Error Forum Blog

Saturday, January 27, 2007

This photo, provided by Microsoft, shows a screen from the new WIndows Vista system.

By Matthew Fordahl
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette In the span of five years, Microsoft Corp. promised its most advanced operating system ever and then yanked key features to meet deadlines that were missed anyway. Details of what would later be known as Windows Vista sounded suspiciously like Apple’s Mac OS X.Yet Vista, which finally appears on store shelves and new PCs next Tuesday, manages to largely overcome its long, tortured prelude. Though it duplicates some of the feel and functions of the Mac software, Vista includes its own improvements that take security, reliability and usability to new heights on the PC.

Vista is by far the most robust and visually appealing version of Windows yet. It’s similar enough to its predecessor, Windows XP, to make the switch easy, but different enough to make the price almost bearable.

That’s not to suggest Vista’s perfect or even as polished as Mac OS X. In more than a month of testing on multiple PCs, I’ve run into a number of rough patches. Then again, I was able to run my systems longer between restarts, experienced fewer crashes and generally found it more informative than its predecessor.

Overall, it’s a worthy upgrade, though one that most users will probably want to delay until the kinks are worked out.

Be forewarned: The hardware requirements for the best features are high.

Though a low-end version is offered (Home Basic Edition, $199, or $99 if the user is upgrading from XP), it lacks the high-end graphics and multimedia functions.

Most consumers will likely want the Home Premium Edition ($239, $159) that includes the visuals and entertainment tools and requires a heftier PC (with at least a 1 gigahertz processor and 1 gigabyte of memory).

The visuals, for obvious reasons, are the most noticeable improvement, though the software doesn’t hesitate to downgrade the experience if your PC is too weak. Programs appear in semi-see-through frames that pop open and close with an animated swoosh. Icons can be instantly resized with a slider (yes, like pictures stored in Apple Inc.’s iPhoto).

The flourishes aren’t just eye candy. They also help get the job done, particularly if you’re a multitasker.

In previous Windows versions, minimized programs were something like a mystery meat: You knew they were there but it wasn’t easy to find anything. In Vista, live mini-previews of each window pop open when the cursor is moved along the task bar.

Switching between programs using the Alt-Tab key combination is easier, as the live previews appear there, too. A new combination — Tab-Windows keys — flips through all your programs like a 3-D stack of playing cards.

The start menu — which has wisely lost the word “Start” — also has been renovated. It now sports a search box that returns results instantly as you type. No more dancing dogs or grinding hard drives.

In fact, the improved search — which had been available for Windows XP users through add-on programs — is fully integrated throughout Vista (much like the latest version of Mac OS X, released in April 2005). Windows that display the contents of hard drive folders, for instance, all have a search box that can filter whatever is inside.

Search results also can be saved into folders that get populated by future files that meet the original search criteria, though the feature isn’t easy to find.

By default, the right side of the screen is filled with small programs known as gadgets, displaying headlines, weather, microprocessor loads, memory utilization — whatever. (The idea isn’t new: Mac OS X has “Widgets,” and other companies have offered similar lightweight application layers for years.)

The default gadgets in Vista look great but aren’t terribly useful. The Really Simple Syndication gadget, which pulls headlines from news sites and blogs, only displays four items at a time.

Hundreds of additional gadgets are available from Microsoft’s Web site. Some maintain the slick Vista visuals. Others don’t seem to try.

Vista also includes considerable security improvements, including a firewall that blocks network traffic in both directions and an anti-spyware program. You still need to get your own anti-virus software.

Vista adopts “user authentication,” which prompts you before the installation of anything that might muck up the system. Oddly — and unlike Mac OS X and Linux — it doesn’t require a username or password. The prompt, which darkens and deactivates everything in the background, also is jarring and decidedly un-Vista-like.

Vista also has tools for monitoring and controlling your kids’ computer and Internet usage, as well as new “features” that Hollywood can use to control what you do with its movies. If you ever update to HD DVD or Blu-ray, for instance, the quality of those crisp videos may be downgraded.

There are finer controls to adjust for power consumption and excellent notification and monitoring tools to figure out how the system is operating and what has gone wrong. Like a judge at a diving competition, Vista will rate a computer’s performance — though it doesn’t explain the scale very well.

Vista sports new multimedia capabilities as well, including a photo management program with basic picture-editing capabilities. It’s improved upon XP’s moviemaking software. And it supports DVD burning.

The premium editions also include Windows Media Center — a shell that makes playing music and video easy, even with a remote control. The program, previously part of a special version of XP, adds some of Vista’s visual pizazz to a package that bundles a digital video recorder for capturing live standard and high-definition TV.

How long does it take to give a PC running Windows XP this facelift and, arguably, heart and brain transplant? Surprisingly little, at least on a high-end PC with 2 gigabytes of memory. The anesthesia takes considerably longer to wear off.

My installation took about an hour. After the software checked for updates, prompted me for a serial number and asked me to agree to the Windows user license, the installer ran without any need for input — a great improvement over previous Windows versions.

Problems arose when the PC came back to life. The beautiful visuals and inviting “Welcome Center” were covered up by error and warning messages detailing a number of incompatibilities.

There was no sound. A program that I use to synch data with a flash-memory drive wouldn’t work. The Internet-phone software Skype couldn’t find audio input or output. And I was told the control center for my ATI Radeon X1600 Pro graphics card “might” have an issue. There was no warning from Microsoft’s compatibility program that I ran before upgrading.

Most of the problems were fixed by visiting each vendor’s Web site and downloading updated software, although I still couldn’t use my Hewlett-Packard Co. LaserJet 1020 printer or my company’s software for virtual private networking.

In fairness, software companies have a few more days to get their acts together before Vista’s consumer launch (businesses have been able to buy it for two months). But what have they been doing all these years?

The success of the operating system, however, won’t ride on how well old programs and peripherals will work but on the new capabilities that are enabled. For laptops, it may hinge on auxiliary displays that notify users of new e-mail when the machine is closed. For gaming rigs, it may be how well the games tap into Vista’s graphics capabilities.

That’s because given all its bells and whistles, Vista is still just an operating system — a blank canvas, albeit one with a very pretty and elaborate frame.

After so much glitch and delays, European gamers will finally be able to get their share of Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console. European gamers had better remember March 23. Yes this is the crucial date of the PS3’s launching in the European continent.

However, those who are eagerly watching out for this hot gadget may face some pangs of disappointment due to the price range. Just last year, Sony sold the basic type of console – containing 20-GB, to the US and Japanese market for $600 or 300 pounds. But in Europe, the company intends to focus only in presenting the 60-GB version of the PS3, which will sell for 395 pounds. Comparing that spec, I guess the price is just a fair exchange. Anyway, to anyone who really wants something badly no price is neither too high nor too low.

Sony really plans the launching to be a whole success that why they have made it as a whole package. More than 30 game titles will be available upon the launch period of the game console, including the popular Resistance: Fall of Man; MotorStorm, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Dark Kingdom and lost more. For network download Gripshift, Tekken: Dark Resurrection and Sudoko are some of the titles available at the launch. Sony really plans the launching to be a whole success that why they have made it as a whole package. More than 30 game titles will be available upon the launch period of the game console, including the popular Resistance: Fall of Man; MotorStorm, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Dark Kingdom and lost more. For network download Gripshift, Tekken: Dark Re

Microsoft launched Vista and Office 2007 at the end of last week to a gathering of developers in its UK headquarters in Thames Valley Park, Reading, and a couple of us from Freeform Dynamics were there to hear what the Redmond software giant had to say.The event itself was typical of Microsoft, pretty slick and well presented. The over-arching message seemed to be that users have put up with poor or mediocre user interfaces for decades, but that this is no longer acceptable given the complexity of the modern information and communication landscape, the way in which user expectations are escalating, and the business requirement to maintain or increase end user productivity. Vista and Office 2007 as platforms for development were then positioned as key to addressing the challenge.

That’s our interpretation of what we heard, anyway. There was, of course, lots of detail provided in terms of how Microsoft is going to take us all forward into the world of rich, integrated and highly interactive multimedia interfaces and applications. This was outlined at a high level during the key note speech by Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate VP, Developer & Platform Evangelism, and expanded upon in later breakout sessions by other evangelists.

So was anyone converted?

Well, chats during coffee breaks seemed to suggest that what Microsoft was presenting resonated pretty well, and we heard general support for the notion of Vista and Office 2007 as targets for development.

Having said this, there were a couple of guys in particular from the London Underground who should take a lot of the credit for getting people really tuned in and turned on early in the day. They blew the crowd away with some proof of concept work they had done, showing how they were exploiting the potential of both Vista and Office 2007. The demonstration they delivered illustrated how much of their back end operational data could be tapped into and presented in a highly graphical and intuitive user interface in real time.

You really had to be there to appreciate what they had done, but imagine starting with the familiar tube map then being able to overlay data on tracks, signals, trains, maintenance, etc on top of that, with real-time updates, then having the level of detail changing automatically as the user zooms in and out. There were literally audible gasps from the audience when they flipped to a 3D view and you could see clearly how the tube dips under the Thames, along with the physical layout of locations for maintenance accessibility and planning purposes as you zoom in.

The point of conversion for some was undoubtedly when the London Underground guys said the whole thing had been put together by a team of four in two weeks. They did stress, however, that a lot of work had already been previously done on the project to construct web service interfaces to their back end systems as part of their move to SOA, so the eight man weeks related to the presentation layer only. Nevertheless, it was still very impressive.

So, how should we interpret what went on at the conference?

The first point to make is that the audience was probably already going to be receptive to what Microsoft had to say before they came along to the event – i.e. most of the delegates probably earn their living designing and developing applications in a Microsoft environment. Developers more into Java, dynamic scripting languages, dabbling with mash-ups, etc, may not have been so easily wowed. Of course, that’s not to put a damper on things as the Microsoft developer community is one of (if not the) largest on the planet. However, it’s worth pointing out that there’s more than one way to skin a cat and “the Microsoft way” is not considered right by a large segment of the developer population.

It’s also important to highlight that we picked up some reservations within the ranks of the converted – not so much in terms of what Microsoft is delivering, but with regard to how long it will take for the new Vista and Office environments to reach critical mass in the business sector in particular.

There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation here. When we caught up with Sanjay Parthasarathy for a chat later in the day, he highlighted in no uncertain terms that the anticipated drivers for Vista and Office 2007 adoption were the applications they would enable and the value of these to consumers and businesses. The view expressed was that the operational benefits of the new platforms, while significant, were secondary to this. Yet developers and IT departments will find it hard to justify committing to Vista and Office 2007 as targets for development if only a proportion of their potential user base is on these. The question then becomes how many snazzy new applications it will take to justify the cost, time, and risk of going through a desktop upgrade.

Relevant to this question is the fact that we still pick up quite a lot of scepticism within the broader IT professional and management community about the incremental value that the advanced user interface functionality of Vista and Office 2007 will deliver or enable. Even together with the operational benefits of Vista, the appetite to migrate still seems to be very limited, especially in the corporate space given the cost, risk and hassle of large scale desktop upgrades.

When we put this to Sanjay Parthasarathy, his response was that “end user pull” would overcome the IT reluctance, the premise being that once users get to see and experience what the new desktop can offer, there will be ground swell of demand that IT departments won’t be able ignore. This is why Microsoft is investing so much time and effort in developer programmes, as the availability of a compelling range of third party applications, both for running on Vista and embedding in Office 2007, is seen to be an important catalyst here.

So what do we think at Freeform Dynamics?

Well, the important thing is not to generalise too much. Questions about whether Vista will be a success or not are largely irrelevant. Vista will enter the market by default through the OEM route which will take it into the consumer and small business segments relatively rapidly, both of which tend to just accept the operating system that is pre-installed on new machines. This in turn creates a market for third party developers to go at and perhaps a stimulus for some larger enterprises (travel firms, retailers, media companies, etc) to start exploiting the embedded service capability of Vista.

Based on past experience, common sense, and ongoing feedback from mainstream corporate IT departments though, we anticipate the entry of Vista into the large enterprise segment to be much more measured and controlled. It will happen, but relatively slowly. It took about four years for Windows XP to become genuinely pervasive in this segment, and at this moment in time we can see nothing to indicate that large scale Vista adoption will be significantly quicker unless Microsoft pulls some unexpected rabbits out of the hat.

But what about Office 2007?

Again, we need to beware of generalising too much. The full name for the new release is “The Microsoft Office System 2007″, and there is one component in there, SharePoint 2007, that can easily confuse discussions about levels and rates of adoption. This is because SharePoint essentially fulfils two functions. Firstly it is a back end to what most people would traditionally think of as “Microsoft Office”, i.e. the suite of desktop tools (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and so on). In this respect, it acts as a hub for collaboration, document storage/sharing, search and a range of other functions. However, SharePoint can also be used independently of the Office desktop components as a very respectable and capable portal environment for serving up either native .Net or composite applications to users through a browser.

SharePoint adoption within the business sector as a portal solution through the previous release is already significant, and indications are that the new SharePoint 2007 is a bit of a hit with early adopters that have migrated or otherwise taken it on board. And this is where things can get muddled. When Microsoft recently invited us as analysts to come and meet a range of organisations that had already deployed Office System 2007, it turned out they were all using SharePoint 2007, but none had yet adopted the new versions of the desktop applications.

Our analysis at this stage is that we expect SharePoint 2007 to gain traction rapidly in the market. Our research has shown consistently that there is a strong demand for portal solutions that enable composite application development and the creation of rich user interfaces that can be delivered through a browser. SharePoint delivers against this very well and we have already seen a tendency for it to be the default choice in many organisations, both because it is Microsoft, and therefore viewed as “safe” (you may disagree with this sentiment but many think this way), and because Microsoft was quite smart with its strategy of bundling basic SharePoint service capability with Windows Server 2007, which got many people “hooked” before they realised what was happening.

However, the jury is still out in our minds on the Office 2007 desktop components. At the moment, we are picking up little demand through our research, but the traditional Office applications do represent the centre of most professional users’ desktops, particularly Outlook, so the notion of using this as an application delivery platform could possibly catch on as the market gets educated on the potential.

From the drill down sessions we sat in at the developer conference, Microsoft has done a great deal to enhance the way custom or party applications running in the “Office shell” can interact with the native Outlook, Excel, Word, etc. The updated APIs and development tools provide for much tighter integration and control, both at a user interface and data manipulation level, and the runtime execution side has been improved too, with new mechanisms in place to prevent applications interfering and conflicting with each other.

The bottom line though, is that IT departments generally remain sceptical, and while all of the stuff we saw at the conference really was quite impressive, it’s the practicalities of transitioning to the vision that really matter. So if Microsoft does have any rabbits in that hat, now would be a good time to pull them out.

The folks at Microsoft must psyched at the thought of next week’s Vista launch, but apparently some of them are a little too giddy in the head for their own good. It appears some MS reps from Norway went on air and demoed Vista on an iMac—not once acknowledging the fact that they were using a Mac. We had our suspicions that Bootcamp would let you run Vista on a Mac, but we thought MS would’ve wanted to use, y’know, a PC to show off their new OS. Hit the image for a look at the video. – Louis Ramirez UPDATE: Turns out it wasn’t Microsoft’s decision to demo Vista with a Mac, but instead a Mac was used because it was the only computer around that had the OS installed (which is still a little ironic). Nevertheless, the Mac belongs to VG and not Microsoft.

When Vista launches on Tuesday, Microsoft will simultaneously release a version of the operating system aimed at developing markets. The operating system would be designed for lower-end processors and include tutorials for those who may be using their first computer.

Microsoft did something similar in June 2004 when it released Windows XP Starter Edition. That version was initially made available in Southeast Asia, Russia and India, although was eventually sold in 130 countries in 24 languages.Vista Starter Edition will follow a similar path, although the release will be offered in some 70 languages. It would also allow the computer to be used in multiple languages depending on each individual user’s preferences.Unlike its bigger brother, which requires at least an 800MHz processor to run effectively, Vista Starter Edition recommends a 300MHz processor be used, although it may be run on processors as slow as 233MHz.

The tutorials would guide users through all facets of computer use, including how to use a mouse and perform other functions. Microsoft says such guidance is necessary as many users of the software have never used a computer before.

According to Microsoft, customer interest in XP Starter Edition gives it hope that adoption of Vista would be quick even in developing countries. While it took 18 months to sell the first half million copies of XP Starter, it only took six months to sell the next half-million, and three months to sell the third half-million.

With Windows Vista’s release finally upon us, it’s normal to wonder what Microsoft’s newest operating system actually has in store for the user.What’s so great about it? What’s not so swell? And what are the new features that could possibly compel me to pay up to $400 to buy it? Well, whether you’re going to pay that kind of cash is a question I’ve dug into in another post, but if you really want the scoop on Vista’s most interesting features, well, read on.

• Aero - Windows Aero (formerly/alternately known as Aero Glass) is the revamped version of the Windows GUI, a gussied up, prettified, 3D interface that’s supposed to make you oooh and aaah… provided you have the hardware to run it. If you don’t have a relatively recent 3D graphics card, you won’t be able to run the full version of Aero and your system will default to a 2D interface which, while pretty, is not nearly as gorgeous. You’ll also be able to drop “gadgets” onto your desktop: Clocks, calculators, headlines, and the like.
• Integrated Search - Windows XP’s dog slow built-in search is so pathetic it’s a joke, and not just because of the little yellow dog that’s there to “help you” find your files. Vista’s upgraded search includes thumbnails, real-time indexing, and other features of third-party search tools like Yahoo! Search. Unfortunately you can’t use Vista’s integrated search to look for text within files, only file names and the new metatags that Vista offers.
• Updated Graphics Engine - Microsoft frequently updates DirectX, the display drivers that power video games and other graphics tools. The new version for Vista, DirectX 10, is a big upgrade that fixes a number of issues (like letting you run 3D applications inside a window instead of full screen) that have long plagued the driver. Video games will get a host of new features, too, and many upcoming games will run best (with all their cool new effects) on Vista.
• Security Upgrades - The jury’s out on how well Vista’s new file permissions/sharing system is going to work, and what normal users might think of the lockdown of Vista from a security standpoint. Simple tasks often require multiple confirmations (a lot like how Internet Explorer now requires your permission to download files), and the OS is more complicated because of this. However the increased level of security is probably a good thing and should help prevent spyware and virus infections, at least until hackers figure out how to get around the restrictions. Parental controls are also now integrated with the OS. So far, the news on this front is encouraging.
• Updates for Laptops - As the world goes mobile, Windows is following suit. Laptops will get new power management options, and as external displays on the lids of notebooks start to appear, they’ll get more features, too. Called SideShow, this is one of Vista’s cooler new features, though hardware that uses SideShow may be a long time coming. (Here’s a sneak peek.)
• Networking Upgrades - Wireless networking got a nice upgrade with Windows XP SP2, but Vista cleans it up even more. Newcomers to Wi-Fi should find it even easier to get online. Unfortunately file sharing between Vista and XP machines is difficult.
• Internet Explorer 7 - New browser. You can check it out now (on XP) if you’re interested.
• New Backup Utility - Windows’ integrated backup has been a joke for a decade. The new backup system might actually be something people will use.
• New Mail/Calendar - Improvements to Outlook Express.
• Integrated Spyware Killer - Also available for testing now.

Those are the big changes, but Vista of course offers tweaks in virtually every corner of the operating system. For more information (though biased), feel free to flip through Microsoft’s marketing materials for more pictures and details.

Back in the day, your operating system was a big deal. It was who you were. Mac vs. Windows was like Catholic vs. Protestant, or Republican vs. Democrat, and about as rational. Now it’s somewhere down around Coke vs. Pepsi. Microsoft is still winning the battles — the iPod “halo effect” notwithstanding, Apple is hovering at about a 5% market share — but no one’s getting worked up about the war. So many of the file-compatibility issues have been solved, and so much computing goes on in the browser anyway. So who cares?

That’s one reason for the near-total non-excitement surrounding the launch of Windows Vista, the first new version in five years of the software that runs hundreds of millions of PCs. The other reason is that Vista is … pretty good. It’s not a disgrace, and it’s not a masterpiece. It’s not worth buying a new machine for Vista, and there’s no reason to switch to it if you use a Mac, but it gets the job done. Not the stuff of which great headlines are made.

And now that I’ve drained all the interest out of this review, let’s go to the features:

1. Vista looks pretty. The edges of the windows are now transparent, like little glass microscope slides. Vista — blatantly following the trend set by Apple — represents data as translucent and jewel-like and faintly glowing. Subtle shadows, gleams and animations enhance the illusion. It’s just cosmetic stuff, but given how much time one spends there, it’s nice when one’s desktop doesn’t feel like a soul-leaching cubicle. (To assuage the Mac faithful: yes, many of Vista’s features are pilfered directly from Mac OS X, and in general Apple has shown itself to be far more efficient and innovative in the operating systems market. Done.)

2. Vista makes sense, more or less. Much of the challenge of creating a good operating system is design, not technology. Which means figuring out a visually logical way for users to get at all their information easily. Vista is creeping in that direction, with improved search functions and nicely built-in music and photo organizers — you can actually “tag” photos with keywords, which is very handy. Useful widgets like clocks and photo albums cluster happily at the edge of the screen like attentive waiters, happy to serve you.

What truly makes a great user interface is an ineffable internal logic, a set of consistent internal rules that one absorbs without their having to be stated (like in a manual, for example), and I don’t see that quite yet in Vista. You don’t always instinctively know where the back button will be, or the “close this window” button. If your desktop is overcrowded with windows, you can hit an icon that will line them all up for you, tilted at an angle, so you can pluck out the one that you need. Nice — but at the same time, it breaks with the visual metaphor of a flat desktop.

3. Vista is secure, or at least it’s securer. If that’s a word. Being a near-monopoly makes Windows a magnet for phishers, viruses, adware and other malware writers. So Microsoft has worked on that, mostly under the hood. I think what most impressed me were the built-in parental controls: you can decide when your kids will use Vista, what websites they can go to, what applications they can run, who they can IM with, and so on. And if they try to break the controls, Vista will rat them out.

4. Vista is expensive and a bit of a resource-hog. There are two versions targeted at home users : Basic ($199, which is about what OS X costs) and Premium ($239). (Note that Basic doesn’t give you that nice pretty translucent look which is Vista’s most immediately appealing feature.) Most people won’t buy Vista at retail, but you’ll feel the burn somewhere in there whenever you buy your next computer. For the Premium edition Microsoft recommends a 1Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM, as well as a respectable graphics setup, but I think you’ll need quite a bit more power to get the full, smooth experience. The laptop Microsoft loaned me to test Vista had 2Ghz and 2GB, so be careful not to buy more Windows than you can run.

To sum up: Vista is a perfectly respectable new iteration of Windows. They’ve even, finally, come up with a decent way to make laptops sleep and wake up again, which XP was never very good at. The fact that it took Microsoft over five years and $6 billion dollars to create Vista is — and I mean this quite seriously — an embarrassment to the good name of American innovation, but it’s perfectly fine.

Two closing thoughts. One, there’s a lot of functionality built into Vista — look at the photo editor, which is integrated with the operating system and which works like a stripped-down version of the already-stripped-down Photoshop Elements. Isn’t that the kind of anti-competitive integration that got Microsoft into anti-trust court last time around? (Not that they ever left: they’re facing hundred-million Euro fines in Europe as we speak.)

And two, Vista’s real test won’t be some reviewer checking off features in his lonely office. It will come when millions of Vista users make their way out into the deep waters of the greater Internet ecology, where legions of Internet-based criminals will start banging away on its security features, looking for a way to fool it, break it or hijack it. Translucent borders are all well and good, but out there in the jungle, no one cares how pretty you are.

Microsoft is doing what it can to drum up Vista arrival excitement, but don’t expect there to be the kind of buying frenzy and lines on Jan. 30, the operating system’s official release day, that greeted the release of Sony’s PlayStation 3 last fall.

However, some retailers will be open specifically at midnight to accommodate the Vista crazed; expect these same stores to offer a variety of specials.

CompUSA

All CompUSA stores except those in Paramus and North Paramus, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico will be open at midnight, and begin selling Windows Vista at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, January 30.

The CompUSA stores will also offer sales on hardware complementary to Windows Vista, such as LCD screens, video cards, memory cards and hard drives.

The chain will also offer unlimited Vista tech support for one month for $29.99, and a trade-up program in which you can sell back your old notebook to CompUSA, and apply that cost toward buying a new PC.

Best Buy

Best Buy will keep open approximately 15 of its stores to sell Windows Vista at 12:01 on January 30th as well, and says it has trained 60,000 employees to help customers use the new operating system. You’ll have to call your local store to see if they are one of the select few.

Starting Jan. 30, Best Buy will offer demos and sales, as well as free Windows Vista personalization services by a “Geek Squad agent,” which will include adding gadgets, setting the background picture, and configuring Windows Vista for better performance.

For $100, the Geek Squad agent will set up your new PC, transfer data from the old PC to the new, and do a security check.

Other Specials

Expect there to be plenty of other specials keyed to Vista. For example, Microsoft has joined T-Mobile in a promotion in which you can get three months of free access at T-Mobile hot spots. Go to a T-Mobile hot spot with your Vista laptop after January 30, log in, and you’ll get details.

Windows Vista is getting a bum rap. The media is painting a picture of Microsoft’s new operating system as a pretty version of XP with few new features that users will care about. This is the same media that greets every new “.1″ release from Apple as if it were the second coming of Jesus H. Christ. These reviews of Vista are so off base, so ill informed, and so superficial that they border on gross negligence.I’m not even sure on where to begin analyzing these “reviews”. Cnet’s review, which gives Vista a “7.8″, calls it a “warmed over XP”, and makes multiple flat out factual errors. They claim that ”most of Microsoft’s [security] improvements in Windows Vista are within the Enterprise or 64-bit editions,” which is a completely ridiculous statement.

There are no security features that Enterprise has that any of the other versions of Vista do not. (Indeed, this “review” was about Vista Ultimate, which contains every feature from every version, with the 1 exception which I’ll mention in a minute.) Vista x64 contains a single feature that the others lack, kind of. Vista x64 restricts kernel mode driver installation to signed/certified drivers only. That’s it.

Cnet goes on to state that there are no ”big-name software packages written exclusively for Windows Vista“. Wow, considering it hasn’t even officially launched yet, that’s a bit harsh.

Cnet criticizes the new Start Menu and search functionality, stating that they ”would have preferred to have access to Search directly from the desktop rather than digging down a level or two“, no doubt referring to Mac OS X’s Spotlight field in the titlebar on the Mac desktop. Let’s see, on the Mac I need to hit COMMAND + SPACE, or click in the field, to start searching. On Vista, I hit the Windows key and start typing. How, exactly, is that different? If anything, Vista’s search is easier to get to.

Cnet continues to make factual errors by claiming that “aero is part of the Windows Presentation Foundation, a subgroup of the .Net Foundation Framework, an underlying foundation for developers to build new applications.“. Um, not, it’s not. Aero has nothing to do with WPF. Aero is a theme in Windows Vista. Nothing more. They even make the very confusing claim that “Aero is necessary to create Microsoft’s new, Adobe PDF-like file format called XPS (Extensible Page System);“, which is completely untrue.

Cnet shows how incredibly inept they are by then criticizing User Account Control while simultaneously plugging OS X. They state that “While UAC notifies you of pending system changes, it doesn’t require a password. The Mac operating system does something similar but requires a password–that’s security.“ What? First of all, UAC only doesn’t prompt with a password IF YOU ARE AN ADMIN.

Administrators in Vista are treated like regular users in every way (in fact, they are regular users) except that they don’t have to type in credentials in UAC prompts. If you run as a non-admin user, you have to type in the credentials of an admin complete the UAC prompt, just like the Mac.

Unlike the Mac, however, Vista displays these prompts on a secure desktop. This prevents malware from fooling you into authorizing something you didn’t want to authorize by simply displaying a fake dialog over the real one. The Mac has nothing like this and is theoretically open to all sorts of spoofing malware attacks. Is that security? If the Cnet team had spent any time researching Vista they would know this.

They go on to say that “the jury is still out on whether Internet Explorer 7 is more secure than, say, Firefox 2“, which I would agree with, but they neglect to mention anything about protected mode IE, which is a great security innovation from Microsoft that suggests that IE 7 will be, by far, the safest modern browser you can use.

Cnet’s review makes many unsubstantiated claims about Vista’s performance, calling it a “resource hog” without ever backing up that statement. (And no, you can’t just look at Task Manager’s RAM stats and use that to justify your opinion.)

Cnet’s review was pretty much inline with many other sites, such as Time.com and even Tom’s Hardware. (And don’t get me started on Walter S. Mossberg.) Time, for instance, closes their review with the seemingly insightful musing that ”translucent borders are all well and good, but out there in the jungle, no one cares how pretty you are.” No kidding. If you guys were so concerned about Vista’s security, why didn’t you spend a little more time researching the many innovations and improvements Vista has in terms of security instead of trying to come up with more ways to mention Apple in your review? They have the gall to title their review “Windows Vista: why nobody cares.” Maybe nobody cares because you guys have done a good job spreading FUD.

These people completely neglect to talk about hundreds of Vista’s features which will end up really changing the way we use computers. Whether it’s the fact that Vista will usher in the world of IPv6 (via it’s support for PNRP), or how it will change the way applications are written and deployed for Windows via technologies like WPF/E and WCF. They almost universally ignore great technologies like ReadyBoost, SuperFetch, and ReadyDrive, all of which will make our computers feel zippier. And they’re oblivious to things like Sideshow. And don’t think that’s the full list of features they’re ignoring. It’s not. For a full list, check out this excellent Wikipedia article.

Windows Vista is a great OS. If Apple was releasing an OS with this many new features they would be called geniuses and would be praised for ushering in a new era of computing. But Microsoft is not Apple, and so instead we get this FUD.

To be fair, there were a couple of decent reviews of Vista. One of them being from Paul Thurrott. Was his a complete review? No. But it wasn’t willfully ignorant like the other clowns.

As if it weren’t already plugged into our DVR schedule, but The Daily Show will host our man BillG Monday, 29 January. There will no doubt be a lot of talk about Vista, as well as some chat about the Gates foundation. We here round the 10 reservation are hoping that MS Bob gets an honorable mention.

Also on 10:

• Microsoft Japan flexes its creativity with animationOnce in a while little gems of entertainment can be found buried deep within massive corporate websites, and microsoft.com is no different. Microsoft Japan’s Dominoken animation that is simply good fun. It’s a nice example of what can be done with Windows Presentation Foundation, so turn on your speakers and go enjoy.