Thank You Microsoft!

In the "true spirit of Christmas" - I just wanted to take a couple of minutes and sincerely THANK (yes, thank) Microsoft for all it's done for me this year:

THANK YOU for making an operating system with more holes in it than Swiss Cheese;

THANK YOU for installing numerous patches without my permission and then force-quitting all my running applications while you performed a restart without asking - and then greet me with a "Updated!" bubble once I finally get signed back on;

THANK YOU for doing the above forced restart overnight - while I was backing up to an external drive;

THANK YOU for hosing my presentation during said restart - about 1 hour before I was scheduled to give it to a worldwide audience;

THANK YOU for not having a single iota of creative, innovative thought in your entire company - but rather just copying whatever everyone else is doing (i.e. Silverlight = Flash, Aero look and feel = Mac, Excel = Lotus 123, etc. etc.);

THANK YOU for coming out with an even MORE bloated and completely useless operating system that requires users to upgrade HARDWARE to even run it;

THANK YOU for popping up 1,000 dialogs asking me if "I'm sure" I want to launch a program, send an email or anything else that might, possibly involve anything a real person would do during the day;

THANK YOU for .NET 3.x - it truly is 100% incompatible with 1.1 and 2.x;

THANK YOU for trying to get into every sector of every marketplace ever conceived of - and mucking it up so badly - that other companies can actually compete in the space (i.e. MSNBC, Zune, etc.);

THANK YOU for the promise of even more bloatware in the coming Windows 7 - and for the complete breaking of the naming conventions you've used for all other OS releases - that'll make it even MORE confusing for my family and in-laws when they all ask if they should upgrade;

THANK YOU for increasing the stock price of 3M making sure that older people and non-technical folks cram their monitors with stickies on it with step-by-step instructions for changing the audio or monitor settings (or any other settings for that matter);

THANK YOU for waging battle against open source and for making sure all your software only works well on Windows - it's helped me to learn other software and operating systems that I would have never tried on my own;

THANK YOU, Microsoft for all you do to make life (between restarts and patch upgrades) marginally tolerable.

Increasing Battery Life by 80% "Instantly"

So, what if you could instantly increase your laptop battery life by 80% - AND still be able to access the web, instant message? Oh yeah, and be able to have your computer come on instantly...

Yeah, baby!

Well it seems like Dell (taking a cue from the "nettop" sub-compact notebook makers Eee PC, et al) is making it a reality on their newly announced Latitude E4200 and E4300 notebooks.

The magic comes by way of a fully-dedicated, Linux-based system-on-a-chip. This low-power ARM processor and flash memory compbo run completely independently of the main CPU and storage. This means you don't have to wait for your computer to go through a 5 minute boot process just to surf or have a quick IM!

The embedded OS is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and has a built-in Firefox-based browser and customer email, calendar and contacts application, a PDF viewer, a MS office document viewer and the drivers that are needed to use the wireless radio.

There is also talk of getting an IM client and making Flash and Java work in the browser - but that may come in the next release.

I think this is one more nail in the coffin in the long-term prospects for Windows as we know it today. If this concept catches on (and I really can't see why it wouldn't) - people would be getting a free test drive of Linux and I'd bet that people would use this type of browse-only functionality (if they make it EASY to boot) about 30% of the time - maybe even more.

That means as people get used to using Linux, and have confidence in it, they may just opt to give it a try on the desktop as well.

That would mean you could actually USE a computer with Vista on it...

Want XP on a Dell? That'll Be $50, Please...

Well, it's the last official day to get XP installed on a Dell without paying a "downgrade" fee. If you're looking for the low-priced Vostro line of desktops and notebooks - bring your piggy bank.

It'll cost $20-$50 more to have XP Professional installed as a downgrade to Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate. Oh yeah, and if you want to downgrade to XP Home - you're S.O.L. - you can only choose XP Professional (which is better, if a little more expensive).

You could, however, choose the more expensive Latitude, OptiPlex and Precision systems and downgrade for no cost - but those machines will set you back the extra $20 to $50 anyway.

Also notice that you have to pop for Vista Business or Ultimate versions in order to be eligible for the downgrade. Those two options are the "high end" of the Vista scale in terms of price. Here's a for example:

If you add Vista Ultimate to a Vostro 400 desktop it'll cost you $149 more than the default Vista Home Basic; choosing to downgrade from Ultimate -- Windows XP pre-installed and the Vista Ultimate installation disc in the box -- costs $169, a surcharge of $20.

And, the best part is - you don't get the XP re-install disc! Hey, great move Dell! I guess this is so that when (not if) your hard drive fails, you can see the error of your ways and install the most hosed piece of crap ever invented "true" operating system - Vista.

To be fair, it's not really Dell's fault - at the end of the day, Dell is only doing what it's supposed to do according to their OEM license with Microsoft.

Microsoft will stop giving computer makers an OEM licesne for XP after June 30th (12 days from now) and will stop selling boxed copies to retailers on that day as well.

My advice? RUN down to BestBuy and get as many of these things as you can afford. Then you can charge all your friends, co-workers, in-laws and relatives cost + $75 to get XP after their hard drive fails or when they realize they need to have a four processor, 32 core system with 8GB of RAM to get Aero to work properly.

I can understand Microsoft wanting to get people on to the "new" code base. It's going to be the basis for their next OS version - and it makes life much easier for THEM - in terms of upgrading.

The interesting thing - is that Microsoft has relaxed the XP OEM licensing until June 2010 for these new subnotebooks like the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and the Eee PC.

Ah, so I get it. Those low-cost, ultraportable notebooks don't come with four processors and 8GB of RAM! So for those people, XP is the ONLY alternative (short of Windows Mobile!) that Microsoft has for them.

Good thing Dell also offers Ubuntu Linux right out of the box - NO extra charge... no downgrade B.S....