Windows Vista: Problems and Advice for Microsoft
I've been sitting on this post idea for a while, since about the beginning of last month, if not a few days before that. In that time I've tried to come up with some good answers to the question Chris Pirillo posed at the end of his "Windows Vista's Rants" video (it starts around 16:30 into the clip). Here are my thoughts on Vista (rather than that video) and, if I'm lucky, a few good ideas that Microsoft would do well to take to heart.
The Complaints
Don't take this post the wrong way; I haven't forgiven Vista in the least for any of its annoyances. I still think the UI design is atrocious hideous (changed on 05/13; more accurately describes my reaction); I still dislike the idea of the UAC dialogs; I still wonder why Microsoft builds everything but the kitchen sink into the operating system. (I can't actually fault them for that; Firefox includes a kitchen sink. 
There is no reason for me, personally, to upgrade my existing operating system. I'm comfortable with the way it works, I know what problems can arise, and all the hardware I've ever seen works perfectly in XP. What's more, some of the programs I use don't work under Vista, which means hunting down replacements.
Aside from software issues, Vista's interface is just plain ugly. Nobody I've talked to about the system, from friends to robotics club members to even my dad (my mom couldn't care less about computers, unfortunately, and my grandmother uses OS X now) has anything good to say about it. All the time Microsoft spent designing the glitzy (and ugly, again) Aero interface could have been spent working on other things like WinFS that were dropped so the new OS could be shipped less than three years late. I prefer the XP look to anything else I've seen (the Mac design could work, if the buttons were moved to the right). There's no option to go back to it in Vista that I know of.
Note that I haven't even mentioned the countless hardware compatibility issues.
But as Chris Pirillo said, we know it sucks. There's no need for any more bashing. I officially declare this post's bash section finished. From here, it's suggestions and thoughts on how to improve the situation.
The Ideas
So what can Microsoft (or OEMs, or both) do to help consumers through Vista until Windows 7 (hopefully much-improved over the current new version!) is released? The options are quite likely endless, and I only came up with a few; but that's the power of the crowd. The more people who answer this question, the better.
Option one is to simply keep selling Windows XP until a decent replacement is available. Microsoft obviously doesn't want to do that because of the hassle of maintaining two mountains of code. People have already adopted Vista in some measure, so yanking it wouldn't free Microsoft from having to provide updates.
Option two is to offer the option, as part of a Vista installation, to downgrade the system for free. Again this would mean maintaining XP alongside Vista, but if Microsoft wants to keep its customers happy, they have to adhere to the age-old business doctrine: "The customer is always right."
Option three involves updating Vista as much as possible, improving compatibility with old software and adding options to make the interface more like XP. I have at least some confidence that the hardware issues will gradually fade away as time goes on, since peripheral device developers are continuing to upgrade their drivers.
Conclusion
These are just a few ideas, brainstormed in the space of a couple dozen minutes while I was pondering what to write this morning. I have by no means come up with everything possible, or even anything useful (that's the risk you run by reading a personal blog . My ideas are based upon my specific feelings regarding Vista, and might not satisfy anyone else. Obviously I hope that Microsoft will read them and use them, but I have doubts about that happening. Microsoft's response to feedback lately has been less than passionate.
I think there is hope for Vista yet, if Microsoft makes the right choices. Sitting back and letting the new operating system take hold in the marketplace by itself obviously isn't converting very many people. By pro-actively responding to user complaints and implementing fixes for common hardware and software issues, Microsoft could convince people to move to the new version of Windows.
This is my last year at my current school, and I will be needing to send back my laptop after graduation in June. I'm considering purchasing a laptop of my own, one that doesn't have any restrictions as to what I can do with it, for use over the next few years, but I refuse to buy anything pre-loaded with that Vista crapware (pardon my French). It's either XP or Linux with Wine and/or mono to run my Windows programs. That is, unless Microsoft makes some serious improvements to Windows Vista very, very soon.
So do you have any ideas that I didn't come up with? (Improvements to mine are welcome, too. 
Share your feelings in the comments; I always love to hear my readers' reactions!
GIMP Script to Make SW Robotics Thumbs
After making a whole bunch of thumbnail images for the member and mentor profiles on the Southwest Robotics site this past season, I finally decided last night to automate the process with a GIMP script, in preparation for next year's new people.
So, what does it do? It takes the image it is run on, scales it (gimp-image-scale) to 120px x 90px, and utilizes script-fu-drop-shadow to add a correctly-positioned drop-shadow. (Correctly is, in this case, the same as all the other images I did manually.)
It's a rather simple script; here's the code:
; Script-Fu script to automatically; resize and drop-shadow files for; SWR profile shots; IMPORTANT!; Image must be EXACTLY 4:3 aspect; ratio or it will be distorted.; This script does not measure the; image or do any cropping; it is; up to you to crop the image properly. (define (swr-make-profile-thumb img drawable)(gimp-image-scale img 120 90)(script-fu-drop-shadow img drawable 4 4 8 '(0 0 0) 80 TRUE)) (script-fu-register "swr-make-profile-thumb""Make SWR Profile Thumb""Scales the image to 120x90 and adds an appropriate drop-shadow""Voyagerfan5761""Voyagerfan5761""March 17, 2008""RGB*, GRAY*"SF-IMAGE "Image" 0SF-DRAWABLE "Layer" 0)(script-fu-menu-register "swr-make-profile-thumb""<Image>/Script-Fu/SWR")
Note: The original has my real name and an email address, but I have stripped them out for purposes of posting this in view of Web crawlers.
Input images must be in 4:3 aspect ratio to avoid distortion. I currently have no validation for aspect ratio, nor am I certain that it's even possible to check such things, but if it is I will add it at some point. As can be seen from two of my updates last night on Twitter, I only just learned Script-Fu Scheme less than 10 hours ago.
The only real problem I had was developing the script-fu-drop-shadow line, which kept choking when I tried to set an interactivity mode. I eventually figured out that that parameter wasn't required in 2.4 (or some other weird problem; I'm still not sure).
It's obviously not much, just a few basic lines of the stripped-down Scheme that GIMP uses. Nevertheless, if you use my script as a base for a released script of your own, I would appreciate an acknowledgment. A link back here along the lines of, "Based on a short script by Voyagerfan5761" would be sufficient (note the link on "Voyagerfan5761").
And of course, I'd appreciate any and all comments on this script, be they pointing out a better way to do things, something I missed, a suggestion for validating the aspect ratio (hey, it never hurts to ask). Or even a note that you based a script of your own off of mine. That's highly unlikely, considering I didn't even copy any code examples for this one. (OK, I lifted and modified the registration function from a GIMP tutorial page at GIMP's website, but that's all.)
Q4 2007 Site Stats Review
As promised back in October, I'm reviewing the browser and operating system statistics for this site again. All data is from the period 2007-10-04/2007-12-31.
So, on to business. First up is the overall browser chart. Firefox leads with 57%, followed by Internet Explorer at 29% and Safari at 10%. I also got some negligible visits (less than 2%) from Mozilla, Opera, Camino, Netscape, and Konqueror, plus a very few hits from what appear to have been mobile browsers, such as HTC_TyTN_II Mozilla and Palm680.
Drilling into per-browser version information, Firefox had a pretty good spread of versions, even getting about 80 hits from Firefox 3.0, though 2.0.0.11 (the latest update to the 2.x series) was on top with 40% of Firefox visits. Some people were still using FF1.5 or even version 1.0 -- to you Luddites, I say, "Upgrade already!" You know who you are.
Internet Explorer 7 led the IE sector, with 58.34% to IE6's 41.54%. Those numbers don't add up to 100% for a reason: I had one Internet Explorer 4.01 visitor. Whoever you are, my note to the Firefox 1.0 and 1.5 Luddites above goes for you, too.
Safari's version spread is pretty much indecipherable to me, because the version numbers appear to actually be build numbers. All I can say is that 43% of Safari visits were using version 523.10, with 20% using v419.3 and 11% using v523.12. I have no idea what the corresponding version numbers are; sorry!
For Opera and Mozilla, the most popular versions were 9 and 1.9, respectively (Opera only had the one version, plus a few "not set" values). I won't get into detail about browsers under 1%.
Onward to operating systems, then. Windows was 73% of visits, followed by Macintosh at 20% and Linux at 5.5%. Windows Vista again bit the dust in the Windows version spread, trailing behind XP at 14.7%, while Windows XP had a whopping 81% of the chart. Versions below Vista all held less than 3% each, led by Windows 2000 at 2.7%.
Macintosh only reported the chipset (Intel or PPC), so I can't do a version comparison there. That is a little annoying; I've been getting so many visits to Leopard-related posts, I was kind of wondering how many of those were actual Leopard users. Intel had 75% and PPC 25%, with a trace 68K visit (0.17%). That's all I can say.
There were no Linux version values set, so that's unfortunately going to remain a mystery to everyone.
So the answers to the questions I posed in October are:
Will Vista catch up to and/or surpass XP?
- Nope, not even close.
Will IE take over Firefox?
- Nuh-uh. Thank goodness it didn't!
It's interesting that the statistics' indications mirror my feelings so closely. I'm actually starting to like IE7 better than IE6, at least from a coding perspective; but I don't know anyone -- including myself -- who likes Windows Vista. Perhaps I'm attracting a like-minded readership, or perhaps my statistics are indicative of a real Vista-hating trend in the world. Who knows? Can that judgment really be made with a 3,000-visit sample?
In closing, I'd just like to say that I'm really happy about these statistics. If other sites are showing similar stats (at least about Vista vs. XP), that makes me even happier. May Vista die a painful death, and may Internet Explorer 8 improve even more on version 7's CSS enhancements. (It's already passed the Acid2 test from the Web Standards Project, which is very cool. Not even Firefox 2 passes it, though I haven't tested Firefox 3 yet.)
Silverlight vs. Flash Battle to Heat Up Next Year
It's been a while since I last blogged about Silverlight, Microsoft's newest (?) "me, too" application. So long, I had to search for the post in my blog dashboard (it's no longer on the first page of results for the tag "Microsoft"). But the news media is covering it again, this time as part of New Year's stuff (predictions for 2008, duh).
PC World's article from a couple hours ago suggests, using mostly quotes and its tagline, that the battle between Adobe and Microsoft will get hotter next year, as Silverlight battles Flash, Flex, and AIR for supremacy in the rich Internet application (RIA) arena.
Microsoft's biggest challenge so far has been to just get people to download the plugin. As the article's author, Chris Kanaracus, wrote, "Every good general knows that even the biggest army is useless if you can't get it on the battlefield." Silverlight won't do Microsoft any good if it stays on the download servers and doesn't get installed on client PCs.
My take is, I really don't want Microsoft to succeed. Adding another application to the mix just means we consumers have to install yet another program to be able to use the Web without any missing content. Needing Flash, QuickTime, Java, and Shockwave is bad enough; add AIR, Flex, and Silverlight, and we'll start to spend all of our time on the Internet installing plugins. Even just one is pushing it, in my opinion.
The best way to go, I think, would be to simply expand existing offerings, perhaps adding one more plugin to do offline (read: out-of-browser) stuff. Silverlight isn't that one plugin; it still focuses on Web- and browser-based content. AIR is OK; I'll probably end up getting it eventually as more application developers start to use it. (So far, all I've seen using AIR is a Twitter client, which I don't need thanks to IM and Firefox integrations.)
Actually, we already have out-of-browser applications, based on Java. We don't need AIR, even. Why can't we just build on existing frameworks, instead of introducing additional platforms? Sometimes, I think the software world has gone mad... I guess I should just be thankful that Silverlight is available for Internet Explorer (Windows), Firefox (Windows/Macintosh), and Safari (Mac). But what about Linux? Honestly, nobody seems to care about releasing plugins for browsers on the operating system that basically runs the Internet (a majority of servers run some variety of Linux). Harrumph. And I want to switch at some point, too.
Update (12/31): Given i80and's comment below, I should clarify something. I say that nobody really supports Linux because the existing solutions either are horrible and pathetic (Linux Flash) or rely on external libraries/applications (Mono, WINE, etc.). It's not that things aren't available for Linux; it's just that there's very little native support, that I can see.
XKCD Roundup: My Favorite XKCD Comics
I've selected a few exceptionally good xkcd comic strips and embedded them here. I find them all particularly amusing, over and above the normal strips. The tooltips have been preserved as well. I advise you to read them; the comics sometimes don't make sense without.
If the pics are too small for you, just click them (Ctrl+click or Shift+click would be better, actually; new tab, new window) to get the full-size version. And you can fix the annoying title truncation in Firefox using this nice extension.
Centrifugal Force
This is one of those things that just hits my funny bone but I don't know why. Perhaps it's the Bond reference. Or maybe it's the fact that I just read about centripetal force in my physics class.
Network
A network of Windows PCs that are randomly infected with viruses. O-kay...
Fight
Never, ever, get a tech-savvy person mad at you.
Ballmer Peak
Now I know why Windows ME was so bad...
Exploits of a Mom
This has to be my favorite of these five. I'm so involved with Web development that I just can't help but be tickled by the idea of a n00bish developer forgetting to sanitize inputs for a database-driven front-end. The fact that it was a school's record system is even funnier.
[Images licensed under CC-BY-2.5, xkcd.com]
From the Linux Idea Bin: i80and’s mod-boot
You may recall me quoting my friend i80and recently in my post about the new features in Gmail Chat. Well, he just posted a new entry to his blog last night, and the idea looks quite interesting.
Basically, what he wants to do is speed up boot times on FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software, like Linux) systems. So his idea was to have init (the default boot script) call a C program of his own writing that would basically optimize the boot process and help bring the system up faster. He explains it better than I can, so I'll just point you to the mod-boot post from last night and let you read the details there.
I will say one thing, though. If my friend's work goes into the Linux core, I just might have to switch to Linux. It already sounds appealing, to not have to deal with Windows...
PS: Congratulations to i80and for being this blog's post #300!
Google Infringing on Sun Patents with Android’s Dalvik?
OK, so Google doesn't call it a Java VM; to them, it's "Dalvik", not Java. It does accept Java bytecode, though, and turns it into Dalvik bytecode. Sun hasn't filed any lawsuits yet, and as far as I know doesn't consider Google's custom virtual machine to be a problem or infringement on their intellectual property. But the developer community and Sun are going over the nonstandard VM that Google made.
When Android came out, I was determined to ignore it, as mobile phone technology doesn't really affect me these days (not until I actually get a cell phone). Since then, Google's announced a full SDK, $10 million developer competition, and shown prototypes that look pretty promising, actually. OK, so all I saw of the prototypes was a few pictures on another blog, but it looked cool. And I can't ignore the Linux part. Not anymore, at least.
Anyway, some people call Google's move "clever", among other things, mostly positive from what I've read. That word above is the opinion of Stefano Mazzocchi, a developer and board member at Apache Labs. Others, such as Hari Gottipatti (a mobile developer), say Google converts the bytecodes so it can say Dalvik is not a Java virtual machine. The general consensus, at least according to my take on the article I read, seems to be that Google is somehow avoiding Sun licensing fees, though (says Gottipatti) Sun might have just waived the licensing if Google had simply approached them and asked.
Me, I'm not too terribly interested in the whole Android thing, but this particular part of it, the maybe-Java-maybe-not part, seems to be worth following. Next thing is to find out whether or not Sun will pursue legal action against Google for what sounds like, on the surface, copying Java Micro Edition. Such a lawsuit probably wouldn't be a good vibe for a company so active in the open source movement, but you never know. I'll definitely keep an eye out for further developments on this one; it's piqued my interest.
PS: To anyone who's ever used the phrase "peaked my interest" or "peeked my interest" (ouch!), please go to your blog control panel right now and fix it. Now! Reading those two words in place of the real one hurts my brain; they give a different (and often nonsensical) meaning to the sentence. How do you peek an interest? I didn't think so...
Incompatibilities Still Affecting Windows Vista
Windows Vista was released nine months ago (at the end of the month), but is still plagued by incompatibilities in both hardware and software. Printers, bookkeeping programs, photo editors... You name the category, there's at least one product that claims to support Vista but doesn't. And that doesn't include the devices and programs that don't support Vista at all.
Part of the problem is companies' reluctance to support a product for a nanosecond longer than they have to. Another piece involves the decreasing time-to-live of the average product revision, or model. New models and upgraded versions of existing products are coming out with increasing frequency, and manufacturers end up having to write new code for more products, which, if they don't want to bother, will leave you in the lurch in the case of an upgrade.
Of course, the worst thing is when products advertised to be compatible aren't. Products like the Brother MFC-5860CN multifunction printer and Corel's Ulead VideoStudio 10 software, both listed as "Certified for Vista" by Microsoft, have certain features missing. Brother's printer can't fax from the desktop (XP-only feature) and the included OCR software is incompatible. VideoStudio contains advanced features only available under XP. The "Certified for Vista" program is supposed to certify software and hardware that are fully compatible, with no missing features or functions. VideoStudio is listed on Corel's site as meeting the requirements for the "Works with Windows Vista" program, which means some features are missing, but the software may still do what you need.
This business of compatibility is a real pain, but on the plus side it's causing resistance to upgrades in the consumer market. Maybe Microsoft's certification bungles will help Linux take over...
Firefox 3 Visual Refresh
Apparently the Mozilla developers working on the next major Firefox release, version 3, are planning big integration changes. Operating system-wise, that is. Firefox will have Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X themes, each carefully matched to the existing native applications and interface style. Alex Faaborg, part of Mozilla's user experience design team, has more details on his blog.
I won't get into too many details. However, I do hope the new 'Fox will support switching between OS themes if the user wants. I might like to try out a Mac or Linux theme on my XP computer.
Microsoft Claims Its Intellectual Property is Used In Linux
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says users of Red Hat Linux should pay Microsoft for patented intellectual property supposedly contained in the open-source OS. The company has made no specific claims as to what portions of the Linux distro violate what patents. I feel the same way as Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation: Microsoft will only create more ill will in the Linux community, and in their own users', until they specifically state what patents are being infringed, and provide proof. The fact that Ballmer simply says Microsoft patents are infringed will likely only further irritate customers who feel that the software giant's patent controls are already too stringent. It also makes for a kind of greedy-sounding statement.
Social Me
Badges
Subscription Options
Latest Comments
- Voyagerfan5761 on “No Evil”: My NET10 Wireless Experiences
- dogbonz on “No Evil”: My NET10 Wireless Experiences
- Voyagerfan5761 on “No Evil”: My NET10 Wireless Experiences
Latest Posts
Archives
Categories
Creations
Southwest High Robotics Team My first non-personal design work
Promotions, Causes, Etc.
- Yes, it's a shameless plug for money. A strange thing coming from me, but it supports one of the Web's greatest sites.
- I'm sure you saw this one coming. You know what I want.
- Set yourself up with OpenDNS, the fastest DNS service around! You can also set up shortcuts for frequently visited sites and filter content.
- Download the best multi-protocol IM client I've ever seen! So it crashes once in a while, but it's in active development, so they're definitely working on it. (And really, what program doesn't crash once in a while?)
- Don't let Microsoft push through a redundant, broken standard for office files! Chaos and confusion could ensue!
- This is just in case spam-bots visit this site. Click it to find out more (it only does bad things to email harvesters, don't worry).
Blogged.com says I have to leave its badge here to claim ownership of this site. I can't take it off, apparently. Whatever. What would be nice is linking to my own site's page rather than generic "technology news" listings...
blogarama and Blog Flux have similar, but implied, issues. And why does everyone link me to a generic listing page?!