It reads,”Windows Vista – The Digital Future Starts Here.” Where does it start? There, right there? Gross. → Read More
http://www.crunchgear.com/video/player.swf?movie=microsoft.flv Here’s that commercial we told you about earlier – the first in the series of ads for Microsoft’s $300 million campaign to help prop up Windows Vista. I just grabbed it off my TV while watching the Giants/Redskins game. While this ad doesn’t really tell us anything about Microsoft or its products, it does tell us that someday computers will be edible. So there’s that. Gates is kinda funny, too. digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Microsoft_commercial_with_Bill_Gates_Jerry_Seinfeld’; → Read More
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is launching a $300 million ad campaign starting September 4th. The ads will star none other than Jerry Seinfeld, who’s reported to be receiving about $10 million. Not bad, eh? The campaign is being developed to combat the negative image that many consumers have about Windows Vista and also to finally push back against Apple’s popular Mac vs. PC campaign. So who will star opposite of Seinfeld in the Microsoft commercials? Bill Gates himself! While that could be seen as a bold and potentially dangerous move, the ad campaign will be the brainchild of agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the company behind Burger King ads (The King), Coke Zero (Coke wants to sue Coke Zero for taste infringement), and Virgin Atlantic Airways. The campaign will play off the slogan “Windows, Not Walls” and push the idea of “breaking down barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting.” That doesn’t sound all that funny, but here’s to hoping from some hilarity on September 4th. → Read More
Microsoft has a blog about Windows 7 now. It’s called E7, and it’s aimed at people like us, people who scrutinize the development (or lack thereof) of Windows to the nth degree. It’s supposed to be a conversation, right, about how they’re making Windows 7. The blog will primarily be written by two senior project managers, along with occasional input from the rest of the Windows 7 team. Now the bad. First, it reads a little too much like a press release for my liking; there’s like three linking verbs in the whole thing. It’s like the copy staff is sitting there making every sentence sing. It just feels rigid, which is not how blogs should ideally be. Second, it’s written by two project managers, guys whose job it is to make sure Windows 7 is the best it can be, from the top down. You know what would make a more interesting blog? Just give it to the everyday engineers and make it anonymous. That way, they can rant—well this feature is a load of bunk, but they’d fire me if I ever voiced my opinion—and give us a truly unfiltered “insider’s” view of its development. A good effort nonetheless. Hopefully it’ll still be an interesting read. → Read More
A recent article in APC Magazine finds a marketing manager for HP detailing how business users are still able to order machines pre-loaded with Windows XP while making it appear that the OS sold was Windows Vista. Jane Bradburn of HP Australia says, “From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP licence. However, what we have been able to do with Microsoft is ship PCs with a Vista Business licence but with XP pre-loaded. That is still the majority of business computers we are selling today.” So the business customer gets an XP machine but it appears on the books as a Vista license. Microsoft is aiming to make Windows XP completely unavailable by January of next year, but HP is apparently “already in discussions with Microsoft about how it could push this deadline back” because the feedback that HP’s been getting from businesses is that most of them don’t have time to do compatibility testing and the cost of re-imaging all their machines is too high during the slow economy. → Read More
Apple’s success with the iPod, iPhone and Mac is finally starting to worry Microsoft, according to the company’s recently filed 10-K form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (10-K forms summarize a publicly traded corporation’s performance, as required by the SEC.) In the filing, Microsoft says the following about a certain vertically integrated rival: A competing vertically-integrated model, in which a single firm controls both the software and hardware elements of a product, has been successful with certain consumer products such as personal computers, mobile phones and digital music players. That’s obviously an allusion to Apple, whose iPod is now the equivalent of Klenix or Q-Tips in terms of brand recognition; whose iPhone 3G has sold exceptionally well (despite apparent glitches and other hang-ups); and whose Mac propelled the company’s most recent, highly profitable quarter. → Read More
Willcom D4 UMPC: Vista Home Premium performance from Jenn Lee on Vimeo. Windows Vista gets a lot of stink for being too resource demanding, something this video here tries to dispel. This 12-minute video shows a Willcom D4 (1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM) running Vista, going through various processes in order to put the tablet to the sword, so to speak. As you might imagine, the tablet seems to hold up pretty well, certainly useable. That we’re still discussing “is Vista right for you,” 19 months after it first came out, must annoy Microsoft quite a bit. → Read More
While I’m never the first to jump on Vista for this or that problem (I’m guessing it’ll be a great OS in a couple years), this is pretty dumb. Larger capacity solid state disks are in the works and, being more complicated internally, will require a more sophisticated controller. You don’t think about your hard drive controller that much, and that’s probably because hard drive technology has been in the same generation for practically 20 years. And you expect a company like Microsoft to future-proof their OS so that the next wave of technology will work best on Windows — what a selling point it would be if SSDs just worked better on Vista, right? But Vista isn’t a forward-thinking OS, it’s a retrospective OS, the last and largest in a line of dinosaurs. And Sandisk says Vista isn’t ready for the next generation of SSDs. They’re gonna get zapped on this. → Read More
Since about 2002, the Department of Justice has had a special “Technical Committee” overseeing the development of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The committee’s main job was to monitor the implementation of the Microsoft-owned middleware products that get (or used to get) installed by default on new computers like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, and Windows Media Player. The monitoring process was supposed to end last November but, according to Microsoft Watch, “Google (and some other Microsoft competitors) requested an extension, and U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave it to them: two more years of government oversight.” → Read More
Dell, in its infinite wisdom, will charge customers $20 to $50 to downgrade from Vista to XP. Only buyers of low-end Vostro PCs have to worry, though. This is all because of Microsoft’s self-imposed June 30 end-of-life for Windows XP. Says the shrill ComputerWorld: Adding Vista Business to a Vostro 1000 notebook, for example, costs an additional $99 above the price with the default operating system, Vista Home Basic. However, selecting the downgrade option — Windows XP pre-installed and Vista Business installation media in the box — costs $149. That’s a $50 downgrade surcharge. Shocking! We should be rocking the Drudge Siren for this. Or, as John Biggs would say, get a Mac. No more downgrading nastiness. → Read More
The Pepper Pad 3, apparently not to be confused with the already-available Pepper Pad 3, has been spotted by AVING. This new version of the…um…board-like, lap-based, net surfing apparatus will feature Intel’s Atom processor and, according to AVING, “a 7-inch wide VGA touchscreen” and a Linux-based operating system. → Read More
Cameron over at TweakTown.com got Windows Vista Ultimate up and running on the new Asus Eee 1000H. The Windows Experience rating is a lowly 1.0, held back by the graphics card, but the system seems to otherwise work. The installation apparently only took about 30 minutes. Bonus points for using AC/DC in the video. → Read More
Heads up, Mac users who want to use Linux for some reason. The latest version of Parallels Desktop, the virtualization software that lets you run inferior operating systems on your Mac, now supports Parallel Tools when running Linux, including Ubuntu 8. Throw in enhanced 3D graphic support in Vista and you’ve got your self a Grade A point update. via MacNN → Read More
