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

Microsoft Wishes We hated Everything Not Microsoft!

In a bizarre turn MSNBC has a published a list entitled "Gadgets That Make You Look Like A Jerk". The Black Berry, Sony TiVo, Apple MacBook Air, iPod and Linux all come in for a bashing. Even the band Mars Volta were trashed for some unknown reason?

When talking about Linux they claim it's "a pain to use". What's so hard about booting from a CD clicking one little icon to run the installer, filling in your details and letting Linux do it's thing? Gnome might be a little different from Aero but it's not that hard to use.

I mean when you see a menu at the top of the screen with the title "Applications". What do you think you'll find in that menu? Can it be any easier than that?

This is obviously a very desperate move by Microsoft to try and discreadit some of the competition. Some how I don't think Black Berry users are about to jump ship just yet.

Microsoft Fudge

It's been a while since I've posted anything. So what's changed? Well Windows 7 is practically completed. Something some might pat Microsoft on the back for. After all it's like at least a year ahead of schedule? Well not me.

A quick brows through the various blogs around the net covering Microsofts' latest and greatest OS make one thing undeniably clear. Windows 7 is nothing more than a re-branding of Windows Vista. Something Microsoft beta tested with it Mojave project. Well it seems the beta testing is well and truly over.

The question now is is it fair to be so harsh on Microsoft? After all a new version of Ubuntu is released every six months and the development ethos is to do less but do it better. The answer is a simple yes. Here's why.

Microsoft as a commercial computer operating system developer has a near monopoly in the desktop operating system market. This ensures Microsofts' income will always be in the "billions" so long as it holds on to it's market share. So Microsoft aren't hurting for resources to throw into product development. They can afford to pay beta testers and programmers to do the grunt work of ironing out the bugs and smoothing everything over to guarantee a flawless user experience on supported hardware. But the reality is anything but smooth and flawless.

Microsoft with their near monopoly on the market can coral and influence other companies. Basically Windows should be guaranteed hardware support. But it's not. All the messing around with Vista held things up which meant not everything was ready on Vistas release. Even though Microsoft has seemingly changed very little to the underpinnings of Windows 7 some incompatibilities in software have crept in. Hardware interfaces with the OS via software drivers. If there are broken applications already showing up, what else is broken?

Windows isn't free. While apparently very little changes from one version of Ubuntu to the next, the distributors can get away with this for two primary reasons. It's free and users know what to expect. Considering the differences between Windows Vista and Windows 7 are set to be minimal, one has to wonder how much Microsoft are going to charge for Windows 7? A copy of Windows Vista Ultimate still costs well over £200 from Microsofts own on-line store. We also have to ask what exactly is changing in Windows 7? What are we paying for with this latest upgrade? If the Touch UI from Windows Surface that Microsoft have grafted onto Vista is the big feature then we're basically getting nothing.

How many folks currently have a touch-enabled PC display? Yet again Microsoft have failed to realise that OS upgrades shouldn't mean hardware upgrades. My current display, a Dell Ultrasharp 27", cost me around £900 as new. So if Windows 7s' pricing policy follows that of Windows Vista I'll have to fork out well over £1000 for the privilege of reaping the benefits of Windows 7 and I won't even have bought a new PC.

My prediction is Windows 7 will be another own goal for Microsoft. Like it's predecessor, Windows Vista, Windows 7 will be popular on new PCs only. But not because people actually want it. Because they simply won't have a choice.

Fusion power seeks super steels

I noticed this article on the BBC news page. You can bet it'll raise the question from all the conspiracy theorists. Why don't more skyscrapers collapse during fires then?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7607473.stm

Microsoft: Windows 7 for servers to be minor release

"Microsoft said on Monday that the server version of Windows 7 will not be a major release and will bear the name Windows Server 2008 R2."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39463010,00.htm

Well that's a shocker! Over on Dells' IdeaStorm forum I've been warning people for months Windows 7 has become nothing more than a re-branding of Vista. This would seem to be the first concrete evidence of that prediction. But then again Microsoft has already said Windows 7 will now be using the Vista kernel and the Vista driver model. Re-branding exercise? You bet it is!

Disney World: The Land of Waiting In Line!

Okay I just spent a whole week in Disney World. It was awesome! But only because my girlfriend was there to. The Disney part wasn't as good as it should have been. It could just be that Disney are victims of their own success. But it seems like most of what we did for the week was wait in line and avoid the shops selling tacky souvenirs.

At least two thirds of the buildings in Disney World are shops selling Disney merchandise. Disney World isn't a theme park. It's an expansive open air shopping mall that sells nothing but Disney merchandise.

If it hadn't been for the fast pass system we'd have spent even more time waiting in line. If that wasn't bad enough the rides are all too short. You wait for well over an hour in some cases for a ride that's over in seconds. Literally 2 seconds. Summit Plummet at Blizzard Beach is one such example. Great ride. Long cue. Over far too quickly.

basically more rides are needed. Yes that will draw in more punters. But they'll be more widely dispersed around the parks. And the bus transportation system? Needs huge improvements. More buses would be a good start.

On a brighter note, the Magical Express was excellent. Disney World actually laid on a Magical Express coach just to take my girlfriend and I back to the airport in the wee early hours of the morning. Just for the two of us. That i can't fault. Neither can I fault the friendliness of all of the Disney staff. They were all top notch. From cleaners to dancers and actors.

Dell Studio Hybrid!

I like the styling of the Hybrid. It's almost like my stackable multimedia rack idea over on IdeaStorm. Okay I might be stretching that a bit. But it's almost like it.

I like the interchangeable sleeves. The fashion conscious will love that feature. The slot loading DVD drive is another nice touch. In fact there are quite a few storage options packed into the hybrid. Including USB ports for flash drives and an SD card reader.

The inclusion of a HDMI port is also a nice touch. It will allow consumers to integrate the Hybrid seamlessly right into the home entertainment experience. I didn't notice it on the UK page, but apparently there's a TV decoder option as well. So people can use one machine for watching TV, listening to music, surfing the web, dealing with e-mail, recording/pausing live TV, playing DVDs (don't know about Blue-ray) and playing casual games. Tetris, Solitaire that sort of thing.

The Studio Hybrid only gets Intel X3100 graphics and a 5400RPM hard drive. The Intel graphics rule out high caliber resource hungry PC games. The slow hard drive might impact on recording Live TV. I guess it'll depend on what sort of quality you're willing to accept. But if you're plugging your Hybrid into a large LCD I'd say forget recording from the TV.



Overall I think Dell have made a good attempt here. It's a better option than previous attempts to build a desktop from laptop components. The XPS One and the XPS M2010 are more capable in the graphics department. But they're also tethered to their displays making them less adaptable and less able to integrate into the home environment. They were essentially still desktop PCs.

The hybrid is a device. A set-top box almost.

The final drawback is Windows Vista. Dell insists on selling the Hybrid with Vista because as we all know Dell "Recommends Vista". Which is of course nothing to do with how good Windows Vista is.

Well selling it with Vista means you need to take the most powerful configuration you can afford to get the best performance out of it. If it were being sold with Ubuntu we could get away with maybe 1GB of RAM instead of a minimum of 2GB. For Vista I'd recommend taking the full 4GB which of course will only give you 3.5GB because the "Wintel" feature that's meant to get you the rest doesn't work. But in fairness Dell do point out only 3.5GB will be available.

All things considered the Dell Studio Hybrid is a capable machine that will more than meet the needs of it's target audience at a reasonable price point. It's just a shame about the graphics and hard drive.

Teaching my nephew about Linux

My nephew has been hanging around me all night. He's been pestering me for a game of the penguine racing game. He'll play it for a while then get bored. What he really wants to do is play with the Fire and Rain effects in Compiz-Fusion. They keep him amused for hours. He loves drawing with Fire.

Of course he can't understand why his grandpa's Windows XP PC can't do those things. He's only 4!

Dell: Microsofts Poodle?

Using the new "Top Ideas" feature on Dell IdeaStorm I tracked all the top rated ideas from the highest voted to 0 points. From page 1 to page 400. On every single page there were a healthy number of ideas relating to Linux, Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and free open source software in general.

The highest voted Linux/FOSS idea had 151870 points and the lowest had 9 points. I'm sure there are other with negative votes in the remaining 79 pages. But most of those ideas were about Microsoft products. Windows XP, Vista, Microsoft Works and Office. The remainder were hardware related, things Dell just can't do or non-idea threads.

Surely this must tell Dell something about the demand for free open source software on Dell PCs? The highest voted idea of all time here on IdeaStorm is Pre-Installed Linux | Ubuntu | Fedora | OpenSUSE | Multi-Boot with 151870 points. In fact the entire first page is all about Linux, FOSS and no trial ware. That theme continues all the way through IdeaStorm to page 400.

So why then is it that Dell still insists there isn't enough consumer demand to warrant treating Ubuntu as an equal to Microsoft Windows? Remember Dell told it's consumers "if they voted for it on IdeaStorm, they would get it". Why are Dell taking so long?

Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org are all free open source applications. Firefox 3 even supports branding! Dell doesn't need permission to distribute these applications. It simply chooses not to. Even though we voted for them.

I'm OLD!!!

I turned 30 today. So now I'm old. Officially old. But being old is good. I got a digital camera and an SD card to go with it!

Dell Points The Finger

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/07/18/32-pages-of-paper-in-17-boxes.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

The above link contains a post from Direct2Dell. Dells main blogging site. Dell would like to point the finger at HP for shipping 32 pages of A4 paper in 17 boxes. Well no wonder they continued to sell the defective W2600 and W3000 LCD TVs for so long. No wonder it's taking an age to get a product recall put into force.

Dell clearly has other priorities other than providing proper customer service. "We can all learn a lot by listening to customers and uncovering ways we can improve ...". Before we inprove the planet, could just try and get customer service right?

Ubuntu Tip

http://www.ubuntutips.net/

Looks like a half decent site. It's still in "beta" but there's a lot of good stuff there to help the beginner.

Of course my real tip here for Ubuntu users or indeed any PC user is to use the web to it's maximum potential. There's so much "free" information out there. There's really no excuse save being dead for not knowing how to do things for yourself.

Here's another great page. http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/

Select Systems Now Available with Ubuntu 8.04

Select Systems Now Available with Ubuntu 8.04

About time too. We're really not that far away from Intrepid Ibex assuming it arrives on time. And why wouldn't it?

I am impressed with the inclusion of something from Dells new Studio line. Perhaps Dell are starting to take consumer Linux more seriously. The XPS M1530 is also a welcome addition. I just wish Dell would make Ubuntu available from the OS options list when building a "normal" PC. It would be much better than doing shady back ally deals out of sight of Microsoft.