Why Windows 7 Will Be a Success, Whether Good or Not
Windows 7 hasn’t even arrived yet but the speculation started: What’s wrong with Windows 7. To be fair, the speculation is fueled by an unlikely source: Steve Ballmer himself. He is trying to manage a potential fallout by warning us: “’The test feedback (on Windows 7) has been good, but the test feedback on Vista [...]
Oh, No – Yet Another Windows Release?
Two years ago I wrote: Windows Seven in 2010. Does Anyone Still Care? I simply don’t get it: Vista is barely out, nobody seems to like it, CIO’s refuse to upgrade, analyst firms tell them to wait, individual users who tried it switch back to XP, others time their new PC purchase so they can [...]
The Vista Movie
OK, I admit. The title over-promises, the post under-delivers. This won’t be an exciting thriller. In fact it’s outright boring. Like watching paint dry. But that’s exactly the point, Vista took a good minute to delete a single file ( I got bored after 18 seconds and stopped recording). Must be a giant file…. [...]
Vista Update Causes Perpetual Reboot
My Vista-based laptop gave me the Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown screen: this is where you have the options to start Windows normally or select one of several “safe” driver- and service-less modes to boot. I picked normal, the system booted .. end of story. Except… I walked away for a little while, [...]
Fifty Reasons Why the Vista Era Did Happen, Indeed
Harry McCracken lists the Sixteen Reasons the Windows Vista Era Never Quite Happened. I almost agree with him, except that I do have 50 reasons to remember the Vista Era: it is the Fifty bucks ransom I paid to get out of this nightmare called Vista. So, yes, it happened. But it won’t be missed. [...]
Bought a Netbook or Super-slim Notebook? The “Free” Windows 7 Upgrade May Cost You a Bunch.
It’s back-to-school time, and there are some amazing bargains if you’re looking for new laptops: following Walmart, just about all major retailers offer at least one sub $300 model – a bit underpowered, if you ask me, but for $100 more you can get fairly powerful computers, still below the $500 treshold. Netbooks are no [...]
Google Chrome OS: Pre-Announcement in Classic Microsoft-style
Image via Wikipedia There’s hardly anything to add to the actual announcement- the whole world is talking about it, and I don’t just mean TechMeme entirely taken over: when Reuters, The New York Times and just about all mainstream media reports it, you know there’s something big – but is it nuclear? We’ll have to [...]
Your Ransom to Break Free of Vista: $50 Win7 Upgrade – Catch it While You Can
Fellow Windows Vista victims, there’s light at the end of the tunnel: we may soon set ourselves free and only have to pay a $50 ransom. I just did. It has been obvious for quite a while that Microsoft simply abandoned Vista and it’s users, and instead of releasing Vista SP3, or Vista Final, it [...]
Screen Size: The Next Plan to Cripple Netbooks in Order to Protect a Dying Market
The proliferation of affordable netbooks is good for everyone – consumers, that is. Computer manufacturers loath it (high volume, low margin business) and so does Microsoft: they can’t exactly sell $100+ worth of software on a $200 machine. So they come up with all sorts of evil plans. First there was the Windows 7 plan: [...]
Microsoft’s About-Face on Windows 7: Three-App Limit on Netbooks (Perhaps) Removed
A few months ago I predicted Microsoft would be facing lawsuits due to the 3-app limitation of Windows 7 Starter Edition, or more precisely due to less than full disclosure on sales of netbooks crippled by Win7. The Wall Street Journal did not go as far as lawsuits, but it called it a big gamble: [...]
Dr Watson Keeps Crashing Through My Windoze
Dr Watson, Microsoft’s crash reporting tool has been with us just as long as the Windows operating system – in fact longer, considering the original, Sherlock Holmes’s assistant. But all careers must come to an end. Starting with Vista, poor Dr. Watson was sent to retirement, replaced by Problem Reports and Solutions, says Microsoft. But [...]
Coming Full Circle – Confessions of a Windows Programmer
Let me start this post off by announcing that I am, to all accounts, a programming dinosaur. I started cutting code back when MS-DOS 2.1 was the OS de rigeur. Of course, I then moved ‘up’ into Win32 programming when the wonderful world of GUI interfaces rose to prominence. I clearly remember observing (with smug [...]
Annoying Software Crashes
Remember the Largest Adobe Flash Crash of the World? While not this huge, I had to recent experiences wit Windows crashes – one somewhat funny, the other scary. I went to see Verdi’s Rigoletto yesterday. Not in the mega $$$ San Francisco Opera, but it’s little cousin, The SF Lyric Opera, for a fraction of [...]
What Lauren and We All Missed: TCO
So Lauren is the new Microsoft star. Sure, she is prettier than The Dude, but may not be a lot smarter if she thinks the $699 piece of crap low-end PC is anywhere comparable to the Macbook Pro. But perhaps it does not have to be comparable: she may not need a higher end system [...]
Market Share vs. Popularity
Who am I to question the great Walt Mossberg? But when he says Internet Explorer is the World’s most popular browser I have to wonder… Here’s a definition of popularity from Wikipedia: Popularity is the quality of being well-liked or common. Looks like Mossberg is right if we focus on common. Internet Explorer is no [...]
