A Thought About Efficient IT Administration
I'm kind of calling out St. Kate's Enterprise Computing Services department in a way, because I want to know why they would schedule a restart-required software deployment an hour before the computer lab is to close.
Can anyone with experience in Information Technology and management of company/school computer networks tell me why the times chosen to deploy new software are chosen? My experience last night of a new software deploy completely disrupting my very limited time on the computer happened at Saint Catherine University, which has a generally great library (unlike Concordia University in Saint Paul, though Concordia used to be greater).
Plenty of people were using the computers, and all got interrupted. Why? Why not schedule the deploy for after-hours and save everyone the hassle? When logging in, the computers at St. Kate's even display a message encouraging users to log off their computers at night so updates and new software can be deployed during off hours. I would define off hours as the times when labs are closed, not an arbitrary time like 21:00 (as was chosen a few days ago for a non-restart-required installation) or 23:00 (as was chosen for last night's disruptive reboot-required deploy).
Maybe the IT staff go home at the usual lab closing time and they don't want to stick around after closing to monitor the deploy. Perhaps they want to have extra time to debug any problems that might crop up before the morning rush. Admittedly, the labs are rather underutilized late at night, but those users there are generally working on something very important that really shouldn't be interrupted. It adds to their stress. Having to wait five minutes for the computer to finish "Applying computer settings..." and "Running startup scripts..." doesn't help frayed nerves.
Having no information on which to base any conclusions, I can only speculate wildly as to why the installation time was chosen. But I know that I was not the only user in that lab that was very frustrated at all the computers being forcibly taken offline for five minutes to install a software package.
I also wonder if it wouldn't be possible to have idle computers install the package immediately, but allow in-use workstations to delay installation and restart until the current user logs off. It seems like that would be much more efficient than having everyone in the room sit and stare at a Windows status dialog for five minutes.
Well, at least St. Kate's and Concordia haven't moved to Windows Vista. 
Augsburg College, when I have occasion to go there, has and their systems are a royal PITA, not to mention slow as molasses ("Designed for Windows XP" — the front of every PC tower at Augsburg).
Oh, and even if you're not in IT, I'd still love to hear your opinion. 
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!
Funny Randomization: Microsoft Downgrades Vista
Found a little site called isyournewbicycle.com, which allows you to plug in any word before the domain (such as I did for this with microsoft.isyournewbicycle.com) and get back a randomized phrase. On the third or fourth try, I got this little gem:
Great fit for the company that made the worst operating system I've ever heard of, eh? Just thought it was funny. Any takers? Beg-to-disagree-ers? Hit the comments; I'm waiting to hear from you!
UK Schools Advised Not to “Upgrade” to Vista, Office 2007
The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) has issued a report advising UK schools not to upgrade to either Windows Vista or Office 2007. Neither new release offers any must-have features over the previous release, and the $350 million deployment cost (only about 30% of that would go to Microsoft) just wouldn't be justified by any significant gains.
We already know that Windows Vista sucks, being the worst operating system to come out of Redmond since Windows ME, but I haven't written much about Office 2007 yet (I plan to rectify that in the next couple days). Needless to say, my opinions of both "upgrades" are equally low.
So, out of £175,000,000, over 60% would go to deployment costs. That includes hardware upgrades, labor for installing the software, and so on. And the upgraded computers wouldn't even necessarily be able to run the much-hyped (ugly, in my opinion) Aero interface. That's a lot of money for not much in the way of actual upgrade value.
I'm happy to hear that the British are being smart and have seen that Vista isn't really an improvement on XP (and that Office 2007 is really no better than 2003). While they don't seem to say it, I can hope that, in the back of their minds, they were thinking, "Man, these new releases are horrid!" At least I can dream about it...
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.)
IE7’s Blocking of prompt()
I haven't experienced the supposed goodness that is IE7 first-hand as of yet, but I have heard plenty about its shortcomings and annoyances. Another I just read about today is the default settings that blocks websites from using the built-in prompt() method in JavaScript.
It wouldn't be super annoying if Microsoft handled user permission intelligently, though. As it is, IE7 displays the by-now familiar Information Bar (introduced in IE6 with Windows XP's Service Pack 2) and the user can allow "scripted windows" on the page. Unfortunately, the scripting engine simply ignores the prompt and moves on through the rest of the script, which does nobody any good. Choosing to allow scripted windows reloads the page, but for some reason still blocks the method. I have seen hundreds of sites use this technique, and I am sure there are hundreds of thousands more.
Microsoft's release notes for IE7 say:
Generic Spoofing Risk Reduction in Internet Explorer 7--The window.prompt script method is blocked and the gold Information bar is displayed by default in Internet Zone for Internet Explorer 7. The helps prevent websites from spoofing things such as the logon screens of other websites. This is a new security enhancement for Internet Explorer 7.
This can obviously be remedied by changing the setting (located in the Advanced Settings tab, of course) or trusting the site ("default Internet Zone" means sites that are not trusted or restricted), but the fact that it requires a conscious effort on the part of the user is ridiculous. Most people using IE don't even know what prompt() is, much less why they should allow it or what it does for them. I think Microsoft should add a change to this in the upcoming Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, disabling the option by default.
I complain mostly because I used to use this function a lot, and I know a lot of sites still do. (I've moved to DHTML-style overlays now.) I really hope Microsoft makes this better, because as it is, the Information Bar isn't going to tell users much about what they're allowing, nor does it actually fix the problem.
Cool Stuff: XsX Alpha-Blended Cursors for Windows XP and Vista
A little idea got to me through Google Reader today. About an hour ago, I installed the XsX alpha-blended cursors on my computer and already I'm loving them. It's neat because almost all the cursors are the same shape, just with different colors. They're bigger than the default Windows set, and they look almost Mac-like, which is generally a plus. I suggest you try them, if you're on a PC. There's an "untested" pre-XP instruction set for those willing to experiment. I highly recommend them.
You can find instructions and the self-extracting download at Tiensivu.com.
XP Faster Than Vista?
Ah, more evidence that Vista's a flop. The same testers that benchmarked Vista SP1 beta performed the same set of tests on XP SP3 beta and came up with some astonishing results.
First, SP3 is about 10% faster than SP2, a nice bonus for a bugfix rollup. But XP SP3 is also about twice as fast as Vista SP1. Twice as fast. Wow! More reason for me to stick with XP, I think. Microsoft's losing their touch.
Microsoft’s Security Focus on Vista May Have Lowered Consumer Adoption
In an article from PC World's Business Center, it is suggested that Microsoft's focus on security for the almost a year old Windows Vista may have undermined consumer opinion. Enterprises and consumers alike should not be expected to purchase an upgrade to a company's product to fix an error on the part of the manufacturer. Microsoft has been promoting the security improvements in Vista from day one, when the OS was unveiled, and that could be a factor in the slow adoption.
In fact, many people who are getting Vista do so because they have no other choice. For the most part, new PCs are sold with Vista, without an option to buy XP. The majority of Microsoft's Vista revenue is coming from the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) segment, not from consumer purchases of upgrades for existing machines.
Another factor, which I believe I have spoken of before, is Vista's high system requirements. A bare minimum of 1,024 MB (1 GB) of RAM for all versions except Home Basic, and recommended memory of 2-4 GB, is a definite turn-off for business clients, who likely don't want to spend the money on upgrading from their current 512 MB setups (the recommended memory for XP) to support Vista. As many companies have on the order of hundreds or thousands of computers, the cost to purchase the extra RAM and the labor to install it alone might be too much, let alone the possibility that the current motherboards in use might not even support more than the current amount of RAM.
I agree that Microsoft's continued harping on security was likely a mistake, and that they should have focused on the other features Vista brings to the table. The UAC dialogs were also a huge problem, one the company is moving to fix in subsequent updates. Personally, unless all the problems and annoyances of Windows Vista go away, I'm holding out for Windows 7. My dad has an XP disc we can install on blank systems (an enterprise license), and I'll use that until Microsoft gets back on the ball.
Businesses Could Skip Vista; XP Remains Biggest Competitor
The largest opponent to Windows Vista in the business market is not Leopard. Nor does its name contain "Hat." There is no "U" nor "K" in its name. The name is Windows XP, and it is a large force in the enterprise market.
Businesses have spent years now standardizing on Windows XP (some places still even use Windows 2000). The hardware and software incompatibilities introduced in Windows Vista, coupled with its enormous hardware requirements (2 GB minimum recommended RAM and so forth) are hampering business adoption, and causing many companies to abandon deployment plans they made before Vista's release.
XP will eventually get pushed aside by Vista, but the question is when, and how, it will happen. From what I've seen of Vista, it's no great shakes over XP (in fact, I like XP's interface a lot better), and with 10% to 40% of business software inventories incompatible with the new OS, I don't see any way the switch can happen anytime soon.
There's also a chance that users will hold out with XP until the release of Windows 7 (codenamed "Blackcomb" and then "Vienna"). Some businesses follow an "every other release" upgrade schedule, which would leave Vista skipped over. Many business customers are so enamored with their XP setups that Microsoft might even feel obligated to extend mainstream support for XP past its current end date, in April 2009. I certainly wouldn't object; I like XP. Now getting developers to continue writing software the XP can run, that's another issue, but if the switch-over rate continues to be low, it should take care of itself.
The two articles I read (that inspired this post) were heartening to read, because I really have no great love for Vista at all. I've seen it, I've looked at the visual stylings and heard about the disaster that is UAC; and I've decided that it's just too ugly and bug-ridden to even consider using. Right now, if anyone tries to force Vista on me, they're getting nowhere; I'm sticking with XP, if I have to wipe the hard drive and install it myself. My dad has a copy I could use if it came to that, and by golly I would. If Windows 7 is any better than Vista, Microsoft will have reversed one of their worst design choices in history. If it retains the eye-hurting UI, I'm switching to Linux.
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