I am amused by the steady drumbeat of rumors about the forthcoming Apple tablet. Before anyone gets too excited about what they’ve read, it might be instructive to go back and look at previous rumors. Here, for example, is a supposed mock-up of the iPhone, published by a now-defunct fan site in December 2006, only a month before the actual iPhone was publicly unveiled:

Love that slide-out keyboard. Whatever happened to it?

This mock-up is from a month earlier. Classic!

That one turned out to be part of a "viral marketing campaign." In other words, a hoax.

And here’s a rumored iPhone ad, previewed in August 2006. Funny, I don’t remember seeing this one.

Hilarious.

When you see pundits talking confidently about how Apple is going to revolutionize computing with its new iWhatever, just remember how wrong they’ve been in the past.

Anyone looking forward to buying a Tablet PC from Apple?

Update: A colleague points to MacLife’s amusing History of the Apple Tablet Rumor, originally produced last summer and much in need of updating…

CableCARD TV tuners for Windows have been around for several years, but they never really took off. The biggest barrier was the Windows Vista requirement of a special BIOS and activation code for a CableCARD system, which shut out the enthusiast market completely.

That all changed last September, when Microsoft and CableLabs announced that they would be eliminating those requirements for Windows 7. And within a few days after the launch of Windows 7, the Digital Cable Advisor was online; it checks your system specs and enables digital cable support if your system passes. (Details here.)

At the time of the September announcement, the only available digital cable tuners were the ATI Digital Wonder models. Although Ceton has announced plans to ship new models next year, they still haven’t provided a firm release date. The good news is that the ATI tuners, which had disappeared completely from the marker, are now back in stock at Cannon PC, as evidenced by this screen shot I captured a few minutes ago.

The price is still high, but if you’re tired of waiting, this is the only way I know to get started now. (And there’s no indication that the Ceton products will be any less expensive on a per-tuner basis.) For what it’s worth, I have three of the external ATI tuners running here on two different Windows 7 systems. As promised, they record local HD channels and unencrypted cable channels without any copy restrictions, which means those programs can be freely copied and shared between PCs and portable devices.

Anyone out there planning to install one of these devices? If so, you’d better move quickly.

(Thanks to MVP Mike Brown for the pointer.)

One question I hear often from Windows 7 upgraders (more often than I would have expected, in fact) is, "What happened to the old network activity indicator?" It’s true: the Windows 7 designers got rid of that little icon in the notification area that flashes to indicate that your network adapter is busy. One of the key design goals of Windows 7 was to make Windows "less noisy," and the Windows design team paid especially close attention to pop-up messages and other potential distractions in the lower right corner of the screen.

Personally, I don’t miss that flashing icon. But if you want it back, you can download a tiny utility written by Igor Tolmachev. It’s called, not surprisingly, Network Activity Indicator for Windows 7:

It uses a mere 1.3 MB of RAM and does exactly what it promises.

Update: In response to a question via Twitter, yes, this works with 64-bit Windows 7 editions as well as 32-bit (x86).

If you’ve been looking for a copy of Windows 7 Inside Out, here’s a great deal. To celebrate the new partnership between O’Reilly and Microsoft Press, O’Reilly is selling Microsoft Press books direct from its web site at up to 50% off. Use the discount code MSINT in your shopping cart to get the savings.

The best part is that O’Reilly offers the option to purchase e-books in addition to those heavy dead-tree versions. So you can get Windows 7 Inside Out in either edition: the printed version, which includes a PDF copy on the included CD, for 40% off the normal price of $49.99; or a DRM-free ebook (in any or all of the Android, Mobi, PDF, and ePub formats, suitable for use on Kindle, iPhone, and other e-reader platforms) for half off the normal price of $39.99.

If you want more information about how the ebook formats work, see the explanation here.

Remember to use the discount code MSINT at checkout. This offer is good for the rest of this year and expires on January 1, 2010, so don’t wait too long…

Have you cleaned your CD or DVD burner’s laser lately? Until this week, I had never tried using a special disk to clean dust from the laser in my optical drive. But that turned out to be the sure cure for a stubborn problem I encountered recently, and I thought it might be worth sharing my experience here.

For the past month or so, I’ve been frustrated when trying to burn music CDs. In a typical session I might be able to burn one music CD successfully, but trying to burn another would fail. The writing software would hang or appear to complete successfully and then return a write error. In some cases the drive itself would lock up so tightly the disk couldn’t be ejected until a restart. The burned disks wouldn’t play back properly on any other device.

I probably turned 30 disks into coasters while investigating this problem, trying every troubleshooting trick I know to find the source of the problem. Converting the source files to WAV format and caching them locally didn’t help. The problem wasn’t software, either, as I found by repeating the issue with multiple burning programs, including Media Monkey and Easy Media Creator 10.

I knew the cause wasn’t the media itself (high-quality Sony disks). I also knew the cause wasn’t specific to my original test system, as the problem was reproducible with a clean install of Windows 7 on a separate PC from a different OEM using a different brand of CD/DVD burner. Both systems had plenty of RAM and fast quad-core CPUs and had burned plenty of CDs over their lifespan. Searching forums and support sites I found scattered reports of people with similar problems but little in common with my configuration. In fact, I found several posts from people who had experienced similar problems using OS X.

By this point I was beginning to suspect a conflict between Windows and the drive or drive controller—both drives were connected to a Intel ICH8R/ICH9R SATA controller using Intel Matrix Storage drivers.

To rule out the controller, I tried an external drive, using an LG combo Blu-ray reader and DVD writer. This SATA drive is mounted in an external enclosure with its own power supply, and I used the USB output to connect it to my Windows PC. This time I was able to burn multiple CDs in quick succession with no problems using every imaginable combination of file formats and software. But when I hooked up a second drive to a SATA-to-USB converter and tried using it as a burner, I got coasters again.

In several forum posts, I had read recommendations for special disks designed to clean the laser on a CD/DVD player/burner. I found this Memorex model at Amazon for $6.03 (the price has since risen to $7.98), and decided to take a chance. (This Allsop model costs about $5 more at Amazon but also gets excellent reviews.)

When I received the product and removed it from its packaging, I have to confess I was skeptical. It looks like a regular music CD with instructions on the label side and a half dozen small brushes arranged in a track on the bottom (shiny side) near the center of the disk. In Windows Media Player, it plays like a music CD, with 14 tracks that include audio instructions delivered in a friendly female voice, along with some test tones to help you determine whether your speakers are wired correctly.

After completing the entire suite of tests in 10 minutes or so, I popped in a blank CD, fired up Media Monkey, and told the software to burn a collection of FLAC files from a network location to CD, converting them to WAV files in a local cache on the fly. Surprise! The first disk burned just fine. As did a second, a third, and a fourth.

Still slightly skeptical, I ran the disk cleaner on my other test system and tried the same operation. The results were the same: 100% success using multiple disks, multiple burning programs, and multiple source file formats.

The Memorex marketing copy says the disk “has 6 ultra-soft brushes designed to safely remove dust and dirt from your CD/DVD player’s lens” and recommends using it “after every 10 hours of playback to ensure optimum laser performance.” Given my results here, I plan to do exactly that.

When Microsoft announced its intention to offer a Windows 7 Family Pack consisting of three upgrades to Home Premium edition for $150 or less, they warned that it was a “limited time offer.” Now we know just how limited it was.

Today, barely six weeks after the public launch date on October 22, Paul Thurrott reports that stocks of the Family Pack have “disappeared” in the United States. Sure enough, when I checked at Amazon.com, Newegg.com, and Walmart this morning I found that the Family Pack stocks are gone, and scalpers have moved in. Enterprising Amazon Associates are offering copies for $260 or more. Even Bing Shopping turns up only one seller with the product in stock, at $272, which is nearly double its list price.

For Microsoft, this decision is stupid and short-sighted. It’s guaranteed to bring them a boatload of ill will and bad publicity in the final three weeks before Christmas. It looks greedy and decidedly not “customer focused.”

When I asked a Microsoft spokesperson for comment, here’s what I was told:

The Windows 7 Family Pack was introduced as a limited time offer while supplies last in select geographies. Response has been very positive and in some cases, the offer has sold out.  Customers interested in upgrading their PCs should purchase Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate upgrade products.

I haven’t heard much about the Grinch lately. Now I know why. He’s been hanging out in Redmond, working on marketing plans and drafting statements for the press.

Humbug.