People need to give Microsoft a little more credit. Does any other company face the burdens of their success like they do?

I have worked on a lot of software in the past 20+ years in the software business but I must say that nothing compares to working on Windows. My friends and associates outside windows often ask what I mean by that, and I have a hard time explaining. It isn't just that Windows is a huge software project with a jillion lines of code and dozens of languages. Windows has really gone beyond software - it is a kind of ecosystem with dozens of different interests, concerns, and agendas all interacting with one another.

Since that probably is a bit too abstract, I thought I would talk about one specific issue that we dealt with after the Beta went out the door. Hopefully you will find this an interesting glimpse into how a day in Windows is not like anything else out there.

Interesting read: The UI design minefield - er... flower field??

You absolutely must hear this, and you absolutely must use headphones.

Other examples.

Source: Music special: Five great auditory illusions

Following this ordeal with Gateway I sent my computer back again. Guess what they did this time. Not only did they not fix the problem, by reformatting it, the DVD drive now doesn't work. It worked fine when I sent it in. Essentially my computer came back in worse condition than it was sent. Sweet.

I have worked on the NMSU Phonebook. The Phonebook has three sections to it, and each section offers something that I have yet to see at any other university.

First is the person lookup page. Clicking on the A (which is all last names beginning with A) brings up a list of people. First, this offers the ability to use it as a directory, just like any phonebook. You can do searches as well. The information is presented in a pleasant manner with nice colors and in a zebra table so the names are easily distinguished from one another. But the one unique feature that I have not seen at other universities is the Rolodex. You can at a glance see the person's name, email address (if on campus, otherwise an email form), and their phone number. Now, with most traditional phonebooks you click on the person's name which takes you to a new page to learn more information about that person. That's so 1995. With the help of Rico we can accomplish this in a much nicer way without displaying a whole new page. Click on a person's name and it unfolds to show more information, including work and/or personal information. It looks like a business card. Now, how do we get this information into Outlook or other email program. The old way is typing in the details to save a new contact, the new way is by clicking on the icon to download the person's vCard. Now the information is automagically added to your email program.

The second section is the department lookup list. This is where we use AJAX. You can do a search for the departments in a traditional way, but doing an AJAX call is so much faster. It might be a little overkill, but the speed is just awesome. It also includes links to an Google Maps implementation of campus that I and my co-workers worked on (future post).

Finally, we have the hierarchy page. I have not even seen this page at any other university. I think it is totally cool. It is basically a hierarchy of departments. So you know who is on the food chain.

Of course all of these link together. Click on a person in the hierarchy and it takes you to the person lookup. Click on a department on the person lookup or department lookup page and it takes you to that department in the hierarchy. In my opinion, very cool.

Well, hot on the heals of getting screwed over by Creative, I now got screwed over by Gateway. You may remember that I had to send my laptop in for repair.

The reason I sent it in was because there was a gap between the plastic and the LCD screen that was shipped from the factory like that. Dust gets in there and behind the screen. The second and more important reason was because it would constantly crash and I would get strange graphic corruption on the screen.

Well, I finally received it yesterday and I am extremely disappointed in them. They didn't fix the screen and all they did was reformat the drive and put Windows XP Tablet Edition on it, like it came from the factory. The computer was labeled as Vista Compatible and I was reassured that Vista would work on it without problems. To make sure that it isn't software I reformatted the drive and installed Vista. While I was in the Vista set-up screen I noticed several pixels flickering on and off on the screen. It didn't do that the first time I installed Vista. After it was installed the Windows Sidebar started flickering and when I went to connect to my wireless network the entire screen went to a black and white pattern and the computer locked up. This was before I installed any software or anything, it was just a fresh install of Vista.

I'm sending it back, again, maybe this time they will fix it.

I wrote Creative regarding their horrible Vista support for my Creative Labs PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card.

I purchased a Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card. I purchased it for a Windows Vista laptop. The information displayed on the creative website said this would be compatible with Vista. However, the support is terrible. The last driver released for this card was March 16, 2007. That is totally unacceptable. When will this card's drivers be updated to be more compatible with Vista. You are starting to lose a loyal Creative Customer.

The card causes blue screens. Also, in Vista's Control Panel, there is an option to hear the output out of all 5.1 speakers. I only hear output out of the front two. The drivers just do not play well with Vista.

Their response:

Dear Curtis

Thank you for contacting Creative email support. I appreciate the opportunity to help you.

Regarding your last email. We are not aware a new update for this product will be released. They only release if one is need. We have modems that have not been updated for several years. Until what is listed online it obsolete and I new one is needed there probably will not be anymore. Also remember that ANY Email Creative advisors are not forewarned or told about future releases. When they hit the Creative Web page they are ready.

I apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

Here is a link to the Creative savings center.

http://us.creative.com/shop/

Thank you for choosing Creative!

The bad grammer is theirs. Basically I was just told to buy a newer product. Goodbye creative. Anyone try Sondigo's Callisto Home Theatre Adapter?

I was enabling VCard downloads on the NMSU phonebook when I noticed that it wasn't working in IE. "Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later." Of course it worked fine in FF, Opera, Safari, Camino, and just about any other browser available.

Well thats what you get for not testing on all browser you say? Actually it worked fine in IE on our development server. Same code two different boxes. It was driving me nuts, what could be the problem? Is it something to do with the headers that the page is sending? Using FF and the FireBug extension I ruled out that possibility. Both servers were sending identical headers. The only difference is the producation server had SSL while the development did not.

It didn't make sense.

Then, thanks to Google, I stumbled upon the answer:

In order for Internet Explorer to open documents in Office (or any out-of-process, ActiveX document server), Internet Explorer must save the file to the local cache directory and ask the associated application to load the file by using IPersistFile::Load. If the file is not stored to disk, this operation fails.

When Internet Explorer communicates with a secure Web site through SSL, Internet Explorer enforces any no-cache request. If the header or headers are present, Internet Explorer does not cache the file. Consequently, Office cannot open the file.

Oh, that makes sense.

When Outlook tried to open the VCard file, it couldn't find it because it was not stored on the disk.

C:Users[username]AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows
SidebarGadgetsWirelessNetwork.gadgeten-USjs

C:Users[username]AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows
SidebarGadgetsWirelessNetwork[1].gadgeten-USjs

This mod is INSANE... It has a smoke machine, motorized doors, all custom painted to match the game, - monitor mod included as well. etc...

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Yes, you heard it right! This site has 99 tips to improve every bit of Windows XP's performance ranging from BIOS tweaks to overclocking your CPU and much, much more!!!
Check out this site now!!!

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"This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first PC virus. We look back at the highs and lows (well, mostly lows) of the ongoing struggle against malware."

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1. Windows Defender (Used to be called Microsoft AntiSpyware)
   
   • Description: This is Microsoft's AntiSpyware program. Technically it is still called Microsoft AntiSpyware, but when Beta 2 comes out, the name will change. I really like this program. The interface is clean and easy to use. It also seems to catch a lot of things, and isn't bugging you constantly to approve or disapprove something. This is in part due to SpyNet. Which is basically all Microsoft AntiSpyware users that have checked the SpyNet option in the program. If I run a program that Windows Defender does not know about, I can choose to send this information to SpyNet. It sends my choice that the program is either trusted or not and along with other user's SpyNet contributions, Microsoft can update Defender.
   • Release Date & Price: Beta 2 is due the first half of 2006. Microsoft has not released when the final product will ship, though probably late 2006. It is and will be Free.
   • My Recommendation: Use it; it's stable and effective. It doesn't replace all Anti-Spyware products, but then again no one should be running just one Anti-Spyware product. Unlike Anti-Virus and Firewall products, this is one area where product overlap is a good thing.
2. Windows OneCare Live
   
   • Description: This is an Anti-Virus, Firewall, Backup, and Performance tweaking tool. The interface is also clean and easy to use. The one thing I like about it, is their mantra, "Get Green, and Stay Green." You see, it displays a icon in the system tray that shows you its current status. When it is green you know you are protected. I do have a couple of gripes about it though. It is too simple for me, a power user; for my mom, it would be great. The backup and firewall both do not have enough options available to me. The OneCare team walks a fine line between configuration and simplicity. It also works. I have it installed on my work computer. You don't even have to plug a computer into the internet to get it infected around here. Just bring it in and set it down on a table. A part of the problem is that we are on a college campus, and as such, there are a ton of users that don't know much about computers or are purposely trying to hack stuff. It's all those dang kids that live in dorms. :) I think part of the problem is that all our machines have public IP's. Which is the way most corporate networks work. At home, most people have a NAT (network address translation) router that acts has a hardware firewall to protect machines.
   • Release Date & Price: Don't know and don't know. I do know that it will not be free, most likely it will be a subscription based pricing scheme. The beta is free though.
   • My Recommendation: Don't use it if you already have solutions (a different firewall and anti-virus product) that work for you. If anything, just check it out to see what it can do. It too is stable and effective.
3. Windows Live Messenger
   
   • Description: The successor to MSN Messenger, this product hasn't changed a whole lot. It sports a different interface which I like better. I have had connection problems and audio problems with its predecessor, MSN Messenger 7.5, but Windows Live Messenger seems to have solved those. It's slow and a memory hog, just like it's predecessor. It has this new concept feature called Sharing Folders, which theoretically is like a mini peer2peer client. If I put a file in a sharing folder specific to another contact they will automatically get it in their shared folder and vice-versa. The reason why I said theoretically is that it wouldn't work with me. There is an option to go back to the old way of things (file transfer). It also put an 8gb file on my computer. Don't know why. I contacted support and told them and they have yet to get back to me. Which is surprising because they are almost always helpful.
   • Release Date & Price: Don't know and free.
   • My Recommendation: Skip it. While it isn't buggy per say, it is slow and clunky.
4. Windows Live Mail
   
   • Description: This is great. This is the successor to Hotmail. The interface is so much faster and better to Hotmail's. It is similar to Outlook in Office. It has a preview pane, drag and drop capabilities, live spell checking when writing emails, and more. I like the interface much better than Gmail. And like Gmail, it is using AJAX. It still uses your regular old Hotmail email address and sign-in. I think the Hotmail name will still be prevalent. Firefox isn't 100% compatible yet, but most features do work in Firefox. They are working on improving other browser support.
   • Release Date & Price: Don't know and free.
   • My Recommendation: What are you waiting for? Go sign up and join the beta.
5. Yahoo Mail Beta
   
   • Description: This interface is more similar to Outlook Express in that the preview pane is on the bottom of the screen, not on the right like Windows Live Mail. The interface seems slower than Windows Live Mail. I don't like the visual look of it as much as Windows Live Mail, however I do like the experience (how it works). I like both Windows Live Mail and Yahoo Mail Beta.
   • Release Date & Price: Don't know and free.
   • My Recommendation: No reason not to use it.
6. Windows Internet Explorer 7
   
   • Description: This one is great as well. Microsoft has finally added tabbed browsing to Internet Explorer. It works just as good as Firefox and Opera too. However, it too is a memory hog, but strangely seems faster than IE6. Though not completely standards compliant, they have fixed some bugs, including eliminating many CSS hacks that people had to create to support IE. Also added are built in Phishing filter, RSS support, and a much improved printing capability. It has a shrink to fit option when printing webpages, so no longer will half of your webpages be cut off because it is too big. It also features a completely redesigned user interface, which I was hesitant about at first, but it's growing on me.
   • Release Date & Price: Late 2006 and free.
   • My Recommendation: I'm running Beta 2 Preview, Beta 2 will come out around April and will be more stable. Wait until then.
7. Windows Vista (formerly known as Longhorn)
   
   • Description: There is no way I could even begin to write about all of the great things in Vista. I'll leave that to the pro's. I will just tell you a few things that I like about it. Security, Stability, and Speed. Yes, I know you may be wondering what the heck I'm smoking or drinking, but I'm serious. I have used it and Security, Stability, and Speed, are always a recurring theme that comes to mind. Windows Vista is by no means ready for prime time yet, it is after all a beta. It's probably the most beta like of all the betas listed on this post. Let me go over the three themes I listed:
     
     • Security: Before I change any system wide settings Vista asks if I want to permit this action. OSX and Linux (sudo) have had this for a long time and now Windows is finally catching up. Also, Internet Explorer has even less permission to do anything. Vista includes built in Anti-Spyware and the security center now detects anti-spyware products. The firewall is improved for out-going and in-going communications as well. This is just a few of the security improvements. I mean, there are systems in place that can kill a program if it detects a buffer overrun. Only time will tell how well these improvements will perform, but all in all I'd say Vista is much more secure than XP.
     • Stability: Stability on a computer is two-fold. Not only does software affect system stability, but the hardware does as well. If you have bad memory your system can crash. Last night, while playing with Vista, explorer crashed. "No big deal," I though, "It's a beta." Explorer restarted immediately and I was back on my way. Playing around in the Control Panel I found a section that listed problems. My explorer crash was on there and as a solution Vista wanted to run a memory scan on my computer and then send the results to Microsoft. I told it to and it did. Pretty cool huh? I didn't have any problems with my memory. There are also ratings in the system that correspond to performance and stability. It seems to me that there are systems in place to figure out why this broke or why is this getting slow.
     • Speed: Performance is pretty good. Not as good as a clean install of XP on my system, but pretty good. Vista is pretty responsive though. Things are popping up right away and the visuals look good too. I don't have a good 3D graphics card in my machine so I can't get Aero Glass running. Which is all the transparency and 3D visual effects. But as is, I like it.
   • Release Date & Price: Late 2006 (Finally) and don't know. There has been speculation that it will cost the same as XP, or that it will be a yearly subscription based price, or that it will be free. Yeah, I said free. Who knows, maybe it will be.
   • My Recommendation: Since this is an entire operating system, stay away unless you know *exactly* what you are doing.

FolderShare, a service that used to cost $50/year, is now free, thanks to Microsoft which has recently bought the company. FolderShare allows you to create a private peer-to-peer network that will help you to synchronize files across multiple devices and access or share files with colleagues and friends.

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