Well, it’s about time:

The wait for the first 802.11n draft 2.0 products is over. D-Link announced Friday that it was the first company to have its products certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, which controls standards for wireless networking.

This standard had a longer gestation period than an elephant, I think. It’ll probably be a year before I upgrade my home network, although this Xtreme N Gigabit Router is tempting. How about you? Anybody out there dying for faster Wi-Fi?

And a word of caution: You’ll probably start seeing all sorts of deals on Draft N equipment. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Just say no.

In the course of a conversation this week, the topic turned to how you cope when you’re stuck on a project with incredibly stupid people. The answer, at least in my experience, is to wrap everything up as quickly as possible and move on so you don’t have to work with them anymore.

Which in turn led me to recall one of the great stupid movie characters of all time, Kevin Kline’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the stupefyingly dense and vulgar Otto, from A Fish Called Wanda. Through the miracle of IMDB’s Memorable Quotes, I bring you these immortal insults:

Wanda: He doesn’t have a clue.
Archie: What?
Wanda: He’s so dumb…
Archie: Really?
Wanda: …he thought that the Gettysburg Address was where Lincoln lived.

Wanda: To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I’ve known sheep who could outwit you. I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs, but you think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape?
Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don’t understand it.

Wanda: Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not “every man for himself”, and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.

John Cleese was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay, and Charles Crichton (who shared screenplay credit) was nominated for Best Director. (It was hard to compete with Rain Man that year, which won both those awards.)

If the movie were being made today, of course, that last line would be, “Those are all mistakes, Otto. I Googled them.”

I found out yesterday that I’ve received an MVP award this year in the Windows – Shell/User category.

The MVP award is retrospective recognition for work done during the past year, so this is a nice reward.

For the past month or so, I’ve been assembling pieces for a major re-do of my home entertainment system. I’ve got a new Onkyo TX-SR505 receiver, a new small-form-factor PC, and a big pile of cables. I’m replacing a high-end (in 2000, when it was new) Pioneer Elite receiver that still works but is increasingly frustrating to use. I’m also getting rid of a Pioneer 300-disk CD/DVD changer that has been rendered completely obsolete by digital music and big hard disks.  The video card has an HDMI output, the receiver includes a pair of HDMI inputs with a single output, and our existing HDTV has a single HDMI input.

The 50-inch Sony Grand WEGA is only two years old and should have several years of usable life ahead of it. We have a passable (barely) mismatched set of 5.1 speakers. Those will get an upgrade sometime soon but for now we’ll live with what we’ve got. My goal is to remove the network and have a single storage/payback point for digital media, including ripped tracks, downloaded music, CDs, and DVDs.

It’s always a challenge getting the wiring for this sort of project working just right, especially when you throw things like HDMI into the mix. Oh, and the two years’ worth of dust that has accumulated in the cabinet will be a wonder to behold, I’m sure. I’m sneezing just thinking about it. This will actually be the first time I’ve tried to use a PC as a full-time living room component. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Anyone else done this recently? Any advice?

Over at ZDNet, I’ve written a counterpoint to the widely quoted and amusing but (IMO) inaccurate notion that Windows Vista is the reincarnation of Windows Me. I see Vista going down a different path, the same one trod earlier by Windows 95:

Vista isn’t Me2, it’s Win95 + 12 years

[…]

So does Windows Vista deserve the Me2 label? After a careful look back at my Windows history books, I see Vista heading down a different path. In fact, I’m struck by how similar Vista’s path so far has been to the one that Windows 95 traveled. Let’s review: Windows 95 was launched with tremendous expectations on a tsunami of hype. It was notoriously unstable and finicky, and for the first year or two there weren’t all that many 32–bit programs. A total of four OEM service releases (in 1996 and 1997) added some interesting new features (like FAT32) but didn’t deal with the significant underlying problems of the OS.

It wasn’t until three years after Windows 95’s launch, with Windows 98 (and Windows 98 Second Edition a year after that) that the stability, performance, and interface problems were finally dealt with.

The similarities with Windows Vista are striking:

[…]

The comments have been especially interesting.

One commenter over there wondered if I was really trying to say that Windows Vista sucks just like Windows 95, so everyone should wait for the next version.

No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.

I didn’t say Windows 95 sucked. I said it had problems (can we talk system resources, anyone?). On balance, it was quite usable, and anyone knowledgeable learned how to work around the problems. I think the same is true of Vista today.

In the case of Windows 95, the flawed OS was still better than its predecessor, Windows 3.1, for most people, so they accepted the problems and learned to deal with them. Windows 98 fixed a number of those problems and generally added a level of polish that the original didn’t have.

In the case of Vista, there’s a perfectly good alternative in Windows XP, which is why a lot of people will wait to upgrade. I regularly hear people say, “Hey, Windows XP is doing everything I want it to do, so why should I change?” There are good reasons why some people might choose to upgrade (especially on mobile systems) but there’s little penalty in waiting.

So Vista has some compelling advantages for some people today. For others, perhaps many others, its inconveniences and temporary incompatibilities outweigh the advantages.

Read the whole historical comparison here: Vista isn’t Me2, it’s Win95 + 12 years, and feel free to leave comments here or there.

Update 2-July: Survey is now closed. Thanks, everyone! 

I’m getting ready to close the survey, so here’s your last chance to help me out (and maybe win a free book) by taking a few minutes to answer some questions:

Besides the standard demographic questions, you’ll find five questions that are specific to this site. Those results will help me determine what you want me to write about.

As an incentive, I’ve got five copies of Windows Vista Inside Out or Windows XP Inside Out (retail value $35 or more) to give away to a randomly selected group of respondents. To qualify for that drawing, leave your (real) e-mail address in the box next to Question 19. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, just leave that box blank.

Thanks for your help.

Ian Easson left this comment on my earlier post about the availability of new ATI video drivers:

I was looking forward to this release, because they finally supported the ATI All-in-Wonder properly, so that you can use the video watching and recording capabilities in Vista. Unfortunately, as soon as I installed 7.6, IE 7 slowed down to a crawl. I mean it took minutes for a menu to pop up! I uninstalled 7.6, and everything is back to normal in IE7. Here’s hoping they will fix things in 7.7.

I had not noticed that the AIW support was baked into this release (I don’t have an AIW, so it wasn’t on my radar). If you’ve got an All-in-Wonder, have you tried this driver? Are you also experiencing this problem? If so, please leave a comment below.

The next wave of services for Windows Live includes an update to Windows Photo Gallery.

Scott Dart has details.

Sounds like a nice application. I can’t tell you any more than that, though, because Microsoft has decided I’m not worthy to be in the beta. Pffffffft.

Less than one month after the last update, AMD subsidiary ATI has just kicked out another update of its graphics drivers for Windows Vista.

Get them here.

(Nvidia, it’s your turn.)