A welcome change in Microsoft licensing terms

For the past few years, OEM copies of Windows and Office have been sold under licensing terms that are just plain silly. Yes, you could buy an OEM copy of either product, at a substantial savings over the retail versions, but you had to purchase a “qualifying non-peripheral computer hardware component” with it. This resulted in the absurdity of people buying a 99-cent cable for a power supply to make the purchase legal. It also created lots of confusion in the marketplace

That’s now changed. The new licensing rules (link restricted to registered members of System Builder program) allow resellers to distribute unopened packs of Windows and Office to any “system builder” without requiring a trivial hardware purchase:

If you don’t open the pack, you can redistribute to other system builders without any hardware.

The new rules also specifically recognize hobbyists and PC enthusiasts as system builders:

OEM system builder software packs are intended for PC and server manufacturers or assemblers ONLY. They are not intended for distribution to end users. Unless the end user is actually assembling his/her own PC, in which case, that end user is considered a system builder as well.

So, go build yourself a PC!

Dell pretends to change its policies

Jeff Jarvis says, “Dell has changed its policy on blogs.”

Well, not exactly. Read the comments at Jeff’s site and you’ll see that Dell still doesn’t get it. Not even close.

Personally, I’ll know that Dell is beginning to wake up when I get an e-mail asking for more information about the problems with power supplies that are affecting huge numbers of owners of Dimension 4600 PCs. I won’t be holding my breath.

Tip of the day: Build your own external hard drive

For comprehensive backups, every PC owner should have an external hard drive. You can find ready-made drives at high prices, but I find it’s much cheaper and easier to build your own. If you can handle a screwdriver, you do this DIY project. You need two pieces:

Any hard drive. A standard 3.5-inch ATA (IDE) hard drive offers the best value. I recommend starting with a new drive rather than recycling an old drive, but if you have a big enough drive hanging around and you’re confident that it’s reliable, feel free to use it. These days, you can pick up a drive in the 80 – 200GB range for well under 50 cents a GB if you shop carefully. You can use 2.5-inch drives as well, but they’re more expensive.
An external enclosure kit. You can find these at just about any online computer parts retailer. Look for an enclosure that has its own fan, an external power supply, and USB 2.0 or FireWire connections. Enclosures for a 3.5-inch drive typically cost $18 and up. (This search at Newegg.com is a great starting point.)

Assembling the drive is a snap. Open the enclosure and attach the included data and power connectors to the drive. Fasten the drive to the enclosure case with screws (which should be included). Snap the enclosure shut, turn on the power, and plug the drive into a spare USB 2.0 port. You’ll need to format the drive using Windows XP’s Disk Management console (diskmgmt.msc), after which you can use it just like any other drive.

A word of advice: Check the pictures and reviews for external enclosures separately. I’m willing to pay a little more to get quality construction instead of cheap plastic, and I also appreciate the low noise levels of a ball bearing fan. A few extra dollars now can pay dividends later.

New hardware or old?

A commenter on Scoble’s site asks an interesting question:

I’ve got a 4 year old PC running (barely) XP. My graphics card is a 64MB card, it’s an AMD duron 850, 256MB of RAM. It runs XP fine now, why should I upgrade it to Vista and won’t my upgrade costs be a little more than $10-20?

He points to a couple of PCs sold to the masses at Wal-Mart and wonders whether Windows Vista will run on those PCs. One is a $548 notebook with a 1.2GHz AMD processor, in the clearance section. The other is a 3GHz Celeron-powered Compaq Presario.

I see no reason why Windows Vista wouldn’t run on both of those machines, after a memory upgrade. The integrated graphics might mean that some of the whizzy 3D graphics would be missing, but all of the features of Windows Vista would work, and I suspect it would be pretty speedy.

He continues:

That’s what Microsoft has to overcome. It’s not that people have to fork over $20 to upgrade, it’s that a lot of them have to buy an whole new computer to run Vista. My parents have a computer purchased in the last 3 years, yet I can’t get them to fork over $100 to get XP Home on their PC because it runs fine with Windows Me for what they want to do. I’ve seen OS X running on blueberry clamshell iBooks and iMacs for cryin’ out loud. Not fast, but as fast as my XP install at home. Why doesn’t Microsoft release an OS that scales backwards as well as forward?

My experience with Windows upgrades through the years is that any PC built within two years of the launch date will deliver a pretty decent experience, especially if you’re willing to upgrade RAM. A PC that’s three years old should run acceptably, especially if you don’t demand a lot from it. Anything older than that is a science project, not a serious technology investment. Windows Vista is more graphically intensive than any previous Windows version, so the graphics subsystem will be more of an issue for mainstream users than it has been in the past, but not an insurmountable one.

I think a lot of this concern is a red herring, though. Most people who will buy a bargain-basement PC from Wal-Mart are not the sort who are going to be salivating for a Windows Vista upgrade. If they were that concerned with flashy new technology, they’d spend a couple hundred dollars more and get a system that will deliver some of that flash right now.

In the past five years, I’ve helped dozens of people buy new PCs. With virtually no exceptions, they upgraded to Windows with the purchase of a new PC. When you work out the economics of upgrading (extra RAM, bigger hard drive, retail/upgrade version of Windows), the cost of a whole new PC is usually not that much more than the upgrade. And that’s the way the market has worked for 10+ years. For every copy of Windows sold in a shrink-wrapped box, there are 10 copies sold pre-loaded on a new PC.

To return to the commenter’s original question… Why should he upgrade his four-year-old PC (which will be five years old next year when Windows Vista is released)? He shouldn’t. It makes no sense. If it’s performing acceptably for the tasks he performs, there’s no need to upgrade. If it’s falling short, four or five years is a reasonable life for any piece of technological equipment, and the arrival of Windows Vista would be a good reason to replace it.

Out, out, damned (Mac) FUD!

The Mac Observer gets all breathless in a short article that speculates (inaccurately) about the future of Windows Vista:

When Windows Vista ships at the end of 2006, it may not run on the cut-rate PCs sold by Dell, Gateway and other companies. Gene Steinberg, in his latest column at The Mac Night Owl, notes that Vista’s current requirements call for a non-integrated graphics card with 64MB video RAM and support for DirectX 9, which rules out many of those cheap US$400 and $500 systems, as well as Windows laptops released before this year.

Why would anyone go to a Mac site for PC news? The number of errors in this one short item are impressive. For starters, Windows Vista will indeed run on systems with underpowered graphics subsystems. They just won’t use the full-fledged Aero Glass 3D interface. (Read the full preliminary hardware guidelines here.)

I just did a quick online shopping exercise and found a compatible graphics card upgrade available today for as little as $32.99. If I’d looked a little harder, I probably could have found it for half that price. A year from now, when Windows Vista is ready to ship, those parts will probably be standard on low-end PCs.

And finally, leading motherboard makers are already making integrated graphics chips that meet the specifications to run Windows Vista. By next year at this time, low-end machines using the most recent motherboard designs should be fully ready for the new Windows.

That concludes today’s edition of FUD-busters.

The mini-multi-monitor

Last week I suggested a second monitor as a productivity-boosting device. This idea takes it to the extreme:

SideWindow transforms your PDA into a virtual desktop extension, allowing you to drag applications such as your favorite picture viewer, media player and instant messaging applications to your PDA while freeing your main display’s real estate for something more useful.

Sidewindow

I actually can think of a use or two for this, but having a tiny 240×320 second monitor is a pretty funny concept. And at least in theory (I haven’t actually checked the specs for this add-in), you could actually take as many as nine Pocket PCs and use them as mini-monitors on your desktop, dragging a different widget onto each one. Even I am not that geeky.

Two thumbs up for Mwave

My new PC arrived on Saturday, and is now happily running Windows Vista Beta 1. Mwave did an excellent job building it and packing it for shipping. All the cable bundles were neatly tied down inside, and it runs nice and quiet.

All in all, well worth the $80 cost of letting them build it to order. Especially when I read stories like this one.

Tip of the day: Get a second monitor

Bigger isn’t always better. If you’re lusting after a 20- or 21-inch monitor to replace the old one on your desk (especially if the old one is a CRT), let me offer a different suggestion: Get two smaller flat-panel monitors instead.

The advantages of two monitors are overwhelming. You can actually open two separate windows (a Web browser and an e-mail program, for instance) and work with them individually instead of having to fuss with arranging them on the screen or constantly minimizing one to get to the other. And you get more bang for the buck: a pair of 15-inch flat panel monitors should cost less than a 21-inch model, but give you much more of a productivity boost.

Most modern video cards, even dirt-cheap ones, support multiple monitors. The settings page in Control Panel’s Display dialog box is easy to use, and even lets you configure which monitor is left and right:

Dual_mon

Next to adding more RAM, this is the upgrade I recommend most.

In search of awesome external storage

If I’m going to be a charter member of the Terabyte Lifestyle club, I should probably get organized about it. Which is why I’ve been looking around at external hard drive enclosures lately. I’ve used IDE drives in external USB 2.0 drives for years with generally excellent results, but I know I can kick performance and reliability up dramatically by switching from USB to direct SATA connections. The new PC (which is scheduled to arrive Saturday) has four internal SATA adapters, of which two will be connected to internal SATA drives. I can use an adapter like this one or this one to make the internal adapters accessible to individual external devices. But I’d rather have a single box that holds four or five SATA drives in a RAID array that can then plug into a SATA RAID controller.

The StorCase InfoStation is one option. It uses removable drive trays that can be hot-swapped. It even supports SATA II drives. But at $1000+ not including drives, it doesn’t fit my budget.

The TeraByte HotDrive 1TB, at $999 including drives, makes more sense. I’m leery that I can’t find a data sheet, though. Has anyone tried this device? Anyone from Evergreen Technologies want to contact me offline?

Any other suggestions for products designed for storage fanatics?

Update: The PC Doctor suggests LaCie’s Biggest F800 1TB. It didn’t make the short list because 1) it uses IDE drives, not SATA; 2) Thomas Hawk has scared me off the LaCie drives with his experience (although I still think he’s got a separate hardware issue); and 3) at $1499, it’s too expensive!

Why some people get Windows CDs and some don’t

Following up on my earlier post about how Dell and HP make it difficult for customers to get a real Windows CD with their new PC…

I went back and read a post I put together back in February (Everything you always wanted to know about Windows Product Activation), and found a few relevant details. If you buy a new PC with Windows preinstalled from your local white-box builder, he or she is required to give you a CD, a product key, and a certificate of authenticity. But if the PC maker is a Royalty OEM – a category that includes the 20 largest PC makers in the world, such as Dell, HP, Sony, and IBM – the requirements are different:

Royalty OEMs receive a ‘golden master’ copy of Windows from Microsoft. The royalty OEM may customize Windows as described in the OPK, their license agreement, or a signed addendum… These OEMs obtain all customized media, end-user manuals, and bulk quantities of COA stickers from MS authorized replicators.

Royalty OEMs may provide recovery media for each computer, and that media must be protected so that it can be used only on that particular computer. Both printed books and any recovery media display the OEM name and branding.

The big companies get to play by a different set of rules, and the customers sometimes come out on the short end of the stick. If you’re thinking of buying a new PC running Windows, make sure it comes with a real CD, not some bogus recovery disk or partition. The CD is a crucial troubleshooting and repair tool; when (not if) you have a disk failure or another type of emergency that requires you to repair Windows, you’ll need that CD.