Vista: No longer "if", but "when"

2006 promises to be a big year for Microsoft. I've already seen (although I wasn't allowed to touch) some pieces of the next version of the Office suite. That will probably ship sometime this year. And Vista, the latest version of Windows, will be out in two beta versions soon (first for business users and then for home users.) The new operating system should be released to manufacturing during the second half of 2006 and will be available on machines before the end of the year.

Maybe you're wondering what's in Vista for you. Maybe you're wondering whether you should upgrade and when. Or should you switch to Mac or Linux platforms.

Let's knock that last question around for a bit first.

Linux: If what you do doesn't require Microsoft products, Adobe products, Macromedia products, and on and on, then Linux might be a good choice for you. Programs exist on Linux to do the jobs Corel, Macromedia, Adobe, and Microsoft products do, but the file formats sometimes aren't compatible with the files used by the big commercial vendors. If file sharing is important to you, your only real choice is Mac or Windows operating systems.

Note to Linux gurus: I'm not knocking Linux. Some of the current distributions are superb, but if I can't run the applications I need without using an emulator, it's not for me.

Macintosh: If I were buying my first computer today and I didn't have two decades invested in learning Microsoft operating systems, I'd seriously consider a Mac as my primary (or only) computer. OS X is generally well crafted although (Mac users close your eyes for a moment) Windows still does some things better as far as I'm concerned.

Apple's market share is increasing slowly, but that will probably level off at 20 to 25 percent of the market. That would be up from about 5 percent during Apple's darkest days in the 1990s.

But for most of us, Windows will remain the logical (if not the most emotionally satisfying) choice.

Maybe you've already seen Internet Explorer 7, which is available in beta now. I've found things to like (tabbed browsing, an anti-phishing component, and a pop-up blocker) and things not to like (Refresh and Halt buttons seem misplaced, as are some other icons and these cannot be modified in the beta version.) I'll probably continue to use Firefox as my primary browser, or possibly Flock, if it continues to advance as the developers hope.

Vista will be familiar and different. The core graphical user interface will show some evolutionary change. Microsoft's usability team has continued to make modifications to the interface and sometimes subtle differences make the system easier to use. More "intuitive" as Microsoft likes to mis-speak.

Some of the ideas have been borrowed from the Mac. One of these is the ability to preview what's in a file without really opening it. This is a feature I like on the Mac and it's one I'm sure to appreciate under Windows Vista.

Microsoft says the Start Menu operates faster. Something like this may seem unimportant, or even silly, but it's precisely these kinds of changes that affect a user's overall impression of an operating system. Having to wait for a menu is annoying.

Windows has had a process that indexes all the files on your computer for quite some time. Apple upped the ante with Spotlight in OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and Microsoft appears to be ready to match Apple with Quick Search. In the past, I've turned off the indexing on Windows machines because I rarely needed the capability and because indexing slowed the machine. As our hard drives become larger and larger, this kind of search functionality becomes more important. If Vista gets it right, I may leave indexing turned on. And if Vista is able to index folders on network drives, which is something Apple's Spotlight can't do, I'll be impressed.

Explorers (plural)

If you thought it was difficult to explain the difference between the Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer, there's more. Explorers have "live icons" that are scalable. Microsoft says that the new Explorers are designed to help you get to the information you need, when you need it. Quick Search is always available. The navigation pane contains search folders ("smart folders" to Mac users) and the traditional folder free. The live icons are one of the most appealing new functions. Besides being scalable, they display the first page of the document. That's what Microsoft means by "live".

Improved graphics

Windows Vista Aero provides transparent visual effects. This is another feature that seems silly when described, but its importance becomes immediately clear when you see it. The clearer and more life-like the image on the screen, the easier an application or an operating system is to use.

This is a feature that not all users will see. You'll need a powerful computer with a full-featured graphics card. The same is true for a feature that displays a live thumbnail of a running application when you hover the mouse cursor over its icon on the Task Bar.

Upgrade or wait?

It's still too early to say for certain whether it makes sense to update a machine that's running Windows XP to Windows Vista or to wait for Vista to be installed on your next computer. If your computer is an older model with marginal hardware, you may want to wait for the next machine to come with Vista already installed. But if you have a fast machine with a lot of memory and a superior video card, upgrading might be the way to go.

Depending on how easy the upgrade is.

When it comes to upgrading, Microsoft has gotten better in the past 10 years. Installing the next version of an operating system without wiping out everything on the computer is a process that succeeds far more often than it fails these days, but there's always a danger involved.

Community Technology Previews (CTPs) – also known as "beta releases"

Before the end of the first quarter of 2006, Microsoft will release to corporate accounts a Vista beta version. Brave home users will get their chance in second quarter.

Microsoft expects thousands of business users to run the beta and 1 to 2 million home users. The plan is to go from beta 1 to beta 2 and then directly to release candidate 1. They'll skip RC0 because they feel what they have ready to go now is solid. Assuming no surprises crawl out from under rocks, RC1 will be released to manufacturing and then anyone who wants to upgrade (except Joe) will be able to do so.

All of the planned features are in place now and programmers are working on speed and reliability issues.

Two issues that are of interest to a lot of users are security and multimedia. Microsoft admits that security has been a problem and says it will continue to be a huge problem for the industry, but Vista will certainly be the most secure version of Windows ever. Not perfect, but better. And the Media Center Edition of Windows will vanish when Vista appears. The Media Center version of Windows was essentially a version that was designed to keep Microsoft's foot in the door for multimedia users.

Big business in Vista

Microsoft probably won't use the word "disappointed" but I think the company was disappointed by the corporate response to XP. Many large corporations are still using Windows 2000, so Microsoft will have to make a compelling business case to convince corporate IT departments to jump from whatever they're using now to Vista. Microsoft technologists say that Vista will save the IT organization money because of better diagnostics, system even logging, and remote system accessibility.

This is the first upgrade to Windows since October 2001 -- excepting service packs, of course. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates demonstrated Vista at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. That was the first public showing of the new operating system's features.

For Vista to be a hit for Microsoft and the computer industry, it will have to sell a lot of upgrades and a lot of new machines. The problem is that Vista, for all its new features, is more evolutionary than revolutionary. When Microsoft move from Windows 3.x to Windows 95, the fundamental architecture of the operating system changed. The next big change was Windows 2000, but that was somewhat muddled by the misguided Windows Me.

There will be some people who will line up in stores to be the first to buy Vista, but don't expect the kind of launch Windows 95 received 11 years ago.

Vista images were provided by Microsoft.

Waiting for Godot ... er, Microsoft

Microsoft plans to release (someday) a new version of Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 7, which is now out in beta, offers tabbed browsing. Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, and other browsers have had tabbed browsing for several years. I don't doubt that Internet Explorer 7 will be a worthwhile advance, but I continue to be puzzled by the fact that fully 85% of Internet users still use Internet Explorer when there are more advanced tools available.

I've used Firefox for the past year or so and I've found it to be a solid, reliable application that allows me to open with just a couple of clicks 15 or more websites that I frequently use. Similar functionality is available with Opera, but Firefox has "extensions" that I find to be appealing. In some cases, the extensions simply add features that are available to Opera users, but the extensions often provide features that aren't available elsewhere.

There's also Flock, a browser that's still in early beta. It's based on Mozilla code. And, of course, Netscape offers tabbed browsing, but isn't compatible with all of the extensions that run under Firefox.

And there are "browsers" that use Microsoft's rendering engine. Occasionally when Joe and I talk about browsers, we receive e-mail messages that ask why we don't talk about "browsers" such "Avant". We don't talk about these "browsers" (note the quotation marks) because they're not really browsers. They are extensions for Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Avant, for example, is a multi-window browser that brings tabbed browsing to IE. (Woo! Hoo!) It includes built-in links to Yahoo and Google search engines and provides some ad blocking capabilities. And it allows IE to be a client for RSS/ATOM feeds. In other words, it makes IE almost the equivalent of Firefox, except that it can't use Firefox extensions. A "browser" that is simply an overlay for another browser isn't, in my opinion, a browser.

Mozilla is the basis for Firefox, Netscape, and Flock. Each is its own product, though. Netscape is the "commercial" product, Firefox is the "open source" component, and Flock is the offshoot. If you're looking for flexibility and extendibility, Firefox is the only choice. Flock is working with developers to ensure that Firefox extensions will eventually work with Flock.

It's probably no surprise that I'm a Firefox fan. I talk occasionally about my appreciation for utility applications and that's exactly what Firefox extensions are. At the left is a picture of part of my Firefox extensions tab. What I like about extensions is their ability to allow the user to build the kind of browser that's appropriate for the task at hand.

My list of extensions installed at the office is different (and much shorter) than the list of extensions I've installed at home. My needs at the office are different from my needs at home.

One of the extensions I've added recently is called Customize Google and it's designed to give the user complete control over all interactions with Google.

Click either of the images for a larger view.

Google ads: Friend or foe?

At one time, Google's ads seemed like a good idea. If I'm looking for a product, seeing the paid ads can be useful. But I've written previously about Google's apparent lack of concern when questionable, and possibly fraudulent, ads appear. A search for any popular electronic device will almost certainly generate a paid ad with a link to a site that offers the device for "free".

The trouble is that by the time you do everything you need to do to earn the "free" item, you'll have paid far more for it than it's worth. I've reported links such as these to Google many times, but they continue to appear. The Customize Google utility allows me to make the ads go away. In some cases, I'll still want to view the ads and -- when that's the case -- I'll turn them back on.

Touching just the tip of the Customize Google iceberg, the utility enables Google Suggest (sort of an auto-complete function that can speed searches), adds links to Google's competitors, rewrites links to point straight to the images in Google Images, uses secure connections for Gmail, blocks Google's tracking cookies (and maybe the feds), removes ads, adds a result counter in the search result, eliminates spam sites from search results, includes links to WayBack Machine (webpage history), and more.

What is all this stuff?

When I have Firefox running (which is just about anytime I have the computer turned on) a lot of extensions and tabbed websites are visible. The example above has 8 "layers" (including the title bar) so I'll start at the top and explain what's there.

• Title bar. On top of the title bar is the Random House dictionary and DS Clock. These are not part of the browser, but appear at the top of the screen regardless of what else is running.
• The standard Windows-based menu (File, Edit, View, ... etc.)
• Back and Forward buttons, Refresh, Cancel, and Home -- the standard icons. Then there's an icon that allows me to capture and e-mail the page, AdBlock, the usual address area, and (at the far right) a search window.
• Here are links that I use frequently or that I've dragged here because I didn't know what else to do with them. I frequently use the TinyURL service and GoToMyPC. CoolWhoIs is there, along with SpamCop, GoodbyeSpam, a blank page, and some radical commie pinko (i.e. "liberal") links.
• Row 5 is the Stumble Upon row -- a good way to accidentally waste several hours.
• Row 6 consists of Blogger links.
• The IT Vibe toolbar is on row 7.
• And row 8 is the tabs for windows I have open at home:
  • Copyediting-L control panel.
  • Copyediting-L (off-list) control panel.
  • Technology corner.
  • One Look dictionaries.
  • Computer Emergency Readiness Team.
  • Urban Legends.
  • Google.
  • Weather Underground (with Columbus weather showing).
  • GMail.
  • Yahoo calendar.
  • The Hunger Site (charitable donations for clicks.)
  • Zap2It television listings.
  • A site that George Bush fans won't appreciate.
  • Goodbye Spam.
  • Customize Google (open to allow me to check facts for what I wrote above.)

That's a lot of stuff and it's one of the reasons why I run my 18-inch monitor at high resolution. If you click the image, you'll see the full screen at 1280 pixels wide. At the office, my screen is 1600 pixels wide. The screen cannot be too large or have too many pixels.

At the top is all the stuff we've already talked about. The main part of the screen is taken up by the website. At the bottom is the Firefox status line that includes controls for AdBlock, GMail status, HTML Validator, LEET Key, and ForecastFox.

Below that is a dual-level Start Menu, Task Bar, and Tray. Because I usually have a lot of applications running, including a collection of utilities in the Tray, I prefer to run this area 2-deep instead of the usual single layer. Making this change from the standard Windows default makes it possible for me to read program names even if 14 to 16 applications are open.

Nerdly News

Blackberry users continue to wear puzzled looks

If you're a Blackberry user, you'll be happy to know that Research In Motion has a plan that it says will let you continue to receive e-mail even if it loses a patent fight that had been predicted to shut the service off in the US. A court hearing is scheduled for February 24 on NTP Incorporated's request for an injunction to halt US Blackberry service.

RIM says it is willing to "generously compensate" NTP, but cannot accept NTP's proposed licensing agreement. RIM, a Canadian company, also says it is still open to negotiations.

If a US district judge grants the injunction, it could turn off more than 3 million Blackberry units. The US Department of Justice opposes the shut-down, saying NTP has not submitted enough evidence to show government users could be exempted "without substantial hardship."

NTP sued RIM for patent infringement in 2002. An injunction was granted in 2003, but it has been delayed pending appeals.

RIM says it has developed and tested workaround software for all Blackberry handsets in the United States and will activate the changes if there is an injunction. NTP has responded by daring RIM to activate the changes now.

WinPod anyone?

Nobody else has been able to beat Apple in the portable MP3 player game and with Apple's recent announcement of small Ipod players at or below $100, Apple stands to grab the entire market. And (does this surprise you) Bill Gates says Microsoft wants some of the action.

Can Microsoft and its allies combine to take over the player business?

Stating the obvious, Gates said, "I don't think what's out on the market today is the final answer." There's a good chance that Steve Jobs thinks that what's out on the market today isn't the final answer, either, and is continuing to innovate. Gates says that Microsoft and it's hardware partners will develop "some pretty hot products" in the next several years.

Who are the partners? There's no word on that. But anytime Microsoft has only 20% market share, you can bet that the company will do something to get more. The Windows Media Player market is about a quarter the size of the Itunes market.

Math lesson at no additional charge: I said that Microsoft has a 20% market share and Itunes has an 80% market share. I then said Microsoft's share is about "a quarter" the size of Apple's. Shouldn't that be "one fifth"? In a word, no. Microsoft has 1/5th of the market share and Apple has 4/5ths of the market share, but I compared the shares to each other. If Microsoft has 1 and Apple has 4, Microsoft's share is 1/4th (25%, "a quarter") of Apple's.

Annoying legal disclaimer

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