Alec Saunders SquawkBox

After the hogwash posting, I received a number of comments on this piece of it:

I’ve lived through lots of Windows launches inside Microsoft (3.1, NT 3.1, NT 3.5, Windows 95, NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000) and outside (Windows XP beta tester).  I love early software. I’ll put up with just about any egregious bloated crap just to see what the fuss is all about.  But you know, at this point I’ve been unable to succesfully install and use any version of the Windows Vista CTPs, or IE 7.  If Vista was really six months away from shipping, it would be a lot more finished, the way that any of those previous versions of Windows were at this stage.  Anybody who had tried Vista would have been able to come to the same conclusion I did.

Most were like this one from Rog42.

I’m interested that someone with such experience in Windows beta OS’s such as yourself hasn’t yet managed to successfully install a Vista CTP or IE7.

Well, that is a little ridiculous, I thought. And, you know, I haven’t really tried that hard…  So, over the weekend I scrubbed my Toshiba Tecra S1 laptop, and ran the install for the most recent CTP.  Lo and behold, a successful install.  It was very time consuming, but then again, the laptop is probably not an optimal piece of Vista hardware, being a 1.4Ghz Centrino based system.  Vista didn’t recognize my ATI Radeon 9000 Mobile graphics card, nor the Intel wireless networking chips, nor the integrated SD reader that Toshiba puts in all their laptops, but a quick visit to Windows Update resolved all but the video card.  At this point, Vista is treating it as an ordinary SVGA card.  Disappointing, but workable.

I loaded up Office 2003, plus Foldershare (which I use to keep files on all the PCs around the house in synch, and backed up).  Synched my files, and was ready to go.

My first impressions are generally favorable.  The new UI is pretty, and simpler than XP in some respects.  IE 7’s tabbed windows are really nice.  The media player is a nice improvement over Windows Media 10.  However:

1)  It’s clear that there are still usability issues to be resolved.  The new networking metaphor is just byzantine, for example.  Right now I am connected to "Network 2 with internet access".  Can’t tell if it’s wireless or wired. I have my wireless network turned on, and the access point specified, but for the life of me I can’t figure out whether I am connected.  Vista appears to say yes sometimes, and no at other times.  Under XP it was never a question.

2) There are still low level hardware issues.  I ran the Tosh on battery for a bit.  Six minutes after I started it, it shut down complaining that the battery was drained.  Not believing it, I powered it up again, ignored the battery warning and ran it for an hour and a half before shutting down normally.

3) There are lots of greyed out buttons within the UI — stuff that must not be finished yet.  The one show stopper for me is the inability to configure a WINS server on a VPN interface.  It effectively prevents me from using the PC for work purposes.  I can login to the VPN fine, but can’t find any of the servers on the network, except by IP address, which means that Outlook (which wants to convert the IP address of my exchange server to a fully qualified DNS name) is useless.

4) IE 7 has rendering issues.  Pages that rendered fine on IE 6 don’t render properly on IE 7.  The advertising on my blog page sometimes end up in the middle of the post.  Sometimes the ads don’t appear at all.  The editing box in WordPress (a java plugin I use) is slow to the point of being nearly useless.

5) Periodically it just goes into la la land.

6) Vista changes the directory structure so that user files are stored in \Users\Username\Documents instead of \Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\ which tripped up Foldershare.    I wonder how many other apps will break because of this change?

7) Permissions don’t seem to be working properly.  Despite the fact that I am logged in as an administrator, I still get warnings that there are some things that I don’t have enough privilege to access.  What’s higher than administrator?

I like the direction.  It would be nice to have a driver for my video card, but I can live with the generic one for now.  And, it seems that the only reliable way to get an install is to start from scratch. The big problem is the VPN.  Until I can set a WINS server, I will be scrubbing the Tosh and restoring Windows XP. 

Fortune published a short interview with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer that’s drawing some fire.  Titled "The Sleeping Giant Awakes" it’s a gushy little puff piece about how Microsoft is "taking the offensive".  The part that’s drawing the most comment?  The fact that Steve doesn’t let his kids have iPods.  Kedrosky writes: "…it is typical of Microsoft that it would find no embarassment in using edicts to dictate product use. It is, of course, reminiscent of certain declining North American auto makers that demand employees only drive their cars to work."

Ignoring the fact that Steve grew up in Detroit, his reaction is in the best time honoured Microsoft tradition.  It’s called eating your own dogfood.  If you don’t use your own products, if you don’t provide the engineering team with feedback on how to make them better, and if you don’t have the drive to want your products to be the best, well… you deserve to lose.  Steve knows that.  And so should all the industry folks who think he’s wrong. 

Bob Frankston, agent provocateur, says Skype is the Future of Connectivity, not IP2. He points out that the edge connectivity of Skype is mobile by default, doesn’t require meshing, and implicitly includes a distributed directory.  Encryption allows connectivity without having to trust intermediaries.

Most importantly, Bob identifies that the real value for EBay may be in the creation of a trust community that frustrates phishing and local gatekeepers. 

Cool!

Sometime in February, I missed the fact that Canadian telecom expert Mark Goldberg has started blogging.  Awesome stuff!  His blog is a great read, and because it’s relatively new, you can read it ALL. How many blogs can you say that about?

In the "Please Remove Your Head From Your Posterior" department, New Democrat MP’s Charlie Angus and Brian Masse have raised the spectre of job losses, higher phone bills and increased foreign ownership if Canada liberalizes telecommunications laws.  According to today’s Globe and Mail, the NDP says it is alarmed by the willingness of Canadian trade negotiators to ease foreign ownership restrictions on telephone companies.

News flash, boys… this quarter Bell Canada announced 4,000 layoffs.  Insiders tell me the number is likely to be higher.  North American phone companies are losing land lines at a rate of 10,000 per day right now.  Canadian industry folks have told me that 1,000 per day is about right for Canada too.

Unless Canada brings telecom regulations in step with market and technology realities, there simply won’t be an industry to regulate.