I want to make a slight digression from building our new computer system to take a closer look at Windows 7 which is due out on Thursday, Oct. 22nd.  I find it curious that the next release of Ubuntu, 9.10, is due out on Oct. 29th one week later.  Is Microsoft starting to get a little worried about Ubuntu?  My thought is they should be.

To review Window 7. I looked at their features page. So here’s why you should spend money to upgrade from Vista, or if you were smart and our still running XP, from XP.  This is taken right from their Windows 7 feature page.

Windows 7 takes the headache out of sharing files and printers.  I thought your printer software took care of setting up a network printer.  My recent Cannon MX850 software went in smoothly with a couple of mouse clicks, since you have to install a printer driver from the printer manufacturer, what is Microsoft possibly adding to the mix here.

Speedy access to your favorite picture and documents.  Ah, didn’t Microsoft include this with XP.  Hello, what’s new?

Snap a quick and fun way to re-size and compare windows on your desktop. Wow! Windows finally figured out how to split a screen.  I have to admit this has been a pain when copying files between folders in explorer, I can’t think when else I have needed this feature.  Microsoft says it will be fun though.  I wonder if my 9 year old boy will think so?

Windows Live Essentials. 7 great programs for free: Mail, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and more…I believe you can have any one of these programs for free anyway.  I’m thinking of Thunderbird for email.

Windows Search. We’ll finally we come to something that’s worthwhile. It’s taken Microsoft how many years to finally figure out they need a better search engine then the one they’ve been using.  Microsoft searches have always been slow and just plain awful.  So much so that I went to third party search utilities to do the same thing.  This is an improvement, and maybe worth the upgrade price.

Window Taskbar, better thumbnail previews.  Another area that Microsoft has been lame is allowing users to decide how to customize the taskbar.  What their pushing is easier-to-see icons and previews.  That’s questionable.  More ways to customize is an improvement, I think.

Full 64bit support. It looks like Microsoft is taking us into 64 bits.  We have the processors available, but until Microsoft supported it, application developers would not embrace it.  This is a good thing, but it will not affect your running of Windows 7 at home, it is more a gift to developers.

Remote Media Streaming.  So your going to log onto your home computer, which of course needs to be running, and listen to a song….why not just dial up Pandora?

Window 7 Touch…ah, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to touch my monitor and leave fingerprints on the display, that I constantly have to clean off the monitor.  I have to be convinced on this one.  Maybe…

You can run XP programs in compatibility mode…ah, pardon me.  We’ve been able to do this since Windows 95.  This just means Microsoft has added XP to the list of old operating systems to be compatible with, so they can retire XP and get more revenue,  to force users to upgrade their operating system.  They’re trying to force users off of XP any way they can.

So to sum up. This is typical Microsoft puffery marketing.  Telling you about features that you really all ready have in a new light.  My kids can’t stand their TV ads.  The big thing in this release is improved search, which is really a rework of the Vista search, and for the future full support of 64 bit, but as I said this should not be important in your use of the computer at home or work for awhile.

In the future, it will mean Microsoft will sell you the 64 bit version of all their applications.  After all, you always need something new to sell consumers to keep that revenue stream going. They’ll claim faster performance and quicker applications, you’ll see.

Windows 7 is just the next release of their operating system, just like a week later Ubuntu is releasing their next release of their operating system.  Only Ubuntu is free, and you do not have onerous registration licensing with Ubuntu.

I called Microsoft Customer Support the other day.   I was impressed.  I got an actual person to talk to in a relatively short time after going through the usual  telephone system automatic pick a number if it fits your problem.

I can’t say that I hung up happy, in fact, I finished the call  downright angry.  What was the problem?  About a year and half ago, I had built a computer. and paid for and installed the OEM version of Vista Home Premium as the operating system.

For those of you who have not looked at operating system pricing, the OEM version, as opposed to the Retail version,  is supposedly for system manufactures and integrators who build systems.

To continue the story, the system crashed and in the process took out the power supply and motherboard.  There was nothing wrong with the disk drives, and I still had Vista and all my data on the drives.   So I purchased a new power supply and motherboard, and connected everything up.

That’s when I found out my system wouldn’t boot.  What was the problem.  Well, in one word, Microsoft.  It turns out if you have an OEM copy of the operating system, It can only be reinstalled on a system with the exact same make and model of motherboard as where it was originally installed. My original motherboard was obsolete, so I was in a “Catch-22.”

What did Microsoft Customer Support say, “Well, that’s our policy.”  Which made me instantly angry.  To paraphrase heir policy, we know you build systems, and that you repair systems, but if your customer has a problem with his motherboard, which needs replacing, you’ll have to buy a new operating system, of course, you could have bought the retail version initially, hint, hint.  In order to get up and running I had to purchase another license.  Pay another $200 to turn a software switch on.

You would think that Microsoft would give its partners a break, which it supposedly does by making the OEM version about $100 less than the retail version.  But as you can see from this experience, you are better off initially buying the retail version.

Better yet, your better off boycotting Microsoft products all together.   Is that possible?  I believe so, yes,  I’ve just ordered the parts for a new computer.  It’s purpose is to prove to myself that I, or anyone else for that matter, don’t need to use Microsoft products.   That you can still have a fully functional computer without using Microsoft products.   I believe Microsoft is going the way of IBM, a has-been, and has peaked.  And I aim to do my part to help Microsoft along.  Yep, I guess you could say, “that’s my new policy.”

Has anyone running Microsoft Vista experienced starting an application on your computer, that normally starts quickly, and having to wait a minute or more for the application to start.  Sometimes you’ll get the spinning circle wait icon and sometimes you won’t.   Or all of a sudden your computer suddenly slows down when you haven’t done anything that you normally wouldn’t do.  Or your internet connection suddenly get real slow when it was running fast a second ago.

The immediate thought is I have spyware, a virus, or trojan running on my computer, and wonder how I got it.

Well, I have a surprise for you.  It may be Microsoft’s error reporting causing the problem.  The theory of error reporting is  if enough people have a problem, and you report it to Microsoft, then Microsoft may come up with a solution, and fix your problem.

Microsoft has been doing error reporting for a long time.  I’m not sure when they started having user’s computers, attached to the Internet, automatically send messages back to Microsoft.   It’s been a long time.  When Vista first came out, it was so bad, I figured, yea, let’s help get this operating system as good as XP.  But enough all ready, Microsoft has given up, and is rushing out Windows 7.  And I have to say, I have never had a message back from Microsoft fixing my problem, or even a message about a current problem.  That’s never in all these years.  So what gives.  I do wonder if they are not just tracking the software on your computer.

If you would like to see what get’’s reported to Microsoft in Vista, get ready for a surprise.   Go to Start>Control Panel>System and Maintenance>Problem Reports and Solutions>View Problem History.  It looks to me like every application you run gets reported at one time or another.  Each one of those reports may cause one of  the slow down problems we described at the start of this post.

My advice is to turn it off, forget about it, and stop those annoying slow downs.  To turn it off go to  Start>Control Panel>System and Maintenance>Problem Reports and Solutions>Change Settings> click “Ask me to check if a problem occurs.  Your not done yet. Click in the same window right below that “Advanced Settings>For my Programs, problem report is “OFF” .”   Then click “Change Settings.”  Windows will protest, and  remind you to turn it back on occassionally, but you don’t need it, and you  can safely ignore their prompts.  Your computer will run a lot better and a lot quicker.

Microsoft is scrambling to get out its replacement operating system for Vista to bring up its revenues.  The replacement, Windows 7,  will try to get corporate America and the government weaned away from XP.  Vista has largely failed to meet expectations.  It is slower than XP with many annoying features, like UAC, User Account Control.  That’s not to say Windows 7  will be much better.  It will have UAC only with four choices instead of two.

In an effort to get Windows 7 out by Q3 2009, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, announced that a new version of Office will NOT be released with Windows 7.  This is a switch from previous releases where both were released at the same time to enhance both revenue streams, and signals a separation of operating sytem and Office development.

This separation is real, and led to several interesting developments.   You will not have to have Windows 7  to run Office 14.  It will still be supported on XP.   Office 14 will have a new format that will support XML-based file format Open Office XML (ODF). Microsoft has been fighting against this to try to keep to its own Open Document Format (OOXML).  It looks like it will give in on this one.

And in a big twist, Stephen Elop, Microsoft Business Division Chief  announced that Office 14 may offer a FREE ad supported version.  In other words, you can get it for free, if your willing to look at ads while you work. Elop said it was to fight piracy, but we think that the complete $400 plus package of Office from Microsoft is under a lot of pressure from OpenOffice.org.  Sales must be hurting given OpenOffice.org is free.   Elops sees it has a chance to get upgrade revenues later on.   I guess, if the ads are annoying enough, people will spring for the $200-$500 to upgrade, but we don’t think so.  Hopefully, the ads will replace the ribbon.

Office 14, the new release, now will not be released until 2010.   In the meantime, we thought we’d tease you with some advanced shots of the new Office 14.   These are compliments of the Office 14 Alpha release and was leaked by the Russian web site, Wzor.  We know, we know, the images are small, if you like an even closer look try here.

Micorsoft Security Updates?   Lets take a completely different perspective.

What if Microsoft didn’t make my operating system like a *&%$* vault, and some baddies somehow laid some malware into my machine.  That’s right, somehow penetrated all my non-Microsoft firewall, anitvirus software, spyware program, registry cleaner, and file change detection programs.  Yep, just suppose this malware got through all of those third-party apps, and really messed up my system.  It messed it up so bad, I couldn’t recover, and I had to buy a new computer.

Wouldn’t Microsoft make more money from the sale of a new operating system and office tools on that new computer I’d be forced to buy.  Get a clue Microsoft, stop these idiotic security updates, and ultra pain in the butt security measures that clog our systems, slow them down, and let us pay you more money.

Along those lines, since we never know what is inside, the now infamous, Microsoft security updates,  I have a sneaky suspicion, that has nagged at me many a time, as my system reboots from yet another securtiy update.   What if Microsoft security updates for XP, and its other older operating systems have a little extra functionality built-in.  Maybe, they have a couple extra loops in the code of each new update.  This would gradually slow your older operating system down.  We, of course, would call these updates, “security updates.”  Of course, the extra loops wouldn’t be in the updates for their latest operating system.

Why? Well, to sell new computers, and with each computer, new Microsoft software.  Can you say money?  Get rid of that super slow clunker you’ve had for a couple of years, and buy a new “speedy” computer with Vista on it.  See how quick your new computer runs.  “Wow, Vista looks really good!”   Nah, Microsoft wouldn’t do that, would they?

I’m running Windows Vista SP1, and it’s now infamous UAC for User Account Control, barf.  Well, I just downloaded a program I’m trying to install with a .msi extension.  A .msi extension is a file type that is meant to be installed by the Microsoft Windows Installer program.  The Windows Installer program manages the installation, and removal of programs on the Microsoft Operating System.

Well it just so happens this program sometimes will not run, gets corrupted, or a setting in windows, like not having the UAC turned on, may not run.  In which case, you can’t install your program.

So here I am trying to get some work done, and I find on my Vista system I cannot run files with an .msi extension.  Why?  Who knows.  I have now spent four hours trying to figure it out.  I’ve been up on the Microsoft site, and they have a replacement program that is supposed to fix the problems with, our you ready for this joke, a new .msu extension which also doesn’t load.  What happen to good old .exe extensions?   A lament, why does Microsoft have to make everything so difficult?

How many of you Vista users out there miss the XP start menu. I know we did when we first were exploring Vista. The one thing we missed in the Start menu on Vista was “Run.” We liked Run to start and install programs when autorun didn’t work on the CD, and to get to the command line especially when messing with networks. The “ipconfig” command comes to mind.

Well, if you also missed the Run command, along with the command window in Vista, we’ve been poking around, and we think we can help you out. It turns out Microsoft didn’t take away all our toys, they just hid them.

If you would like to have your Run command back permanently in Vista, put your mouse on the Start button, and click the right mouse button, click on Properties. Oh! well, well, well, you can have your old XP start menu back by clicking “Classic Start Menu,” but before you go there, stay with me, because the Vista menu has some advantages, like the search at the bottom of the menu.

Next to the Start Menu button, click on Customize. This is an alphabetical list of menu items. If you scroll down the list to the R’s, you’ll find our old standby “Run.” Check it off, click “ok” twice, and you have your Run button back permanently on your Vista Start Menu. More on the Start menu in another post. Enjoy.

Microsoft marketed Vista like it was the coming of a new generation. 3D desktop was supposed to be a revolution. What we got was 3D window switching that no one uses, and a pain-in-the-butt UAC, User Authorization Control, that if “On” makes you constantly tell Vista it’s ok to run an application you have been running every time you sit down at the computer. If its off, Windows nags you that it’s off, and your system can be in danger. On top of that, Vista is a memory hog. You need more memory to run those pretty graphics. XP was, and still is, faster than Vista. And Vista, like Office, was packaged in different version, confusing its customers. In the end, you ran with whatever came with that new computer you bought with Microsoft nags to have you upgrade.

What can we expect in Windows7? Microsoft says better performance, and better memory management. That’s a pet peeve of mine. Every time we want to push a new product, better memory management is one of the features. We’ve been hearing about better memory management now for 20 years. You’d think they’d get it right by now. Instead of UAC with two choices, we will now have four choices which Microsoft calls a customizable UAC. A new feature to get us close to what we had in XP, but allow you to keep the current wonderful Vista UAC, if you want. More control over system tray icons, so what. Snap different windows to screen edges, so what. I’m starting to get a little bored with this…

In the end, we see Window7 as a patch of Vista, and a way to try to goad people to give up their beloved XP to get their revenue stream moving again.