Problems with Vista

To be honest, I'm not using Windows Vista yet. I just bought a PC last week, and was offered the opportunity to get Vista with it, or XP and decided to stick with XP. It's probably because of what I've been hearing from friends and reading on the web!

In the few times I've tested or used Vista, I've noticed it's rather slow and somewhat over-featured!

In any case, here's a rundown of the most common complaints about Windows Vista, and check them out to see if you've ever run into any of them:

Vista is slow, even on a brand new desktop or notebook, even when no applications are running. Opening an application takes time, and once inside an app there's a chance fast-typists, like us journalists, will suffer a delay in characters appearing on screen!

Some users say Vista works fine if you've got 2GB RAM. What, that's massive!
Operating systems should be light, running in the background and should not be a cause for holding up a user session with multiple applications.

Another common user complaint is that Vista applies new short-cuts and routes to doing things which end up feeling like 'long-cuts' because Windows users have been dealing with Microsoft's operating systems for 15 years and they don't like too many changes.

The main problem is that there are other useable options out there, and not just Windows XP.

Have you ever heard of Ubuntu? It's an open-source operating system that can run all your applications and is getting excellent reviews all round.
Right from the start, the installation is slick, the desktop is fast and responsive, and it copes well without running on a top specification machine.
Thanks to non-Microsoft products, like OpenOffice (replacing Microsoft Office), Thunderbird (replacing Outlook) and Google Apps (soon replacing everything), Ubuntu comes to life!

There's also Apple's Leopard OS, which just hit 2 million users this week, but that's for Macintosh users.

Back to PC systems, Vista is doing fairly well in spite of the slow take-up by users. Almost every PC in the Western world is being sold with a copy of Vista, other regions are not far behind and obviously there are millions of downloads of the system from Microsoft's website. But, such is the sheer dominance of Microsoft, that many million more users are needed for Vista to make an impact, and to be considered to be replacing XP.

Just imagine that Microsoft continues to support XP fully, ten months after the release of Vista, and from the looks of it will continue to do so until 2010, at least.

So, where does that leave us?

If you're a typical non-technical user who is about to buy a PC, get Vista and run it on a PC with big RAM and harddisk space, and don't push it too hard!

If you're still using an old PC, stick to XP as long as you can.

If you're a techno-type, install Ubuntu and discover the wonders of Linux and open-source.

Oh, and if you're still using Windows 98, please tell Microsoft because they're pretending that you don't exist anymore!

zanasser@gmail.com

Microsoft offers IE7 without validation - no strings attached

Finally, Microsoft has decided to challenge Firefox on its own turf, by making Internet Explorer 7 a truly free, no-strings-attached browser.If you thought it was freeware, seeing as you actually don’t pay anything for it, think again.

You were paying in information to Microsoft, because the condition to download IE7 was the need for Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) authentication.WGA is part of Microsoft's Genuine Software Initiative.

It is intended to help prevent the distribution and use of unauthorized versions of Windows. Up until this week, if you wanted to download IE7, you had to authenticate according to the WGA. So, you may wonder, why would it be a problem to request that users are law-abiding, legitimate owners of Microsoft software before they can enjoy IE7?It’s a problem because the harsh reality is that no less than 85 percent of users worldwide are using illigitimate Microsoft products, and even that is a conservative estimate.

Apart from legal Windows XP or Vista installations, that come pre-loaded on PCs, how many home users do you know who paid for their copy of Office?

In business, we tend to go legal, but home users don’t and they make up the bulk of total PC ownership in any country.Anyway, users like there privacy, even business users, and they’re probably not comfortable with Microsoft keeping an eye on their hard disk contents.

It’s not just Microsoft applications that may be illegitimate, there are also products from Adobe, Corel and others which may be illegal.

Simply, Mozilla’s Firefox offers users an excellent, full-powered browser without any conditions. This has allowed Firefox to gain a sizeable share considering it’s not backed up by a major corporation like Microsoft.

Naturally, Microsoft will ‘add some PR spin’ to why they’ve changed their strategy, claiming that IE7 is more secure alternative than IE6 and that higher adoption of the browser will provide more Internet security worldwide. Fair enough, if IE7 was actually more secure! Microsoft’s statement also makes it clear that the company is still ‘totally committed to fighting software piracy’.

But what this move shows is that the availability of a free, open-source alternative that manages to gain significant market share, may push Microsoft towards offering free software.

Interesting, and it’s a first sign of a major industry shift at the consumer end.In a few months, once the uptake of IE7 increases, and the browser is put under serious pressure by hackers and malware writers, we’ll get a better idea on how secure it is, and the number of downloads will show if this strategy has halted the increasing market share of Firefox.

Although I don’t like to promote software companies, I suggest we all download IE7 and show Microsoft that this is the right direction; thereby promoting freeware, and less conditions on future software releases by the the industry’s top publisher. Think about that.

zanasser@gmail.com

Forty years ago handlheld calculators were born

Amidst all the wonders of the PC world, it’s easy to forget where it all started.

Forty years ago, Texas Instruments created the handheld calculator, and made it a consumer-friendly price; thereby opening the way for ‘bigger consumer calculators’ which turned into the home computers of the 70s and 80s.

Our favorite home computer companies like Commodore and Sinclair followed Texas Instruments (TI) through that passage way with their own computers before launching computers. So, four decades ago, history was made. TI’s first calculator weighed 55 pounds and plugged into an outlet. Compare that to TI’s and everyone else’s latest offerings and you’ll see how far technology has come.

But what immediate impact did it have back then?

Jerry Merryman, 75, a co-inventor of the hand-held calculator, said that Americans embraced it, educators were proud of circumventing repetitive, drill-based learning and instilling creativity and curiosity in students. These are the lessons calculators help facilitate,” he says.

Even back then, the debate began on whether calculators help or hurt students. Some educators believe that calculators students technology-dependent and mathematically insecure.

A fact that may point in that direction is that the United States lags in international math exams. But, really, isn’t that just a symptom of Americans not being as smart as Asians and Europeans who use calculators too and are still very mathematically minded!

Besides, calculator capabilities grow with students and enable them to achieve more. Elementary students get started on “Little Professor” calculators that can add, subtract, multiply and divide, then they move onto graphing calculators in later grades.University students nowadays are already using programmable devices that show algebraic formulas, graphs and word problems on the same screen.

So, really, isn’t the whole idea to facilitate brilliance in math and logic, rather than slow it down with tedious, mind-numbing manual calculations!

Mental math must be taught in Kindergarten, then once the basics are grasped, calculators can take over. Why not? What other way is there to grasp higher math.

Compare this matter to writing. Some people can’t spell, but word processing can allow them to express themselves thanks to automatic correction technologies. Our computers will be doing all of this work anyway. You can’t stop progress. What we need is to organize it’s application.

And remember where the word ‘computer’ came from: the verb ‘to compute’. We’re using a glorifed calcalculator everyday!

zanasser@gmail.com