Rants Tagged with “Windows”
<< < 1 2 3 4 > >> (Total Pages: 4/Total Results: 31)
I really like the realtime (or near real-time) preview of the windows on the Taskbar in Vista. Check it out:
Here is an interesting article on how Aero works over Remote Desktop even if the remote machine can't run Aero. Everything is rendered on the client...interesting:
I spent the weekend downloading and upgrading my main XP box with this pre-RC1 test build. Yes, I said upgrading XP! The good news is that is build is very very good. Not perfect, but very good! I am able to use it as my main box.
I have tested VS.NET 2005, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, MS Office 2003, and even games (ok I am addicted to WoW). All of these programs worked. The only problem I had was that I wasn't granted access to my old Documents folder, but I would guess that has more to do with the fact that I changed the location of the folder with TweakXP.
When the RC comes out, I think it will be close to ready for prime time. I am psyched.
Back on July 20th, Paul Therrott wrote a long blog entry explaining his experience with WGA (I stopped it from installing so I didn't try to work with it). His big problem was that WGA reported that his version was pirated. I think he (and most of us) assumed that WGA was not working correctly.
Read down to the end of the article. It looks like he got with Microsoft and worked it out...guess what? He has a pirated version of Windows. The online retailer that he purchased it from actually sold him a pirated version. Wow. Funny...sad...still no reason to push WGA down as a "security update".
I know this has been all over the blogosphere by now, but I wanted to make sure people knew about Windows Genuine Advantage being snuck into Windows Update. Here is a ZDNet article that walks through Windows Update to show how deceptive the install is. I am disappointed in Microsoft over installing this tool via Windows Update. While I don't work for Microsoft, I am a fan of what they do in general.
The problem with WGA is that it is an anti-piracy measure, not a security update. The idea is to have users trust Windows Update and turn it on so they can't get hacked, right? By trying to sneak this onto computer systems to see if they are genuine, they are undermining the trust factor for most users. Through the generosity of Microsoft (through their MVP program), I have legal versions of Windows running throughout my network. But I still didn't install WGA. Why? Its the principle.
My less techinically savvy friends are going to see this on a news site or other place and think twice next time there is a Windows Update alert. So they won't install the update and they get comprimised. They they think Windows in an inferior product. Is this going to help Microsoft get more Windows licenses? Nope. They consider an iBook next time.
Microsoft, think this more next time. I am disappointed...
I spent the majority of yesterday moving my primary laptop to Vista. I got a new 100G/7200RPM drive, so I decided to chew up some of the space with a dual boot. I got to late last night (about 6am) when I decided it was a dead proposition and I needed to revert to my XP SP2 desktop. Good news is that a majority of the software I loaded on Vista worked without a hitch. At the end of the day it came to that a few critical pieces of software weren't Vista-ready.
Vista Setup
Getting Vista installed was a snap and with the exception of the touchpad driver, everything worked flawlessly (and after installing the XP touchpad driver I was good to go).
Productivity Software
I installed Office XP to have Word and PowerPoint to do some work where Office 2007 might cause some compatibility issues. I then installed Office 2007 over it and it worked well side-by-side. I've been told that Outlook 2007 and Outlook XP won't work side-by-side so I didn't even try.
Outlook 2007 was a big problem. While it worked as advertised (and my SpamBayes Add-in worked well), I couldn't search at all my messages. Outlook 2007 seemed to want to use the Vista built-in search which wasn't working with Outlook, and brute force searching was simply broken. The rest of Office 2007 seemed to work fine though I live in Outlook.
I tried installing Small Business Accounting and it depended on .NET Framework 1.1 which wasn't installed curiously. I installed the .NET Framework 1.1 with SP1, but Vista complained the whole way and in the end it still didn't work.
Development Software
I got Visual Studio 2005 installed without a hitch. I did have to install IIS (as its not installed by default) before installing 2005, but it worked well.
I installed SQL 2000 and SQL 2005, having to tell Vista to install it even though it told me it didn't work right on Vista. I had to be sure. After installation, SQL 2000 worked fine. SQL 2005 on the other hand is completely broken under Vista. The server works, but none of the tools work at all.
Conclusion
I had decided to live with most of the problems of Vista but the SQL 2005 tools not working became the death-knell of my ability to go Vista now. Beta 2 is looking very good, its just not quite ready yet. Too bad, I was really hoping to go that direction.
On a side note, the user protection stuff that was constantly asking permission to do simple things (e.g. deleting a file from the desktop) was frustrating and I ended up turning it off and being a bad boy and running as full-admin all the time.
My only other comment on Vista was that explorer.exe was constantly crashing and losing my optical drives. It came up fast, but was part of my frustration.
In this news.com article, they explore a problem I wondered about when I first saw Avalon two years ago. I am hoping that MS will make this better during optimization. I had heard that the Avalon team was hoping that battery life and mobile GPU's wouild be better when Avalon shipped. Not surprisingly, the battery life of laptops is essentially the same as it was two years ago (IMHO), though Mobile GPU's may be better.
What do you think?
After fighting everyone else to download the Beta 2, I got Vista Beta 2 installed on my tablet pc last night. My impressions so far:
- Installation was as easy as XP, and possibly faster.
- Most of my devices were detected and drivers installed by default (unlike the MSNBC writer's bad experience with this). Of note, my audio driver, tablet screen (e.g. Pen) and modem drivers didn't install. But the audio and modem drivers installed soon after the system contacted Windows Update. Gateway doesn't yet have a certified digitizer driver so its not Vista fault in my opinion.
- It seems at least as fast as XP, though I have it on an underpowered video card, so I don't have aero glass working.
On the whole I am very happy with the experience so far (and will probaby make it my main OS in the coming weeks). In addition I have some cheers and jeers so far:
Cheers
- The sidebar is definitely faster than in previous versions. I turned it off, but I like it nonetheless.
- The lack of flyout menus on the start-bar is great. I love the new menu.
Jeers
- Changing the size/location of desktop icons isn't working like i'd like it to.
- The new IE7 Save dialog is confusing on how to make some folder the default.
I will give a more in-depth review after I have used it for a week or so (I have a WinFX article coming up so I'll have to use it as my main machine for a few days).
Not really, but this is my favorite from the list:
"Vista Boot Straight Into World of Warcraft and Never Be Seen Again Edition"
As some of you know I lost the screen on my main laptop (HP ZD8000, a lovely machine at 13 lbs) so I sent it into support where they are going to fix it but take 2 weeks to do it. I took over my old laptop from my dear Tricia to try and make it work for a while.
To simplify her world, the laptop only had XP Home on it. After getting the 3,000 things installed I needed to in order to work on my current project I am going to have to upgrade it to Professional. The problem? ASP.NET 2.0.
I am working on a project using the VS web server (not IIS would would have been an obvious Professional requirement). But I started to get the dreaded "Unable to attach. Binding Invalid Handle" error when trying to debug. Digging deeper it seems that it needs the VS Remote Debugger to work to debug in the VS Web Server (don't ask me why...it *just* does).
Remote Debugger was running, so what was wrong I wondered? I couldn't even attach to other processes with a similarly cryptic error:
"Unable to connect to the Microsoft Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor name 'XXXX'. The binding handle is invalid."
So I dug in the debugger (Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\ide\Remote Debugger\x86\msvsmon.exe) and ran it manually (after stopping the service). It complained:
"Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor will not be able to debug applicaitons because the 'Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts' local security option is set to 'Guest only - local users authenticate as Guest'. This can be configured with the 'Local Security Settings' administration tool."
Great error message...a solution right? Well, um...nope. Local Security Settings is a tool that only works with XP Professional. So I give up. I am going to do the upgrade to professional and hope I don't hose the machine and have to start all over.
Wish me luck...
