Category: Windows Vista

Last call for Vista Beta 2

’Softie Ian Moulster says you’ve got one more day to order your copy of Windows Vista Beta 2:

In case you weren’t aware, we are only providing a limited number of copies of Windows Vista Beta 2 – either download or physical copies – and we’re fast approaching the cut-off point,

What this means is – if you want to get a copy, get it now (and I mean now). Visit http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/engb and either download or order. Because WE WILL BE WITHDRAWING ACCESS VERY SOON. Did I say that loudly enough?

The cut-off date is tomorrow, June 30, 2006.

Update: And now it’s officially closed:

Thank you for your interest in Windows Vista. The Customer Preview Program is now closed. We have reached our program capacity and no new orders are being accepted. We apologize for any inconvenience.
For registered customers who have received a Product Key the download sites will remain open until Friday, July 14.

That sound you hear is my head hitting the desk

Microsoft delays Office 2007 again:

Microsoft said Thursday that it is making another slight delay to the planned arrival time for Office 2007, citing performance concerns with recent test versions.

The software maker now plans to finish the code for the revamped Office suite by the end of the year, with a mainstream launch in “early 2007.”

“Based on internal testing and the beta 2 feedback around product performance, we are revising our development schedule to deliver the 2007 system release by the end of year 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007,” a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail. “Feedback on quality and performance will ultimately determine the exact dates.”

And, of course, this means that Windows Vista is probably going to slip as well. Because Office is the one that’s in good shape.

Ship it when it’s ready, not a day earlier. It’s good to see that Microsoft would rather risk some embarrassment than hit the deadlines regardless of the product’s quality.

The joys (not) of dial-up Internet access

We’ve been having sporadic blackouts over the past three days. The power was out for several hours on Monday morning, and then again yesterday.

It could be just a coincidence, but when the power came back up, my high-speed Internet connection didn’t. Calls to Qwest (whose technical support is consistently excellent and customer-focused) confirmed that the problem was on their end. Service was restored in minutes on Monday, but it took all day yesterday – apparently a crucial piece of hardware in a server at the calling office failed and had to be swapped out.

So, for most of the workday yesterday, I had to use the free dial-up service that comes with my Qwest account. The experience was a serious blow to productivity, but at least (he says in an effort to find some silver lining in all this) it gave me an opportunity to test the dial-up features in Windows Vista.

From a usability point of view, setting up a dial-up connection in Vista was a complete home run. I plugged in my ancient modem, ran the Create New Connection, clicked the Connect To… link in Network Center, entered the dial-up access number and credentials, and was online in less than two minutes.

But damn, it was slow. I have a newfound appreciation for the frustration experienced by anyone who is stuck with dial-up in 2006.

Vista beta testers, please help me out

Over at ZDNet, I’ve just posted a description of the new Reliability Monitor tool in Windows Vista Beta 2. (Go read Watching Windows Vista Decay for all the details.)

According to the System Stability Chart at the top of the Reliability Monitor, my notebook has deteriorated alarmingly in the past four weeks, going from a perfect 10 rating to a mediocre 1.70. See for yourself:

Reliability Monitor

The trouble is, this system isn’t particularly unstable. Instead, it appears that the System Stability Index itself is inaccurate. As I point out in the ZDNet piece:

This is a crude measurement, to be sure, and it’s misleading as well. The problems I’ve been experiencing (and which are logged in detail in the Reliability Monitor) are pretty much the same bugs, in Windows and in application software, occurring repeatedly, which is what you expect from a beta. So the inference that the system is somehow getting much less stable over time may not be accurate. In other words, my system stability was never a 10, and it’s certainly not a 1.70 now..

If you’re beta-testing Windows Vista, I’d like your help in assembling a dataset of Reliability Monitor readings. Open Reliability Monitor and make a note of the first date in the chart and the current Stability Index. (Click Start, Control Panel, System and Maintenance, Performance Rating and Tools, Advanced Tools, Open Windows Diagnostic Console. Or you can just click Start, type Perfmon in the Search box, and click the Perfmon shortcut when it appears.)

Post the date and the Index number and any additional subjective comments you have about Vista’s performance in the comments section below. Thanks!

R.I.P. ActiveSync

The Windows Vista Team Blog has some good news about the new Windows Mobile Device Center for Windows Vista:

Windows Vista Beta 2 features built-in support for Windows Mobile-powered devices for the very first time with the new Windows Mobile Device Center. Instead of installing ActiveSync to use our devices, our device drivers are now part of Windows Vista. Due to this built-in functionality, installation of ActiveSync is blocked.

Windows Mobile Device Center can perform “Guest” functionality similar to ActiveSync, but with some new and exciting features. With Windows Mobile Device Center, you will be able to browse your device, synchronize media using Windows Media Player, and even play media files and view pictures and documents directly from the device. Our devices will be able to connect with Windows Vista via Bluetooth, USB or infrared.

An update to the Windows Mobile Device Center will be available shortly on Windows Update. With this update, you will be able to create partnerships and synchronize your Windows Mobile-powered device with Outlook. Stay tuned!

This has been one of the key missing features in current betas of Windows Vista. I’ve had to boot into XP using a copy of my Outlook Personal Folders file just to sync up contacts and appointments – a significant PITA, needless to say.

I’m also pleased to see Windows Update being used as a way to deliver new functionality like this. No need to wait for a new nbuild – just download an update.

Windows Vista Tip #4: Move your data folders to a separate drive

Update 24-Feb-2007: There’s an even easier way to accomplish this. Details here:

Vista Hands On #7: Move user data to another drive

If you prefer the manual approach, keep reading…

Windows Vista makes a few fundamental changes in the default folders used to store personal data. For starters, the Documents and Settings folder is gone, replaced by the Users folder, which is located in the root of the system drive (usually C:). Each user account has its own profile folder here, which contains 11 folders, each devoted to a different type of data.

If you have multiple hard drives (or multiple partitions on a single hard drive) you can relocate any of these user folders. The advantage? By separating system files from data, you make it easy to back up and restore each. At least once a month, you can use the backup program in Windows Vista Ultimate Edition to create an image-based backup on DVD or an external hard disk. If something happens to your system drive, you can restore the image, and your data files remain unaffected.

In my experience, the Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos folders are most likely to contain large amounts of data and will benefit most from relocation. In this case, I assume you have a separate empty drive or partition that uses the letter E:. If your system is configured differently, you’ll need to adjust the instructions accordingly.

Here’s how to relocate the Documents folder:

  1. Open Windows Explorer, navigate to the empty drive that you want to use to store data, and create new folders for each of the existing folders you want to move. If you’re the only user on your computer, you can put them in the root of the drive: E:\Documents, E:\Music, and so on. If you’re planning to use the drive to store data for two or more users, you should create a separate top-level folder for each user and then create subfolders for each type of data: E:\Ed\Documents, etc.
  2. Click Start and click the bold user name at the top of the right column in the Start menu. This opens your profile folder.
  3. Right-click the icon for the Documents folder and choose Properties.

    4. Move_docs_folder_1

     

  4. On the Location tab, click the Move button.
  5. In the Select a Destination dialog box, double-click Computer, double-click the icon for your data drive (E: in this example), and select the folder you want to use as the new location. Don’t double-click this folder, just click to select it.
  6. Click Select Folder to return to the Location tab, and then click OK. You will see two dialog boxes:
    • Do you still want to proceed and redirect to <new folder location>? Click Yes.
    • Would you like to move all of the files in your old location to the new location…? Click Yes. (If you click No, the original folder remains intact and you risk having documents split between the two locations.)

That’s it. You can now repeat the process for Music, Pictures, Videos, and any other data folders you want to use. When you click the Documents shortcut on the Start menu, it takes you to the new location, which appears to be in the same old location. In the Vista namespace, your profile folder always appears under the Desktop, and each link in that folder points to the location you specify. So you can leave some folders (especially those you rarely use) in the original location and just move those that are chock full of data.

Windows Defender stops one

This surprised me today. As I was looking for an e-mail message from my 2005 archives, I ran across a message in my Junk E-mail folder that was clearly some sort of malware. It was from a sender I didn’t recognize, with a subject line that hinted it was a picture in a Zip file.

I opened the attachment to see what was inside and saw that is was an executable file with a filename designed to fool the recipient into thinking it was a picture. Standard stuff, right?

I extracted the file onto the desktop, where I was going to scan it using an antivirus program (on this test system, I don’t have real-time antivirus protection). But before I could do that, this dialog box popped up:

Windows_Defender

Windows Defender, included with a default installation of Windows Vista, had detected this copy of what turned out to be the Bagle worm and had blocked it with a blood-red warning message.

I don’t normally think of Windows Defender as an antivirus program, but clearly it has that capability, especially for well-traveled forms of malware. I certainly wouldn’t rely on it exclusively, but in this case it did exaactly what it was supposed to do.