discovered from Yahoo! and one for QuickTime (this one attacks a vulnerability Apple patched just last month). The sites also throw in an exploit against a six-month-old IE flaw.’ The article notes that the SANS Internet Storm Center has released a GUI tool to help users safely deactivate the vulnerable plug-ins in the Windows registry.” Found via Slashdot.Org

Will Windows 7 Track Your Every Move?

File this one under “You’ve got to be f***ing kidding me!”

“…One good place to look for what might be coming in Windows 7 is an early planned feature list of Vista (then called Longhorn) back in 2003. If one intriguing feature, called Location Awareness, makes its way into Windows 7, it could track your every move…and that could be a good thing.

Microsoft described Location Awareness, along with a host of other planned features, in a document called the Windows “Longhorn” Pre-Release Privacy Statement that detailed to beta testers Longhorn’s expected data collection and use. (Thanks to istartedsomething for uncovering this document and its relation to another potential Windows 7 feature, HomeGroup.) Many of these features never made it into Vista — remember WinFS anyone?

Location Awareness, according to the Microsoft document:

collects computer location data such as address, position, building/floor/room, and stores it locally in the WinFS store. It also collects data that helps to determine the location information of your computer, but is not directly useful as location information itself, such as: MAC addresses of access points near your computer and the IP address of the subnet and default gateway to which you are connected. It collects data from you, from the active directory, from wireless zeroconfig, and from IPhelper.

Read the full article on ComputerWorld.Com

Microsoft Pulls Troubled Vista Update

“Microsoft TechNet forums started to buzz with trouble late last week, after update KB937287 caused some Vista PCs to either fail to properly boot up or enter an endless boot up loop.“

“Microsoft released a statement:

“We’ve received reports that some customers may be experiencing an unusual reboot cycle after installing KB937287, the servicing stack update we released last week. To prevent further instances of this issue, we temporarily stopped automatic distribution of the update and are investigating solutions to the problem. We believe this problem only impacts a small number of customers. We are working to identify possible solutions and will resume automatic distribution again after we address the issue.”

“I can’t recall a time when Microsoft acknowledged any problem causing trouble to more than a “small number of customers.” How does Microsoft define “small?” Read the full story on MicrosoftWatch.Com

UK education agency says no to Vista, Office 2007

“The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has published its final report (PDF) on Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. The agency is largely sticking with its interim recommendations that schools steer clear of Vista in existing deployments and Office 2007 altogether.”

“…Becta recommends against deploying Vista in current setups, saying that the upside of such upgrades aren’t worth the cost. According to Becta, only 22 percent of school PCs in the UK are capable of running Vista “effectively.” Read the full story on ArTechnica.Com

Sales Pitch: “We remove Vista” [pic]

“…the sign appeared in the window of A&D Computer, across the street from the town square. Shop manager Aaron Kaplan said they were prompted to put it up because so many people were having problems with Windows Vista, including compatibility issues with older software and trouble adjusting to the interface.”A lot of people didn’t like using Vista, and a lot of the manufacturers forced people to go up to Vista,” he said.

What was the demand for the service? “We had a lot of people coming in and asking about it,” Kaplan said. “Of all the signs we put up there the last two years, at least, we probably got the most response out of that one. A lot of people coming in.” Read the full story on SeattlePI.Com

Legal IT Consultant: Vista = My Own Personal Hell

“…My conclusion is now that NO ONE who values their sanity, their time, their psyche and general sense of well-being should use Vista. At all. Under any circumstances. In fact, after giving it more than a fair shake over 11 months of daily use, I know think it deserves to be classified internationally as a Weapon of Mass Data Destruction. In fact, perhaps the best way to defeat Al Quaida or any other terrorist group would be to send them free copies of a particularly brain-dead version of Vista like “Home Basic” - it would stop them in their tracks, as it has done with me and so many others.”

“Vista is the #1 reason Apple has been so successful in the overnight turnaround of its Mac product line. The best feature of the Macbook and iMac series is they DON’T have Vista, not the fact they now have Leopard.” Read the full post on Rossipsa.Com

Newspaper: Window Vista can clear out a medicine cabinet

“…A year ago, I picked up a computer on Boxing Day. Because Windows Vista didn’t come out until a few months later, the computer had the option of a free update to the new Microsoft operating system.

I never got around to doing the upgrade. And now, I’m glad I never did.

This Boxing Day, I once again picked up some bargain basement computers. This time, they were all loaded with Vista. It’s a good thing I don’t get headaches, because now, a week later, I would have run out of Advil, Motrin, Tylenol, Tylenol Extra Strength, Tylenol Quick Release, Aspirin, and maybe even Children’s Tylenol. I might have even raided the first aid kits in the cars.

The first headache was networking. As these computers are all meant to work together for my hockey photography shoots, so it is imperative the networking works.

Gizmodo Tests XP vs Vista vs Vista SP1. (Vista still sucks)

“…we noticed with Windows Vista was when we tried to transfer a large folder full of files over our 100Base-T network. While XP was able to transfer the 1.37GB folder containing 2606 items in a quick 3:37 (minutes/seconds), the Vista transfer seemed to hesitate at the end, taking a leisurely 12:58 to perform exactly the same copy from one PC to another over our network. Then when we compared the current shipping version of Vista with its upcoming service pack, there wasn’t much difference, with the Service Pack speeding things up by 0.865% in the PCMark tests.

The only part of it that’s bugging us is the network file transfer speed got even slower in the SP1 release candidate. Also continuing that bothersome disk speed problem is the way Vista couldn’t read and write on that speedy 15,000rpm SAS drive anywhere near as fast as XP did.” Read the full report (with a tiny bit of good news) at Gizmodo.Com

Windows Home Server corrupts your files.

Microsoft Corp. has warned Windows Home Server users not to edit files stored on their backup systems with several of its programs, including Vista Photo Gallery and Office’s OneNote and Outlook, as well as files generated by popular finance software such as Quicken and QuickBooks.”When you use certain programs to edit files on a home computer that uses Windows Home Server, the files may become corrupted when you save them to the home server,” Microsoft said in a support document posted last week. Read the full story on ComputerWorld.Com

PC World: Vista The Biggest Tech Disappointment of 2007

Hot on the heels of C|Net declaring Windows Vista the Worst Technolgy Product of the last 21 years, PC World has chimed in declaring Windows Vista the number one biggest technology disapointment of 2007.

“…No wonder so many users are clinging to XP like shipwrecked sailors to a life raft, while others who made the upgrade are switching back. And when the fastest Vista notebook PC World has ever tested is an Apple MacBook Pro, there’s something deeply wrong with the universe.

We have no doubt Vista will come to dominate the PC landscape, if only because it will become increasingly hard to buy a new machine that doesn’t have it pre-installed. And that’s disappointing in its own right.” Read the full list here. Or jump straight to the #1 disappointment spot.

Gauging Windows user’s reactions to Vista with Google

Ever wonder where I find some of the articles I post here? A lot of comes from being spotted in customized .RSS feeds from technology websites but a lot of it is also found with Google’s search. Thanks to the amazing “quotes” and “&” feature it’s always easy to find relevant information and/or an exact phrase. Here are some of my favorite Google Searches and the enlightening consumer consensus they reveal about Windows Vista…

Soviet Microsoft: How Resistance to Free Markets and Open Ideas Will the Unravel the Software Superpower.

“…Somewhat ironically, one of the most financially successful capitalist companies of the 90s has positioned itself as a modern counterpart to the old communist Soviet Union. Microsoft’s ideological contempt for and resistance to free markets and the open expression and propagation of fresh ideas and technologies is not only a close parallel of the old USSR, but also a clear reflection of why Microsoft is currently failing and why its troubles have only just begun. Here’s a comprehensive look at why this is the case.” Read the full article on RoughlyDrafted.Com

Adventures in public printing (Windows security)

A little side note today about an experience of mine from yesterday. I found myself needing to print a few PDFs from my Gmail account while I was out and about. Hmm where to go for printing that’s along my journey? My first stop was the internet cafe in the local London Drugs 

After paying for a 15 min slot of time I sat down at the XP computer, logged into my Gmail, found the e-mail, and clicked the attachment. But much to my surprise 

Picture of the Day

Found via Gizmodo.Com

One year later: Where are the killer Vista apps?

“At the Consumer Electronics Show last January, Microsoft and Yahoo made a big deal out of a Vista-optimized version of Yahoo Messenger that was supposedly one of many compelling Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps in the pipeline.

On December 6, one year later, Yahoo announced a pre-beta of its Vista instant-messaging app. And still no word on what took so long or when Yahoo will get the final version out there.

What gives? Aren’t applications supposedly what sell an operating system? If so, where are the must-have Vista apps built to take advantage of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) graphics, the Windows Communication Foundation WCF) communications and Windows Workflow (WF) underpinnings of Vista?”