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May 01, 2008

Another Open Letter to Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

I know you're busy formulating a hostile take-over of Yahoo right now. So you're probably swamped. And since I think your proposed take-over Yahoo is a swell idea - and a great way to improve your image after the whole vista-capable debacle, I've been giving some thought to some of the great things you can do once you convince Yahoo that this will be a great experience.

For example... you could use Yahoo's search-engine functionality to keep track of all the documentation, white-papers, and KB articles that you keep MOVING around on your damned site.

Me? I LOVE getting the "We're sorry for the inconvenience...." 404 page that you use to tell me that you willy-nilly just removed a resource that I was looking for - because it tells me that you care. Other people might get crabby about that though.

And here's the thing, people are linking to these resources - quite a bit too. Heck, I figure I bump into 2-3 of these little 'love notes' every day. But hey... I get you, you're saying that I don't really need access to documentation, white papers, and to KB articles. Cuz if I did, you wouldn't keep MOVING and DELETING those resources from your site.

But hey, like I said, I know you're really focused on that Yahoo buyout - so'z you can be more focused on providing people with a stronger and more friendly 'intarweb' experience...  I know I'd really like to see something like that from you - so good luck on the buyout as all our hopes and dreams are resting on it!

--Mike

Posted on May 01, 2008 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 21, 2008

An Open Letter to Microsoft

Microsoft,

Maybe it's just me, but it's probably time to come to grips with the fact that a lot of YOUR customers actually use FireFox.

As such, pages like this one are beyond ridiculous:
https://partner.microsoft.com/40052721?msp_id=vistasp1

And I don't know what's funnier/worse:
- the fact that I have to accept two different SSL certs that you guys issued to yourself for this site,
- or the fact that you apparently don't know how to do any type of standards testing on your markup/css
- or the fact that there are 78 319 javascript errors on that page in FF.

And actually, pages like that (which litter your site) are actually quite arrogant. You guys keep telling us that you get web standards. And in many ways you really do a great job of listening to customers. But I'm a small shop - and I can be 'bothered' to test my own sites in IE 6, IE 7, FF and sometimes even in Safari/Opera. Why can't you?

--Mike

Posted on March 21, 2008 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 10, 2008

Suddenly, the iPhone just got less cool

Well, it gets a lot less cool if anyone is dumb enough to fall for it:

Sun to put Java on the iPhone

Posted on March 10, 2008 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 29, 2008

Microsoft Perfidy and Vista Capable Debacle

As much as I hate to say it, I'm glad that Microsoft is starting to catch some industry flak over the whole "Vista Capable" debacle.

I posted about it a while back - using some strong language. Mostly because I figured that the whole way that customers had been abused was just some side-effect of a marketing campaign run rampant. That, and the name of the site IS AngryPets after all - so I do have to talk trash and act all bothered every once in a while, right?

But as details have been forthcoming about this whole 'debacle', it's sad to see that we're not just talking about a marketing campaign that got out of control - where a few people got burned. What we're actually looking at is something that really, seriously, looks like collusion. Or, even if there isn't a criminal element involved, it's painfully obvious that Microsoft made the decision to sell their customers down the road.

Which just makes me sad.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer documented some of the emails exposed as part of the (now) class-action lawsuit being leveled against Microsoft. Some of the zingers:

One message points to chip maker Intel Corp., a key Microsoft partner, to explain the decision to lower the requirements a piece of hardware needed to qualify for the "Windows Vista Capable" designation.

"In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded," Microsoft executive John Kalkman wrote in the message, referring to a class of Intel graphics technology that doesn't work with Windows Vista's most-advanced graphics technology, known as Aero Glass.

In another message, Microsoft executive Mike Nash wrote that he "personally got burned by the Intel 915 chipset issue."

"I know that I chose my laptop (a SONY TX770P) because it had the Vista logo and was pretty disappointed that it not only wouldn't run Glass, but more importantly wouldn't run Movie Maker," Nash wrote. "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine."

Like I said, pretty sad.

Posted on February 29, 2008 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 05, 2008

Spot On

Mario Romano nails it:

Let's be clear about it: Google is not a social institution for the defense of civil rights - it is just another corporation, not unlike Microsoft and others.

Seriously. Anyone else sick of the obscene hypocrisy coming out of Google?

Me? I'm hoping that MS manages to pull of their 'buyout' of Yahoo. No, not to get back at Google, and no, not because it would make MS that much more powerful or blah blah blah. My motivation is much more ... sinister.

You see, what with MS being on the warpath with that nasty little thing called a Zune, my hope is that if they can persuade Yahoo to let them take over, that they'll keep Yahoo Unlimited up and running - instead of trying to hand-off those customers to Rhapsody. YU is really built around WMA, and things like 'the Zune'... so hopefully MS can 1) take over yahoo 2) be persuaded to keep it alive.

Which brings me to my real point, which is about why Yahoo is likely hurting so much anyhow. Because they apparently don't know how to make $$. Take me for instance, I'm hooked on Yahoo Unlimited. I'm seriously depressed about the possibility of life without it (I mean, I've got over 25k rated songs/albums/artists with that service - and oodles of playlists). But what's Yahoo up to? Oh, they're apparently going to shunt it over to Rhapsody, where I'll have to pay more for it.

Dear Yahoo: If YU is too expensive to run as is, and if I'm going to have to pay Rhapsody MORE to keep a music subscription, then just LET ME PAY YOU MORE. I don't mind (that much) paying more. I do mind, on the other hand, paying ANYTHING to something associated with Real Networks - to the point where I simply won't.

Posted on February 05, 2008 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 31, 2008

Windows Vista - One Year Later

So, I finally gave in and made the switch to Vista.

Actually, if you've followed along on my blog, you'll see that I've actually attempted that a few times - a couple of those were even really early on. But I ran into a bunch of nasty problems very early on that really just precluded me from having any hope of truly switching to it for realz.

And then, over the past month or so I've made a couple of REAL attempts to get it to install as a dual-boot option. Mostly because I really wanted to take advantage of the SMB 2.0 goodness for communication back and forth between my server (which is running Windows 2008 RC0). See, between XP and my server I get about 15MB/sec transfer. But between 2 Win2k8 RC0 boxes (on a Gigabit switch) I was getting almost 80MB/sec. That, and I've heard some great things about Vista's stability in terms of video playback and editing - and since I'm doing more and more with Camtasia these days (more on that later), that seemed pretty tempting.

That, and *cough* because I was still being drawn like a moth to flame when it comes to Aero-Glass. (I mean hey, I've got a sweet rig with 2 killer video cards and 3 DVI monitors hooked up - why wouldn't I want some Aero-Glass love hooked up to that?)

But each of my REAL attempts at installing a dual partition over the past few months has just met with MISERABLE, STINKING, FAILURE. In each case, Vista just plain crashed after the first reboot during the installation process. No warnings, no BSOD, no errors, but most importantly: no LOVE. Three separate times I tried, still no luck.

On a whim I tried specifically loading drivers directly from the NVidia site to account for my RAID-0 (which shouldn't have been necessary - as the Vista installer was perfectly capable of seeing my RAID-0 and all of it's volumes - it was even able to format logical partitions). At any rate, that attempt ALSO crashed and burned. Only, when I rebooted after the crash and burn, Vista actually finished setting up, and then finally booted. (Whereas it hadn't done this the previous three times. ANd what's most baffling about the entire adventure is that of all the bad things I could have said about Vista over the last year, the Installer was easily one of the high-points: simple, elegant, fast and dependable - just not the last three times actually needed it to work).

That was then, This is Now
All my complaining aside, once I got Vista to finally 'take', the whole experience has been fantastic actually. For a change, ALLLLLLLLL of my software now works. No hoops, no problems, no warnings, no issues. It all just works. And on my hardware everything is very responsive and peppy. (I'm sadly at a total score of a 5.3 because my processor is only a dual-core 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo - but I'll swap that out for a quad-core 3.0 GHz (45nm) Wolfdale once those come out - otherwise disk and video are all at 5.9, and I need to slap some faster RAM in place too... but it's nothing to complain about at 5.5).)

I've also been really impressed by how stable things have been, and how WELL the audio and video handles in Vista as well. So far it's looking like it does a much better job of ensuring that audio and video don't get pre-empted, which is a HUGE win for me. And, without any tweaking I'm at about 50MB/second between my desktop and server which is also a huge boost.

Where I have taken a big hit though is with BattleField 2142. Apparently that game just isn't optimized very well to work with Vista. The video feels really smooth (compared to my XP box where the video occasionally feels a bit 'jerky'), but my frame-rate has strangely dropped by 20-50 FPS - which is a huge amount. That, and at points in the game my machine will just 'chug' or bog down to the point where game play gets really gross. But only for a few seconds. Which is weird, because XP never had any problems with that. Oh, and this is all after turning off Aero-Glass before playing. (Without doing that, playability just sucked - apparently it had something to do with painting two shiny windows with slick glass while keeping the carnage alive and well on my main monitor.)

So, that's primarily the only crappy thing I've bumped into with Vista - but given how much gaming I do (in comparison to other things) it's not that big of a deal. That, and while there ARE performance problems I'm hopeful that a bit of tuning will make them go away. Not to mention, even with those problems I'm still at the point where I'd happily deal with minor issues rather than reboot into XP.

Some Issues
Of course, you knew this was coming - even if I'm really happy with Vista, you just knew that I'd have to seriously COMPLAIN about a couple things.

Happily though, they basically only relate to Aero-Glass/Display.

The first thing I noticed was that, apparently, with my 3 monitor and 2 Video-Card setup, I'm apparently living so 'out there' on the fringe that MS doesn't want to acknowledge that people like me actually exist. (If ONLY I were actually that cool.) What am I complaining about? Vista's Dreamscape. You know - that spiffy bit of 'ultimate' functionality that lets you put video in as a background on your desktop? Right - watching home movies or MTV on your desktop would be either lame or distracting, but I was hoping to put some 'animated' video of the earth spinning, or some *cough* matrix-like characters falling onscreen and so on.

clueless

But noooo. Dreamscape no-worky with more than one display adapter. Talk about lame, and frankly, talk about useless. Dreamscape is a joke - because people with the kind of hardware to be able to actually use it (in a lot of cases) without suffering big performance hits, won't be able to actually use it. That's just dumb - and proof that MS apparently just wanted to get it out the door to get people to shut-up about the missing extras. Guess what? I'm still complaining ;)

The other thing I've noticed, which I can't help but feel is a cruel joke or hoax is the fact that my task bar loses transparency when I maximize ANY window. I mean, talk about idiotic - and apparently it's a known issue. Me? I maximize a few things - that's one of the benefits of having 3 monitors - I can take advantage of lots of real-estate. Only when I do, my taskbar becomes opaque. If I un-maximize everything, voila! transparency. Re-maximize? Opacity. It feels like a cruel joke - and when I first realized what was going on, I had to look around my office for the hidden cameras (as it would have been a MUCH nicer outcome had this actually been a prank rather than some 'design' of the OS).

Yeah, I know - this 'issue' won't kill me. But come on, they actually shipped it like this? And one year later they haven't fixed it?

Maybe that will be part of the secret sauce that they're releasing on Feb 4th as part of SP1.

Posted on January 31, 2008 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 19, 2008

An Open Letter to Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player,

Honestly, could you be more stupid?

Why can't you figure out that if
a) I'm not watching video and
b) My mouse hasn't moved in the last hour

that it's okay to turn on the screen-saver and then power down the monitors after a while (like normal)?

But no, I've got to go in and check the 'Allow Screensaver during playback' Option. Which is idiotic. Not just because I have to specify that (and no, there are no visualizations being run either), but because we both know, that a week from now, when I'm actually watching some video, and get into it enough to take my hand away from the mouse for more than 10 minutes, the screensaver will click in.

If you were written by some hick who only knew VB 6, then I guess you could be forgiven for not being able to know a BIT more about your environment. But since you were, last time I checked, made by the same folks who SWEAR that you're better because a) you were built by the people who made Windows and b) 'work better' as an integrated media player, there's just no excuse.

And it's not like we haven't known about this 'feature' since, oh... say... at least WMP 9.

--Mike

Posted on January 19, 2008 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

December 05, 2007

Sams Publishing can Bite Me

I'm working through what looks to be a decent book from Sams Publishing: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services.

Only there's a sample database that they use throughout the book and in order to download it, it appears that I have to sign up for Safari - that obnoxious 'digital bookshelf' service that goes for $439/year.

Dear Idiots at Sams Publishing,

If I had wanted a digital copy of your book, I would have purchased it for $6 at Amazon when I bought this book. But since I've purchased the book, I'd like access to the sample code since you were too cheap to include a bleepin' CD.

You suck.

And no, I don't give a crap about the free 45-day trial membership of Safari that I get which lets me download the sample code (I assume) since
a) the instructions in the book no longer match the site,
b) Safari tells me I only get 10 days before they start charging my frickin' credit card and
c) I just don't want to sign up to some stupid service - I just want the sample code for my book.

Again, you suck. A lot.

--Mike

UPDATE: I should point out that the book itself points to a link and tells you to enter a coupon code - which will give you 45 days of free access to your book. Before writing up this nasty post, I went to the url listed in the book - but it just kept redirecting me to the safari site - where I was on my own and ran into the experiences listed above. That's what made me cranky. I'm _not_ hip on having to sign up for anything to get code for my book - but I'll tolerate it if it's less painful than writing up a nasty blog post ;) In my case, however, I just couldn't get access to the book - without divulging my Credit Card # and doing a full 'trial' sign-up.

ALMOST THERE UPDATE: After sending an email to Safari Publishing and Sams I got a response. Rather than just going to SamsPublishing.com which redirects to informit.com, they sent me to the following link: https://ssl.safaribooksonline.com/safarienabled - where I'm able to enter the code/coupon from the front of my book and add a few pieces of info (my name, email addy, and a password). But that still ended up being a pain - and after scouring the 'bookshelf' I still couldn't see any obvious links for downloads. So I gave up for a few minutes.

SOLUTION UPDATE: Happily, however, since I had spammed a handful of people/accounts listed on the informit.com site (with a link to this post, of course), I got another response from a publicist who provided me with a link and offered to send my 'feedback' to the appropriate folks in order to ensure future customer satisfaction. Happily the link that the publicist sent was EXACTLY what I was looking for:
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672327821&rl=1
Note the Download Tab. Note too that there's no need to sign up, sign-in, or give-away one of my children. I guess I should have checked the 'store' functionality on the site early on - but I was too caught up in going to the URL that the book sent me to.
Oh well, problem solved - and I've got my sample code.

Posted on December 05, 2007 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

December 01, 2007

Vista Capable Debacle

So, it turns out that a number of people who bought "Vista Capable" machines prior to the release of Vista's RTM are suing. They're suing because they can't run anything other than Vista Home Basic on their machines. The machines with the little sticker that told them that their box was 'Vista Capable'.

Here's the problem with that. You and I know that if we wanted a box that ran Vista Home Premium or Ultimate (and, especially, Aero Glass), we would have needed to buy something with:

  • 2GB of RAM.
  • Some SATA disks (at least) to get some decent speed.
  • A Multi-core processor (nice, but not required - and remember, this was about a year ago that you would have been making the purchase).
  • A WDDM compliant Video Card.

Most end users might be able to deal with the first of those requirements. But then again, many average PC buyers really don't know the difference between RAM and Disk. Many people aren't quite going to know what to do with the WDDM compliant video drivers.

But no fear, Microsoft has been 'dumbing down' computers for years now - to try and make ownership easier for non geeks. Defragmenting your disks in XP is replaced with the dumber: "Re-organize my files to make stuff faster."

In essence, Microsoft has helped make it possible for non-technical people to buy and use computers. Obviously, their business model depends upon it. I may balk at that a bit, but, ultimately, I get that it's a fact of life. (I just wish they would release something like an 'enthusiast' version of their OSes, that was slimmed down and less dumbed-down - to cater to my needs/wants.)

The point of all this? Simple: When you slap a sticker on a box that says that it's Vista Capable, you're targeting people who typically don't know a ton about computers. Yeah, geeks would sit down and figure out the absolute requirements. Non Geeks are just looking for a way to know what to buy. Worse, the non-geeks affected by this sticker are people who are actually trying to be smart and buy something that will meet their needs today - and tomorrow.

That's why MS' legal strategy with this whole lawsuit is revolting:

Microsoft criticizes the plaintiffs for focusing on "a small (less than a square inch) sticker" and not considering the broad array of things it did as part of the Windows Vista Capable program. The company claims that it made clear through "a comprehensive marketing campaign" what the sticker meant, and that arguing over interpretations of the word "capable" without reference to these broader efforts isn't a fair way to proceed.

So, people who 'bought in' to the sticker's meaning should have done more research? Like what? ensuring that the video cards for their boxes supported WDDM drivers? Hell, GEEKS had a hard enough time jumping through that hurdle when Vista finally RTMed.

Better yet, add the fact that apparently even some MS Execs assumed that the "Vista Capable" logo would have meant that buyers could run ANY version of Vista, and you can see that this is a marketing campaign (designed to keep the flow of $$ rolling while people wondered whether they should purchase new machines with XP on them, or wait to buy one with Vista) that has gone horribly wrong.

It would be nice if MS would just admit that this didn't go as well as they would have liked, and that they're setting up an 800 number people can call to meet their needs. It would likely be cheaper than hiring lawyers. It would also be the right thing to do for their customers.

Instead they're taking the idiotic stance of blaming their customers. No wonder things like this, and this resonate so well.

Posted on December 01, 2007 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

November 16, 2007

Dell Jumps the Shark

Hey Dell, here's an idea: empower your employees to actually give a crap about customers, start shipping your products ON TIME, and stop wasting money on recruiting celebrities:

Dell Enlists Celebrities to Beg for Customers

A few months ago I purchased a 20" 2007WFP monitor, a keyboard for an older laptop, and another keyboard for one of my other boxes. The laptop keyboard was from their refurb site, and so was the other keyboard (though it was brand new). The monitor shipped fine and on time. My keyboards just seemed to 'hang' in limbo. Then I got a cryptic email from (let's say) Laura at Dell. The email said that there had been a problem with my order, and I needed to call Dell's customer service.

100% sounded like a scam. Didn't even have dell logos or 'letter-head' in the email - just a 2 sentence email. But my stuff hadn't shipped, so even though this looked like a phishing email I decided to call. The people on the other end of the phone wanted to know my Social Security Number - without that they couldn't help me.

No way was I going to just dial a number I got in an email, and then fork over my SSN. (It's the perfect recipe for a phishing scam - just spam everyone with an email that there's a 'problem' with their order from Dell, and get anyone with a current Dell order to bite... )

What GALLS me is that this was REALLY, 100%, Dell. Not a phishing scam - just Dell's amazing customer service trying to 'help' me.

They had let the $300 monitor go through fine, but were forcing me through some sort of fraud protection on the $43 and $13 keyboards - to ensure that I was really me, and had really ordered the stuff in question. Gee guys, glad you've got my back on the $60 stuff...  

When I demanded to speak with a manager after being asked for my SSN (and refusing to give it) I was told that I could speak with a manager after giving them my SSN, and was actually hung up upon by 2 of their reps. I finally managed to squeeze another number I could call out of one of the reps - which was the actual Dell service #... and after 40 minutes of computerized menus and about 3 phone transfers I finally was able to get the story on how fraud prevention had intercepted the order....

But by this time the refurbed laptop keyboard was out of stock. Dell still wanted my $ at this point - did I want to apply that $$ to another purchase?

I told them to stuff their keyboards where the sun doesn't shine, and canceled the order.

But hey, Burt Reynolds, Ice-T, and other celebs think that Dell's a pretty cool gig. Maybe I should reconsider....

Posted on November 16, 2007 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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