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Microsoft Retail Stores

Microsoft to open retail stores.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/982/
1050982/microsoft-plans-retail-adventure



Stupid Flanders.

Preinstalled Software

Consumer grade computer often come so loaded with unneeded and use trial software it has developed it's own moniker - crapware. One of the reasons I steer people towards business class machine is they have far less preinstalls; with the exception of trial versions of MS office. But why would you buy that when you can get Open Office for free?

All aside this article explains that some manufacturers are rethinking the whole concept. They should.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/
news/2008/08/28/pc-makers-rethink-preloaded

PC BOX BUILDERS are thinking of getting rid of the tradition of stuffing your new PC or laptop with trial software that you don’t really want anyway.

The reason is that some retailers, such as Best Buy, are making a small fortune removing the software and charging punters for the privilege.

According to the New York Times software companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars to PC makers like Hewlett-Packard to install their photo tools, financial programs, virus killers and other products, usually with some tie-in to a paid service or upgrade.

PC makers have come to lean on this cash as profit margins become thinner than a French catwalk model who has skipped eating for a month, fainted and fallen under a steam roller.

Circuit City and other US chains also report that users are miffed at the amount digital infomercials which are being packed onto the PC.

Always the end user advocate, my advice still stands. Look for business models to buy. You'll probably have to go on-line to do so.

Ink & Toner Ripoff

Well really, does this come as a surprise?

http://www.slate.com/id/2198316/

I bought a cheap laser printer a couple years ago, and for a while, it worked perfectly. The printer, a Brother HL-2040, was fast, quiet, and produced sheet after sheet of top-quality prints—until one day last year, when it suddenly stopped working. I consulted the user manual and discovered that the printer thought its toner cartridge was empty. It refused to print a thing until I replaced the cartridge. But I'm a toner miser: For as long as I've been using laser printers, it's been my policy to switch to a new cartridge at the last possible moment, when my printouts get as faint as archival copies of the Declaration of Independence. But my printer's pages hadn't been fading at all. Did it really need new toner—or was my printer lying to me?
.....
OppressedPrinterUser found that covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he'd installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months have passed. I've printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn't begun to fade. On FixYourOwnPrinter.com, many Brother owners have written in to thank OppressedPrinterUser for his hack. One guy says that after covering the sensor, he printed 1,800 more pages before his toner finally ran out.

Surprise!

Eye Candy

So what's wrong with eye-candy?. In my last post I mentioned that Vista was offering mostly eye-candy as opposed to real features. Don't get me wrong, I like cool looking applications just as much as anyone else. But do you need Vista for that? You could of course get a Mac, they're all about eye-candy anyway. Not just their software but their general styling as well, but you do pay for it.

What about dressing up XP, that is easy enough to do also. Two things I use and really like. First an old one, the Google Desktop. Want all those gizmos on your screen along with that slick glassy look and a great search, then this does just that. Works great on my wide screen laptop because frankly I don't care for most applications to run that wide. Ever tried following small print all the way across a 17" wide screen? I just keep my application in a more normal aspect and let GD fill the right 2" of my screen. Well I'm a sucker for a lot of Google ware as it is. Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger and Picasa - both the program and the on-line photo sharing.

That brings me to my latest little piece of eye-candy. Pic Lens as a FireFox addon.
Those iphone commercials where they glide through pictures. Go there and check it out.
http://www.piclens.com/

Such a cool interface for Picasa on-line.

I said two items but I offer one honorable mention. Opera. The latest version sports a new look if nothing else. And it just works. Excellent browser that still has a really nice feature of fit-to-width view. The look is by default a very pleasing and glassy modern black and dark red that I truly like.
opera.com

Opera and FireFox are both skinable and there are quite a few offerings, or do your own is always an option (yeah in my free time).

What's Wrong With Vista

Microsoft is trying hard to polish up Vista's image.

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.

"Oh wow," said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html?tag=nl.e703

At this point many of the annoying bugs that first appeared in Vista are gone. This still misses the point. What's wrong with Vista is what isn't wrong with XP. XP works pretty well. Vista offers mostly eye-candy and slower operation due to that. From a business user and sys admin's viewpoint there is no there there. Top that with the need for an outlay of money and a learning curve for the way some old features now have new names and locations and try to figure out the motivation.

I can't.