Bad Windows

The blackout that left millions of Skype users without the ability to make Internet phone calls from their PCs for two days was, ironically, triggered by the service's users.

Skype offers a P2P (peer-to-peer) VOIP (voice over IP) software service, which allows users to make phone calls, instant messages and videos over their computers with a broadband Internet connection. The service is free for users of the Skype network and is extremely popular, boasting more than 220 million users.

Skype spokesman Villu Arak wrote in a blog post Aug. 20 that the outage, which was resolved Aug. 18, happened after a massive restart of its users' computers across the globe as they "re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update."

Read more at eWeek 

Something I often hear from people that talk about Linux on the desktop is this: people want to be able to go to the store, buy hardware, and be confident that it will Just Work.

I would like to point out that things are rarely this simple on Windows. And, in fact, things are often simpler on Linux these days.

Here's the example that prompted this post.

I have a computer that's about 4 years old. It's my main desktop machine at home. It was still fast enough for me, but has been developing all sorts of weird behaviors. Certain USB ports stopped working altogether a few months ago. Then it started hanging during POST whenever I'd try to reboot — but would still boot OK about 80% of the time after a power cycle. Then it started randomly losing contact with my USB mouse until a reboot. And the last straw was when the display started randomly going out. I've told everyone that my machine has cancer and is slowly dying.

Read more at changelog 

Software incompatibility, the need for hardware upgrades, and comfort with existing versions of Microsoft Windows are all causing businesses that once planned to roll out Windows Vista as fast as consumers to put off their deployments, according to Forrester Research Inc.

According to a report published last week and publicly released on Tuesday, Forrester says "most" of the 45 IT managers it spoke to this spring are waiting for the release of Vista Service Pack 1 early next year before starting to "seriously consider" upgrading to Vista. Many others also cited the late-summer release of System Center Configuration Manager 2007, the upgrade to the deployment software formerly known as Systems Management Server (SMS), as another reason they have not started to move from Windows 2000 or XP to Vista.

Read more at PC World 

WHILE MICROSOFT'S Vista operating system is being touted by the company as the greatest thing since sliced bread, organisers of the 2008 Olympics are not so sure.

PC company Lenovo, which is supplying masses of computers to the Beijing Organising Committee, does not think the operating system is stable enough. It will be deploying Windows XP instead.

Yang Yuanqing, chairman of Lenovo, miffed the Vole during a briefing in Beijing earlier this month, when he said that the Olympic Games require mature, stable technologies and were not the place to try out something new.

Read more at theINQUIRER 

Microsoft's August security patches, released today, provide a new chance to assess the company's promise of higher security in Windows Vista. The company released six critical security bulletins, and Windows Vista is among the versions affected by three of them.

Two of the critical bulletins involve earlier Windows versions, but not Windows Vista, suggesting that Microsoft avoided those problems in the new operating system.

But one of the three bulletins with the lower ranking of "important" affects Windows Vista alone. And it's an interesting one, dealing with RSS feeds and Windows Vista Gadgets. Here's the executive summary:

Read more at seattlepi.com 

Vista Inspired Wallpaper

"Content protection features in Windows Vista from Microsoft are preventing customers from playing high-quality HD audio/video & harming system performance. Vista requires premium content like HD movies to be degraded in quality when it is sent to high-quality outputs, like DVI. Users will see status codes that say 'graphics OPM resolution too high'.

Read more at Slashdot 

Microsoft has had to create a new build of Windows XP Professional for computer makers because the six-year-old operating system's continued popularity has nearly exhausted the supply of product activation keys.

The new build, dubbed SP2c, includes no fixes or feature changes, but was created simply to address the shrinking pool of product keys. XP Pro SP2c, which has been released to manufacturing, will be made available to OEMs and system builders next month, said Microsoft.

"Due to the longevity of Windows XP Professional, it has become necessary to produce more product keys for system builders in order to support the continued availability of Windows XP Professional through the scheduled system builder channel end-of-life (EOL) date, wrote the Microsoft system builder team on its blog Thursday.

Read more at New Zealand PC World 

Unquestionably, Vista has met and perhaps even surpassed most sales expectations. This includes OEM and boxed sales of the new Windows operating system. But what we never hear Microsoft talking about is the level of satisfaction from their customers who elected to purchase this OS. Today, we'll explore this perspective based on my research in this area.

Thanks, But I Will Wait for SP1. One of the common themes I have seen with a substantial number of Windows power users is their desire to wait for Windows SP (Service Pack) 1 before switching to Vista. Why? Simply because of the fact that many of these same users have been witnessing a lot of press and blog coverage from real users who, for a variety of reasons, have tremendous problems with driver support, among other issues.

So, how can the successful sales be explained then? I'm willing to bet that it has to do with the fact that power users are more likely to closely review a product before dumping large amounts of cash onto it. And with many well known Windows users exclaiming that waiting for some bug fixes might be a good idea, who amongst the geeky users is going to take this risk? Not those who value their time and money, that is for sure.

Read more at OSWeekly 

Evolution of window errors. Looks nice…