Alex Barnett blog : Vista

Breaking the Vista Customer Experience

alexbarnett — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 14:58:00 GMT

"I’ve written in the past that I thought at 60,000 feet, Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X are more or less the same in terms of ease of use. The one huge (and probably crucial) exception to this is the initial user experience. I can only imagine what my 80 year old father in law would do if he saw the screen as it looks ‘from the factory.’"

By "from the factory", Pito is referring to the OEM software crap that's added to machines over the OS - "Vonage this" and "AOL that" plus additional "added value software" that unquestionably degrades the initial out-of-the-box customer experience.

In my personal use experience, the number 1 example of this OEM "fiddling" is the crap that is laid over the default Windows wireless / hardware / software configruation. On three different laptops family members have bought in the last couple of years (XPs at the time), each had these "added value wireless configurators" - software that is meant to help you connect to wireless networks and manage those connections - but in fact does the complete opposite - they hinder the straightforward act of wireless network discovery and connection.

For those three laptops (2 Dells and an HP) my dad and siblings actually found it impossible to get a connection going to their home networks using the additional bundled wireless software that auto-runs on start-up. The wireless network they were connecting to were completely standard set-ups. Support was called and they couldn't help so suggested that the machines were taken back to the shop to figure out the problem. So fixed it. The solution? Each time I simply removed the OEM wireless-related software and restarted. The moment I did that, each machine's wireless connectivity "just worked".

Pathetic, and worse - uneccesary. This kind of crap customer experience is so damaging to the Windows perception. That's really got to annoy all those thousands of PMs, Devs, Test teams that slogged away for the last 5 years to get Vista right, only for it to be messed around with at the final shipping hurdle.

I haven't bought a Apple machine in years so I can't compare its initial customer experience with a new Windows machine, but I'd be happy to place a guessing bet on which is the better in the first 10 to 20 minutes of using the machine. Some might argue "but that's not Microsoft's fault!" - but the customer doesn't care about the why it is - they just experience the is.

What is Bill Gates' password?

alexbarnett — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:36:00 GMT

Last night's Daily Show, with Jon Stewart interviewing Bill Gates about the Vista launch was fun.

Jon: What's your password?
Bill: <laughs>
Jon: You don't have to answer that. Is it 'Gates'?
Bill: I'll tell you later.
Jon: Hey, do you have pets?
Bill: Well actually, we keep putting off having pets. Our kids put on a lot of pressure.
Jon: Did you ever have a pet when you were younger?
Bill: Sure I had a dog.
Jon: What was the pet's name?
Bill: That's not my password.

You watch the interviews on Soapbox beta: Part 1 and Part II

Where did the Windows Vista wallpaper images come from?

alexbarnett — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:19:00 GMT

Raymond has the answer.

Windows Vista and Office 2007 now on MSDN Subscriber Downloads

alexbarnett — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:08:00 GMT

If you are an MSDN Subscriber, come and get your Vista and Office 2007.

Vista start up sound

alexbarnett — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 22:24:00 GMT

Here's a short NPR segment on the new Windows Vista start up sound. The story includes playbacks of the start up sounds from Windows '95, Windows 2000, Windows XP as well as the new Vista sound that was whittled down from some 2,000 candidates.

Windows Vista releases to manufacturing!

alexbarnett — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:40:00 GMT

According to the Windows Vista team blog, Windows Vista has released to manufacturing (RTM):

"And just what is this so-called RTM? It’s the major milestone where we can confidently say that Microsoft is done with Windows Vista and will be handing it off to our industry partners: PC makers, ISVs and IHVs. They in turn will continue to ramp-up in earnest now that the target is locked -- for example, by refining hardware drivers -- in order to complete the cycle and make Windows Vista available via retail channels on 30 January 2007. On that date Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system will be available to customers around the world."

Detailed Vista RTM Questions and Answers are here. Check out Charles Torre interviewing Jim Allchin over at Channel 9.

FeedDemon 2.1 Beta integrates Windows Live Writer

alexbarnett — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 14:50:00 GMT

Nick Bradbury announced the beta of FeedDemon 2.1 earlier this week, the feed reader I've been using for years now.

I noticed this snippet in the new features list:

Integration with Windows Live Writer.

From the release notes:

"If you don't already have a blog publishing tool configured in FeedDemon, FeedDemon will automatically detect Live Writer. Otherwise, click the "Auto-detect" button on the "Configure Blog Publishing Tools" dialog to add Live Writer."

So I tried it out...It works! This post was created using by right-clicking Nick's post within FeedDemon and selecting Window Live Writer (WLW) from the menu (Send To >> Blog this News Item >> Window Live Writer (on your first run you need to select the 'Auto Detect Feature' - note: you must have already installed WLW on your machine for this to work...) - this copies the content of the post into WLW, ready to edit and post. Easy. Sweet.

P.S - I've got all this running on Windows Vista RC1 without any issues.

Vista and Synctoy

alexbarnett — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:47:00 GMT

I took the plunge over the weekend and clean installed Vista RC1 and Office 12 (2007 Office).

All working sweet, except for SyncToy (latest version is 1.2) which doesn't run on Vista. I found this post by Ed Bott, citing a comment left by the SyncToy program manager at Microsoft on one of Ed's previous posts, confirming the next version will have Vista support.

In the meantime, if you are running Windows XP and a need syncing app (backing up to a networked drive, synchronizing music, picture, video files across machines, etc), Synctoy works great, really easy to use and it's free. I know some people who tried earlier version but were frustrated by the inability to support the maximum length for folder paths (my Dad made this loud and clear to me...). This was fixed in the 1.2 release.

Unfortunately, it does'nt provide an interface for scheduling (yet - I really hope this feature makes it's way into a future release), but it can be run as a Scheduled Task from Windows:

To schedule a task using the XP operating system:

1. From the Start menu, select All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Scheduled Tasks.

2. Select Add scheduled task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard. You will see a list of possible programs to run.

3. SyncToy may appear as an option in the list. If SyncToy does not appear in the list, click Browse and go find it.

4.The wizard will next prompt you to enter how often you want to run the scheduled SyncToy (for example, daily, weekly, et cetera). Select a frequency.

5. The next page asks when to start the task. Select a start time.

6. The next page asks for the user name and password to run the program under. Enter your user name and password.

7. The final page contains an option to open the properties dialog when the wizard ends. Select this checkbox.

8. Modify the Run textbox to include the –R command line option. –R all by itself will run all folder pairs that are active for run all. If you want to run just a single folder pair, add –R“My Pair” to the end of the command line. Note: there is a space before the hyphen but not one after the R. If the folder pair name contains a space, surround it with quotation marks, as the example above shows. For another example, assume that SyncToy is in the folder named C:\My Folder and that you want to run a folder pair named "My folder pair." Enter the command line as follows, including the quotation marks: "C:\My Folder\SyncToy.exe" -R"My folder pair." Note that there are two sets of quotation marks in this case: one is around the path to the SyncToy program file and the other surrounds the folder pair name.

Get your Vista RC1

admin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:11:00 GMT

Neowin has the links to the Vista RC1 goodies.

Via Scoble.