Bad Windows

Microsoft's Vista operating system arrived with great fanfare in late January.
You can buy it already installed on a new computer or you can install it on the computer you already have. However, Consumer Reports has found some problems of which you need to be aware.

Testers found the new computers with Vista are slower than those with Windows XP. And while Vista's security system proved quite effective, it requires a lot more attention because of frequent pop-up messages.

Consumer Reports discovered other problems. When Vista was installed on a home computer, an error message popped up when trying to print. It turned out the printer wasn't compatible with Vista. And the incompatibility problems didn't end there. At least four of the external devices stopped working after the upgrade to Vista.

Read more at 9news.com  

Microsoft unfairly labeled PCs "Windows Vista Capable" even when the computers could run only the most basic form of the operating system, according to a lawsuit filed in March.

Prior to the availability of Vista, Microsoft launched a marketing campaign that allowed PC makers to place a sticker on computers alerting potential buyers that they could upgrade to Vista when it became available.

However, "a large number" of those PCs could capably run only the Home Basic version of Vista, which lacks many features, such as enhanced graphics, that Microsoft advertises as included in Vista, the suit alleges.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seeks class-action status and asks for damages. The suit notes that the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million and that the size of the class likely exceeds 10,000 people.

Read more at CIO  

Software giant Microsoft has confirmed that they are not delivering the security updates to the users still on the beta and test releases of the Vista operating system.

The company added in a statement that the no-updates policy had already been spelled out to users who installed the beta and two release candidates (RC) last year.

A Microsoft representative added in a statement: “Microsoft no longer provides service or support for the prerelease versions. This would include [security] updates.”

Apparently, manually downloading the patches is not working for the test users as the updates gives out an error and closes down.

The company has also confirmed that the Vista previews will expire May 31. They plan to start notifying users starting May 18.

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Having heard that Vista's CD/DVD burn utility by default uses a nonstandard format, possibly as a result of yet another one of Microsoft's lock-in schemes, I decided to check things out for myself. That would also give me a nice chance to see what Vista was all about.

The plan was simple:

1. Locate a Vista box,
2. Bring empty CD's plus some arbitrary files on a USB stick, and
3. Burn CD's in several ways while making screenshots.

As it turned out, the planning was the simplest part by far. The rest is best described as a tale of frustration.

1. Step 1: Locating a Vista computer

Locating a working Vista box proved harder than I expected. First I went over to a local computer shop, the owner of which I know personally, and asked if I might have a go on any Vista demo box they might have standing around. They said they'd be happy to oblige, but that they had no Vista computers on offer at all, because “Vista doesn't work well enough yet.” It turned out that they'd tested a Vista installation on several machines and concluded that it wasn't yet something they wanted to sell to their customers.

The exact same thing happened at another computer shop. The third vendor, a large retail chain, did actually have some preinstalled Vista machines running but wouldn't let me touch them, because, they said, then: “We can't sell them as new any more.”

After a week of calling around, I finally located someone with a preinstalled Vista box that I could try out — he wasn't using it, as it turned out that the owner (an experienced Windows XP user) couldn't get the hang of Vista at all and considered buying the machine “a mistake”. Not a good sign.

So I had the machine all to myself: a dual-core 2.8GHz Pentium D with one GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 SE featuring 128MB graphics RAM, preloaded with Vista Home Premium. This is a vastly more powerful machine than any of my Linux boxes (which run smoothly and snappily nonetheless), yet it seemed to me to be underpowered to run all the Vista eye-candy, in particular the 3D effects. Ah well.

Read more at Groklaw

An internal memo from top technology officials at the Federal Aviation Administration cites Windows Vista's hardware requirements as a major reason why the government agency may pass on upgrading its computer systems to Microsoft's widely-hyped new operating system.

The memo, which was authored just prior to Windows Vista's commercial release at the end of January, notes that Vista requires "twice the memory …than that currently specified in the FAA Desktop standard configuration."

It also points out that the operating system, Microsoft's successor to Windows XP, needs "a faster processor" and graphics cards that are also beyond the hardware specifications of PCs used by the FAA.

Microsoft recommends that business editions of Windows Vista run atop computers with at least a 1-GHz processor, 1 Gbyte of system memory, and a 40-Gbyte hard drive with 15 Gbytes of free space.

The memo, dated January 26, 2007, was issued and hand signed by FAA CIO Dave Bowen and VP for acquisition and business services James Washington. A copy of the memo was obtained Wednesday by InformationWeek.

It reinforces comments made by Bowen in a March interview with InformationWeek. At the time, Bowen said he might permanently bypass upgrading the FAA's 45,000 desktops to Windows Vista and is instead considering migrating workers at the agency to PCs running a combination of Linux and Google's online Google Apps productivity tools.

Read more at InformationWeek  

When Microsoft released a strong earnings report for the first quarter of 2007, it wasn't just the spike in revenues that was unexpected. The claims that strong Vista sales was a key driver of that earnings growth sounded a bit overblown – and I can give you six reasons why.

The operating system was only released to the consumer market in January. Enterprises have had it since last Fall, but they generally tend to adopt a new Microsoft operating system fairly slowly. Nonetheless, a story in Business Week, Vista Pays off for Microsoft, states that "…while some corporate customers still opt for the predecessor Windows XP when they buy new computers, for software compatibility reasons, a remarkably large number are taking the new operating system." That unattributed remark sounds like a reporter may have drunk too much of the Microsoft Kool-Aid. 

Read  more at Computerworld

I was at a conference when two techies walked into the open bar, one an open source supporter and one staunchly anti. They got into it a bit after a few drinks, and Mr. Anti commented loudly, “I wish open source would just go away! It causes more trouble than it's worth.” Statements I obviously have issues with. Now, I know most people don’t understand the role of open source software in our world, or just how many services that we take for granted would disappear without it. If you’re a card-carrying member of the community, you probably know where I’m headed.

Say at the stroke of midnight, all open source software magically vanished. What would still work tomorrow?

For starters, the Internet would “disappear” for the average user. Most Domain Name Servers (DNS) are run on open source software like BIND, which turns www.whurley.com into the IP address of the appropriate server. The majority of basic Internet users would be literally lost in translation. Of course, BIND isn't the only open source software for DNS. And not all DNS solutions are open source.

So assume DNS still works or perhaps you memorized 72.14.207.99 instead of www.google.com. Even with name servers functioning, Google would drop off of the face of the Internet. Google is primarily powered by Linux—arguably the most popular open source operating system on the planet. No worries. You'll just pop over to Yahoo!, right? Wrong. Yahoo! is one of the largest consumers of another popular open source operating system: FreeBSD. Now you’ve resigned yourself to trying 207.68.172.246. We all know they're not running open source, and they've been working hard on that search feature for quite some time.

Read more at bmcsoftware