Rants Tagged with “Microsoft”
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I am surprised when I talk to developers these days and they don't know who Sara Ford is. She's responsible for CodePlex and many open source initiatives at Microsoft. In addition, her blog is an excellent source of information on Visual Studio tricks and features that most of us have never noticed. It is well worth a read. Just announced today, her blog is now available in Russian and Spanish so if English isn't your native tongue, you're in luck there too.
Wonder how I get someone to translate my blog into other languages ;)
I am copying a video file across my wireless network (though this particular machine is kinda flaky, so it might not be Vista's fault) but I thought this was funny:
Over the past week there have been a flurry of new projects coming out of Microsoft, mostly in the form of CTP's. I've been downloading like crazy and will likely be discussing my experience with them in the coming week. In case you missed any of them:
I expect that with the release of the EF Beta 3 means Astoria is coming soon. I'll let you know when it drops! Time to start digging in.
This blog post may seem to be a clever way of increasing my web traffic but the fact is that I am growing frustrated with the adoption of Vista and Microsoft's general under-delivering on Vista.
The big caveat is this: I use Vista and really like it. I don't have any real problems (no driver issues) and I find that gaming performance close enough to XP that I can't tell the difference. In addition, I like the new UX sheen of Vista...so why do I ask if its the new Windows ME?
Vista has a bad name in the community. Some is perception (bad press==bad experience), some of it is real (driver issues for machines not pre-installed are bad....often really bad), and the 64-bit story is just painful. UAC is similar to how Ubuntu implemented root protection, but bothers people more than most Linux distributions (with my limited experience).
In addition, Microsoft seems to be ignoring much of the bad user experience. Trying to pretend a SP1 wasn't coming out just didn't make any sense to me. The "Vista Ultimate Extras" premium and non-delivery of anything interesting (bit-locker is of interest mostly to corporate environments but was touted as an "Ultimate", and Dreamscene is a cool trick for demo's but isn't interesting for everyday use). After being caught not delivering anything new in 'Ultimate Extras', Microsoft promised to deliver something by the end of summer (2 days and counting) and nothing is to be seen.
So while I think Vista is a good OS, it seems an abject failure from the perspective of users. Will it become the punch-line to jokes that Windows ME is? I don't know. Maybe SP1 will do to Vista what SP2 did to XP (make it a grown-up OS), or will downgrades that Microsoft is supplying to people that buy machines with Vista be its death knell?
I don't know, but I am watching closely to find out...
What do you think?
I wasn't surprised to see thsi story on CNet as I wondered whether this would be the case as far back as 2003:
http://wildermuth.com/2003/10/29/Been_a_busy_couple_of_days.aspx
and again in 2006:
http://wildermuth.com/2006/06/05/Vista_Beta_and_Battery_Life.aspx
I hate to say I told you so...but...
I am in between meetings near the Microsoft Campus today and wanted a coffee so I headed to a nearby Starbucks. I wanted to check my e-mail, ut I had given up my T-Mobile account (at $40/month) because there is so much free wireless in my neighborhood. I wrestled with spending $10 for a day pass just to check e-mail when I noticed that Vista users would get a free trial to T-Mobile hotspots.
I took the trial and I got a free month of access. No credit card required (so no nasty...trial, but we'll bill you if you forget to cancel nonsense). I did have to install an ActiveX component to check to see if IE7/Vista was in use. Voila...free e-mail checking...
Microsoft has launched a new website devoted to teaching beginners Windows and Web development. It includes several phases of learning and skill assessments. Check it out if you want to learn to program!
I was setting up my new laptop with Vista today and it looks like everything is finally installed, except my fonts. So I opened the Font folder and picked, "Add New Font". This is what I saw:
While it is certainly skinned with Vista, this is the same font dialog that i've been using since '95 or perhaps 3.1. I love the Drives dropdown and the Network button. I wonder how much ancient code is still in Vista? Anyone notice others?
As reported on
Ian Griffith's Blog, Kenny Kerr has released an excellent program to take screenshots on Vista. The problem has been with Aero Glass and not wanting to take a picture of the window underneath, but retaining the Aero look and feel. It allows you to take a clean screenshot of a window (and its parent) including the shadow effect. Just wonderful...
I thought I'd mention a problem I had with my new Vista installation.
I have a separate partion for my data, so when I upgrade to Vista I didn't do a clean format of the entire drive, but just did a clean install of Vista. Works great!
The only exception was that I did not have permission to access, modify or delete some files on my data drive. I am an administrator, what do you mean I don't have permission? After googling the problem, I discovered that the owner of these few wierd files was an unknown entity. To fix it, I used the Advanced button the security tab of the file/folder properties to change the owner to my admin account. Once I had the ownership, it was as simple as adding the appropriate permissions.
Works great now.
