Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

I'm sure that some of you must have picked up on the news that 2008 is the year that Mr. Microsoft himself - Bill Gates - will leave the company. In July this year he will be leaving day-to-day operations management at the company he founded, to devote himself to a full-time career in philanthropy, whilst remaining as a chairman. As a founder of Microsoft that company was basically the only one he ever worked at in his entire life. Off course this leaves people speculating on what might become of him once he steps down from his full time position at Microsoft.
Well, at this years Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Gates revealed a video as part of his keynote speech, that showed him attempting to be a star in rock, rap, movies and politics and features numerous Hollywood stars, as well as past and present US presidential candidates.

One thing is sure: Gates will never become an accomplished actor, but I smile at this geek among nerds. You can say or think what you want about the man, but his geek factor is way higher than Apple's CEO Steve Jobs. Not to mention Gates gave away over $29 billion to charities since 2000. That is more money than Jobs will ever make in his life.

Anyway: this whole story is just to provide myself with an alibi to show you Gates' video. So here it is :-)

Bill Gates’ swansong speech at CES 2008

Just could not resist posting these two YouTube movies. It's always great to take cheap shots at Bill Gates :-)

Gates VS Jobs


David Letterman's Tribute to Bill Gates

As of today you can go to the store and buy Windows Vista. But the big question is: should you buy it? Is it really better? Off course Vista was already released to manufacturing on 8 November 2006 and it was officially launched to businesses on 30 November. But as readers of my blog know, I had a very rocky road testing Vista, and even today I am still not convinced it is ready. And I am not the only one. Research company Gartner (not just your average Joe Schmoo), also thinks that Vista is lacking especially in the driver department. If you are a long-time Windows user (or, as Mac users might joke: "a Windows sufferer") you might shrug your shoulders and say "what else is new?". Six years ago (Oct. 2001) when XP was launched, there was exactly the same problem: there were hardly any XP drivers for your hardware. But a big difference with Vista is, that back then you could - as a general measure - just use Windows 2000 or even Windows ME drivers. Sometimes it was enough to just change a line of text in the driver ".inf" file and it would work. With Vista you might be able to use a XP driver, but it will most probably fail.

I have experienced at first hand that something simple as a Webcam (Phillips PCV 630) that didn't need drivers in XP (native protocol) didn't work in Vista. Neither did my HP Scanjet 3300C (which is just simply a TWAIN compatible device). Neither does my TV/Video card work (in fact it screwed up many installations of the Vista Beta) nor was my onboard audio recognized. I had none of those problems back in 2001 when I got my hands on XP: everything worked as expected.

So is Vista done? Well, as Michael Silver, Research VP at Gartner put it in his blog of Jan. 4th:

Well, in a word, no. In past postings, we talked about the importance of Microsoft Update (MU) to Vista’s launch. The reality is that Microsoft could not have shipped Vista in November if real people were going to be using it en masse for real things right away. With consumers not getting Windows Vista until 30 January 2007, and most businesses just "kicking its tires' (if that) over the holidays, Microsoft and the Windows ecosystem have an 11-week extension between RTM and actual use. That Microsoft and the ecosystem are ready for the 30 January consumer availability is much more important than that they made their 2006 RTM goal.

And, as Silver wrote yesterday:

The bottom line is that, with Vista, as with any new platform, early buyers of new Vista machines should expect that there will be a few rough spots to be worked through during the next few weeks, and they will need to stay connected to both Microsoft and their PC maker.

So will I make the switch yet? No, not for a while: I have the full version already but I feel no need to install it. Maybe when I get a new PC. But for now XP is just fine for me. As it will be for millions of people. Funny thing is: when I got my first Mac with the first version of OSX in 2002, I had no problems whatsoever. In fact: I have never had those problem with my Mac.. Period...

This I had to throw in just for kicks: my friend Vincent mailed me this videoclip from CNN with New York Times Andrew Ross Sorkin's 'Minding Your Business.' It's about the new Microsoft Zune player that offcially launched today. They discuss if the Zune will become the iPod killer or not. Don't expect big revelations or something, but what is hilarious is how in the end of the segment they compare the Zune to the new iPod shuffle. One of the hosts shows off her new iPod Shuffle and immediatly all three start to drool over the iPod: "Now that's the thing that's a lot sexier than this, right?". But the best part comes right after that when the other host ends the segment by saying: "Why don't they (Microsoft) get some decent design people to make things look better? It's... It's clunky!" and Sorkin just sighs at the thought. Now that is what I call funny!

Ok, folks, as I reported this saturday, Vista RC 2 build 5744 is out. I was obviously one of the few to obtain it in time, because this Monday, only two days after making the Release Candidate 2 (RC2) version of Windows Vista available to the public via the Customer Preview Program (CPP), Microsoft pulled the download already. Anyway, according to sources Microsoft only plans about two more interim releases before it goes final. So one would expect that this version is damn close to the final product - although the official amount of bugs that still need to be fixed is 1400 (and counting). Well, I can report first hand that it still is anything but close to the final product.

In fact: today I installed it (dual-boot) on a spanking new HP Compaq DX2200 Pentium 4 2.8ghz HT testcomputer at my work and Vista was completely dead within the hour. It would not even safe-boot or anything. And the only thing we did was change from DHCP to a fixed IP... And what's worse: I can reproduce the problem any time I want. I just do a clean install, boot into Vista, do an update and then change from DHCP to fixed IP. After a while I get all kinds of errors, then Explorer hangs and it's all over.

And I'm talking about a brand new machine here: no old wacky hardware. It is just incredible.. And to make things weirder: at home I have RC2 running on a similar machine (also 2.8ghz HT) and I haven't had any problems there yet!

With less than 4 months for the anticipated release I can state that I never had such mixed results with a release candidate for any OS. Microsoft really needs to pull their act together.

Update: C|Net has found Vista RC 2 also not ready to ship.
See also: Microsoft Pulls Vista RC2 Public Download

Just a quick note to all of you out there that Windows Vista RC2 (Release Candidate 2) build 5744, is out and will be released soon via the Customer Preview Program, which means that literally anyone can download it to give it a testdrive. It is the last public build before this next-generation operating system is released to manufacturing.

You can download it here: Windows Vista RC2. Both 32bit and 64bit versions are available.

As a note: you will need a valid serial to install and activate, but if you had a serial from a previous testversion it will work on this one as well. You can still register for the RC1 program here, it will give you al valid key but you have to register before November 30

Yesterday I downloaded and installed the latest version of Windows Vista, Build 5536. This is the Pre-RC1 build, so after this we should see what probably is the closest build to the final release next year. My conclusion so far: Vista is shaping up to what Microsoft wants it to be. Some improvements are small and hardly noticeable, but others are definitely visible - or should I say: noticeable. Performance has gone up on my PC. Vista feels more responsive and quicker on it's feet. Yes, this release is miles away from the crappy beta2 community release (the one that probably did more harm than good to Microsoft's PR). So let's have a look at some of the the good, bad and ugly.
Continue reading "Shaping up: Vista part 5" »