Vista

Archive for the 'Vista' Category

Microsoft Vista Service Pack 2?

Published

on 7/6/2007

. 153 Comments

Microsoft’s Windows Vista is a buggy product. Heck, even I found an unreported bug in it after playing with it for less than ten minutes!

I was talking to Microsoft folk in Madrid last week and I said to them that I couldn’t wait for Service Pack 2 for Vista to be released. Their response was - “You mean Service Pack 1?”

Nope, I meant Service Pack 2. Vista is so buggy that I don’t think Microsoft will address all the problems in their first Service Pack release. Like Windows XP, Vista will not be reliable until SP2.

The Microsoft guys weren’t impressed with my opinions of Vista!

It looks like SP1 is getting closer though. According to istartedsomething.com the Microsoft Downloads site had links to documentation for SP1 for OEMs - as of this writing the docs are still available.

Cool, now has anyone seen any sign of Vista Service Pack 2?

My move from OS X to Vista - Day 6

Published

Tom Raftery

on 20/4/2007

in Microsoft, Vista, Windows, os x to vista and video

. 2 Comments

Good news for a change!

I received an email from Miel Van Opstal alerting me to the fact that NVIDIA has updated its video driver for the Vaio (Miel is the guy in charge of the Vaio Influencer program in Microsoft).

Previously SecondLife refused to run on the Vaio because of video driver issues. Steve Clayton had kindly offered to help out at MIX07 but that won’t be necessary now because the new driver which Miel emailed me about, fixed the problem (after I uninstalled and reinstalled SecondLife and restarted the Vaio!).

I have already wasted the morning grappling with Windows Live OneCare, I might as well blow the rest of the day now trying out SecondLife on Vista!

Thanks Miel.

Windows Live OneCare is a POS

Published

Tom Raftery

on 20/4/2007

in Mac, Microsoft, Vista, Windows and os x to vista

. 37 Comments

Windows Live OneCare is a fantastic idea. Write buggy insecure software and then charge the people who buy your software extra if they want to buy OneCare, which is supposed to protect them from the errors you created in the first place.

Anyone else see a conflict of interest here? Why fix the software, when fixing it, only gives people a reason not to buy OneCare!

Anyway, a trial version of OneCare came on the Vista laptop that Microsoft sent me. This morning I was sent an Activation key to upgrade from the trial version to a full version. Excellent, that will get rid of the nagware screens Microsoft have in the trial version and allow me to update the virus definitions.

Ah, the naivete, if only life (with Vista) were that simple.

Three hours and countless restarts later I was still battling unsuccessfully to Activate OneCare.

First off, if you want to go from the trial version to a full version you have to uninstall the trial version (requires a restart) and download and install the full version (requires a restart). Why? Why can’t you simply add an activation code to the trial version and it change automatically to the full version?

Anyway, after going through this process I was faced with the following unhelpful error message:

When you click the Get Help button, you are brought to a screen which asks you what the error is! I dunno. You tell me. You are the one with the bloody problem.

“OneCare has encountered a problem” doesn’t elicit any helpful responses unsurprisingly!

I decided to make sure I had done a full uninstall. So I uninstalled OneCare (and restarted) and then I ran the OneCareCleanup tool (has to be run as Administrator and requires a restart).

I then reinstalled OneCare and sure enough an Activation screen appeared - wohoo, I thought, success at last. Silly me.

I clicked on the Activate button, the screen closed and nothing happened after that. I decided to try a restart as almost everything else in this process had required a restart! Still no joy.

I tried going further in the Windows Live OneCare Support pages. Could I contact someone to help out? Of course not. Why? Because Windows Live OneCare determined that I was still in the Free Trial Period so I was only entitled to email support (24 hour turnaround).

AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I give up.

My move from OS X to Vista - Day 5

Published

Tom Raftery

on 10/4/2007

in Mac, Vista and os x to vista

. 10 Comments

I love having lots of screen space. My MacBook Pro has a maximum screen resolution of 1440×900, which, while not great, is better than the 1280×800 maximum on the Vaio which Microsoft sent me.

To get the most out of these screen resolutions on the Mac, I position the Dock on the right hand side and turn Hiding on. I put the Dock on the right (as opposed to the default option of the bottom) because the laptop display is widescreen. As a result, I have more horizontal than vertical space on the screen and most websites require more vertical than horizontal scrolling!

It is possible to mirror this on Vista by sending the Taskbar to the right and turning on hiding, however when you do that, you immediately miss the clock! I don’t wear a watch and therefore always check the time on whatever computer I am on (and I make sure my computer synchs with a timeserver so the time is accurate!).

In fact, in OS X I have the current time and lots of other information in the menubar at the top of the screen (see image below):

I miss not having all that information available at a glance, at all times, in Vista.

My move from OS X to Vista - Day 4

Published

Tom Raftery

on 29/3/2007

in Vista, Windows and os x to vista

. 9 Comments

I know, I know, I didn’t post anything yesterday so this should be Day 5 but I wasn’t using the Vista machine yesterday, I was using the Mac for a Keynote presentation I was giving. Powerpoint has nothing on Keynote.

Today I wanted to run Second Life on the Vista machine but ran into the following error:

I’m fairly certain that this is a machine specific error and not a general Second Life not running on Vista error however, as I can’t access the Vaio Update page because of the following error:

I can’t update the drivers.

Vista sales numbers don’t add up (to much!)

Published

Tom Raftery

on 27/3/2007

in Vista

. 0 Comments

Microsoft are boasting that Vista is selling twice as fast as XP did when it shipped originally.

From the Microsoft release:

Initial sales figures from Microsoft show its new operating system Windows Vista made a splash in its debut. In the first month of Windows Vistaâ€™s general availability, sales exceeded 20 million licenses, more than doubling the initial pace of sales for its predecessor, Windows XP. These initial figures reflect the broad interest in the security and usability enhancements in Windows Vista…. Windows Vista license sales after one month of availability have already exceeded the total of Windows XP license sales in the earlier productâ€™s first two months of availability. In January 2002, the company announced sales of Windows XP licenses had exceeded 17 million after two months on the market.

The more than 20 million copies shipped represent Windows Vista licenses sold to PC manufacturers, copies of upgrades and the full packaged product sold to retailers and upgrades ordered through the Windows Vista Express Upgrade program from January 30 to February 28.

It all sounds very impressive until you analyse the numbers as Paul Kedrosky has done - from Paul’s more realistic take on it:

Back in 2002 PCs were shipping at the rate of 10.8m a month into a worldwide installed base of 680m. Today, in early 2007, Vista is shipping into a market where PCs are selling at 21.4m a month, and into a worldwide installed base of more than 1-billion PCs. (All figures from IDC.)

So with more than twice as many PCs selling worldwide now, the Vista sales numbers are struggling to be on a par with XP, as opposed to being twice as good. I’d love to see numbers for how many of these 20m Vista sales were to people who went into stores saying “Can I have a copy of Vista, please?” as opposed to the number who got it because it was the default option on the new Dell they bought online!