When Vista released, there was an almost immediate anti-Vista backlash among most of the tech press.  I called out CNet for it’s almost relentless barrage of anti-Vista postings and stories that were purported to be ‘news.’  It was not just CNet, though.  The most vocal anti-Vista site was, with out a doubt, PC World and all of its sister sites.  One writer, in particular, seemed to have a bone to pick with Microsoft and he used his bully-pulpit to spew his anti-Microsoft rants. 

Funny thing happened with Windows 7, however.  Just about everyone seems to like it.  Even PC World has a difficult time putting out anti-7 posts.  But, they do.  Especially any of the drek written by the aforementioned author, who will remain nameless here.  So…

What would you call a statement like “Windows 7 sales brisk?  Can’t give it away?” What would you say if I said that because I could not sell a copy of Windows 7 that I purchased for $50 (US) for $80 and no one wanted to buy it at that price and then I made the blanket statement that no one wants Windows 7?  Why, because I couldn’t sell it for that price, I could not ‘give it away’ because, you know, that’s such a deal.  Then, to my shock, I could sell it for what I paid.  Wow.  Windows 7 sales just stink.  No one wants it.  See, I can say that because I couldn’t make thirty bucks on it.  Sounds preposterous, doesn’t it?  Well, PC World didn’t think so and re-posted this ‘news’ from CIO.

Yep, some wannabe writer (no, not the one I mentioned above, for once)  for CIO actually posted this.  He bought the upgrade when it was offered for $50.  Then, while attending a Microsoft event, he got a free, autographed copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.  Naturally, he installed that one on his computer and then tried to sell his upgrade to someone in his office.  That’s right.  His office.  He figured he would sell it in ‘minutes’.  Instead, he got one response from someone who wanted to put it on their Mac.  They offered sixty bucks.  He declined.  After no one else wanted it, he decided to sell it for fifty bucks, what he paid.  Shockingly, there was one taker.  So, from this one experience-and ignoring the real sales figures-this person concluded that no one wants Windows 7.  All of the real analysts MUST be wrong.  His conclusion, after all, is based in fact.  The fact that most people he works with use Macs and those who don’t already had Windows 7 or were not going to upgrade what they do have.

Color me convinced.  Windows 7 is a failure.  Microsoft needs to just concede its market to Apple, since PC World’s sister sites and magazines are mostly Apple related anyway.

Well, after taking this all to heart, I’m going out a limb here and will state the oh-so obvious:  Mac OS X is not worth anything.  See, now follow MY reasoning:  I work with two people who have Macintosh computers.  Neither one of them have offered to give or sell me one.  Thus, I can conclude that they aren’t worth selling or even giving them away.  And, since I know only two people at work who have them, I must conclude that they are just awful products since no one else has them.  Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?  Yeah, I thought so too.

Google Chrome OS.  Two words and two letters that add up to…nothing.  Google recently held a press conference, a dog and pony show, to show off what they have done, so far, with their new ‘operating system.’  If what they showed off is anywhere close to what they intend to release next year, then the words ‘operating system’ become meaningless.  What Google is doing is, essentially, a minimalist Linux with the Chrome browser grafted on as the UI.  Given the devices that this thing is being targeted, it really ceases to become an operating system and more of a terminal application.  Or, in other words, a browser device.  Less a computer and more a dumb terminal, akin to the old ADM-3A terminals from Lear-Siegler back in the late 1970’s and earl 1980’s.

To be fair, the virtual images floating around the ‘net are NOT from Google and were compiled from the source code that Google released after it’s press conference.  The image I am using is from the GDGT website. It barely qualifies as an alpha release, so much of what I am about to discuss could very well change.

First, the good stuff.

Since Chrome OS is, essentially, the Chrome browser, you pretty much already know how to use the ‘OS’ if you have used the Chrome browser.  The user interface is pretty much the same.  And since it is JUST a browser, there’s little in the way of setup.  Also, you have very little control over the look and feel.  This makes it really simple to use, so simple, in fact, that grandma and grandpa could get email and view those photos and videos of little Johnny and Sue without having to call the family tech support.  Your data is stored in the cloud, so backup is not needed.  Since it is not Windows (or Mac OS X) and lacks the ‘smarts’ of a real operating system, it is pretty much immune to viruses and, thus, anti-virus is not necessary.  All applications are web based, so there isn’t anything to install.  Sounds ideal, huh?

Now, the bad stuff.

It is just a browser, has little local storage, is designed for solid state drives ONLY, does not support local applications (but, supposedly, will have an ‘offline’ mode) and lacks any user customization (unless you know the secret key combinations to access a Linux terminal, but, then, there goes the whole simplicity argument.)  Keep in mind, this ‘release’ is barely an alpha release so much of this MIGHT change, but it probably won’t.  Google has stated that they intend this to be a connected device, i.e. always connected to the Internet. 

The one thing that people seem to gloss over are the internet provider caps.  As with streaming video, these caps could be reached pretty quickly, depending on how much you use your Chrome OS device.  With caps as low as 5 gb, one could hit them pretty quickly.  A few large documents, spreadsheets, a couple of movies, photo uploads and viewings and, tada…you’ve hit your limit.  Now what?  Granted, casual users probably have nothing to worry about and, I suspect, are going to be the initial target audience for these things.

While an inexpensive device running Chrome OS could be a useful tool, especially for family members (not necessarily grandparents, I over generalized there) who are not computer savvy or care to be or for those who just need or want to use web mail, surf the ‘net quickly.  For anyone who needs to do real work, however, this is not for them.  Yes, you can hit the web-based ‘productivity’ suites and, yes, you can store your data in the cloud, you cannot use it off line and you risk losing ownership of YOUR data, especially if the cloud based service you are using (it does not have to be Google) goes out of business or, for whatever reason, cuts your access.  If you lose connectivity, you may lose your data.  For me, this is a deal breaker. 

Personally, I don’t see much use for Chrome OS.  With cheap computers, Windows 7 or even a real Linux, the market for Chrome OS seems pretty small.  For it to succeed, it needs dirt cheap devices.  Under $100 (US) is probably the right target.  I’d go so far as to say under $50.  Maybe something like the ZipIt or something in the same form factor as the netbook. Anything more than that, however, would be a waste since the ‘OS’ would not be able to take advantage of the extra capability. 

Now, where is that ADM-3A?

Links:

• Download Chrome OS from GDGT
• GDGT Chrome OS page
• Engadget Chrome OS overview

Thanks to my lovely wife, I am now the proud owner of a Zune HD.  I must say, this is one sexy device.  Thin, sleek, beautiful screen and great sound all add up to a device worthy of the words sexy, great and killer.  I’ve been a fan of the Zune since I got my 30gb, 1st gen Zune a couple of years ago.  The Zune HD is the device that Microsoft should have released then. 

The Zune HD is one of those devices that you must experience to appreciate just how nice it really is.  Everything about it, from the packaging to the setup is well done.  Setup was very easy, much easier than the first gen device.  I, literally, connected it to my computer, which already had the Zune 4 desktop software installed.  It installed a driver, which took about a minute.  After that, the Zune software asked me for a name for the device and then asked me if I wanted setup the wireless sync, which I did.  It detected the wireless network in my home and sent everything that the device needed to access my network.  In just a few minutes, I went from a boxed Zune HD to one with a handful of songs, a few photos and a video and was ready to rock and roll.  I set it up on my laptop, which is why there weren’t many songs to sync.  I’ve got it on my desktop and syncing my content.  I found out that 32gb is easy to fill.  They need a higher capacity device as  I am sure most will have a much larger library than I currently have.

The Browser

One of the first things I had to try was the browser.  Having a device with a larger screen and decent keyboard that I could carry with me and get online is a huge plus and my Palm Pre was serving fine, but the Zune HD, with it’s larger screen, should fit the bill perfectly.  However, my first look at the browser was a bit of a let down.  All I was getting was these limited mobile phone pages.  My Pre gets the full desktop experience and I had thought that the Zune HD could come close.  Happily, it does.  I needed to go into the device setup and tell the browser to render the full pages and not the mobile versions.  Once I did that, I was good to go.  The browser works fairly well and is pretty quick.  There are a couple of things that were a bit unintuitive and a couple of nagging items, but, overall, the browser is nice and works well.

The unintuitive aspects of the browser include bringing up the on-screen keyboard and the fact that you have to backspace over the address in order to enter a new address…unless I am just dense, there’s not an easy to do this.  Bringing up the keyboard involved to taps: once on the status line and once on the line that pops up under the status line.

The nagging items include the fact that this browser is, apparently, based on Internet Explorer 6 and, as such, you get warnings from some sites that support ‘for your browser is being phased out’ or some similar message.  Also, no Flash means that some sites, like YouTube, are pretty useless.

As I said, though, most sites render fine and pretty quickly too, so the browser is a very useful addition to the device and works better most portable browsers do, especially those in Windows Mobile phones, the BlackBerry and other portable devices.

The User Interface

The user interface on the device is excellent.  It is all gesture driven, like the browser, and easy to pick up.  The one mistake I kept making was to hit the one physical button on the front of the device to go back to the previous screen or menu.  The button takes you all the way back to the top level menu.  To go back one screen, you simply tap the top of the screen, which is generally the menu name.

Certain aspects of the desktop software made it into the device’s UI.  For example, the mix view is there and you have the ability to pin things to the menu.  There are lots of nifty animations for the menu and other functions, all of which add to the user experience.  The UI maintains the flavor of the previous gen menu system while adding device specific features.  One change that I’m not overly wild about it the omission of the user selectable backdrop.  You can still pick a photo for this, but the only place I’ve seen it is the ‘lock’ screen.  Once you are back into the menu, the background is black.  I think that is OK, but I’d still like to pick a photo for that purpose.

The Screen and Video Playback

Photos and video, by the way, look stunning.  The screen is bright and very sharp.  In fact, the sharpness of the screen will make you think that the resolution is much higher than it is.  I’ve not used it in the sun yet, so I cannot comment on the complaints from some that the screen washes out in direct sunlight.  I’ll report on that once I try.

Video playback is smooth and the color is excellent.  The playback on my old Zune was less than stellar, mostly due to the decoding and color limitations of the device.  Zune HD handles many more formats and is capable of millions of colors. I could not try the video out since both of the docks that I have only handle composite or component video out, neither of which are supported by the device.  I was hoping I could use them, but it looks like I need to buy a new dock.  Also, it looks like video out from the earphone jack is not supported.  Oh well.

Applications

The few games that I have tried are pretty impressive.  Project Gotham Racing looks and plays great.  The device has an accelerometer built in and this game, as well as others, takes full advantage of it, better than some Wii games.  PGR relies on the device itself for steering.  To turn right, you tilt the device to the right and so on.  The game is fast and the graphics are outstanding, better than a comparable game on the iPhone or Nintendo DS.  I’m a huge fan of the DS, but Zune HD’s graphics are much nicer.  I think the only hand held with comparable quality is the Sony PSP. 

For now, the apps are free.  The games are ad supported in that you have to sit through a 10 second ad before the game starts.  Most of them, so far, display a quick ad for the Zune Marketplace, but a couple that I tried had Ford adverts.  The adverts are not obnoxious and if it means I don’t pay for the game, then I can sit through a short ad.  However, I do hope that Microsoft wakes up and really promotes development of third party games and apps for this device.  It is a great platform for both games and applications.

Once I have had more time with the device, I will post more thoughts and some tips and tricks that I’ll have picked up.

Microsoft is one company that just blows my mind, but not because of the great products they produce, though a few are mind blowing. No, they blow my mind over those products that they produce that truly are great but get little or no promotion from the company.  Products like OneNote, Windows Home Server, its Live Essentials Suite, Media Center and, of course, the Zune, are all great products that receive little or no promotion.  In my mind, each of those products are tops in each genre, yet few people even know they exist.  When my wife purchased the Zune HD, for example, the clerk did not even know what she wanted.  They had to be shown.  That just blows my mind.

This week is PDC 09, the Microsoft equivalent of Apple’s developer conference.  As such, Microsoft has been trotting its newest stuff and revealing all of the goodness in its new technologies for developers. They have already spotlighted Office 2010 and, today, released the public beta. I’ve downloaded it and have installed it but have not yet had much of an opportunity to explore it. I took a cursory look around OneNote, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Access.  All sport a similar interface with the exception of OneNote, which still looks pretty much like the 2007 edition UNTIL you try to click the menu. Once you do, however, the ribbon appears and then it looks like the rest of the suite.

As previously stated, all of the apps in the suite feature online sharing and OneNote can be docked to the side of the desktop and become the recipient of drag-drop operations from any application. Where this is really useful, though, is if you have a browser window open and are doing some research.  You can highlight and drag information into OneNote.  The note is tagged with a link back the source.  You can index it and manipulate it as if you had typed it yourself.  Very useful and very intuitive.

I really like the small additions to PowerPoint.  There are numerous little changes, here and there, that, like Windows 7, add up to a more satisfying experience.  And, I think, that is, so far, my overall opinion of Office 2010.  I liken it to Windows 7:  The UI is more polished, performance (considering this is still an early beta) is very good and the little additions and changes all add up to a more satisfying package.  It just FEELS better than Office 2007, and I LOVE Office 2007.  Of course, I was in the minority, it seems, with Vista: I loved and still love the operating system, but Windows 7 is that much better. It isn’t one specific thing, but many little things put together nicely.

If you would like to try out the beta, then go here and download it.  One caveat:  If you choose the 64bit version of Office, you MUST uninstall your current 32 bit version. You cannot have both installed at the same time.

And while I am on the subject, a certain writer at InfoWorld is at it again.  This time, he finds all kinds of problems with the Office 2010 beta.  He says it is sluggish, ugly, and they moved everything on him again.  Oh, he also complained that he had to reboot AFTER installing the beta.  I don’t know what beta he is using, but none of this is true.  Oh, you do have to reboot…AFTER UNINSTALLING your current version of Office.  I did NOT have to reboot once the beta was installed.  Performance is good and, as for moving things…he complained about the send/receive button being ‘hidden’.  Nope.  It is plain sight, up where the Office Orb used to be (it is gone now.)  It was the first thing I noticed.  I have not had to hunt around for anything.  Even in OneNote, the ribbon is laid out logically and was easy to use.  He must be using an early alpha release. Or, he has not even seen it.  Not sure.

Also announced and demoed was Internet Explorer 9.  According to a real Microsoft reporter, Paul Thurrot, the IE 9 that was demoed is nowhere near feature complete and is, in fact, just a bare shell to demonstrate the engine.  Microsoft has not yet tipped its hand regarding UI stuff.  Maybe they have those copiers warming up, eh?  I kid, of course. 

Microsoft is addressing many of the very public criticisms of IE 8, including performance and stability.  Standards adherence is another area where they say they are focusing on by including support for HTML 5 and CSS3.  In the performance arena, they are including support for DirectX instead of GDI in the rendering engine. This should greatly improve the visual rendering of pages.  It also means that sites do not have to do anything to gain performance as the rendering engine will just do it.

Thurrot is speculating that a beta version will be available sometime around March with full release in October, 2010, the same time he expects Windows 7, SP 1 to be delivered.  Yes, Microsoft is already working on SP 1 for Windows 7.  Of course, the ink was not even dry on the Windows 7 packaging when talk of Windows 8 started.

Good things are happening with Microsoft…well, except the dancing employees in the Microsoft store, that is.  I’m embarrassed for them.

There are now a few public Office 2010 pages up on the Microsoft site.  There is a download the beta button, but, so far, it just gives you a message that the beta will be available ‘soon’.  However, you can get a glimpse of the geta by going here.  The screen shots look nice and there seems to be some nice new functionality. Once again, there will be Enterprise,Business and Home editions.  The Home edition will be of most interest to people who read my blog, so that is what I will focus on here.  Of particular interest is OneNote 2010.

OneNote:

Linked Notes is a feature that lets you jump to the source of your information with a single mouse click.  Versioning is also a new edition to OneNote.  Now, when you open a shared page, you will see the changes since you last opened the notebook.  It will also provide a version history that will allow you to go back to a previous version should you need to do so.

Windows search is now integrated into OneNote.  As you search for information, you are presented with a dynamic list of search results, as you type your query.

Perhaps the nicest new feature, and one that will kill the only advantage that Evernote has over OneNote is the web sync.  You will be able to access, share and edit your notes from just about anywhere.  There will be a web app as well as a mobile app that will, no doubt, be Windows Phone only.  Microsoft needs to realize that there are other Smartphone's out there and release versions for non-Windows Phone devices.

Other features include enhanced text formatting and better ways of organizing your notebooks.  But, the biggest difference in the application itself is the addition of the Ribbon UI.  Gone are the bloody menus and toolbars.  Good riddance!

Now, I realize that there are those who do not appreciate OneNote as much as I do and find more mundane things like Word and Excel far more interesting. So, for those of you who fall into this camp, here are a few snippets of Word and Excel goodness.

Word:

Word 2010 includes enhanced collaborative editing of documents.  The new co-authoring features allow for the editing of documents with multiple people at the same time. Presence is incorporated into the application.

Word on the web will also allow for sharing of documents as well as editing them from virtually anywhere without having to have Word on your computer.

Visual styling and effects have been enhanced and there is also a translation utility which will translate your document into another language.

Excel:

New analysis and visualization tools make tracking and highlight data trends easier. You will be able to insert tiny charts into cells to visually show trends for a row of data. Pretty cool stuff here, huh?

As with the other apps, you will be able to use web apps to edit, share and manage your spreadsheets.

Office 2010 looks like as great a leap in the suite as 2007 was.  2007 set a pretty high bar, but it appears that 2010 will jump even higher.

The public beta will be available ‘soon’.

Psystar, the Macintosh ‘clone’ maker, was dealt a major blow in its on-going litigation with Apple.  The Judge in the case has ruled in Apple’s favor, saying that Psystar illegally copies the Mac OS X operating system that it installs on the ‘clone’ machines.  Psystar, instead of installing OS X on the machines using the actual copies that they bundle with the machine, were using images made from OTHER copies of the operating system, a clear violation since they did not have permission to do so.  Had they actually installed the OS from the same discs they gave to customers, they may have avoided losing that particular argument. 

It didn’t end there, however.  In order to get the operating system to actually boot, they had to circumvent Apple’s EFI boot loader and encryption scheme.  The Judge ruled that, by doing so, they violated the DMCA.  That, alone, will hand them a heft fine. 

There were other things they were found to be in violation, but the DMCA violation and the illegal copies are more than enough to torpedo any remaining arguments that they have.  This ruling, by the way, was in the California case.  They still have a case in Florida, but, given the ruling in this case, the Florida case looks worse than the Titanic.  They should settle, if that is still possible.

Personally, I think this stinks.  While the illegal copying is wrong, that does not mean they don’t have a valid argument here.  Apple’s exclusion of non-Apple hardware is bad.  Yeah, I know, they have a right to control their products…but, remember, so does Microsoft and, yet, our government here in the States as well as the European Union, think otherwise.  Those two governing bodies should stick their long noses in Apple’s business as well.  What Apple is doing is, essentially, saying “well, you can only use our gas in our car.  You cannot use that gas in a Ford.”  They allow you to put other operating systems on their hardware, so why not Mac OS X on OTHER hardware?  Well, the answer is two fold and simple:  they want to sell their computers and if you want the ‘Mac experience’, then they need to control the whole package.  The other reason is that the do not know how to support the operating system on non-Apple hardware.  They can barely support their own legacy…oh, wait, they don’t.  They only go back a generation, not much further.  And if Joe User has a Dell and puts Mac OS X on their, they would not know what to do other than to say ‘talk to Dell.’  It is an expense they do not want.

Psystar was doomed.  I admire the spirit of what they did, but not the tactics.  They should have done it right by installing the same copy of the operating system that they gave the customer and not make the images (i.e. illegal copies.)  What a shame.  This will only embolden Apple to continue these ridiculous restrictions.  The fact that they actually went out of their way to lock out the Atom processor speaks volumes.  How anyone can still hold this company up high just baffles me.  And they said Microsoft was the evil empire. 

You can read more about the case here.

Well, actually, yes, they are for real. There is a catch, however.  Most of the movies are old, public domain movies and the quality varies a great deal.  I don’t mean the quality of the movie itself, though they do. No, I mean the quality of the download itself.  Some of the movies are from really old and bad prints, prints with missing scenes, out of focus transfers and poor sound.  If you look carefully, however, you can get some really nice copies. 

There are ‘staples’ of sites like this.  The original Flash Gordon serials, for instance, are all over the place.  Things to Come is another favorite.   The Captain America serials are showing up now and the old Dick Tracy movies are out there as well.  Below are some real gems I have found and where you can download them.  One of my favorite sites is the Internet Archive.  The films below are from the Archive.

“Non Stop New York” – 1937, BW

Stars John Loder and Anna Lee

The story of a young actress who witnesses a murder and then tries to make her way back to New York to save an innocent man.  Her trip to New York takes place on a futuristic airliner, complete with an outside observation deck.  The movie was labeled as science fiction, but it is more comedy than anything else. 

“Last Man On Earth” – 1964, BW

Stars Vincent Price

Story of a scientist trying to survive in a world full of vampires.  The story that the movie is based on has been made several time.  That story is ‘I Am Legend’.  It was remade in 1973 with Charleton Heston and entitled “The Omega Man” and, most recently, with Will Smith. 

 

“His Girl Friday” – 1940, BW

Stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell

Funny film about a newspaper publisher who drafts is ex-wife for a final sensational story before she re-marries.  Cary Grant is his usual debonair self and plays his role with a lot of flair.  Russell is wonderful as the reporter and the two have pretty good on-screen chemistry.  The download from Archive.org has a slight sound issue right at the beginning, but the copy is otherwise pretty good.  The problem is pretty short and right at the start of the movie.

 

“Things To Come” – 1936, BW

Stars Raymond Massey

The story of a man (Massey) and a decades long world war.  It chronicles the downfall and then rise of civilization after the war.  The film was shot just prior to the rise of Hitler and the beginnings of World War II.  It has really good special effects for its time and accurately predicts several technological advances such as two way television, helicopters, space travel and other things. It’s depiction of a space launch, while popular for the day, was way off:  they shot the capsule from a cannon.  That aside, the film gets a little preachy is places, but is still a worthwhile download.  Better yet, buy one of the restored DVD’s.  This is one of my favorite classic films.

“Transatlantic Tunnel” – 1935, BW

Stars Richard Dix

Dix plays an engineer who envisions a tunnel that will connect England and Europe to the United States.  Dix loses his family and endangers his own health to see that the tunnel is completed.  The story is a little thin, but Dix plays his character well and sub-plot with his wife is well done.  The special effects are pretty good.  The print was OK, but the aspect ratio seems off and, thus, does not fill the screen.  I find that a little distracting, but the movie makes up for it.

Archive.org also has television programs from the 1940’s and 1950’s.  Some of the best of classic tv is there and there is a small, but nice collection of programming from the long gone Dumont Network.  Programs like Captain Video and The Honeymooners can be found. 

There are a few good sites to go to for other public domain movies and tv shows.  One of them packages the programming in a way that looks like an old 1960’s UHF station that was trying to fill time.  It is called ‘Cult of UHF’ and offers it’s movies as podcasts.  You can subscribe via iTunes or Zune Marketplace or you can go to the site and download what you want.

Another site, also available as a podcast via iTunes or the Zune Marketplace is Archive Classic Movies.  This one has nothing to do with Archive.org, but they offer a decent selection of films, all public domain and free.  There are several films here that you will at the other sites, but this site seems to have somewhat nicer looking films.  They aren’t too dark, the sound is generally good and the films seem to be as complete as can be.

One note about old, public domain films:  because the copyrights have lapsed and the films are available in many places, there’s not been much attempt to restore them.  Many of the available prints are either from television stations where they were cut up for commercials and/or time constraints, theaters that actually trimmed the films for more showings during the operating day or films that just have missing parts.  Metropolis, for example, was originally two hours or so.  For years, the available prints were 78 to 92 minutes long.  Most of the prints were faded and in poor shape.  Fortunately, the film is good enough that it did attract several people who had the resources to restore it.  One re-release in the late 1980’s had a soundtrack added and the film was partially colorized, but only for effect and where the original was hand colored.  Metropolis is an exception.  Sometimes, however, a film can leave the public domain because someone claimed copyright on an element of the film.  Its a Wonderful Life is an example.  The film itself is still public domain, but some of the music used in the film is not. The opening music, for example, was still under copyright.  NBC television purchased the exclusive broadcast rights to the film and that is why it no longer shows up on hundreds of stations during the Christmas season.  Anyone can still offer the film, provided they remove the music.  Since this can be expensive, no one has done so.  At least, none that I know of, and I have looked.

As always, you need to be careful when searching for movies.  There are sites that offer more recent films, but if the price is free, then it is probably not a legal site and could not only get you in trouble with Hollywood, it could also cause problems for your computer. Practice safe computing and enjoy those legal and free movies.

CORRECTION: 11/24/2009

In the paragraph concerning Archive Classic Movies, I incorrectly stated that it had nothing to do with Archive.org.  In fact, it does. It appears to be a nicer front end to the moving images portion of the Archive.org site.  All of the links, as far as I can tell, point to the same movie on Archive.org.  Nonetheless, you can subscribe via iTunes or Zune Marketplace and it is a bit nicer than the Archive.org website.  My apologies for the mistake.

So, what’s going on with Apple?  Has the press finally emerged from the reality distortion field and started to report the problems with Apple software more than in the past or is it that there are that many more users who have not ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ yet?  No matter, the fact is that more and more problems are being reported about Apple products than I can ever remember reading about.  The majority of the problems come from updates as well.

Microsoft took it on the chin, so to speak, when Vista released to lack of driver support, application incompatibility and general displeasure with the changes made to Windows.  Now, it seems, much of that is happening with Snow Leopard.  There are tons of issues surrounding compatibility, hardware problems, lock ups and even loss of user data.  There were similar problems when Leopard released, but they were not highly publicized, at least, not like Vista.  That has changed.  A quick Google or Bing search for ‘Snow Leopard problems’ reveals a bevy of postings, more than any other version of the operating system.  Some of the problems have been addressed in updates, many have not.

And, speaking of updates, Apple updated the Apple TV software to 3.0 to handle some of the new features in iTunes and, in the process, broke Apple TV.  Among the issues are user content disappearing and dropped network connections.  Apple did something truly amazing-for them-over the weekend: they rushed out a patch to address the missing content issue.  However, they did not address any of the other problems users are having with the update.

The latest patch release of Mac OS X also affects the so called ‘hackintosh’ netbooks.  Apple, for what ever twisted reason, includes a kill switch for Atom based hardware.  Atom is the Intel CPU that powers most of the netbooks that are available today.  While no public reason has been given, speculation is that Apple wants to do all that it can to keep Mac OS X off of non-approved hardware.  Read that to mean all non-Apple hardware.  This is a truly hateful move on Apple’s part. Yes, it is their software and they can do what they want since they are not a monopoly.  Still, I fail to understand why they care so much.  The people who take the time to hammer Mac OS X into a netbook fully know what they are getting into and there is confusing Mac hardware with these barely usable devices.  I really do not get it.

So, I ask again, what’s going on with Apple?  Are they spread too thin?  I don’t know how many developers they employ, but I’ve read that it isn’t that many.  I’ve read it is as few as the number of developers who work just on Windows within Microsoft to the same number that Google employs.  Whatever it is, it is possible that they simply do not have adequate developers and QA people to fully test releases.  Apple really should take a page from Microsoft and release things like operating systems as public betas.  I suspect if Snow Leopard had had the same scrutiny as Windows 7, it would be a very different picture.  Of course, die hard Apple fans might not even bother with a public beta release since, you know, anything put out by the company would ‘just work’ anyway.

I certainly would hope that the shift that seems to be happening will continue.  It is about time that the tech press report Apple in the same manner they report other companies.  And, don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy about that these issues are affecting Apple’s users.  I don’t wish such things on anyone, especially on the Apple user base, many of whom have never had to really deal with such things.  At least, that is what I have been led to believe since the reporting has been pretty bad and any time I talk someone who uses an Apple product, all has been just fine.  I’ve met very few Apple users who have been up front about the products they use.  In fact, only one blogger/podcaster I know of has been pretty well balanced about the Mac and Apple in general.  Sam Caldwell, who puts out the excellent Windows 2 Apple podcast, tells it like it is, regardless of the machine he is talking about.  On second thought, if they were all like Sam, it would be one less thing for me to rant about…can’t have that now, can we?

I came across a few killer Windows 7 tips and thought I’d share them.  I will share the tips here, but look for the links to the sites where I got them as there is a wealth of cool tips tricks at those sites.

Add Flip 3D to your  taskbar  (from ON-10)

1. Right click your desktop and select NEW, then SHORTCUT
2. Type C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe dwmapi #105 in the LOCATION box.
3. Click NEXT and give your shortcut a name, such as ‘Window Switcher’ or ‘Flip 3d’
4. To change the icon, right click the shortcut and select PROPERTIES
5. Click ‘Change Icon’
6. Copy and paste %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\imageres.dll into the ‘Look for icons in this file’ box and press ENTER
7. Pick the first icon (or any that you want, the first is actually the one for Flip 3D) and click OK
8. Click OK again to close the properties window
9. Drag the icon to your taskbar
10. You can delete the icon that is still on your desktop-you no longer need it.

See more options on context menus

You can hold down the SHIFT key while right-clicking pretty much anything and you may see either a new context menu OR additional options to an existing context menu.  For example, the ‘Send To’ menu contains many more locations if you hold down SHIFT while right clicking a file and then selecting the Send To menu.

Add your own Send To locations

1. Open Explorer and dock it to one side of your desktop (using Windows 7 Aero Snap)
2. Open another Explorer window and dock to the other side
3. In one Explorer’s address box, type shell:sendto and press ENTER
4. In the other Explorer, select the location or application you want to add as a location and drag it to the other Explorer window
5. The newly created shortcut will now serve as a destination for any object that you right click and Send To.

Create Zune HD friendly videos with Windows Live Movie Maker

OK, so this is not strictly a Windows 7 tip, it is a handy one nonetheless.  If you have a Zune HD, you will want to be able to create Zune HD friendly videos with Windows Live Movie Maker.  The fine folks over at the Windows Live Blog have created two new profiles for Movie Maker that allow you to create videos formatted for playback on the device itself and/or on your HD television via the Zune HD dock.  Go here to read the article and download the profiles.

I’ll post more tips and tricks as I find them.  Stay tuned…

Companies, today, have many avenues in which they can interact with customers.  Quite a few companies, many who had (or still have) awful reputations for customer service have embraced these new avenues and are, albeit slowly, changing that perception and embracing a more open and honest relationship with their customers.

Take Comcast, for example.  This company has never been known as a customer friendly company.  Ask pretty much anyone who has had to deal with them for a problem and they will tell you just how rough an experience that can be.  Well, I”m happy to report that Comcast is trying to change that.  They now have people dedicated to helping customers via the Internet.  I have experienced this first hand.  I had written a post about an email issue and in short time, I got a response directly from them.  It was very nice and the person did a good job at explaining just what had happened.  I was OK with what they did, AFTER I got that message.  The problem was that the email they sent me was very poorly worded and, in effect, accused me of being a spammer.  The person who responded to my post explained why they did what they did (re-assign my outgoing port to something other than the default) and that went a long way to changing my opinion.  I also Twittered a couple of questions about the 250gb cap and I got several responses. Very nice.  Comcast not only monitors blogs, but also Twitter.  I can only guess that they also monitor My Space, Facebook and other social sites.  Kudos to them for doing that.  My only issue with this is that they really should retrain the front line people (as well as those who send out the emails) to be more friendly and upfront.  (Although I can certainly understand that they deal with many irate people on a daily basis.  I’ve worked retail and can understand how one’s patience can get might thin.  I won’t ding the front line office people too much.  They do an OK job, considering the people they deal with everyday.)

Other companies also monitor their own forums, Twitter, chat rooms and other social sites as well as blogs.  Companies like Microsoft, Apple and Palm all have people who respond this way.

Another impressive company is Peek.  Since I purchased my Peek, I’ve been actively reading the Peek community forums.  They also monitor and respond via Twitter (@peekinc) and email.  Many, if not most, of the questions posed in the company forums get an answer from the company (tmel is one person I see answering questions) and they do seem to try to address the issues they can actually fix and don’t get too defensive with criticism.  It is very refreshing to see such responsiveness – and politeness – from a commercial entity.

There is no doubt that the Internet and social media in general, is re-writing the book on company-customer relationships.  The few companies I mentioned here are by no means the only ones using the new tools, but they do stand out to me as good examples.  Comcast, especially.  They have had one of the worst reputations of any company that I have ever dealt with.  They are actively trying to fix that.  The steps they are taking are small, but they are also very important and prove just how effective things like blogs, Twitter and other such things really are. 

I, for one, no longer feel helpless or like I am being brushed aside.  Having this new toolset is very empowering.  There is a danger of abuse, though.  I certainly hope that that abuse – on the consumer side – is kept to a minimum.  It would be really bad if all of this progress got swept aside because a few people abused it. 

A recent visit to a local Best Buy to help a friend pick out a new laptop was quite an eye opener.  Now, in general, I like Best Buy and have, for the most part, had positive experiences there.  As with any retailer, some stores are ‘better’ than others and the same is true here in Richmond.  Locally, there are about six stores and two of them I would consider marginal stores in that the staff and/or the production selection seem to be sub par.  Given that, though, they all follow the same sales tact and when you purchase something like a large screen television, an appliance or a computer, they will then perform the up sell.

An up sell is an attempt to sell you something related, but in addition to what you are buying.  For me, today, I purchased a remote start kit for my wife’s mini-van (it is a gift, don’t tell her) as well as help my friend buy that laptop.  I fully expected an up sell with the remote start since the mini van is a relatively new Toyota and nothing is ever simple or cheap when it to comes to recent vintage autos.

What I did not expect, however, was the types of up sells for the computer.  My friend wanted something relatively in-expensive but something she could use in the business that she and her husband run.  Given the requirements, we had narrowed down the choice to three laptops.  NOTE: there’s a ton of laptops out there, good and bad, and picking one-for ANY price/performance range-is a daunting task.

Of the three, a Toshiba costing under four hundred dollars was the best choice.  The machine is a dual core AMD with 3gb of RAM that can be expanded to 8gb.  It had an ATI Radeon chipset and a pretty spacious 350gb hard disk-more than adequate for the machine’s intended purpose.  So, once the selection was made, the salesperson then proceeded with the up sell.

The first thing he tried to sell was an ‘optimization’ service.  For $40(US), the Geek Squad would, essentially, de-crapify the computer.  Yep.  They will remove the trial ware and the crap that these companies put on the machines.  Then, the person said, they would perform some registry clean up and optimization.  Finally, they would download and install all of the security patches and Windows updates.  I about choked and asked the guy if he were serious.  He kind of looked puzzled and said that, yes, he was serious.  Next, of course, came the protection plan.  I had actually told my friend that she may want to get one.  I normally don’t like these, but on some things that have parts that would cost more than the plan and device combined, I have purchased them myself.  In two of three cases, I had to actually use them and it paid off.  Usually, though, it is just free money for them.  And, in this case, it turned out to be not such a good deal after all.  Best Buy’s standard ‘warranty’ is pretty much in place of the manufacturer’s warranty: during the first year, if the machine has a problem, you bring it back to the store and they repair it.  If it is beyond the store’s ability to repair, they will send it to the manufacturer.  For the protection plan, it is the same thing only it covers user induced problems and not just defects in the machine. You can get a plan covering one, two or three years.  The problem is that the two and three year plans would come very close to the cost of just buying a new computer. 

Finally, the salesperson tried to sell anti-virus.  The lure is that you get the first SIX MONTHS free, then you pay fifty dollars and must renew every year.  Well, with several really good free anti-virus packages, there is no need subscribe to one through Best Buy.  Microsoft’s Security Essentials and AVG Free are pretty decent.  AVG’s paid application is also pretty good and you don’t pay definition updates.

Overall, however, the purchasing experience –sans the up sell – at Best Buy is pretty decent, I’ve experienced worse at other retailers. But the problem I have with them is that up sell.  I realize and understand that they are there to make money, but some of this stuff strikes me of taking advantage of people who just don’t know better.  Charging $40 to, essentially, remove a few applications and install updates is a bit much.  Though, I suppose, for some people, not having to that themselves is worth the money and it is probably lower than what others charge to do the same thing.  Sony, for instance, was selling machines without the crapware for FIFTY dollars MORE.  Incredible.

That visit to Best Buy just proves that I am in the wrong line of work.  Maybe I should market a de-crapification and anti-virus service myself.  Think of it…the Half Byte New Computer De-crapification Service.  Kind of catchy, huh?

Bits and Bytes

• Internet Explorer 8 download bug?  I’ve written about issues with Internet Explorer 8 in the past and have retracted a major complaint that I had.  That said, there appears to be a small issue with downloading files.  I regularly download video podcasts and store them on an external drive.  This has worked well with Firefox and Safari 4 for Windows.  Since my upgrade to Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 has been my browser of choice.  It is working relatively well and is pretty quick too. However, if I try to download to an external drive, the file starts and then stops.  It will sit for a minute or two and then act like it is done.  Problem is, it never downloaded completely. It is usually a two to five megabyte file.  If I try to re-download, to any location, I get the same truncated file. I have to clear the cache and then try again.  It usually works after that, even to the external drive.  Also, if I cancel the download and immediately try again, it works just fine.  Now, I suspect it has something to do with the external drive spinning up and IE just does not know what to do.  Timing seems to be the issue.  Anyone else experience this?
• Windows 7, in two weeks, surpasses Snow Leopard in worldwide usage.  Huh.  I would have thought it did even before its release.  At any rate, Gizmodo published an interesting graph showing worldwide OS usage.  Take a look here.  Steve Ballmer was quoted, elsewhere, that sales are already ahead of where Vista was at its same point in time.  If this continues, it will be the fastest adoption rate of any version of Windows.  Of course, comparing the release to Snow Leopard is a bit disingenuous since Vista’s install base is larger than Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard anyway.
• The Beatles are available digitally!  Yeah, yeah, yeah!  This past week, there two ways to get your Beatles tunes: via download or an expensive USB stick.  First, the digital downloads.  A company called BlueBeat was offering the downloads very cheaply.  Problem was, it was not legal.  They had no rights at all and, in fact, the true rights holder, EMI, had a judge slap BlueBeat with an injunction.  The second method, the USB stick, comes from EMI and contains the entire catalog, some video and other goodies.  The stick is housed in an ugly green apple.  It is yours for about $250(US).
• Peek goes all a Twitter.  Yep, Peek has taken its email only hand held device and grafted on a Twitter client.  For $99.95, you can get yourself the device and six months of service.  After the six months, service is $7.95 a month. Having recently purchased a Peek Classic, I can honestly say that the hardware itself is rather nice.  It looks decent, has a good feel, a decent screen and a workable keyboard.  That’s where my enthusiasm ends, however.  It is difficult, especially at $19.95 a month for the email service, to justify it for email and damn near impossible to justify it for Twitter ONLY.  Now, if they threw in the Twitter client along with the email service, it would make the device more attractive.  Even better, throw in a minimal but working BROWSER and they would have something. While I am sure they will find a few people to buy this, restricting it to just Twitter is absurd.  Sell the hardware for twenty bucks, charge $14.95 a month for email, Twitter and that browser and it would sell even more.  But, with Smartphone use on the rise, this thing has very limited appeal.  However, if you want to read more, go here.
• Windows 7 SP1 to hit beta this year with release for 2010.  Yes, that’s right, SP1 is due for beta release by the end of the year with the final going live mid-2010.  No doubt, SP1 will further improve the new OS’s performance.  If it does release on this schedule, it will have been released much sooner than SP1 for Vista-an operating system that disparately needed an SP release sooner than it got one.
• Windows Live, wave 4 coming soon?  Looks like Microsoft’s wonderful Live suite will be getting a client side upgrade soon.  There will also be some changes to the services themselves.  Ars Technica is reporting that there is one service in particular that looks interesting:  “Flix”.  Flix is like a mini-You Tube service, powered by Silverlight, and intended to be used like the Live Photo Gallery but for videos.  The target audience is family and friends and not the general public. Hop on over to this posting on Ars Technica for more.

Since I’ve gone a few days without posting something about my new favorite operating system, I thought I would pass along a few things I’ve found for Windows 7.  First, and foremost, the wonderful free Windows applications site, The Road To Know Where, has been updated for Windows 7.  There are a ton of links to Microsoft or Microsoft related downloads for Windows XP, Vista and 7.  Go here for the Windows 7 stuff.  You can get to everything else from there.  This site is a bonanza of information and software for Windows.

One of the things I found there is called TweaksLogon.  What this does is give you a mechanism to change the background for the Windows 7 logon screen.  It is pretty simple.  You select a background image and TweakLogon will apply it to your logon screen.  If the image is too big, the application will resize it for you.  You can also revert back to the default Windows 7 logon background.  It is simple, works great and is free.

Another interesting link I found, and it looks like it will work with XP and Vista as well, is something called Wallpaper Generator.  What this does is generate a random gradient wallpaper based on colors you pick.  Pretty slick and free.  Get it here.

Stay tuned for more Windows 7 tips and tricks.

Apple has gone on record, several times now, saying it will not-read their lips-NOT enter the so called netbook market.  No, they would rather maintain the ‘premium’ image they have crafted and keep pricing their products artificially high.  And good for them.  They have left a competitive market to a few companies to slug it out and make razor thin margins.

What if, however, you wanted the Mac experience for a McDonald’s price?  Well, you would create for yourself a ‘hackintosh’.  A ‘hackintosh’ is a PC that has the Mac OX installed.  Until recently, this was a fairly daunting task as Apple has placed many roadblocks in the way of hobbyists can install the operating system on non-Apple hardware.  Recently, however, the process was documented and perfected to the point where it became fairly easy to install the operating system on non-Apple hardware. 

Apple, not to be outdone AND to maintain that tight control, has introduced more roadblocks.  With the latest version of Snow Leopard, recently seeded to developers, now does some things that prevent the operating system from running on Intel Atom processors-the workhorse of the netbook.

Why, Apple, would you do this?  Are THAT concerned with the OS running on non-Apple hardware?  Well, yeah, it would appear so.  The ongoing battle with Psystar shows the lengths that they would go.  Recently, they declared that every time a Psystar computer boots Mac OS X, they are guilty of making three unauthorized copies of the OS…they actually claim that the in-memory representation of the OS is there illegally and, thus, is a pirate copy.  Really?  Really, Apple?  Of course, they are very serious about that.  Still, it just wreaks of a desperate thing to do. 

Apple’s desire to control everything, end to end, is getting old and just makes them look silly.  iTunes sync with Pre, Psystar, netbook hackintosh…seems to me that Apple is focused on the wrong things.  They should fix their operating system.  If they put the same energy into fixing Snow Leopard, they might have a good enough product to fight WIndows 7.  But, no, they work to thwart the few fans on the ‘PC’ side that they have.  They want to turn away legitimate customers just because they use a Pre and not an iPhone.  What are they thinking? 

I’m a huge NASCAR and love the ‘chase’.  The chase is NASCAR’s championship playoff.  The last ten races of the season make it up.  After the 26th race of the season, traditionally the race here in Richmond, VA, NASCAR resets the top 12 in points and starts them off at 5,000 points.  Each driver who won a race during the season gets an additional 10 points per win.  That’s the chase.

So, this year, Jimmie Johnson is now our points leader.  He did so not by going out during the normal season and winning a lot of races and consistently finishing in the top 10.  No, he raced just enough to stay in the top ten in points.  At no point, during the normal season, was he ever in the points lead.  Tony Stewart was, for the most part. Funny thing, once those ten races began, Johnson is suddenly winning and contending for the win.  He now has a 184 point lead over second place Mark Martin.  Johnson seems to have hit upon a winning formula:  race just enough to stay in the top ten in points during the normal season and then, starting with race 27, actually race to win.  Unless, that is, he’s a Talladega, Alabama.

Talladega is a two mile, D shaped, oval.  It is a restrictor plate race on top of it.  See, back in the 1980’s, Bobby Allison was travelling in excess of 200mph and got caught in an accident.  His car left the track and went into the catch fence.  Parts of the car went into the crowd.  In an effort to slow the cars at Talladega and Daytona, NASCAR mandates a restrictor plate on the carburetor.  The plate reduces the amount of power the engine can produce and, thus, slows the cars.  The problem is that now the cars cannot pass as easy and they tend to get bunched up. This often leads to the ‘big one’. 

The big one, as the press calls it, is the dreaded multi-car wreck.  Because the cars are all bunched up, when someone has a problem, pretty much every one has a problem.  Unless you sandbag.  Like Jimmie Johnson did in today’s event.  Sometimes it pays, sometimes it does not.  Today, it paid.

Johnson lagged behind during the whole event.  He was counting on someone-anyone-going with him to the front.  One car cannot go it alone, but two or three can.  Two cars are faster than one.  With five laps to go, Johnson was 28th or so.  Then, the second ‘big one’ of the event took place.  By the time the race restarted, Johnson was up in the top ten-a place he would not have been had that wreck not happened.  He was mired way back.  With three to go, when the event resumed, he was up to sixth.  Then, another wreck happened and the race ended under caution.  Johnson finished the event in sixth place.  A position that he did not earn.  That said, Johnson ran a smart race.  This event has not been kind to him in the past.  A sixth place finish is akin to a win for him.  And, don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge him of it. I simply contend he did not earn it.  He did not race for the spot.  He lucked into it.  And, for me, that is the problem with many of the races I’ve watched this year.

And it isn’t just Johnson.  Mark Martin is another one who has raced enough to stay in his position.  Oh, early in the season, he did some fantastic racing.  He had to. He had a rough start and barely made it into the top 12.  However, since the chase started, he’s raced just enough to not lose too many points to Johnson.  And, now, we have two more years of him racing just enough.

Talladega.  The place should be bulldozed and rebuilt.  Rebuilt in a different configuration and smaller, too.  It is too big. It takes too long to run.  Restrictor plates make races here very boring.  Racing is, after all, about speed and skill.  Neither of which are much of a factor here now.  And why is it in the chase at all?  Replace it with a road course or a short track or something that is more thrilling to watch than paint drying.

Perhaps I am being too  harsh.  I don’t think so.  Jimmie Johnson is an awesome driver.  The man is full of talent.  He’s the three time champ.  He CAN race.  I really wish he’d do so all year long.

I finally upgraded the last of the machines in my house-that I am going to upgrade-to Windows 7.  It is my wife’s computer and is an eMachines T5082.  The machine originally came with 512mb of RAM, 160gb HDD, on board x200 ATI graphics and Windows Home Basic.  Not a screamer of a machine, but it was adequate for what my wife wanted to do:  internet, some word processing stuff and email.  It ran great until SP1 for Vista was released and it was all downhill after that. I found that I had to upgrade the RAM to 1.5 GB of RAM so that Vista could run acceptably.  Since I had already added a video card-an ATI Radeon x1650, adding the RAM didn’t do as much as I had hoped.  Still, my wife said it was fine and didn’t want to do anything else with the machine.

Fast forward a bit and the machine got slower.  After having the great upgrade success with the three machines I had upgraded, and knowing we still had one upgrade license, she suggested that we upgrade her computer with more memory and Windows 7.  I did a bit of research, bought what I thought was a decent RAM stick (from Corsair) and then ran the upgrade advisor on her machine.  All looked pretty good. There were a few craplets that I had to uninstall as well as the ATI Catalyst software. 

I proceeded to install the RAM and restart the computer.  BLUE SCREEN on boot.  Several times.  I swap the RAM sticks around and, still, no go.  So, I go back to the 1.5 GB that was there.  Turns out, the two 1gb sticks are of differing speed: 533mhz and 667mhz.  The eMachine couldn’t handle the mix.

I began the upgrade process and wanted to do an in place upgrade so I could preserve everything.  It worked well on the two laptops, so I had hoped it would work here.  Of course, it did not.

Two aborted upgrades later (each blue screened during the ‘expanding Windows files’ period,) I was left with an un-bootable machine.  I figured out that there was a device driver that was causing the problem, but it was too late.  Setup told me that it was rolling back to the previous version of Windows, but it did not work.  The really weird thing is that it never actually installed Windows 7.

The third time I tried, I booted the computer with the upgrade DVD.  It got all the way through to the ‘completing installation’ and first reboot before it blue screened.  Undeterred, I scratched my head and went into the bios setup screen.  I disabled the ‘hyperthreading’ feature and rebooted.

I began the upgrade once more.  It went all the way through to the SAME spot as before:  ‘Completing Installation’, reboot and DIE.  Only, this time, the blue screen rebooted the computer and presented me with the option of starting in SAFE MODE, which I did.  Now, this is where it gets really odd.  It started the ‘setting up Windows for the first time’ and then complained about being in safe mode.  I allowed it to restart and, voila! it completed the upgrade.

I remembered that the Linksys wireless adaptor was not supported (it is a USB device called ‘Speedbooster’) I swapped it for a newer Linksys USB device ‘WUSB113’, I think, that I knew worked with 7 since I used it on my old HP laptop with RC1 of 7.  Getting the eMachine on line was simple and the rest of the setup proceeded without incident.

By the way, I have to say that the support for Windows 7 from Linksys and Netgear appears to be spotty or poor.  I really don’t get it, it is not like they didn’t know.  eMachines isn’t much better.  I suppose, if you have a newer eMachines computer, you might be in good shape. However, this machine is about two years old and is no longer getting updates.  Fortunately, it uses fairly common components and 7 was able to install updated drivers for everything except for that first USB wireless adaptor. 

ATI was also a bit of a let down as the x1650 card has been moved to ‘legacy’, which means it will not get a 7 specific driver.  Again, however, the Vista driver works fine and 7 was able to install a driver for it as well.  The machine has native Aero support and is working just fine.

I installed Microsoft Security Essentials instead of AVG.  I’m now running Security Essentials on two machines and, so far, it has been fine.  No noticeable slowdowns, no infections, etc.  The price was right.

Performance of the T5082 is noticeably better than under Vista Home Basic.  The 1.5gb of RAM does not seem to be a hindrance and applications seem to be very responsive and ‘snappy’.  Not quite as much as my 8gb machine, but better than it was.  Internet Explorer starts darn near instantly and renders her home page in just a few seconds, compare to the nearly minute long process as before.  Whatever Microsoft did to enhance performance is clearly working.  Even Office apps start up just fine.  Heck, OneNote was up before I even released the mouse button.

While the outcome here was positive, it was only that way because I stuck with it and have some technical background.  I’m not afraid to click the OK button.  However, this is a total failure for eMachines.  I’m not going to blame any of it on the operating system.  This machine should support 7 with no problems since it came with Vista pre-installed.  Here’s the thing, though: it JUST BARELY supported Vista.  Maybe some of the blame is ours because we bought the machine mainly because of the price and because it DID come with Vista.  I didn’t do any homework before we bought it.  I suspect it was an XP machine and eMachines rushed it out with Vista Home Basic-which was as close to XP as Vista could get. It ran, but not all that well-compared to XP.  So, if I were a ‘normal’ person, I would have stopped with the first failure or, maybe, the second.  I would not have gone further. I would have gotten all ticked off, called Microsoft – who would have been unhelpful and passed the buck to eMachines, who would also be unhelpful and blame Microsoft.  As Joe User, I would get ticked at them both and probably buy a Mac.  OK, may be not buy a Mac, but I certainly would not get another eMachine.

One interesting thing I have noticed is that every time 7 restarted, instead of seeing the Windows 7 boot screen, I still see the Vista ‘cylon’ eye.  The nifty swirling Windows 7 logo is never seen and, instead, the old Vista ‘now loading’ screen is shown.  Not once during any of the upgrades did the 7 boot screen display.  It still does not.  Makes me a bit nervous.

Upgrades of any kind, be it an operating system, memory or hard drive, are nothing trivial.  For techie types, they may be second nature, but for most people, they are a daunting task.  Companies like Microsoft and even Apple should document the process better as well as making the upgrade installer bullet proof.  In may case, what was supposed to be a helpful feature resulted in my original Vista install being rendered useless.   It should not be that way.