Tag: Microsoft

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Joe Wilcox’s post: Microsoft, Give Thanks

Of interest post-Thanksgiving, here’s more for you to digest on Microsoft… courtesy of Joe Wilcox in his post Microsoft, Give Thanks!

"It’s another Thanksgiving and 10 new reasons why Microsoft should be grateful. Like the past two years (here and here), I have complied Microsoft’s what-to-be-thankful-for list."

I’m thankful for the 64-bit version of the Zune software. My personal favourite from Joe’s list:

4. Windows 7 team. Microsoft’s troupe responsible for Windows 7 has done remarkable work. Sure, much more is needed, but the progress is astounding considering the starting place: Windows Vista. PDC demos rocked, and the Engineering Windows 7 Weblog is setting new standards for Microsoft transparency. Somebody hit the reboot button on Vista and it came back Seven. Blogger, customer, enthusiast, journalist and partner responses are, so far (knock on wood), much better for Seven the pre-beta than Windows Vista with Service Pack 1.

Tags: articles, what I read, Microsoft, blogs.

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Watching the Windows 7 keynotes at WinHEC… all from the comfort of my home office

I’m out sick this week <cough, cough> whilst the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 2008 (WinHEC) kicked off today at the Los Angeles Convention Center (thru November 7). 

"WinHEC 2008 provides the opportunity to learn about the latest product news and opportunities from Microsoft and the ecosystem. This year’s event will focus on partner opportunities with Windows 7 and Microsoft’s channel engagement and will discuss features of the upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 update release."

Although I wasn’t there, I was able to watch the keynotes live from home over the Internet from the mail WinHEC page – recorded versions available on demand here…

CNET’s Ina Fried is covering WinHEC live this week and writes that Microsoft hopes to rebuild trust with Windows 7…

"In a speech to hardware makers attending the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Microsoft’s Jon DeVaan said that the company is aiming to rebuild trust that Microsoft will deliver products with the promised features and at the promised time. "And Microsoft is also hoping that most partners won’t have a lot of work to get ready for Windows 7. "We have the tenet that if something works in Vista it really should work in Windows 7," said DeVaan, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Windows core operating system division."

Also of interest: Todd Bishop is also in LA and posted that Windows 7 kicks Vista’s butt on his TechFlash site…

"Most companies talk about how much better they are than their competitors. Microsoft this morning kicked off its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference by detailing how much better it believes Windows 7 will be than Windows Vista in areas including boot time, battery life, graphics rendering, reliability and performance. "It was an implicit acknowledgement of Windows Vista’s problems. But the company is walking a fine line as it makes the case. On the one hand, it wants to convince PC and device makers that it has its act together this time around. However, with Windows 7 not expected until early 2010, the company also risks hurting Windows Vista’s sales in the meantime if it talks about how much better the successor will be."

Tags: Microsoft, performance, Windows 7, Windows Vista, WinHEC 2008.

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It’s two… no, three blogs in one: the new Windows Blog

You can now knock a couple of blogs off your reading list.

No, they weren’t tossed – nor did the blogger go on permanent holiday as some are wont to do – but a couple of our Windows blogs were merged into the new Windows Team blog, with (as Brandon says)…

"… sporting an all-new look and feel reflecting Windows in a broader sense instead of a single Windows release. We figured it was time to give our blog a good facelift (it’s looked the same since we originally launched in October of 2006) – especially as we start talking about Windows 7, Windows Live, and many other interesting Windows topics. Our old design focused strictly on Windows Vista. Our new design is no longer tied to a specific Windows release allowing us to talk about a wider range of topics."

The Windows Team BlogWe’ve had two blogs hosted together on the same site, the Windows Vista Team Blog and Windows Experience Blog.  Now it’s all just one big happy blog family on The Windows Blog.  

You’ll find the above two blogs as well as a new third as of today: the Windows 7 Team Blog. You can sign up for RSS feeds for the individual blogs or just get the main The Windows Blog RSS feed, all from the following links.

· Windows Vista Team Blog | RSS Feed

· Windows 7 Team Blog | RSS Feed

· Windows Experience Blog | RSS Feed

· Front Page | Main RSS Feed

And a quick quote from Margaret Getchell: Be everywhere, do everything, and never fail to astonish the customer.

Tags: Microsoft, blogs, Windows 7, Windows Vista, PDC 2008.

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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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A badge of your very own: I’m a PC

Breaking for lunch, and so here’s a quick post with a little badge for those interested, given the feedback to my post last week on being a PC among other things. 😉

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

Have you recorded your own clip yet?  As noted, I found that Steve Ballmer has.

And few insights and comments in response to Rob Pegoraro’s blog post last week on Microsoft’s new message.

This ad campaign certainly works in terms of getting people to talk about Microsoft — here I am writing about the ads, here you are reading about them. But unless this marketing message gets followed up by some concrete reasons to choose Windows over another operating system, I’m not sure if they’ll get people to follow up with their credit cards.

Apple’s “Think Different” campaign was largely gauzy idealism, but it was replaced by those “Switch” ads and, more recently, the “I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC” clips — most of which emphasize specific Apple advantages, like a Mac’s backup tools or multimedia capabilities.

What say you about Microsoft’s new marketing? And, of course: Are you a PC?

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista

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