What was that all about?
Windows Vista has had the weirdest response of any other OS Microsoft has ever released. Over six years in development, it hardly comes with the radical improvements its predecessors were. The OS looks more like a revamp of XP with a few extra fancy features. It was plagued by its fair share of bugs, nothing exceptional to what any of the previous fresh Windows releases had really. However, complaints came in by the millions regarding application compatibility, hardware requirements, and an overall lack of interest in adoption. One could say Microsoft did something wrong by actually doing something right for a change – creating a stable, secure OS that is Windows XP, with which everyone was happy. People around the world saw no reason to upgrade to Vista. What’s more they began praising the old and familiar, 7-year old OS, defending it fiercely against the lag monster that is Vista. So began a freakshow that would last an year. But deep inside everyone knew it: Vista is the future, and sooner or later everybody will upgrade to it. The question on everyone’s lips was “when?”. And the world had its eyes on Service Pack 1, the update which promissed to address Vista’s bugs, improve compatibility, and support older hardware — Vista’s saviour. That time is now.

The SP1 “prophecy”

Microsoft has yet to speak about what Service Pack 1 means to their hopes on Vista’s future, but I think they’re waiting for the adoption as much as anyone else. Vista’s sales have been horrendous, and many have publically stated that they refuse to give Vista a try until SP1 is out. The service pack, according to Microsoft, will be released Monday on February 4th in two waves. The first wave will have SP1 in 2 waves:

-wave 0(Feb 4): to include only English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages

-wave 1(between Feb 11 and 18): to include all other languages

While security has not been an issue with Vista systems, Microsoft still mentioned that SP1 will be adding improvements inthat area, along with performance, stability, and support improvements. All in all SP1 is to include:
-All Windows Updates released since RTM
-Performance and stability improvements in scenarios such as file copy, network browsing, and improved response time when resuming from sleep.
-Support for new types of hardware, and several upcoming standards.
-Administration improvements

Among these improvements are also a reduced frequency of UAC prompts. Don’t expect anything spectacular, they’ll still be the nag they are when installing software, copying to certain locations, or configuring system options. Unless UAC is revamped or are using 3rd party software I suggest you don’t bother keeping it on. BitLocker encryption will also support multiple drives.

If you’re testing a build of Vista SP1 you will need to uninstall that prior to installing the final version. Additionally, Microsoft says to allow a one-hour running period between SP1 installs and uninstalls, and prior to installing any other updates, as Windows continues to update files after the install has completed, to insure there are no install problems. “Wait one hour”…well that’s a new one.

Pirates rejoice and beware

Vista SP1 is also to remove the reduced functionality mode in Vista to simply taking off the wallpaper every hour and displaying nag popups. But if this comes to any relief for non-legit Vista users, Vista is also disabling the timestop and OEM BIOS crack methods for Vista. It is however, not much of a hassle to the community, who have been trying out the SP1 beta builds and finding ways to crack them.

Your own little server

The kernel of Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 are basically one and the same. Many core files found on Vista SP1 will be identical to those in WS2008. Yes people, you will be using a home OS with server-like stability. Vista has been rock-solid even back in the beta days. I’ve only ever had two crashes – they were two BSODs, one when using the beta, and another when I had force-installed an incompatible driver. Another praise-worthy feature of Vista SP1 is hotpatching — the ability to update core files of Windows on the spot, without need for restart. This will maximize uptime and surely please many users.

The old and dead shall not rise from the grave

If you’ve been waiting to see compatibility with older DOS apps, it won’t happen. The command prompt has given up on supporting any type of legacy DOS graphical modes. Also many a program which were not updated by the developer will continue not to work on Vista. They are gone, forever. However, if you’ve just bought a computer and are planning on using Windows Vista for the first time, Service Pack 1 will be an overall pleasant experience. Anyone starting out with Vista these days will notice that almost every hardware and software being sold are Vista-compatible, and the OS itself will behave.

Yes, it’s safe to come out now

Vista is through with its hardships. It is becoming a trustworthy OS which has gotten over much of its infamy. If you’re a customer buying a Vista PC these days you won’t be taking much of a risk at all. But wait, what about Windows XP? Service Pack 3 is just around the corner, right? And performance-wise it’s shown better results in benchmarks than Vista’s SP1. Well, it’s true. A previous Windows OS will always run faster than a newer one on the same hardware. Just install Windows 98(if supported) on your machine now and be amazed… seriously, this is an irrelevant issue. And Vista is fine just the way it is. I feel however, that SP3 will still have a role to play in Windows Vista’s history. However, many are beginning to open up to Vista and seeing what it has to offer — just another Windows OS, with fancier interface, a few new features, and support for better in-game graphics. What’s so bad about that? Vista has reached both its maturity and its time. And if this is true, Windows Vista will see a greater adoption rate than it has on its first year. Just another oddity in the freakshow that was Vista’s adoption history…

PS: There’s quite a few alleged “SP1 RTM” torrents out there. At least today, don’t bother with any of them. They’re all just SP1 RC1. Not even RC2…

Until the last few months, buying a PC that was running Linux was a bit hard. Today, Linux is a wealthy and powerful alternative to pre-installed Microsoft’s operating systems. However, one cannot restrain from wondering what’s behind this growing interest towards open source, and I have no valid answer for you yet.

Drawing a line, last year, only 39% of new computers went on sale with Windows Vista pre-installed, compared to 67% for Windows XP in 2002 (a first year of full availability).

It’s not just consumers that are seeking alternatives to Windows. Last week, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency advised schools in the United Kingdom not to upgrade their PCs to Vista, suggesting they instead eye lower-cost Linux systems the next time they need new computers.

With a host of new Linux PCs hitting the market this year, U.K. schools — and other buyers seeking computing alternatives — will have more options than ever should they decide to steer away from Microsoft.

Since this system has been setup, Microsoft has had many complaints from their customers that their genuine operating systems have been limited due to this system being put in place.

WGA has been used in Windows since Service Pack 2 was released August 6, 2004 where they made you activate your copy of Windows with Microsoft. This could either be done online or over the phone. Microsoft has no plans of removing this feature, but in the latest build of their service pack (Windows Vista Service Pack 1) they are going to remove the system that limits users without a valid copy of the OS. This could either be a good thing for Windows hackers or it could mean that they are going to replace this with an even tighter system.

Whatever happens to the WGA system, this will all be revealed early next year when the service pack is released via Windows Update.

Top row: Steve Wood, Bob Wallace, Jim Lane.
Middle row: Bob O’Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin.
Bottom row: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen.

Yes, that little kid in the bottom left corner is actually Bill Gates. He was just a teenager then, but he grew and had an important contribution to what Microsoft is today. Who would have thought back then that those geekish people would propel Microsoft into the large corporation it stands as today?

Easy to see they were all ‘hippies’ back then (or were people dressing like that 30 years ago?) There were some at Apple Corporation as well, so maybe we could say that hippies created the personal computer industry. For those interested, the history of the personal computer is (at least partially) interwoven with the 60’s counterculture. An excellent book on this topic is John Markoff’s “What The Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer”.

Either way, “Would you have invested back then?”

The second picture presents Microsoft’s senior leadership roles.
From left to right:
Bill Gates, Craig Mundie (Chief Research and Strategy Officer), Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect), Steve Ballmer (CEO).
They were at a news conference announcing plans for Ozzie and Mundie to assume increased roles in the company. The picture was taken about a year ago.

Notice the difference.

Just I was talking about Google’s initiative to increase storage space for a small fee, Hotmail took measures of its own. Now Hotmail offers 5GB of storage space. It’s quite a big jump from the 2GB it previously offered, but this is surely not the only new improvement.

“We’ve spent more time in this release identifying what parts of the product are slowest and fixing those. We hope that you notice an improvement when this update is released to your account, and we’ll continue our work on performance in future releases.”

So from now on you can expect your Hotmail pages to load faster and make you save time. Besides that, other improvements were made to the contact list, now you can keep track of a person that uses multiple login names within one contact entry. Not only that but there is even a wizard to help you make the change.

Also safety features were added, such as blocking images and links in emails that come from unknown users. This should prevent phishing fraud and other malware related actions.

For now Yahoo! seems to lead the free email market with its ads supported, unlimited storage space webmail, and now comes Hotmail with it’s 5GB, so it’s Gmail’s time to show that it’s the best.

I know it sounds weird, but feel free to try it out. Click here if you are using IE6 and if you’re willing to experience a full browser crash.

This is the piece of code embedded in that page:

< style >*{position:relative}< /style >< table >< input >< /table >

The weird thing is that the code renders correctly in Firefox, Opera, Safari and even IE7, but when accessed with IE6, it pops in a fatal error mshtml.dll. Special thanks to Hamachiya2 (a Japanese blogger) who actually discovered this.

Bill Gates declared for the New York Times that he doesn’t believe Google can really challenge Microsoft’s share of the market, referring to mobile phone software. They say Microsoft now has ten percent of the market so it really is going to be hard for Google to match, much less overtake such a strong showing.

“How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many of them are profit-making products? They’ve introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So you’re now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they’re going to have the world’s best phone and it’s going to be free?”

All that might as well be true, but the way I see it Microsoft should not boast about profit from entertainment. Just take a look at how well Xbox sales are going. Nevertheless Google has some hard work to do if it wants to be a top dog in this market.

After Sony’s price cut on the PS3 it seems logical that now it would be Xbox’s turn to get cheaper. It would be a somewhat predictable step on Microsoft’s part, but for now it’s all rumors.

The news are based on two ads, one seen at Wal-mart and the other at Toys R Us. The guys at Cheap Ass Gamers noticed them, and this is how it all started. But even if it would be so I’m not sure that a $50 will mean too much. But of course that’s for the buyers to decide. So it could be a hoax, but I seriously doubt it. Anyway we’ll wait and see.

Throughout the last year, Federated Media had been serving and selling ads for digg.com. Yesterday, that partnership ended and Kevin Rose signed a deal with Microsoft.

I wanted to give you a heads-up before the official announcement is made later today. We’ve signed on Microsoft as our new partner to sell and serve the ads on Digg. It’s a deal similar to the one Facebook signed with Microsoft last year.

This move gives us an advertising partner with a larger organization and a more scalable technology platform to keep pace with Digg’s growth. Best of all, it lets the Digg team completely focus on new feature development. Federated Media, which has been an awesome partner for the last year and a half, will continue working with Digg focusing on integrated sponsorships and custom programs like the Arc project in labs.

It’s important to say that we’re as focused as ever on a great user experience. So, no dancing monkey ads, and the design will remain uncluttered.

New (big) features coming soon…

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It’s been a while since people started complaining about Xbox gaming consoles that were scratching their DVDs. But it was only recently that the first legal issues started for Microsoft on this matter.

The lawsuits was initiated in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and it concerns disks that were damaged by Xbox consoles that were handled in “reasonable, foreseeable, normal and intended use”. To be clear about this, this was the first lawsuit regarding the DVD-scratching batch of consoles, if we consider the big picture there are numerous legal quarrels related to the Xbox, but this is the first of them concerning the fact that some Xboxes really damage DVD’s.

The accusers claim $5 million and brings in front once more the Dutch video (shown here) that shows users with broken DVDs due to the Xbox. I bet Microsoft isn’t that happy anymore for extending the warranty on its consoles, but in the same time I’m sure they’ll manage to get out of this without much hassle.