Month: August 2005

When will the next Media Center update arrive?

Chris Lanier asks the rhetorical question, When Will Media Center Update Rollup 2 Ship?

According to Neowin, what we know now as Windows XP Media Center Edition Update Rollup 2 RTM’d on August 12th (Last Friday).  However, when might the actually web release be if it RTM’d on August 12th?  Take a trip down the Media Center release timeframe table and you should get a good idea of when it might ship (eg. be available for download).  I’ll have more of the content posted from Neowin later.

 

MCE v1 – Oct. 29, 2002

MCE 2004 – Sep. 30, 2003

MCE 2005/Update Rollup 1- Oct. 12/17, 2004

MCE 2005 Update Rollup 2 – ?

If Chris is reading the tea leaves correctly, Microsoft is going to sit on this update for nearly two months. I think this timeline might be off a little bit, however, because this rollup is not like its predecessors. For the past three years, each fall has seen the debut of a completely new edition of Windows Media Center Edition. In 2002 and 2003, the OS was sold only through OEMs, and no upgrade path was available. In 2004, with the release of MCE 2005, Microsoft finally made the OEM version available for white-box makers and hobbyists in addition to big OEMs, but there was still no upgrade path. This year, for the first time in four years, there won’t be a new MCE version number. Instead, anyone who owns MCE 2005 can upgrade to the latest code by downloading and installing a rollup package, and OEMs who sell MCE computers can incorporate the rollup into their new machines as well.

The files in the MCE 2005 system folders have date/time stamps of August 10, 2004. That’s when last year’s code was locked down and the process of making it ready for OEMs (and for retail sale) began. As Chris correctly notes, MCE 2005 wasn’t officially released until October 12, and it was followed a few days later (Chris says October 17, but the download page is actually dated October 15, 2004) by a rollup package that added over-the-air HDTV support and a few bug fixes.

It made marketing sense to hold the release of MCE 2005 from August 2004 until its official launch in October. MCE 2005 wasn’t a downloadable product, and the rollup was useless to anyone running a previous MCE version. But it doesn’t make any sense to delay this year’s rollup for two months. OEMs can continue to sell MCE 2005 from now until then, and they don’t have to worry about customers getting stuck with an obsolete OS version. Meanwhile, Media Center customers (a million of them as of April, with perhaps another half-million since then) can benefit immediately from whatever features are in the update. So why delay it? Microsoft has already determined that it makes no sense to change version numbers this year. Anyone who buys MCE 2005 can download the update, and OEMs can slipstream the rollup package when they’re ready.

Holding the Rollup 2 package for weeks or months isn’t good for anyone. Microsoft, if this update is ready to go, release it!

“Windows Vista … hands down better than Windows XP”

Tim Coyle has an interview with Charlie Owen of Microsoft’s Media Center team. I thought this part was interesting:

I know you probably can’t say much about Longhorn, but what are you hoping will be in Longhorn?

You’re right — I can’t talk about Windows Vista much. I will say I have been using it on a daily basis as my main workhorse machine already for a while now and it’s hands down better than Windows XP. That bodes well for consumers and developers, especially considering we just recently hit the beta 1 milestone.


I’ve now got Windows Vista running on two machines, including a Tablet PC. It’s very stable, and the new shell is growing on me.

What’s in a name?

Mike Torres spots a trend:

Would anyone like a lesson in how FUD spreads in the blogosphere?  Start here, then go here, here, here, and then finally here.  When you are finished, email me a list of the people (with URLs) complaining they "don’t like the name RSS and propose to change it to something better." 

Good luck.

A little background: Dave Winer has done much of the development work to bring the RSS format to its current state. He is a pioneer in the software industry. He deserves his own page on Wikipedia, and sure enough, he has one. Dave has a history of complaining, loudly and repeatedly, when others step into the field he claims is his own. He has carried on a running feud with Google and Blogger over their attempts to develop a new syndication format called Atom instead of using RSS 2.0. (You can read a balanced description here and a less balanced but much more entertaining account from Ben Hammersley here.)

In the first beta release of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft has added a Feeds button to the standard toolbar and a Web Feed Discovery Settings dialog box to configure how it works. As you can see from this screen shot, it doesn’t use the RSS brand anywhere.

Winer sees this as a slap in the face and a deliberate attempt by Microsoft (and Google) to co-opt the RSS brand. I can’t understand why Dave Winer continues tilting at this windmill. (This post in particular is really over the top.)

Personally, I think Web feeds (oh, and did you notice the lower-case “w” in the IE7 dialog box?) is a much more descriptive term than RSS. If I see that term on a Web page, I can probably suss out what it means, whereas if I see RSS I need to find an encyclopedia article to explain it. Scoble notes that non-techies seem to have adjusted to terms like CD and DVD (he doesn’t mention VHS or USB, although those would also be good examples). The difference? All of those terms were pushed by large corporations intent on establishing a brand so they could sell products. The CD came from Philips Electronics in partnership with Sony. DVDs came from the DVD Forum, which was founded by 10 very large corporations, most of them in the consumer electronics business. VHS is a JVC invention, and USB is another technology that comes from a consortium.

The important point here is that brand names get established because people want to sell stuff, and brands help them simplify the process of explaining what the stuff they’re trying to sell is for. If RSS is really a great brand, as Dave Winer insists, then it should be easy to find big organizations that will put their market weight behind that brand.

I’m currently using FeedDemon to subscribe to Web pages that offer their content in a compatible format. Would Dave insist that Nick Bradbury change its name to RSSDemon? This technology is still in its infancy. It’s not even a blip on the radar of the vast, vast majority of people on the Internet, much less on the planet. Insisting that RSS is the one true name for the technology is a little premature.

In another overwrought post, Winer speculates on what would happen if Microsoft tried to change the names of some companies that compete with it, like Yahoo and Google and Netscape. Huh? Please send a baggie of whatever you’re smoking my way, Dave. It must be really awesome.

Winer thinks this is a battle, and that Microsoft is trying to change the name of a feature because they want to screw him. (I’m not making this up. That’s really what he said.) News flash: Microsoft is in business to sell software. The reason some people at Microsoft are exploring alternatives to RSS is because people don’t understand the term. You put an RSS button on a Web page, and most ordinary people just slide right by it. I’ve been to Microsoft’s usability labs, where they test features like this. My guess is that they’ve been testing RSS features in the labs, and they’re trying to find the words that will help people understand and use this technology. Software developers who’ve seen their features go through usability testing usually get a big wake-up call from the experience. Dave, you should schedule a visit to the usability lab and see for yourself.

DirecTV and TiVo get closer to Splitsville

PVR Wire has the latest installment in the DirecTV/TiVo feud:

It’s not really news, but it does make it official: DirecTV will stop marketing TiVo’s PVRs later this year, replacing them with NDS Group Plc technology, which is owned by DirecTV investor News Corp.

The word came Wednesday during Reuters Telecommunications, Cable and Satellite Summit in New York City. "The product we will market is our product," DirecTV Chief Executive Chase Carey said. However, he suggested that customers can still get TiVo if they ask.

The NDS PVRs have high-capacity hard drives that store frequently watched programs, creating an almost video-on-demand experience for users.

The NDS box will reportedly be able to handle MPEG4 format streams, which means more hi-def with less hard drive storage. It’ll be interesting to see whether DirecTV offers incentives to current TiVo owners to get them to upgrade.

And a prediction: It’ll be 2007 before the HD versions of these new boxes are available outside of a few test markets.

Windows Vista Inside Out

In a comment on an older post, John Sercel asks: “Any chance of a ‘Windows Vista Inside Out’ any time soon?”

Soon? No. Carl Siechert, Craig Stinson, and I definitely plan to do that title and have it available as soon as Windows Vista is ready, which is a little over a year from now. Meanwhile, we’re talking with Microsoft Press about ways to cover Windows Vista while it’s still in beta. So, a few questions for all of you:

  • Would you be interested in a book that covered the public beta version of Windows Vista? (Obviously not the same depth as an Inside Out title!)
  • Would you like to see a blog that focused on the public beta version of Windows Vista from the perspective of intermediate to advanced Windows users (not network administrators or IT Pros?
  • Do you think you’ll upgrade to Windows Vista soon after it’s released?
  • Is the ability to run Windows Vista going to be a key determinant in your hardware purchasing decisions over the next year?

I’ve actually switched over to Windows Vista for most day-to-day computing tasks. Part of the experience is a joy, but there are obviously a few beta demons to grapple with. I’ll keep you posted.

Tip of the day: Clear the most recently used files list

Windows keeps track of all the files you open from within Windows (by double-clicking a file in Windows Explorer, for instance). This can have privacy implications, and over time the %userprofile%\Recent folder, where shortcuts to all tracked files are stored, can get cluttered. To empty this folder, right-click the Start button, choose Properties, and click the Customize button to the right of the Start menu option. In the Customize Start Menu dialog box, click the Advanced tab.

To empty the Recent folder, click Clear List. (This option deletes the shortcuts in the Recent folder only; it doesn’t delete the files themselves!) To stop keeping track of recently used files, To hide the My Recent Documents shortcut on the start menu, clear the List my most recently opened documents checkbox.

Update: The original version of this tip contained an error, which I’ve highlighted and corrected above. If you want to stop tracking recently opened files in Windows, you’ll need to change the attributes or permissions of the Recent folder or use a third-party utility. Microsoft’s Tweak UI PowerToy for Windows XP can do the job. Click the Explorer heading and clear the Maintrain document history option.

Tip of the day: Get to Windows management tools faster

In Windows XP Inside Out, we listed a bunch of command-line shortcuts that can take you to useful spots within the Windows interface, usually much faster than the point-and-click method. Instead of drilling down through the Start menu, just click Start, Run, type in one of the following commands, and press Enter. Here are a few examples of the command that open common management tools directly:

Management tool Command
Device Manager Devmgmt.msc
Services console Services.msc
Disk Management Diskmgmt.msc
Computer Management console Compmgmt.msc

In each case, you’ll notice that the command ends with .msc. That extension means the utility is a saved Microsoft Console (technically, a Microsoft Common Console Document). The names are reasonably intuitive, and if you do a lot of system maintenance and are comfortable with the command line, these shortcuts can save you a few seconds here and there.