Well, sort of. Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista is still a beta, nearly a year after it was first previewed at CES 2007 (and months after I wondered out loud why it was taking so long). An incomplete beta, no less.

Long Zheng has some screen shots and sharp analysis. No doubt he will do a pixel-by-pixel analysis of the icons in the Messenger window. I bow to his superior knowledge and this critique:

The major disappointment is the lack of voice, video and sharing capabilities which were widely fanfared and demonstrated at CES. These features simply don’t exist in this version which leaves this client nothing more than just a fancy text instant messenger. The official blog states explains these features and more are coming in future releases which I hope isn’t on a 12-month cycle.

I will, nonetheless, give it a try.

Update: The How-To Geek has more and whizzier screen shots but concludes: “They are supposed to be adding a lot more features over the next year, but I think I’ll stick with Pidgin or Adium since I don’t really use Yahoo messenger anyway…”

Microsoft just posted a release candidate of Vista Service Pack 1 for its gaggle of official beta testers. The code will be unveiled for public scrutiny next week.

As for the final release schedule, here’s what Microsoft’s Nick White reports:

[W]e’re on track to complete and release SP1 in the first quarter of 2008.  When SP1 is complete and we reach our release to manufacturing (RTM) milestone, then shortly after the standalone installer will be released to the Web in two waves.  The first wave will consist of the standalone installer (x86 and x64) for the 5 initial languages — English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese.  These languages will be deployed shortly after the RTM milestone.  The second wave will launch 8-12 weeks after the first and will consist of all remaining languages, for both chip architectures (x86 and x64)

I’ve finished downloading the x86 and x64 betas and will pass along my experiences when I can. For what it’s worth, “release candidate” is still beta. It can and will have bugs, so don’t even think about installing this not-quite-ready-for-prime-time player unless you know what you’re signing up for.

The good news is that previous betas in this series have been easy to remove. I expect this release to follow in that tradition.

WGA is about to get a huge overhaul. If you’re looking for a reason to install SP1 when it’s released next year, this might be it. Details here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=334

I was shocked and saddened to learn this morning that my dear friend and colleague Marc Orchant has suffered a massive coronary and is in critical condition in the critical cardiac care unit at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque.

Judy and I were privileged to join Marc and his family as they celebrated his 50th birthday this past summer, and we saw Marc and his wife Sue just a month ago for dinner. He was full of excitement and enthusiasm about some new opportunities that he was about to embark on and we had a wonderful evening together.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Marc and his wife Sue and their two wonderful children at this difficult time. If you know Marc, please follow the link above for more details including contact information at the hospital.

You know it’s almost December when you start seeing Top 10 lists everywhere you like. Still, I kinda like Amazon.com’s Best Books of 2007: Editors’ Picks in Computers & Internet. (Hint: There’s only one Windows Vista book on the list, and it would be an excellent gift for your favorite geek…)

Sometime last week, the folks at Linksys quietly updated their product page for the next generation Vista-compatible Media Center extenders. Where it used to say “Coming in November,” the page now reads, “Coming soon.”

Meanwhile, Chris Lanier picked up a tidbit from the Green Button forums, where a poster heard that D-Link has delayed shipments of its DSM-750 extenders until “end of Dec/early Jan.”

Would it kill these people to actually put out a news release or contact some people in the community with authoritative information? Sheesh.

[Update: I just got confirmation from a D-Link spokesperson that the DSM-750 has indeed been delayed. Review units will not be available until mid-December at the earliest, which means that units for the retail channel won’t be ready until the new year. Bummer.]

{Another update: No review units, but as of late December I have purchased two Linksys extenders, which are working well. Details here.]

Oh, the irony in those “I’m a PC. I’m a Mac” commercials.

A Mac enthusiast site has the latest report of troubles from Cupertino, specifically, keyboard failures in OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard):

Some users of Apple’s Intel-based portables are reporting that their keyboards are periodically seizing up during use, especially after upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard.

Numerous posts in Apple’s support forums for the MacBook and MacBook Pro, as well as AppleInsider‘s own forum, attest to the glitch. By most indications, the flaw effectively shuts down the keyboard at unpredictable intervals until either resolved on its own or else by restarting or waking the system.

A follow-up post at another enthusiast site points to battery life problems as well:

Apple’s release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard appears to have brought with it battery drain and intermittent keyboard freezing issues, which are plaguing some MacBook and MacBook Pro owners. […] Some users are reporting on Apple’s forums that where Tiger allowed a normal three hours or so of notebook use, they are now down to two or less. “My laptop has become unportable,” says a poster in one thread.

The 10.5.1 patch and firmware update (made available three weeks after Leopard was released) apparently don’t fix this problem, although they do apparently resolve the earlier problem with monitors randomly freezing on new iMacs.

For sheer Schadenfreude, there’s nothing like popping in on some Apple message boards. Like this one:

Is it just me, or is Leopard a MESS ??
Posted: Nov 12, 2007 8:57 AM

Two WEEKS now of pure frustration. […] I’m not a tech expert. I have used Macs for about 2 years and think they are fantastic. But after this Leopard fiasco I will not be so enthusiastic about them in the future.
If anyone in a position of responsibility reads this, then PLEASE ensure that a 10.5.1 release addresses the networking issues. ‘Connection timeout’; ‘Invalid password’; ‘Failed to connect’; and the dreaded ‘Self-assigned IP address’.
Never saw ANY of this with good old Tiger. It simply worked. Always. Oh I miss Tiger…

Which inspired a bunch of “it’s not just you” replies before the thread was locked a day later. One commenter said, “I believe this is the first OS upgrade where I am seriously thinking of back tracking to the previous version.”

No, don’t give up on Leopard!

And even upgrades to older OS X versions are less than trouble-free, apparently. John Battelle, who runs the Federated Media ad network that this site belongs to, is having a lousy time with his latest OS X upgrade:

I recently (over the weekend) upgraded to a suggested new version of Mac OSX, 10.4.11 or somesuch, and it’s killed my ability to work normally – Firefox and Safari both crash without notice nearly every time I launch em.

These sound an awful lot like the sorts of complaints people have had about Vista, don’t they?

For the record, I think both Vista and Leopard were probably about as well tested as they could be, and given the complexity of the personal computing ecosystem these days this sort of glitch is to be expected with any OS upgrade on any platform. But the irony is deeper and richer when it happens on the “it just works” platform.

I just got a piece of snail mail inviting me to join the IEEE Computer Society. My first instinct was to toss it in the trash with the other junk mail. But before I do, I thought it might be worth asking if anyone else is a member and wants to give a thumbs up/down.

Is it worth the $90 a year?

Several people have asked me where they can order one of the HP MediaSmart servers I reviewed last week at ZDNet. I recommend Amazon.com, which currently has some decent discounts. Full disclosure: If you order through one of the links below I get a commission of a few bucks.

If you do order from Amazon, be sure to sign up for my November 29 webcast and use the promotional code on the signup page, which cuts $20 off the price.

Update: The Amazon $20 off code is 5KUHQHRB and can be entered at checkout.

At least not for me.

Excaliber PC just sent me a nice e-mail letting me know that the Linksys extender I ordered yesterday is not scheduled to arrive in their warehouse until December 2.

Dang,

But kudos to them for clear communication.