Just read this announcement:
I’m pleased to share with all of you that we’ve signed a deal with the Windows Media Center team at Microsoft to own and manage the TGB web site, which will help take our community to the next level.
The purchase price was probably a little less than they were going to pay for Yahoo, but hey…
Congrats to all the TGB folks.
Allway Sync is one of the programs on my list of 10 favorite Windows programs of all time. I’m pretty good about keeping it up to date, so I was surprised to see today that version 8.2.1 was available as an update to my current version, 7.1.2. How did I fall so far behind?
I didn’t, it turns out. Version 8 has been in beta testing since March. The first official release (8.1.0) was two weeks ago, and there have been two updates since then to fix what the news page describes as “minor bugs” and some compatibility issues with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
I just downloaded and installed the new version and immediately noticed a welcome change: The sync options now include FTP folders and Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3).
I’ve been using this software to keep files in sync across machines on my local network. Looks like I’ll be able to use it as a client for syncing stuff to the cloud, too. The Amazon S3 option is especially intriguing, as it represents cheap cloud storage that can be accessed by any client using its APIs. I don’t currently have an S3 account set up, but the service gets rave reviews and it’s been on my to-do list for a while. That project just got moved a lot higher on the stack.
Update: Well, it took me about five minutes to activate my Amazon S3 account (I’ve had an Amazon Web Services account for years, so it was just a matter of checking a box and agreeing on a payment method). I had to cut and paste two digital keys into the AllwaySync configuration dialog box, and that was all the setup required. I am busily backing up my digital pictures to cloud storage right now. According to the S3 estimates, I could store 100GB, transferring 40GB or so per month upstream and 5GB downstream, for about $20 a month. Pretty good deal. AllwaySync is currently about halfway through synchronizing my 7500+ digital pictures to the cloud. Nice!
In July of 2007, Microsoft began pushing out an automatic update to the Windows Update client software that runs on Windows Vista and XP. From Microsoft’s point of view it was routine stuff, done many times before and never considered controversial. Except this update had an unfortunate bug that affected a small number of customers that repaired PC’s using the repair option on the Windows XP installation media. The discussion of that bug and its fix revealed to many people that Microsoft had installed an update automatically, without any notice.
So, for this year’s Windows Update infrastructure update and accompanying client software update, Microsoft is overcommunicating in advance, scheduling conference calls with the press, blogging about the change, updating a KB article. Oh, and when you do get the update you’ll see an entry in the Windows Update history log that provides more details.
I’ve got more details over at ZDNet:
Jon Gordon interviewed me last week for Future Tense. The results are now available in podcast form at the American Public Media website:
It’s Windows XP, not Vista, inside Intel
As the New York Times reported last week, Intel does not plan to upgrade its corporate computers to Windows Vista, the beleaguered operating system from Microsoft.
Even though many analysts and online commentators see Intel’s move as an embarrassment for Microsoft, Windows expert Ed Bott says it’s no big deal.
(Thanks to Disk Kusleika in the comments for pointing out the podcast.)
Last week it was all Bill Gates, all the time. This week, the Windows+Microsoft folder of my RSS reader is stuffed with tearful goodbyes to Windows XP this past week, coupled with craptastic punditry about the future of Windows, has made it difficult to find actual insights.
Fortunately, something rare hit my radar today: a long, well-researched, fact-filled look at Windows and its competition. Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music wrote Adieu, XP; How Vista SP1 is Doing, and Why This OS Generation Has Been So Tough. Maybe it’s because he brought the fresh perspective (that of a digital media professional) to a subject that has been pounded so thin in the past year that it’s hard to find anything new to say.
I found myself nodding in agreement as I read this piece, which contains its fair share of fair criticism and a relentlessly realistic point of view. I was especially taken with the XP-versus-Vista section near the end. The three reasons you should use Windows XP are pretty straightforward (it’s working; you’ve got an older PC; you need it for specific compatibility reasons), but the list of eight reasons you might want to run Vista are more interesting and included at least one I’ll bet you haven’t heard of unless you are a serious digital music aficionado.
As they say, go read the whole thing.
Rather than waste precious brain cells explaining why Randall Stross’s shrilly anti-Windows op-ed in the New York Times (Windows could use rush of fresh air) is full of crap, allow me to outsource the job:
Anonymous Microsoft blogger Shipping Seven, New York Times gets it wrong:
Trying to future proof software over more than a decade is like trying to predict the weather at 2pm, on the 4th of July 2045. Windows is pretty modern, just like everything else out there. I can’t really think of any ancient technology in Windows that is beyond salvage; everything important that needs to be overhauled can be overhauled, and has been…
Robert McLaws, I Can’t Believe New York Times Let This Get Published:
I believe that Mr. Stross has allowed his prejudices to cloud his search for the real facts. He uses Singularity as the impetus for his overall argument (hardly a novel strategy, as others with similarly nonexistent experience with this research OS have also taken this tack) without ever actually using the OS that he suggests should replace Windows on the at least 800M PCs it is currently running on. Singularity is designed to help people re-think application isolation for robust security, not for getting your 9-year-old printer to work.
Paul Thurrott, Randall Stross jumps the shark:
I am freaked to be saying this, but you, sir, know absolutely nothing about either Windows or Mac OS X and shouldn’t be giving this kind of advice. Shame on you for publishing such a story. Microsoft is right now working on further componentization of Windows ("MinWin"), a project that could very well result in the type of "just-enough" OS that, no, Apple doesn’t have today either. But even today’s Windows versions (Vista and Server 2008) are architecturally and factually quite different–i.e. "superior"–to what you’ve described.
Brandon Paddock, NYT article says we should throw away Windows:
Stross and others seem to be under the mistaken impression that Microsoft is somehow unable to change the existing Windows codebase. These guys present two options:
1) Build stuff on top of the last version of Windows
2) Start over.
Why pretend that these are the only two options? Especially when historically Microsoft has always chosen door number 3:
Take what you have and make it better.
Replace the parts that need replacing.
Don’t break something without a good reason.
For a professor of business, Stross sure is fast and loose with his facts and sloppy with his research. I lost track of the number of gross factual errors I read in Stross’s original article. Here’s my favorite part:
Microsoft … should take heart from Apple’s willingness to brave the wrath of its users when, in 2001, it introduced Mac OS X. It was based on a modern microkernel design, which runs a very small set of essential services that make the system less vulnerable to crashes.
Quick quiz: When was the Windows NT kernel (which is at the heart of all current Windows versions) written? When was the Mach microkernel (which is at the heart of all current OS X versions) written? Answer: Both date back to the early 1990s. So why is one more “modern” than the other?
I don’t think InfoWorld editor Eric Knorr meant this to be funny:
Last Friday, we FedEx’d the Save Windows XP petition to Steve Ballmer. I have to say that sliding the memory stick into the envelope was an emotional experience…
Wow. I guess the definition of “emotional experience” has changed since I left Silicon Valley 12 years ago. The idea that people can go all emo about an operating system just doesn’t compute for me.
Eric and I worked together years ago at PC World. He was a good guy then and I doubt that he has changed in the meantime. But this whole Save XP campaign is one of the most cynical, manipulative, and misguided things I’ve ever seen.
Today’s the last day you can buy Windows XP preinstalled on new PCs from Microsoft’s largest OEM customers (the so-called royalty OEMs).
To mark the occasion, I did an interview with Larry Magid of CBS News. You’ll hear sound bits on the radio, or listen to the whole thing (roughly 6 minutes) here:
http://audio.cbsnews.com/2008/06/28/audio4216829.mp3
Larry’s an awesome interviewer and a skilled audio editor, and I was impressed with how crisp the interview turned out. Take a listen and leave some feedback in the comments.
Charles Arthur tees up on a Wired article by Kevin Kelly and demolishes it: No, Mr Kelly, I’m afraid the internet is not as clever as a single (human) brain.
Charles’ writing is brilliantly caustic. Samples:
Run up and down a flight of stairs (to get the required level of breathlessness), and then read the following…
and
Honestly: it’s hard to know quite what Kelly is trying to do here, unless it’s to make everyone point to him – but is it helpful to have people pointing at you saying "that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard?"
and bonus points for the commenters, who join the scrum with glee:
The numbers are, I suppose, wowifying on their own, for the easily impressed, but to turn them into an argument for ‘We are headed toward a singular destiny: one vast computer composed of billions of chips and billions of brains, enveloping the planet in a single sphere of intelligence’ seems to me like finding it amazing that if you laid 36,000 Statues of Liberty on their end it would reach the moon and deciding on that basis that sculptors are actually working on a space programme.
Interesting poll results at We Got Served, which asked its visitors to list the hardware they’re using to run Windows Home Server. With 519 responses (only 7 from people saying “none yet, but I want one”), the results show that custom-built servers are most popular among enthusiasts, grabbing about 67% of the market. Of the remaining 33%, HP not surprisingly has the lion’s share, with a total of 123 respondents claiming ownership of a MediaSmart Server. That’s nearly 24% of the total. Impressive.
Ed Bott 