Month: August 2005

New hardware or old?

A commenter on Scoble’s site asks an interesting question:

I’ve got a 4 year old PC running (barely) XP. My graphics card is a 64MB card, it’s an AMD duron 850, 256MB of RAM. It runs XP fine now, why should I upgrade it to Vista and won’t my upgrade costs be a little more than $10-20?

He points to a couple of PCs sold to the masses at Wal-Mart and wonders whether Windows Vista will run on those PCs. One is a $548 notebook with a 1.2GHz AMD processor, in the clearance section. The other is a 3GHz Celeron-powered Compaq Presario.

I see no reason why Windows Vista wouldn’t run on both of those machines, after a memory upgrade. The integrated graphics might mean that some of the whizzy 3D graphics would be missing, but all of the features of Windows Vista would work, and I suspect it would be pretty speedy.

He continues:

That’s what Microsoft has to overcome. It’s not that people have to fork over $20 to upgrade, it’s that a lot of them have to buy an whole new computer to run Vista. My parents have a computer purchased in the last 3 years, yet I can’t get them to fork over $100 to get XP Home on their PC because it runs fine with Windows Me for what they want to do. I’ve seen OS X running on blueberry clamshell iBooks and iMacs for cryin’ out loud. Not fast, but as fast as my XP install at home. Why doesn’t Microsoft release an OS that scales backwards as well as forward?

My experience with Windows upgrades through the years is that any PC built within two years of the launch date will deliver a pretty decent experience, especially if you’re willing to upgrade RAM. A PC that’s three years old should run acceptably, especially if you don’t demand a lot from it. Anything older than that is a science project, not a serious technology investment. Windows Vista is more graphically intensive than any previous Windows version, so the graphics subsystem will be more of an issue for mainstream users than it has been in the past, but not an insurmountable one.

I think a lot of this concern is a red herring, though. Most people who will buy a bargain-basement PC from Wal-Mart are not the sort who are going to be salivating for a Windows Vista upgrade. If they were that concerned with flashy new technology, they’d spend a couple hundred dollars more and get a system that will deliver some of that flash right now.

In the past five years, I’ve helped dozens of people buy new PCs. With virtually no exceptions, they upgraded to Windows with the purchase of a new PC. When you work out the economics of upgrading (extra RAM, bigger hard drive, retail/upgrade version of Windows), the cost of a whole new PC is usually not that much more than the upgrade. And that’s the way the market has worked for 10+ years. For every copy of Windows sold in a shrink-wrapped box, there are 10 copies sold pre-loaded on a new PC.

To return to the commenter’s original question… Why should he upgrade his four-year-old PC (which will be five years old next year when Windows Vista is released)? He shouldn’t. It makes no sense. If it’s performing acceptably for the tasks he performs, there’s no need to upgrade. If it’s falling short, four or five years is a reasonable life for any piece of technological equipment, and the arrival of Windows Vista would be a good reason to replace it.

Worm attacks ABC, CNN, New York Times

Last week, Microsoft issued a critical update for a serious vulnerability in Windows 2000 and versions of Windows XP before Service Pack 1. Today, a worm that exploited that vulnerability hit some of the United States’ media giants:

A computer worm shut down computer systems running the Windows 2000 operating system across the United States on Tuesday, hitting computers at CNN, ABC and The New York Times.

Around 5 p.m. computers began crashing at CNN facilities in New York and Atlanta. ABC said its problems began in New York about 1:30 p.m.

There is no excuse for these companies being unprepared for this. After CodeRed and Sasser and Blaster and other similar worms, the IT departments at these companies should have been ready to deploy critical updates like this one for any operating system, not just Windows. We’ve known for years that exploits like these can be go from proof-of-concept code to a full-fledged destructive worm almost literally overnight, as this outbreak proves once again. Even if they weren’t prepared to deploy a patch immediately, basic firewall software and a network configuration that blocks ports 139 and 445 from entering the network (all documented in the Workarounds section of this security bulletin) could have prevented the spread of this worm.

If you’re running Windows 2000, better check your security settings. You’re definitely at risk.

Out, out, damned (Mac) FUD!

The Mac Observer gets all breathless in a short article that speculates (inaccurately) about the future of Windows Vista:

When Windows Vista ships at the end of 2006, it may not run on the cut-rate PCs sold by Dell, Gateway and other companies. Gene Steinberg, in his latest column at The Mac Night Owl, notes that Vista’s current requirements call for a non-integrated graphics card with 64MB video RAM and support for DirectX 9, which rules out many of those cheap US$400 and $500 systems, as well as Windows laptops released before this year.

Why would anyone go to a Mac site for PC news? The number of errors in this one short item are impressive. For starters, Windows Vista will indeed run on systems with underpowered graphics subsystems. They just won’t use the full-fledged Aero Glass 3D interface. (Read the full preliminary hardware guidelines here.)

I just did a quick online shopping exercise and found a compatible graphics card upgrade available today for as little as $32.99. If I’d looked a little harder, I probably could have found it for half that price. A year from now, when Windows Vista is ready to ship, those parts will probably be standard on low-end PCs.

And finally, leading motherboard makers are already making integrated graphics chips that meet the specifications to run Windows Vista. By next year at this time, low-end machines using the most recent motherboard designs should be fully ready for the new Windows.

That concludes today’s edition of FUD-busters.

What’s on your Start menu?

Dwight Silverman wants to start a new meme:

If you use Windows XP, and you’ve not fallen back to the simple, Windows 2000-style theme, your Start menu includes a list of frequently used programs. It’s there on the lower left side of the menu, and the default is six items. What’s there for you?

Dwight’s list is radically different from mine. He still uses a version of HomeSite I abandoned years ago, for instance. (And what is it about techies from Texas and WordPerfect, anyway?)

I could go on for about six screens if I counted every computer I have. So I’ll just concentrate on the two PCs I use most, one of which is running Windows XP Pro, the other running Windows Vista Beta 1. I’m changing the rules in another way as well. In both cases, the list consists of programs I’ve “pinned” to the Start menu, working from the top down. It doesn’t include Microsoft Outlook 2003 or Internet Explorer, both of which are permanently pinned to the top of the menu:

Windows Vista Beta 1:

  1. SyncToy – This is my new favorite Windows utility. I use it to keep music files and photos in sync on different machines. I also use it to keep backups of working files on my Tablet PC. If you have more than one computer, you have got to try this.
  2. Remote Desktop Connection – I can sit in my comfy chair in the living room and continue to work on the desktop PC.
  3. FeedDemon – NewsGator Outlook Edition doesn’t work with Windows Vista yet, so I’m trying the newest beta version of FeedDemon. I experimented with it for a while last year and wasn’t impressed, but it’s come a long way since then. Now that it synchronizes with NewsGator Web Edition, I’m finding a lot to like. (It also syncs with Bloglines, if you prefer that Web-based feed reader.)
  4. Microsoft Word 2003 – I write. I write books about Office. My copy of Word is heavily customized, needless to say!
  5. Microsoft Excel 2003 – Numbers, lists, charts, PivotTables. I use Excel for all sorts of stuff.
  6. Ecto – I’ve been happy with BlogJet as my tool for creating and editing blog-post, but alas, it doesn’t work well with Beta 1 of Windows Vista. So I’ve been experimenting with Ecto, and I like it. It lacks a WYSIWYG editor, but it’s more powerful in some respects. If you don’t mind seeing bare HTML in an editor window, check it out.

Windows XP Pro:

  1. Microsoft Word 2003 – Obviously.
  2. Microsoft Excel 2003 – Ditto.
  3. Microsoft Money 2004 – Online banking with scheduled payments is the best thing since sliced bread.
  4. Windows XP Inside Out Deluxe Second Edition eBook – I refer to this book a lot, so I keep the electronic version (in Acrobat Reader format) handy. The Search feature works better than even the most carefully composed index.
  5. Nero Burning ROM – Music and backups on CD or DVD.
  6. eMusic Tag Editor – It’s an essential part of keeping a well-organized digital music library.

Be sure to check out Dwight’s list and then tell us what’s on your Start menu?

Is the latest Media Center update ready yet?

On Saturday, I wrote briefly about a post that Chris Lanier published on his site, which speculated about the ship date of Windows XP Media Center Edition Update Rollup 2.

So … did that code actually ship as scheduled last week? The Neowin article that Chris used as his source was a couple months old, and it was actually pulled from Neowin’s site a few weeks later. In addition, it referred to a proposed schedule, not actual events.

Anyone on the eHome team want to take advantage of the anonymity of the Internet and clear things up? (I didn’t think so.)

Tip of the day: Stop highlighting new Start menu shortcuts

When you install a new program that adds one or more shortcuts to the Start menu, Windows XP highlights the new Start menu shortcuts for a few days. This highlighting, which appears in orange by default, makes it easier to find the new items and makes you
aware of added items that you might have otherwise overlooked. If you find the highlights distracting, you can turn this feature off.

  1. Right-click the Start button and choose Properties.
  2. In the Taskbar And Start Menu Properties dialog box, click the Customize button to the right of the Start Menu option.
  3. Click the Advanced tab and clear the Highlight Newly Installed Programs check box.
  4. Click OK to save your changes.

More on RSS versus feeds

Mike Torres spent a few minutes putting together a list of companies that don’t use the term RSS. Firefox. Bloglines. SixApart. Etc. He concludes:

I didn’t spend more than three minutes because after about three minutes, I realized Microsoft isn’t trying to rename RSS and I stopped.  RSS stopped being used long ago…

Conclusion: RSS is a great technology and a lousy brand. If you want people to actually use the technology, you need to find a better way to explain it to them.

(Background here.)