What's In A Name

How did Microsoft come up with the name "Windows 7" for Windows 7?

Microsoft I think claimed that's what it is. The 7th version of Windows. But I'm finding that a bit hard to believe. It's not a 7th generation product unless it is of course nothing more than a re-branding of Windows Vista as I have said all along.

Apart from the look and feel of Windows 7 and the behaviour of the UAC crap. There is some good evidence that Windows 7 is just a re-branding exercise. Which if true means Microsoft and it's partners shipped an "alpha" level product and charged full price for it. The evidence is all in the name and the existence of the Mojave "punking" experiment conducted by Microsoft.

So what was Mojave? Well basically it was Windows Vista with UAC turned down or off running on a PC specially configured to be Windows Vista friendly. Microsoft invited "random" members of the public to try it out to see what they thought telling them it was the next generation Windows product. After which Microsoft interrogated it's lab rats until they ponied up the Vista marketing slogan "WoW".

So how do we get to Windows 7 and how does Mojave point to Microsoft and it's partners being lying thieving scumbags? Well all we need to do is examine the Windows family tree from Windows NT4.x on wards since this is the granddaddy of all modern desktop and server Windows operating systems.

So the order goes:

• Windows NT4.x (Windows 4),
• Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Windows 5),
• Windows Server 2003 (Windows 6),
• Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (Windows 7?),
• Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Windows ... err ... 7?).

Either somebody over at Redmond can't count or Microsoft are coning the public. Remember the "Mojave" experiment?

IF Windows 7 really is Windows 7, Microsoft have some explaining to do. Especially since they've released "Windows 7 Beta 1". The implication being Windows Vista wasn't even "beta" software. It was still in "alpha"!

Which in turn means we still haven't seen a release candidate for "Windows Vista ... err ... Windows 7" and Dell along with all of the other Windows PC builders have some refunds to pony up since they shipped a product that was clearly not ready for market and resulted in at least a large and vocal minority being forced to endure all manner of issues.

Windows Vista 7 really could be a time bomb waiting to explode in the face of the Microsoft kickback crowed. Especially since Microsoft will of course be expecting us all to pay full price for Windows Vista 7.

Windows 7 is just the same smoke and mirrors game as Windows Mojave. Personally I think all Windows users should teach Microsoft a really hard hitting lesson. Send the message ripping off your user base, your customers is totally out of order. Boycott Windows 7. Hit Microsoft where it hurts.

NOTE: I have left out Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition along with their various incarnations like OSR2 because they were supposedly a parallel code path to NT4.x that basically ended when Windows 2000 and Windows XP were developed from NT4.x.

Quick edit: Just found this link when submitting to Digg.

The Joy Of Old Friends Getting In Touch

Recently an old friend of mine got in touch. I think it's amazing how such a thing can totally lighten the mood and turn a bad week into a good week. So if there's someone you haven't spoken to in a while. Give them a call or drop a line. It's so awesome!

Thanks Mel. You is awesome!

Apple Now Rule The World

Apple either now rule the world or they have killed multi-touch enabled devices manufactured by anyone except Apple. The patent granted recently to Apple is exactly why I hate patents in general and especially software patents. They don't protect IP. Apple didn't invent touch and it didn't invent multi-touch. It didn't even invent gestures (I hate gestures too btw). The really sad news is Apple has already shown signs that it is becoming a patent troll.

What software patents do is allow companies to take other peoples IP that was invented aeons ago and levy a tax on it. DailyTech has more details.

Why I don't blog very often.

When I started this blog I was going to gather up all sorts of of awesome Ubuntu tips and tricks and stuff. But the fact of the matter is blogging on a regular basis requires that you actually have something to say. Which for what I was going to do means research. That equates to work. Which I don't feel like doing right now.

But here's an example of blogging on the cheap. Talk some shit about one OS kicking the other to the curb. I mean really worth while journalism there from Robin Harris of ZDnet. I'm so glad he made that contribution to the billions of worthless web pages out there. I guess it gives me an excuse to add some more crap to the pile.

Someone please tell this idot Windows 7 is only out in beta at the moment. Linux isn't suddenly going away because Microsoft supposedly have 80% of the netbook market. Which I doubt. GNU/Linux was born into a world of Microsoft domination. That is its' natural habitat.

Windows on the other hand traditionally has a tough time competing with it's self. Especially when there's little to no obvious gain in an upgrade. Which is a problem for Windows 7. It might be leaner than Vista but it looks pretty similar on top. To use the touch screen tech, you need to fork out for a new display and I doubt anybody is going to buy a new OS or a new PC just to get a new taskbar.

I mean WOW! Microsoft stole the Linux taskbar and now Linux is dead!!! OMFG!!! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!! .... Okay I'm done taking the piss.

Windows 32-bit Installed!

Well I got 32-bit Windows 7 installed. Not the 64 bit I wanted but Windows is Windows. And that's really my impression. Windows 7 with a library of third party software is just a barren OS. Sure you get Windows Media Center Player whatever. You get Paint. Wordpad. A few games and some essential utilities.

Basically there is nothing here to tempt me away from Ubuntu. Which has a whole library of quality software available to it from the Applications > Add/Remove menu option. The only thing resembling a free programming language was the power shell. Which doesn't really qualify as a development environment. It's a good step to at least include a programming language. Remember Steve Ballmers "... developers, developers, deveoplers ..."?

Basically there really isn't much to look at. Which is sometimes good. Everybody hates pre-installed trial ware. But trial ware isn't what I'm looking for. I'm not even looking for pre-installed software. I'm looking for a Linux style repository of usful stuff. Something to get me started and up and running. And there's really nothing but Paint and Wordpad. Is this the WOW factor? WOW there's nothing here!?! Maybe I've been using Ubuntu too long and I'm being unfair?

I said I'd be looking closely at the taskbar. I did. It didn't do anything special except tell me to find anti-virus software on-line. After it told me it couldn't find a network connection. For some reason it kept wanting to configure a wireless connection. It also had no driver for the VirtualBox OSE virtual network adapter. So no internet. Which I actually didn't mind when I saw the state of the IE8 interface. Even though there wasn't much to it, it still managed to look cluttered.

The installation process it's self felt like it took forever. But I think it was actually about half an hour. There were about two or three reboots. Don't know why Windows still needs to reboot during installation. But it does.

Note to Microsoft: Sort your damned OS installation routine!!!

After each reboot there was an annoying blank screen which will have any non-technical user bricking it and thinking somethings wrong. The reality is nothing is wrong. Windows 7 just arrogantly refuses to tell you what it's doing. Not a good sign me thinks.

After the installation is all completed you finally get to the desktop after some more labourious desktop configuration. Why doesn't it do that at install time? Anyway in my VM Windows defaulted to 800x600. But this was easily switched to 1024x768. I could have gone higher but decided that was enough for testing. Interestingly at one point Windows told me I had less than 64MB of video memory. But when reconfiguring my desktop it told me I had 128MB of video memory. Clearly a bug to be fixed. But I have no internet in Windows. How do I report it? DOH!

Screen shots will be posted shortly.

For the record. I still don't understand why the 32-bit version works and the 64-bit version doesn't. And the basic Vista theme sucks.

Back to the Future with 32-bit Windows

Some people have suggest over on Dell Forums that 64-bit Windows 7 might be having trouble installing on a 64-bit virtual machine because the host OS, Ubuntu, isn't a Microsoft OS. Hmm ... could be the reason. So I'm now downloading the 32-bit version.

Since it's a virtual machine, performance isn't really something I'll be looking at. Although I will be watching the boot time. A fresh installation of Windows XP boots in a decent-ish amount of time. A couple of minutes. Ubuntu boots in less than 30 seconds.

What I'll be most interested in is seeing things for my self that many people have said are carbon copies of features from other OSs. So I'll be looking very closely at the taskbar. I don't have a touch screen so touch isn't even a consideration.

As you might expect I don't have much in the way of Windows software laying around. I've been a full time Ubuntu user for a while now. I'm sure I'll find something though.

Windows Vista 7 Beta: Face Plants Instantly!

I tried Windows 7 Beta for the first time today. I set up a VirtualBox OSE virtual machine with a 20GB hard disc, 3GB of RAM and 128MB of video memory. My host system is a Dell 720 with an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz CPU, 8GB of RAM, 2xNVIDIA 7900 graphics cards in SLI and 1.5TB of hard drive space running Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit version.
I doubt I should be having problems installing this Windows 7 in a virtual machine. But I do. It face plants instantly. The installer iso loads and then tells me to insert the installation disc. Clearly I'm missing something here. Here's a screenshot.

Then of course there's the whole download process. Why was all the registering necessary? It's an open beta supposedly free for anybody to test until the 1st of August 2009.

It probably goes without saying I'm not impressed. Ubuntu 64-bit runs fine in a virtual machine. I don't see why Windows shouldn't. Clearly I need to go back and look at the instructions again. But this is poor form from Microsoft. The stupid thing won't even install. Is this really beta software?

Getting Serious About Blogging ... NOT!

2009 was going to be the year where I got really serious about blogging. Until I decided to share the LOL Cats RSS feed with anybody with nothing better to do. Besides, there's far too much fun to be had to sit around wasting time writing about it all!

http://feedproxy.google.com/ICanHasCheezburger?format=xml