There’s an update to this story below.

As a faithful reader of CNET, I was astounded to witness Fried’s feat of bad journalism. While an opinionated piece is allowed to lack a certain degree of objectiveness, it obviously expresses bias towards Microsoft. Windows Vista sucks, Microsoft is useless, along with everything it does. Yes, we know the story.

“It is July 2008 and Microsoft still finds it necessary to show customers that plenty of hardware and software works with Vista, which has now been on the market for more than 18 months.”

– And that’s a bad thing, huh? Showing and reassuring your customers that a certain piece of hardware of software is compatible with Vista, by means of a simple website, is really a horrible thing. There’s no need to puke on everything Microsoft does, people.

I’m sure non-technical people will value a centralized compatibility database to ensure their investments were worthwhile. Or am I seeing just things..?

The rest of the post discusses how Microsoft failed to launch the site by the promised date. I agree it’s silly to set a date if you can’t make it. But it’s not the end of the world. I don’t think too many noticed, either.

Following in on common prejudices won’t make you popular, per sé. Certainly not when taking advantage of a common target like Microsoft.

Update July 10th: Apple was supposed to release MobileMe today, but failed to do so. Ever since, .Mac has been down and inaccessible. I wonder where the outrage is now… Oh, I know, there won’t be any. Of course, it’s Apple. See

MacWorld Expo and CES. It seemed as if these were the only two topics grabbing the headlines this past month, huh. I don’t feel much for CES and  — if I’m honest — MacWorld wasn’t very exciting either, despite the extraneous coverage on blogs and podcasts alike. Yet, permit me to sidetrack to Apple for a moment…

But before I do that, here’s a list of what I’ll be babbling about. Yes, the links are anchors (it’s been a busy week):

• Some Apple nagging (read on)
• KDE 4 Unleashed (go)
• iTunes Movie Rentals, not for Europe? (go)
• Delicious 2.0 didn’t come this week after all (go)
• Vista EULA changes again (go)
• Vista SP1: Feb. 15? (go)
• Windows 7 Development Kicked Off (go)
• Blu-Ray captivates 93% of market (go)
• Digg Revolt (go)
• Eee PC will soon run Windows (go)
• Massive WiMax Network for India (go)
• SSD not catching on (go)

From the few announcements I could remember from MacWorld, I was particularly disappointed in Apple’s decision to charge for the so called ‘January Software Update’, which includes apps that were previously developed for the iPhone and would now make their debut on the iPod Touch.

Mail, Maps, Weather, Notes and Stocks are to be added to the iPod Touch’s scarce Home Screen for 20 USD (or 18 EUR). Now, the only applications I’d really consider are Mail and Maps. The Wifi Triangulation is another sweet feature I’d love to try.

Even though it’s tempting, I’m not sure I want to pay for something that ought to be free in the first place. This software wasn’t even developed from scratch. I reckon I’ll hold off on the paid update and waddle along with my trusty mobile version of GMail…

Without intending to make this an overdue MacWorld reporting, I found the MacBook Air pretty un-impressive. The design-aspect is not the issue, you’d be an ass not the like the exterior of this baby, but hardware-wise the Air seems a bit over-hyped and underpowered. If I were in the market for a sub-notebook, I’d opt for a 13" Dell XPS or a regular MacBook. There’s no way I’d have accessories dangling down from a single USB-port.

KDE 4 Unleashed

KDE 4.0 was released earlier this week boasting half-baked implementations of potentially innovative technology. With QT4 as its underpinnings, KDE is leaping ahead more elegantly with the new Oxygen Visual Style. The new desktop shell dubbed Plasma makes its debut, along with the Phonon multimedia system and the Solid Hardware Layer. The KDE project hopes to have laid the stepping stones for a whole new experience, which they hope will be delivered in the future, albeit incrementally from this point onward. While most of the new stuff is still a bit rough around the edges, it’s obvious that when this thing becomes stable it’ll make Linux a nicer to place to reside in.

I, myself, have always preferred Gnome over KDE, mainly because of KDE’s intricate system of (Windows-like) bars and menus. I understand it’s packed with advanced stuff and all, but it’s just too clouded for the likes of me.

Perhaps KDE 4 will make this turn around somewhat in order to reach a broader audience.

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iTunes Movie Rentals, not for Europe?

Apple seems to be having trouble getting their newly released Movie Rentals in iTunes to Europe. Unlike the US, Europe is a cluster of individual countries, with each their own set of rules and laws. This heterogeneous environment makes it difficult for Apple (or anyone else) to provide a consistent service across the board.

Where I live (Belgium), we’re pretty much locked in by the one and only cable company, which reigns over the digital television realm. They provide the TV, the Electronic TV Guide, the Prime movie channels and the Pay-per-View services. There’s hardly any competition in this area, so it’d be extremely welcome if Apple would offer movie rentals over here. It would at least fire up some competition, which is always good for the consumer. It’s just not reasonable to pay 4 to 5 EUR for the sakes of renting a single movie (that’s between 6 and 7 USD!).

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Delicious 2.0 didn’t come this week after all

I love and use Delicious daily, but there’s no denying the interface is — mildly put — bland. I wholeheartedly agree with the ‘keep it simple‘-principle, but simple doesn’t equal to mid 1990′s… There has been word of Delicious 2.0 for quite a while now and everyone was pretty much expecting it to launch this week.

Alas. Maybe next week.

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Vista EULA changes again

Back when Windows Vista was unleashed on the public for the first time, Microsoft stood its ground and persisted that only Business and Ultimate editions of the OS would allow virtualization. This caused a widespread ‘what the heck?’ feeling to spread across the Windows community and rightly so. The reason for MS’ decision was entirely economical, of course, as opposed to their own public statement in which they twisted it into a security issue.

Tech enthusiasts galore just do virtualization of Vista anyway, since there’s no real technical restriction to hold you back. The theoretical illegality aside, it was more a mindset-thing than anything else.

Finally Microsoft is giving up their pigheadedness about this issue, so at last, anyone can virtualize Windows without having to purchase yet another license.

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Vista SP1: Feb. 15?

Microsoft has churned out yet another Technical Refresh of SP1′s Release Candidate. Some are speculating it’ll be finalized by February 15th, though this date hasn’t been verified by MS.

I agree that now is the time to get SP1 out the door, even though it won’t be groundbreaking, at least it’ll add some stability and performance — which could haul over businesses and withholding consumers. Others might just as well wait until Windows 7 ships. And in turn, they would have to wait for SP1 of that release… And.. And..

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Windows 7 Development Kicked Off

Windows 7 screenshots have also popped up. T
he images of the M1-build we’re seeing, look much like Vista. Obviously this build is merely experimental and in no way representative of the end product.

The final release date has also been shoved a year earlier. It is now forecasted to be released late 2009, whereas MS previously projected an end 2010 timing.

It’s looking like Microsoft is trying to make up for the lost time with Vista. They’re probably trying to re-acquire the credence they lost and build on top of the deep-going work they performed with Vista. It’s too early to see where this project is heading, though.

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Blu-Ray captivates 93% of market

After Warner Bros’ breaking with HD-DVD it seemed inevitable Blu-Ray would win the format war. And it’s certainly starting to look that way too. Engadget reported a spectacular decline in HD-DVD’s market share (hardware players) from 49% to 7%.

I have backed HD-DVD for a long time, for no particular reason other than pure cost, but it seems HD-DVD is up for a quick demise into the realm of forgotten technology. It’s only a matter of time until Microsoft and other pro-HD-DVD companies have to lay down the sword and back Blu-Ray. I guess it’s over. It passed quicker than anyone could’ve thought. But is that a good thing, per sé?

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Digg Revolt

Kevin Rose announced Digg was altering the way their algorithm works in order to allow more diversity. They’re incorporating a diversity rank, which renders group voting (a group of friends digging up a story) impossible. Moreover, the algorithm will keep stories with a digg-count of over 100 in the ‘Upcoming List’. This caused a lot of uproar from the regular diggers.

I’ve never participated a lot in Digg. I dig the concept, but it is pretty impossible to get a story popular if you don’t have a large circle of Digg-friends. This is causing a lot of people to look for alternatives, like the three months old Mixx.com.

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Eee PC will soon run Windows

A couple of days ago, Asus released a version of the Eee PC running Windows in Japan. The tiny notebook will run Windows XP and will be called the Eee PC 4G-X. The specs haven’t changed at all, though this means the US and other countries will be up soon.

I think my hands would be too big for the Eee’s keyboard. With or without Windows .

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Massive WiMax Network for India

The largest Indian telco is planning to build the biggest mobile WiMax network thusfar. It’ll be capable of serving up to 250 million people. The Indian government requires that 20 million broadband connections are in place by 2010.

Sniff.

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SSD not catching on

While the futuristic Solid State Drives may have many benefits, the extraneous costs aren’t persuading consumers, it seems. Honestly, are added costs of up to 1,300 USD (MacBook Air) an incentive to invest in this technology?

While you can shake an SSD to death in operation, I’m sure conventional hard drives will continue to be built into laptops as the primary means of storage. At least for the time being. 1,300 could buy you another laptop, or a TV…
(Did you know switching on Windows Paging can kill a SSD in a matter of hours?)

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Still hoping for Delicious 2.0 to come out soon .

As a power user I greatly value every effort to simplify common tasks like file operations and other every day stuff. Copying and moving files/folder is one of those things and Windows XP used to do a great job at this with its dynamic ‘File and Folder Tasks’ side-pane. I got used to the fact that these shortcuts appropriately adapt to whichever file type is under your cursor and presents you with a list accordingly. Until…

The new Explorer Shell in Vista incorporated a lesser dynamic sidebar that limits your options to well-known shell destinations like Documents, Music and Searches. The horizontal blue-greenish bar that runs across the window allows for some dynamic behavior, yet it’s limited to only opening stuff with certain applications.

Out of the box, there’s not much you can tag on outside of your own Favorite Links. Which, in retrospect, could come in handy.

1. Open up an Explorer Window, right click on some empty space and select ‘Open Favorite Links Folder’
2. Add new links by right clicking in an empty spot and selecting New > Shortcut
    
3. Follow the Wizard and presto!
   

The shortcut be anything, not just folders.

A quick fix:

• In an Explorer Window, make sure you have Vista remember Window Settings:
  
• Select ‘Remember each folder’s view settings’ in the ‘View’ tab:
  

Sometimes Vista still forgets the position.
In that case press and hold CTRL while clicking the Close-button and all should be well again.

Windows Vista has the option to make selections using checkboxes familiar from webpages alike. This feature isn’t enabled by default, but is reachable in just 2 steps. Here’s how to:

• Open an Explorer Window, it doesn’t matter which, and click through
  Organize > Folder and Search Options
  
• Click the View-tab and look for
  ‘Use check boxes to select items’
  
• That’s it!
  

First of all, running an XP machine with SP1 deserves death penalty. Second: who the heck doesn’t run any form of security app on this kind of machine?! This is beyond me, really. Nonetheless, it’s worth a read, even if it’s just for the sake of a good laugh.

From ZDNET.com:

… Connected a machine running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 to an unsecured wireless network. The machine was running no antivirus, firewall, or anti-spyware software …

“You can download attack tools from the Internet, and even script kiddies can use this one,” said Mick.

…

And blah blah blah. Funny. Ignorant.

Click image above for a bigger view of my Reliability Monitor

A few days ago I remembered Paul Thurrott mentioning the Vista Reliability and Performance monitor and since I had purchased a new laptop a month earlier, I was curious to see how things we’re holding up.

The result in the image above is mainly a downhill graph, starting at 10 out of ten and dropped to as low as 1.82 on October 7th. Vista’s running on a new Dell XPS M1710, so it’s pretty astonishing. As of late, the graph has gone up again and is currently at 5.5.

In this broadband-enabled era, more and more people turn to the full digitalization of their beloved DVD-based movie-collections. This enables centralization and streaming it to media boxes like Windows Media Center (also: XBOX360 as a Media Extender and in the future other Media Extenders), Apple TV and other platforms.

Throughout the years Internet media has dramatically gained popularity and so has DivX; the leading codec for decently compressed video. To date, DivX remains partially incompatible with Vista. Upon initialization, the installer gently warns you that some parts of the program/codec won’t work well.

After setup, you might notice your system being pulled into Windows Vista Basic-mode after firing up the DivX-player — the same scenario unfolds when you attempt to run an embedded DivX-movie on a webpage. Playing a movie from within Windows Media Player presents you with a black screen. Windows Media Center could experience the same. I’ve heard these problems are very system-specific (lucky me) and vary from system to system.

I’ve heard of a few alternatives, which could temporarily soothe your and my soars:

One solution would be to uninstall DivX and grab the previous stable version, which oddly enough doesn’t suffer from the instability issues (version 5.2.1). I’ve tried this, but to no avail. Vista’s window manager doesn’t crash, but the video doesn’t playback either. Again, this is very system-specific, so if you’re lucky, you could get it working on your configuration.
Alternative I: DivX 5.2.1 for XP SP2 (installs fine on Vista too)

Others just get rid of DivX for the time being and use the open-source solution XVid. This codec claims it will play your files, regardless of the operating system you’re on. In my case, installing it resulted into a “No codec found”-error. I was unable to resolve this.
Alternative II: XVid for Windows

There are many open-source apps out there, but the one I’m most impressed with must be VLC Media Player. Its platform-independency lets you run it on any recent version of Windows (including Vista), Mac OS, Linux and other platforms.It’ll use your current D3D-driver to visualize virtually any type of video — without codec-hell. Pretty impressive stuff.
Also, VLC also comes as a PortableApp.
Alternative III: VLC Media Player

• Windows Vista Starter (comparable to today’s Windows Starter Edition, meant for less developed countries)
• Windows Vista Home Basic (down-graded version of home premium)
• Windows Vista Home Premium (comparable to today’s Windows XP Home)
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Ultimate (collection of all versions)

‘N’-branded will most likely also be offered.

Article and images courtesy: Paul Thurrott
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_office2007_packaging.asp