The specs that manufacturers use for Vista are severely inadequate. Examples:

1.  The keyboard flexes to the point where long-term use is uncomfortable.  Hardware specs need to be tightened up to improve the user experience.  I blame Gateway and Microsoft for this.

2. The video card on my machine cannot support full-frame HD playback, even though the OS (Vista Home Premium) has features that would require this ability.  I can watch recorded TV in a window the size of a postage stamp, even though my 3 year old Fujitsu running XP can play back these files without an issue.  I assumed since this feature was available in software, the hardware would be able to keep up.  Wrong.  Deep research into the specs show that, yes, intel stated that they could not support HD playback in Vista.  I’m supposed to know this?

3.  Hibernate and Sleep don’t work.  I’ve given up trying to figure out why or how to fix it. The machine wakes in my bag for no reason. Attempts to research why have failed. Software problem? Hardware problem? Who cares.

The pursuit of the price-point has resulted in a machine that is worthless to any reasonable user.  The next machine I get will be a mac.  20% market share is only the beginning for Apple - I’m tired of waiting for Microsoft to get their act together.  Windows 7?  Nah.  Who cares.  

I want to give Vista a fair shake, I really do.  But here’s my experiences with the thing that clinches it for me as a useless upgrade. Windows 7 probably won’t be any better, and so I’ll be switching to Mac when the time comes.

1. - User Account Control.  I have no idea why the operating system is continually warning me about things that I don’t understand.  Are you sure? ARE YOU SURE?  Well, I thought I was sure.  But the warnings are so frightening that, well, now I’m not sure.  Blame the user.  That’s what security has come to.
2. - Unreliable networking.  Routinely (and by routinely, I mean at least daily) the machine drops my wireless network and fails to reconnect without a reboot.  Sometimes I can attempt to log into a network that isn’t mine (like a neighbor) and when that fails, a reconnect to my own is successful.  If I can cycle this, why can’t the OS?  The times when the machine must be rebooted (daily) render the OS useless.
3. - Useless sleep/hibernate functions.  These simply don’t work, with the machine waking for seemingly no reason, from either state.  I cannot take the machine with me in a bag because it will overheat once it wakes up inside the bag.  The restart routine takes so long that I don’t want to shut it down, and so the laptop stays at home.
4. - Inadequate hardware pairings. The machine I have, built a full year after the OS release, does not have adequate hardware to run the OS.  Yes, I upgraded the ram, because I already knew that the 1 gig wasn’t enough to drive the OS.  But selling the machine with Home Premium, and then putting inadequate video support in there to run the best features of Home Premium (Media Center)?  Useless.

What can they do for Windows 7?  Easy.

1. - Make it smaller and faster.  This is a no brainer.  The OS is too large, it takes too long to boot up. Give me fewer options, and less control. Hide more from me.
2. - Make it more reliable. When I booted the machine for the first time, out of the box, it gave me a blue screen.  Not good. My network continually failing is unacceptable. Hibernate and Sleep are worthless.
3. - Sell it with fewer hardware configurations. I don’t think any organization would be capable of supporting the myriad of hardware parings that this OS needs to support.  Dozens of processors, video cards, etc. - it’s impossible and results in a horrible user experience.
4. - Sell a Microsoft Branded Computer. There, I said it. What are you waiting for?  Outsource the specs to 10 manufacturers and let them build them EXACTLY to spec.
6. I’m driving a Chevy when there are thousands out there driving Toyotas telling me what a great experience that is. Chevy is complaining to me that they have a legacy of problems around their neck that they have to deal with that the other guy does not, and that’s why their products suck so bad.   I don’t care.

Edit - windows live writer puts those numbers above on the left. I can’t get rid of them, so I won’t.

Just read an article about Amazon’s s3 service – there’s a Windows Home Server add-on that allows for automatic cloud storage of anything/everything on a Windows Home Server to Amazon’s s3 cloud.

So, in addition to automatic local nightly backups using WHS, I can auto-backup my entire WHS offsite onto Amazon’s S3 cloud, so if my house burns down I lose nothing. I think it costs .15 a gig per month. Pretty expensive when you consider the monthly charges, though. Rather than backup the entire machine, just backing up and storing the photos makes more sense – that’s the truly irreplaceable stuff. More reasonable, I think.

As an alternative, it would also be possible to have fully automatic offsite backups from your house to my house, and vice versa. There is a foldershare hack for WHS (and MS server 2003) just like I tested earlier this year. If you had a folder somewhere on a machine in your system that was usually running, you could link that folder with my WHS and backup that way - quietly, in the background, constant backups to the machine in my basement of all of your pictures (music, documents, etc.) without any prompting/awareness by you.  This is the way it should be, and as it’s only a matter of when, not if, your hard drive fails, this is the correct solution.

OK, so I was finally so fed up with the Razor phone (honestly - who says ‘good might’?) that I bought a windows smartphone off of ebay.  I tried getting a t-mobile dash, but my contract was still so fresh that they wanted $300 for one.  I found an unlocked HTC version (the company that actually makes the dash) and got it on ebay.  It came with Windows Mobile 5, which is so 2003… I eventually made my way to the HTC site where they offered a free upgrade to WM6, which was pretty good, but not the quantum-leap in mobile computing I was hoping for.  XDA-developers had a WM6.1 hack (the version that came out in April) and finally I think I’ve got this device working the way I want it to.  Here’s what it does:

I can use the 5.99 mobile internet plan that t-mobile offers, as opposed to the $30 a month it costs to use the iPhone data.  Yikes!  That’s an insane price to pay to look up a map every once in a while.

I can check my e-mail.

Google maps does location-based guessing even without GPS - and does a pretty good job of it.  Their app works just fine in the 5.99 internet I have.

It threads my text messages into conversations.  I didn’t realize how cool this was until I had it.

It tells me who left a voicemail, not just that one exists.

It timestamps everything - missed calls, voicemails, text messages, etc.

Best of all, I can get loads of stuff done around the house while I’m waiting for the thing to boot up.

It isn’t so much as a poor-man’s iPhone as it is a reasonably useful device that has a full keyboard.

Oh, and get this - I signed up for a test account on apple’s me.com service - and it works.  I delete email on my phone, and it works its way back into the cloud and back down onto my PC - VERY useful.  Haven’t tried to get calendar working but who knows - someone out there is certainly working on a hack as we speak.

The hacked GPS has a freeware application that will record detailed track data, with timestamps.  My camera records metadata that also includes timestamps - by combining the two datasets, you can automatically geotag photos - showing within 15 seconds exactly where on earth they were taken.

Google earth is getting some pretty sophisticated images incorporated into their software - check out the Olympic Mountains here in Washington; the level of detail on Mount Olympus is pretty cool.

They pretty much rock.  Psych rock done right.  Thank god for the earplugs, and the guy behind the projector should get a medal.

So I was thinking back to a few years ago, when KEXP tried to broadcast a signal in south Puget Sound, in the hopes of expanding their local listener base beyond the Seattle metro area.  It turned out to be an expensive lesson in geography - the further you get from Seattle, the less likely someone will be listening to the station, whether or not there is a strong signal available.  There is a strong geographic component to radio - something that may be missing from satellite radio, but I don’t know - I haven’t spent any time at all listening to it.

That may change this summer when I take my long road trip - I’ll probably sample a subscription at some point; radio is just too convenient, and the format is interesting.

This move from John in the Morning to New York from month to month will be interesting - I’m sure that for him to get a listener base on the other coast, he’ll have to rely on his folksy conversation with his listeners regarding his routine, the weather, his adventures - will it be the same for a listener in Seattle?  Or will it be more like listening to a national radio show on Sirius?   Time will tell.

Getting coffee yesterday, an older man (65?) in front of me was bantering with the baristas about having a MySpace page, along the lines of "Aren’t you a bit old for a MySpace page?"  The one behind the register turned to me and asked, "Do YOU have  a MySpace page?" to which I replied, "No, I just got on Friendster," thinking I was being pretty clever.  She deadpanned "Old school…" before she realized I was kidding.

Is anyone out there really signing up for a friendster page today?  Or a MySpace page?  And in 2 years, will Facebook still be all the rage?

Seems like too much work to keep those pages up.

It’s time to take the idea of the promotional MP3 seriously.  MP3s have embedded information in each file, and most players have the ability to display album art that can be linked to the file. Why on earth are most promotional MP3s not using this feature to promote the full album?

Back in the day, when we listened to our music on CDs, companies like BMG would litter our physical mailbox with promotions designed to hook a music lover into a subscription service that was (ultimately) overpriced and difficult to cancel.  But the CDs that came with the service - the CDs that contained music that was identical to copies sold in record stores - were different.  They contained marks on the physical packaging that identified the discs as coming from a music service like BMG or Columbia House.  Even though the information on the disc was identical to store bought discs, there was ’something’ not quite the same with having the disc originate at a music service.  So strong was the bias against these discs that used CD stores would refuse to purchase these for the same price as original store discs.

Artists suffered as well -these ‘promotional’ discs’ revenue went straight to the record companies, and the artists saw none of the monies collected. But if the information contained on the discs was identical, why should this matter?

I’m pretty sure this is a marketing question.  It’s up to the producers of music to distinguish between a promotional MP3 and a purchased MP3.  Today I downloaded a file called spidersnakes.mp3 and much of the metadata was missing.  Why is this?  If it is a promotional MP3, shouldn’t the metadata indicate that this MP3 came from the label as a promotion? Shouldn’t the album art be broadcasting the fact that it’s a promotional MP3, and where to get the full album?

Someone somewhere who is making the decisions about these files needs to take a marketing course. Or be fired.

It’s a polaroid plugin - you can do some pretty cool things with Windows Live Writer.  I agree with many people that this is one of the cooler things to come out of Microsoft in a few years.