How boring the tech “news” sites would be if they couldn’t pick on Vista? This time around the Inquirer suggests that Vista isn’t all that since Intel continues to pass on standardizing its enterprise on Vista. Couldn’t be more wrong. As Ed Bott points out this is nothing new. Intel has made similar decisions in the past with previous versions of Windows. Point is, there’s lots more going on here than whether the current generation of Windows is worthwhile.

Let’s face it, good businesses keep costs down. And setting aside the cost of the licenses, moving a whole organization to a new OS is going to be expensive. So maximizing the use of what you already have is a good idea.

This is the case for Intel and its true for my doctor’s office that still runs Windows 2000. Recently I asked them why they still used 2000. Their responses? Number one: cost. Number two: They really don’t use the OS that much; they stay within the confines of their office medical app. Think about it. For most of what they do, they only need two or three applications and the rest is there for their farmed out IT staff. This is the reality for many in specialized jobs that use computers. The OS has long since been sufficient for them. Isn’t that why Linux has had its opening in the market? Exactly.

Now Microsoft’s challenge is to continue to ease the management of their OS for the little doctors office, the mega-enterprise, and for my neighbor. Why? Because that’s where there’s been too much pain and expense to date. Isn’t that in large part why many of us are migrating our content and work to the Net? It is for me. I don’t like to re-install the OS to clean up a mess I didn’t create. I don’t like spending a half dozen hours adjusting settings to get machines to work together so I can share some particular content. I don’t like managing a network or an email system or on and on. I’ll do it if I have to, but I’d rather spend my time working on what I really want to use computers for.

Microsoft and Apple are continuing to make strides in these regards, but there is still room to go. That’s why I’m sure that when Windows XYZ comes out, the enterprises will eventually move to them too, even if it does take them awhile.

Jason Perlow of ZDNet may want to stick with XP, but I’m more than ready to say goodbye to my remaining XP machines. In fact, the other day I had to do a clean install of XP and ugh I can’t tell you how awkward it felt.

Some of this is that we all get used to whatever OS we’re using and anything else doesn’t seem right. The XP users think that of Vista and I to a degree think that way of XP.

When I have to use XP again–and I mean use the OS not just run programs in the OS–I can’t help but realize how much I like Vista better.

Whether it’s configuring the networks (which still needs more room to improve–especially with EVDO-DUN support) or searching for a file, Vista has the edge.

I can survive in XP just fine, but I like doing more than surviving. I don’t care what people say–outside of the driver problems and a few bugs that were fixed in SP1–Vista is a better OS than XP. Yes, it’s a hog so as it stands now it’s not the right choice for small systems. But otherwise, it’s the winner.

I do have to admit though, Vista is more at home on a desktop than a notebook. There is one exception to this, however. Vista on a Tablet PC trumps Vista on a desktop. The stylus and handwriting features make the difference.

Uhm, who said Vista SKUs are a mess? Read some of these partial details on how AT&T and Apple are going to handle iPhone 3G sales.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is par for the course. Carriers are a not-so-consumer friendly group.

This is how you bait Windows developers into commenting on your blog.

Besides the obvious bias of this posting, there is something interesting in this general area of what Windows developers are using. First, I think most programmers today are Intranet developers. They leverage the browser. They leverage database tools. They write code that will be used internal to an organization, rather than external. And for those outward facing apps, they’re almost always browser based apps.

So although I don’t think the point of the article was this: I do think that for most Windows development per se–let’s call it the old Win32 style of development–is dead. I’d even go further in saying that for all practical purposes .NET is the Microsoft API now. There are some of us that still develop for the Windows platform as a platform, but there aren’t many of us. Most could just as easily be writing for anything if the tools they were using were cross platform. It’s just that the tools they are using are themselves Windows targetted. Silverlight is the exception here. And, yes, Novell is working on a port of the .NET Framework to Linux, but I’m so-so on whether this will pan out the way people are thinking it will. My view is that Microsoft should be doing the work. How hard is it anyway?

So here’s how I see it (in an oversimplified and overdramatic way):

* C++ is dead
* The Windows API is dead
* The .NET Framework is the API to target
* If you want to get a programming job today, focus on web development and databases
* Scripting is sufficient for many tasks and is something more and more people can do

And here are the general trends I think we’re seeing when it comes to programming:

* Learn how to design. Design tools will continue to improve and programmers will become more designers than just programmers. Likewise, designers will gain more powerful tools that will enable them to do more programming.
* Tools will improve so that more people can do programming.
* More “things” will move to the database.

This is way oversimplified, I know, but I think these are general trends that are true. What do you think?

For the last couple of weeks Lora has been trying to get me to build a website where people can post their suggestions, quirks, and flaws for Vista/Windows 7. I’ve been dragging my feet because this is one of those things I think Microsoft should be doing, such as on Channel9 or 10 or whatever.

Well, it looks like neither Microsoft nor I have to worry about spending the weekend coding up a site, because Long Zheng has coded up such a site. It’s called the Windows UX Taskforce.

By all means, if there’s something in Windows–particularly the UI experience–get on over to Long’s site and add your suggestion/bug/irritation or vote up or down suggestions others have made. Let’s all work together to make Windows even better.

This is a great opportunity for Tablet PC, touch, and mobile folks to get their message out for fixing those little bugs in Journal or to make requests to better integrate ink into Windows Mail and so on. I think it’s even fair game to ask here for ink to finally be integrated into Messenger for the Mac. It’s a bummer to not be able to ink back and forth with someone on a Mac.

I would make one suggestion for users of the Taskforce. There needs to be better tagging of the items. If something is in the Windows Shell, then tag it as Windows Shell. If it’s in Journal, then tag it as Journal. Otherwise, it’s going to be a pain to sort the contents when it gets large.

This is great to see Long take the initiate here. I will repeat, though, that I think Microsoft should take over this database. Come on Channel9. OK. Even if you don’t want to take on the one week or so of work to launch it, then how about putting a prominent link on your sites to The Windows UX Taskforce service?

I have an old machine that I had to re-install XP on. What a shock it was to do so. After using Vista almost exclusively for the last year, I could see quite clearly how much better is Vista is over XP. It’s not just the looks. It’s the management of the network. It’s the Search field in the Start menu. And on and on. I didn’t mean this to be a test of Vista and XP, but after doing this little exercise I’m more convinced than ever of the incremental improvements in Vista.

I think this also illustrates to me how easy it is to get used to one version of the OS or another and then begin to feel so comfortable in it that all other versions feel klunky.

Of course, all this being said, I’m not a fan of the current implementation of UAC and I don’t care for how the OEMs have handled drivers. In both respects, I think these are areas that Microsoft is going to have to address. Yes, Microsoft. Microsoft is going to have to step up to the plate and commit to drivers particularly for notebooks where swapping out components isn’t a choice for most. The drivers either work or they don’t–which means Windows either works or it doesn’t. Microsoft can’t pass the work onto others. It has to convince me and I think the rest of the market that it is doing all it can to make Windows work right. The market isn’t what it used to be, you can’t just rely on the manufacturers to spot support the OS.

Anyway, enough of that rant. Again, I really do prefer Vista over XP and except for the driver issue and the UAC I’d recommend it to more people I know. Given these two issues I’m cautious recommending Vista unless I have time to help them set thing up and to introduce them to what the UAC is and the like.

I’m really looking forward to Windows 7. I hope that it all comes together.

We’ve all had it happen: Windows not properly sleeping. I think things have gotten better since Vista (especially SP1), although my Toshiba Tablet PC will wake up from sleep if I disconnect a USB device when it’s asleep and I’ve had my desktop machine wake up at times I think after installing an update.

Same thing happened to James Kendrick’s U110. Ouch. Literally. The thing was in a bag when it unexpectedly woke up and heated up so much it about fried an egg. We feel your pain.

James asks a good question: Why are Vista systems waking up from sleep anyway? And if for some reason a system wakes up, why in the world should it just spin and spin and spin on a Log in screen unless you MANUALLY tell it that’s what you want? Shouldn’t the default be 1) conserve energy and 2) don’t potentially fry an egg!

There’s a bit of large-media chatter this morning over a comment Bill Gates made the other day in a press conference about the sales rate of Vista being “rapid.” So far, 140 million copies of Vista have been sold.

First, on an anecdotal level, I now know six people who run Vista outside of my family (who primarily use Vista). Not six months ago the number was zero. So there is uptake. Now, I will admit that two of those six Vista users run copies of Vista that I donated: one to a developer that at the time was looking for work and one to an older couple looking to experience the latest in the computer field. So maybe you’d count that as four. Of the other Vista users two use a MacBook Pro and two purchased new machines with Vista already installed on them. Neither has had driver problems, although, I don’t think they have old peripherals. That’s an important point.

(Oh, I have seen several many, many more Vista machines at various developer events, but I’m not counting those. I’m just talking about friends and neighbors.)

Overall, I’d say the built-in driver issues are getting resolved. In other words, if you purchase a new machine you’re going to be pretty confident that there are drivers already supplied for everything in the box. What you do still have to be aware of is that if you have a lot of older printers, scanners, webcams and the like, you may be forced to upgrade them if you switch to Vista because you simply may not be able to find Vista drivers for them. Microsoft has said there are tons of drivers now available, but you know how Murphy’s Law always seems to pop up at the most inopportune times. So check and double check when you buy new hardware.

Actually, the Vista driver issue is a big one for peripherals at this time. I’ve seen more than once now where people have purchased brand new standalone peripherals out of the box that don’t have supplied Vista drivers. Sometimes there will be a note saying to download the actual Vista driver–which can be hard to find–or sometimes there’s no support at all. The drivers for built in components in notebooks and desktops is good. However, for standalone devices there are still some holdouts. I’m not talking about devices from major vendors like HP and the like, I’m talking about the small stuff, like MIDI keyboards and special camera capture devices. Most people will not run into these issues now, but I think it’s worth mentioning.

A final note: I know a lot of people purchasing Mac hardware now. Almost everyone wants to run dual operating systems (OS X and Windows). They all ask whether they should use Vista or XP. My first question to them is how many older peripherals do they have. If not many, I always recommend Vista. The Apple machines are terrific with their Vista driver support. Now if they have lots of three+ year old printers and the like I look up whether there’s Vista support for them and make an appropriate recommendation. Most people I know don’t want to be forced to upgrade their peripherals unless there’s some other compelling reason besides going to Vista.

Many are passing along comments from Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald that Vista will collapse unto itself. Wow, the blood hounds are howling over this one. I think all the negative comments are overblown here.

Come on folks. It’s hard to imagine that Microsoft engineers aren’t aware of issues along these lines and further that they won’t do anything about it. In fact, Microsoft has already publicly demonstrated the work of the MinWin group so this is evidence enough for this chap anyway that Microsoft is working to improve things.

Now if Microsoft were to dump its engineering team, then we’d have something to worry about. But speculating that they can’t figure out how to improve Windows and that they aren’t motivated to do so is ridiculous.

James Kendrick asks–for the average person–give them a choice between a low cost notebook and a Tablet PC–is the price difference worth it for a Tablet?

Depending on what you do, the answer may be no. For me, yes. For many no. Why isn’t the answer yes for more people?

Here’s the thing with Tablet PCs: Microsoft markets them as a “premium offering,” focusing on Tablet features in higher SKUs in Vista. This makes sense. The OEMs love it because a higher price is consistent with this marketing model. However, when’s the last time you saw Microsoft really make this case, strongly. You don’t. One problem is what’s meant by a “premium experience.” Is it one that a CEO has? An artist drawing a Disney animation? A person on a sojourn through the Andes? Likewise, Tablet PCs make an ideal offering for schools. However, price is a big issue here. Unfortunately, Tablets do very poorly here. Similarly, Tablets rank poorly on the coolness factor–something many older students pay attention to, even though Tablets are actually quite impressive from a technology perspective.

So in a nutshell, the two markets where Tablets look like they might have a chance–on the high end SKUs (think businesses) and the low end (think schools and students), Tablets do very poorly.

But looking at Tablets today, I think all this misses the real opportunity. I ask, why isn’t a smart board in a classroom a “Tablet” if you will. Why isn’t a MID? Why isn’t the Microsoft Surface Computer?

The way I look at it, there’s a collection of technologies that are slowly becoming practical which make computers more natural to use–and which enable them to work in ways that help me be more efficient, to do more, and make my life more enjoyable. I don’t want to live my life behind a keyboard and a mouse.

And as I pointed out in the previous post, it’s less and less today about one OS, one platform. It’s about how devices work together. The problem with the Tablet as a platform approach is that it’s too restrictive and more aligned with yesterday’s world. Have you ever tried to “share” with or send ink to anyone over the Internet? ‘nuf said.

For ink to really work today, ink and reco have to work in the browser, on the Mac, on Linux, with smart boards, and most importantly all versions of Windows. There have to be top notch drawing primitives. There has to be great digitizer and touch support. It’s not just about Vista XYZ. A Tablet is not unto itself. Those days are gone.

That’s one reason that these lower cost computers are doing so well right now–because they don’t have to do much. There’s great value in the connectivity. That’s why the “Tablet” per se has to reach out and be a great connection and communication enabler.

Now in terms of the Tablet as a form factor. I still think there’s lots of room for innovation. I’d like to go back to the days of the NEC Litepad or the HP TC1100. Now these were great Tablets even if they were a little under powered.

Similarly, I have great hopes that the OEMs building UMPCs and now MIDs will begin to appreciate the importance of the whole experience and not just the specs on a hardware listing.

Still lots of room for growth and evolution in my mind.

As of right now, I wonder, who’s leading the way? Now that’s a tough question to answer.

This blog post (Five reasons why Vista beats Mac OS X) by Preston Gralla on ComputerWorld is troll material and normally I wouldn’t fall for it, but it’s too far over the top to ignore.

Several of the reasons he gives for using Vista are rather silly. I won’t even get into them.

What I want to say, instead, is that I think he’s looking at the whole problem the wrong way. In fact, he’s looking at it as a battle of one computer system over another. Forget it. That’s yesterday’s battle. The stakes are different today.

It’s now just not about one desktop or one notebook for that matter; it’s about what devices (yes, plural) you use and how much you can do with all of them as a whole. It’s about how collectively they make your life better.

I like Vista. I even use the 64-bit version as my main OS on my Mac Pro, but I also love OS X lite, if you will, on my iPhone. It beats everything else I’ve ever owned in terms of browser connectivity–even though it’s missing Flash, which I sorely miss. I also love my Toshiba M700 Tablet PC. It’s a terrific notebook; a great brainstorming tool, and an all around workhorse while on the go.

I use all of these devices as a collective pool. They are all winners in my mind. Singling out one device or one OS or one application or one power plug or one button or…you get the idea…is focusing on too small of an item. Today, it’s about connectivity across multiple devices. The OS tug-of-wars still get down and dirty, but they’re nothing to get overly concerned about.

I’ve been meaning to get up a video that I made awhile back which shows how similar the iPhone and UMPC are in many respects–at least how I have them set up. Yeah, it kind of surprised me too. But it’s true.

The issue is that even with similar features, the experience is different. And here is where the iPhone trumps the UMPC.

Take Flicks on the UMPC and the finger slide gesture on the iPhone for example. Both can be used to switch from “page to page” in an application (though Flicks can be defined to do a lot of things). However, despite their similarities, the iPhone slide gesture wins out for me.

It wasn’t until this morning that I realized why.

The iPhone slide gesture gives me feedback during the gesture, Flicks does not. With Flicks–as the name suggests–you make a rapid side-to-side or up-down gesture to signal an action. The problem is that during the gesture itself you get no feedback. It’s not until the gesture is complete that you might see an icon on the screen signaling that the gesture was recognized. If you did the gesture incorrectly, no icon appears.

The iPhone slide gesture is completely different. During the slide itself you see the “page” begin to move. You can tell right away that you are in control of something. You slide slowly, the page moves slowly. You toss the page to the side, it moves off the screen rapidly and the next page “bounces” into view.

The lack of feedback is a big problem for Flicks. It means that no matter how much the hardware may improve to improve the quality of the gesture, it’s still not going to provide real-time feedback. Flicks’ paging gesture as it exists now is never going to win out over a gesture with feedback. The Flicks page gesture is OK in itself, but just not optimal.

Some of the problem is that Microsoft is working with subpar gesturing hardware. Resistive technology isn’t going to do it–or at least I haven’t see it work as well as capacitive. Give this video a glance to see the problem. In it Josh Bancroft tries to slide a coverview like window of content on a MID using is finger. Since the MID uses resistive touch and Josh doesn’t use his fingernail, the experience is horrible. Don’t fret Josh, I’ve done the same thing. Many, many times over. And I keep doing it wrong too.

Now the “hand” tool in IE is more like the iPhone’s slide gesture. Pretty much. With it you can slide page content up and down. There are some jitter problems in IE though that you don’t see on the iPhone. Here again, part of this is a sensor problem. And “hand” tools are not standard by any means on Windows apps–though with coverflow like controls and other iPhone-inspired behaviours becoming more popular, maybe it will be.

I think the challenge for the Flicks team is to come up with gestures and a user interaction model that makes more sense for a variety of devices. Whereas Flicks might seem cool at first–and it might be a simple way to add some gesture functionality to a lot of apps never designed for gestures–it’s probably not the model that should be the primary focus.

Engadget has a graph showing some crash statistics for Vista. I have no idea whether this data is good, bad or indifferent, but it’s interesting for what it is.

I personally don’t find that Vista crashes all that much, although I have run into problems in the past with what I thought was a Flash/browser problem and the driver from WebcamMax. Other than that the sleep/hibernate issues have been a pain on my Toshiba M700 Tablet PC.

All this being said, is Vista worse than XP? Absolutely not. I can see why people go with XP for older hardware, however, Vista is quite comfortable to use. In fact, as long as there are drivers for the hardware, I’ve started recommending it for friends and family.

Joe Wilcox posts a list of 10 things he warned Microsoft about Vista–I think many of us could write a list like this. Some similar points. Some different. When you think about it, with all the feedback Microsoft was getting then and now, it’s a wonder they can really keep their heading right.

Anyway, this list got me thinking about the 10 things I like about Vista. In no particular order, they are:

1. Windows XP was getting old and it was showing. With age comes service packs that become a total pain to manage–especially when installing the OS fresh.
2. Vista Updates seem to work quite nicely.
3. Connecting to a wireless network is easier now than in XP.
4. This isn’t Vista-specific per se, but it was developed in the time frame with Vista in mind: I really like the WPF programming model. Lots of power. Easy to use. Silverlight 2 is taking this even further–to the browser.
5. It’s more secure than XP–particularly in IE. I haven’t had a meltdown yet, knock on wood.
6. The battery meter seems a lot more accurate in Vista. When I’m on battery power with my Tablet PC I rely on it more.
7. I like the quieter boot up and shutdown “music.” Less annoying–and sometimes embarrassing–than XP’s.
8. ALT-tab for switching between apps is much nicer.
9. I’m a huge fan of being able to type names or partial names of apps in the “Start | Run” edit field to get to them. If I want to get to Notepad, for instance, sometimes I click on the icon in the Start menu if I see it. Other times I just type “Notepad.” I usually type the names of infrequently used apps to launch them rather than search the Start menu for them or directory.
10. Vista locks up more for me than XP–because of lingering driver problems–but it gives me much better feedback than XP in terms of where the problem lies. Very useful–even if there’s nothing I can do about the drivers.
11. Better support for the Tablet PC, such as the checkboxes in the shell which make it much easier to select files.

OK. That’s 11, not 10 things I like. Consider the 11th one padding, just in case you don’t like one of the other 10.

Now I guess I could write a “10 things I warned Microsoft about” list too–but what’s the point? We are where we are. Now it’s time to look forward and help Microsoft focus even more on the things that are important to me as a user, such as better notebook support, better touch features (including multi-touch), improving speech recognition and synthesis, working with the OEMs to build better devices, and taking the DWM (desktop windows manager), even further (I want to be able to rotate WPF apps, for instance). I can think of tons of more things, which why this industry is so great. There’s always more and better things to create. Can’t wait.

If you’re pulling out your hair trying to get file associations to work in Vista, but you can’t get the file association to work no matter how hard you try, you may want to check out this thread. Seems the path in the registry to the executable might be incorrect–which can occur if you’ve moved (during a re-install) a program. Here’s the steps to fix it:

1. Open regedit.exe
2. In the left window pane, expand the tree view to:

Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\<your application executable name>\shell\open\command

<your application name> should be replaced with the name of your application. For me it was xemacs.exe

3. In the right window pane, double click (Default). Where you see the path to your program, you’ll notice that the path is wrong. It will be the old path, where your program USED to be.
4. Open Windows Explorer, and go to where the executable of your program is located. Copy the path in the Windows Explorer address bar
5. Back in regedit, paste over the incorrect path using the path you copied from Windows Explorer. Make sure you only replace the path, and not anything extra that happens to be in the Value data text box. (ie. be careful not to erase any quotation marks, or “%1″, or anything else you see there)
6. Press OK, close regedit, and you should be done!

Not sure if this issue appears in all versions of Vista or if it’s something that’s part of some beta issues. But I see online that others are running into this, so I thought I’d post the answer here.