April 2007 - Posts
Caleb Jenkins, who runs communitycast.tv ('Channel 9 for the rest of us'), was making an awesome video podcast from the MVP Global Summit in March. To see what we got up to, view this communitycast video on MSN Soapbox. Of course, the fact that I feature twice makes it all that much better :-P
I hope all who attended enjoyed last week's session. I've uploaded my LinQ to SQL slides from last week's talk as well as a zip of the demo solution. If you don't have Office 2007, to view the slides download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack (which lets you open AND edit 2007 OpenXML formats in 2003), or at least get the standalone PowerPoint Viewer 2007.
I've had some interesting feedback on my Vista gripe post yesterday, and I wanted to add some small follow-up points. First off, here is a nice article on some Vista tweaks. I realised I do actually have a 1gb flash drive that I carry around with me that doesn't do much, so I may as well try use it for ReadyBoost, even though I have 2 GB RAM, so I'm not expecting all that much.
With regards to point 5 on the drivers, I had one suggestion - I noted that all devices seem to require multiple drivers, and that I have to go through a convoluted process each time. It is definitely smoother since I turned off the option to search online, which did little of value anyway, but I realised what we need is a tickbox on the 1st item that says 'apply this same logic / folder / process for each of the upcoming driver requests for this device - that would really help a lot.
As a further aside, I was thinking about the long delay we did have between XP and Vista, and it is probably the longest MS has ever had between OS releases. Aside from all of us forgetting the upgrade pain, it's almost been very interesting and very pleasant to see how much great software has been released and stabilised on the platform over the long stretch. I'm sure there are many factors at play as well, but perhaps Microsoft indirectly did the world a great servive with the delay in terms of providing a long-term, stable platform, which, if you think about, is really the goal of an OS in many ways. Conversely, I'm weary of us switching back to the old every-2-years release cycle. Any thoughts from the blogosphere?
Ok, I've been having some thoughts on Vista recently, based mainly around the fact that at least one things crashes on me at least once a day. It really is a very pretty OS, and it has some nice good features, but the stability is really shocking, at least for me. I'm running a Dell Latitude D820, and these are my current main issues:
- When I unlock my machine, it keeps switching the displays around ('ve blogged about this twice so far, with a mini-workaround)
- Internet Explorer crashes on me at least once a day (I heard Raymond Chen refer to it as Windows Exploder on a recent Hanselminutes)
- Ditto for Windows Explorer (less frequent, but enough to annoy me, especially on folders with video files)
- Ditto for Media Player
- If I got to Properties on My Computer, I can't access Device Manager. It keeps telling me that "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Set Associations control panel.". Now, I guess I can fix this one, but I shouldn't have to! By the way, my quick workaround is just to click the Advanced System Settings link, the change to the Hardware tab
- Don't even get me going on Bluetooth...
- And then on to drivers... So I finally found where to set Windows to not spend 15 minutes at a time finding NOTHING on Windows Update (which is extra useful when it seems to need to install at least 4 things for every device you plug in!). To change this behaviour, follow the steps i (5), then click Windows Update Driver Settings and change it to "Ask Me...". In addition, what somebody showed me recently is that even though Windows fails to find drivers for, well, almost anything, all you need to do is point it at the magic location c:\windows\system32 .. you know, the WINDOWS FOLDER. Where the heck does it go before this???
In short, I really can't say I'm impressed with the quality of this OS, especially considering how long it took to release. Some of the problems are to be expected, like lack of drivers and software not yet having a version for Vista - it's been 5 years since we've done this, and before that it was always a 2 year cycle (I heard recently that some execs got fired because of the delays shipping Vista), so I can bear that pain, but I really expected this version to be super stable, considering a) that the company has a history of OSes... and b) that it is, at least conceptually, Microsoft's original core business. Based on this last point, I can imagine the issues will get resolved quickly, because they have to be, but right now I definitely can't comfortably recommend to people to upgrade. Office 2007 is another story though, thankfully, and it is a great suite!
On a related note, Sam Gentile (who I was sitting next to at Global Summit for one session without realising it!) has a very good post around this stuff - Wanted- A Windows Edition for Power and Professional Users.
Oh and, in case you were wondering, what finally prompted me to post was when the following occurred:
Yes, that's right - the reporting mechanism that is supposed to report something crashing, crashed!!
Where are my old 6.22 floppies...
I blogged a little while ago about Vista losing my display settings for my second monitor. Sometimes it gets the actual displays per monitor correct (i.e. resolution and refresh rate), but not always and even when it does this, it always switches the monitor orientation. My laptop is on the right, and the external monitor on the left, but this is not the windows default. What is worse is that it resets these every time I (un)lock my pc :-(. I still haven't found a solution, but I've got a short term way to ease the pain. I've created a shortcut on my quick launch toolbar to the display settings, so at least I can access them more quickly. Just point to C:\Windows\System32\desk.cpl (and give it a nice icon as well, of course).