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Ed Bott said ‘the experience is so dramatically improved’ with Windows Vista SP1 (Springboard Virtual Roundtable)

On the Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable with Mark Russinovich, the panel discussed performance issues and common misconfigurations on Windows Vista.  Among others joining Mark were Gabe Aul of Microsoft and the incomparable Ed Bott, the scribe behind Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report.

Gabe Aul noted that "driver maturity helps a lot" and Ed offered a specific example. Link to Springboard series with MarkThen at 6:20 in the video, Ed relates an hands-on experience with one customer who purchased a notebook PC with Vista in April of 2007, and had a negative experience (with Vista RTM). Ed recalls that he contacted the customer, arranged to get the machine…

"… a year later after SP1 came out, [I] refreshed all the drivers, installed SP1 and sent it back (to the customer) who said that "I don’t even recognize this machine, the experience is so dramatically improved." 

Nice to hear.  As I posted previously back in January as we were readying Vista SP1, I reinstalled the Vista OS complete with the new service pack on to a stock Dell Inspiron 600m laptop (nothing special notebook that originally shipped with Windows XP). 

My unscientific findings: with a clean install on an old laptop, it takes only 20 seconds to recover from Hibernate, and less than five seconds to recover from Sleep.  A DVD inserted in the drive is playing in less than 20 seconds. 

Now, you can pay a retailer somewhere between $30 and $130 to optimize your new (or old) PC, or you can consider doing this yourself.  As I noted, there are several sites and applications that can help you improve PC performance by removing pre-installed items…

imageWith one of our new PCs, I went through and uninstalled most of the pre-installed trialware and demoware via the Program and Features control panel.

Seeing Mark’s Springboard video, I’m also reminded that there is also Windows Sysinternals (for knowledgeable PC users), which shows you what applications are running during start up.

Back to Springboard.  At 28:45, Mark and the panel talks about Experf:

I’m having trouble finding the tool mentioned earlier, whas that Experf ? (no hits on ms.com/downloads)

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/perftools.mspx

Tags: Microsoft, performance, crapware, Windows Vista, Mark Russinovich, Springboard.

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NBC Video Direct restores world order at home, saves my bacon

As I Twittered (tweeted? I’ll get this right), sometimes you forget to do something: pick up milk on the way home, feed the cat or empty the dishwasher.  On the whole, not so serious.  And with a digital vide recorder or a Media Center PC, you shouldn’t have to worry about missing an episode of your favourite show.

That is, unless you forget to program the system to record your favourite show. 

That happened to me this week, as I neglected to restart recording of The Office on NBC.

Luckily, imageNBC Video Rewind is available on the NBC 24/7 Video page, where you can view full-length episodes of NBC shows (posted the morning the day after they air), including 30 Rock, Heroes and others.  You can also watch quick recap, two-minute replays that provide a Cliff Notes video clip of the show.

As we found with Hulu.com, we were able to find episodes of The Office on the web, available for streaming for free to your computer, live over the web.  ABC and CBS also make many of their popular shows available for viewing on ABC.go.com and on CBS.com respectively, with many available in HD.

But most interesting over the compressed streaming video (fine for travel and desktop viewing) is full SD and HD video, downloaded to your PC.  Normally relegated to Bit Torrent file downloads, we’d rather have a network blessed (read "legal") way to get vide to our Media Center computer (or any PC for that matter). 

Thankfully, there’s the beta for NBC Video Direct, where full episodes are available for download. Using NBC Direct (now in beta), you can download full episodes to your Windows PCs.  We first installed the NBC Direct player (available free) and then after registering were able to download HD versions of current and past favourites (do you miss Erin Gray in Buck Rogers?).  For The Office one hour premier, it took about 10-15 minutes or so at home to get the full HD file.

Last fall, the New York Times said that the NBC Direct Beta was "not quite ready for prime-time" but a lot changes in a year.  There’s a full list of shows available, the performance was flawless and overall our experience this week has been quite positive.

So, next time you neglect to program your DVR or PC to record a show from cable, satellite or broadcast, remember that there is a fallback for many of your favourite shows. 

I'm a PC I'm a PC Life without Walls

Tags: NBC, Windows, Media Center, television, DVR.

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Talk to Mark Russinovich via the Springboard Series on September 24th

Mark RussinovichI just ran into Mark Russinovich (of Sysinternals fame) in the hallway and was reminded that on September 24th, he will host a virtual roundtable for IT pros worldwide to explore as I’m told “top of mind performance issues, common misconfigurations, and tips on how to fix them. From boot times and applets to disk performance and battery life, this is chance for IT pros to find out how to optimize Windows Vista and what they can do to improve overall system performance.”

Tell your friends to save the date and join Mark on September 24th at https://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard.  As posted previously, Mark has hosted these live Springboard Series virtual roundtables discussing issues such as Windows Vista security .

As part of the “virtual” experience, you may submit questions about performance and optimization to Mark and the rest of the panel live during the event, or submit questions in advance to vrtable@microsoft.com.

Also of note: Mark’s Blog covering topics such as Windows troubleshooting, technologies and security.

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Save the date! Wednesday, September 24, 2008 9:00am Pacific Standard Time.  To learn more, visit the Springboard Series site.


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Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting: webcast available live

As noted on our website, Microsoft hosts a Financial Analyst Meeting tomorrow (July 24).  You can listen in to the action and get the play-by-play as a live webcast will be available starting at 8:30AM Pacific Time. As noted on Bloomberg news today…

“Ballmer, along with Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell and the presidents of Microsoft’s three businesses, will address analysts and investors tomorrow at company headquarters in Redmond…”

Hopefully analysts will get a little more clarity about the business given the confusion raised in this ComputerWorld article. 

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Upcoming Interactive Webcast: Mark Russinovich on Windows Vista security 6/18/08

Put this on your calendar: Mark Russinovich Technical Fellow from the Windows COSD will host a live Springboard Series virtual roundtable discussing Windows Vista security on Wednesday, June 18 at 9:00AM Pacific Time.

Go to Visit https://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard to register for the Springboard, and submit your questions in advance by sending an e-mail to vrtable@microsoft.com.

Of interest:

Tags: Microsoft, Mark Russinovich, tips, Vista, Windows.