Posts Tagged ‘ Microsoft ’

Windows Mojave - Best idea ever! 29 July 2008 at 6:35 am by Jason 717 views

Meet Windows Mojave:

The “Mojave Experiment”

It’s fast, it’s sleek, it’s cool, it’s hip, it’s… really Windows Vista?

This is the best marketing idea Microsoft has come up with in a long time.  Dealing, as I do, with many novice computer users, getting them to switch to Vista has been an uphill fight.  Most of them haven’t tried the OS or even seen it.  They’re getting all their info from word of mouth and aren’t sitting down to try it.  In this “experiment,” Microsoft has taken many different users and after listening to them bash Windows Vista, ask them to try the newest OS, Windows Mojave.  Upon trying it, everyone is loving it and wanting it, and then comes the reveal… it’s actually Windows Vista.

It’s a great watch… I love the responses some of the people give (for real hilarity, click the link that says “You can’t please everyone.”) and how honest they are.

Seriously people, give Vista a try.  Yes, it had issues… but so did XP… and 2000… and ME… and 98… and 95… ad infinitum.  It’s not like Microsoft is the only company to have issues with new products (let us not forget the MobileMe mess) and if you never try anything new, you’ll be left behind.

Some information about the experiment via the Windows Vista Blog:

  • The focus group took place over three days in San Francisco and was conducted earlier this month.
  • All participants were either Mac, Linux, or users of versions of Windows that came before Windows Vista. Respondents were chosen from the focus group organizer’s database, called at random, but then selected based on having a low perception of Vista (<5 rating on a scale of 1-10).
  • The participants were given a demo by a trained retail salesperson - geared towards the experiences they seemed most interested in following a series of interviews. While the retail salesperson drove the demo, it was geared by the interests and direction of the participant.
  • We did not use some geeked out or custom built PC. We used an HP Pavilion DV2500. It had 2GB of RAM and was running an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz. The OS was a 32 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate.
  • Of the 120 respondents polled, on a scale of 1:10 where 10 was the highest rating, the average pre-rating for Windows Vista was 4.4. After they saw the demo, respondents rated Mojave an average of 8.5.

There you have it.  If you’re using an older version of Windows… go give Vista a chance!



+ Daily del.icio.us Bookmarks for 07/17/08 By Jason 17 July 2008 at 12:03 pm 131 views 1 Comment

These are my daily “Good to Know” links for 07/17/08 … please enjoy:

John Wiley Price: "I don't even know what blog means" | Grits for Breakfast

As far as an elected official in 2007 declaring he doesn't know what the word "blog" means - Good God! I don't know where to begin.

'Shawshank' in a Minute | Radar Online

The Shawshank Redemption in one minute… rapped. It's awesome, trust me on this!

S.F. officials locked out of computer network | San Francisco Chronicle

A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday.

Zombie Garden Gnome | Gizmodo

Design Toscano wants you to "expect the extraordinary from your home and garden," and that includes the walking dead. Take this 13-lb. resin undead garden zombie, for example.

Obama bloats Vista by 11MB | The Register

We're very much obliged today to readers Hawkeye and Duncan Lilly for providing evidence that the Beast of Redmond's Vista is not the lean, mean fighting machine it really should be. Check out this "important" update warning for size.

Come back for more links tomorrow!!



+ Daily del.icio.us Bookmarks for 07/09/08 By Jason 09 July 2008 at 8:01 pm 109 views No Comments

These are my daily “Good to Know” links for 07/09/08 … please enjoy:

LEGO Hamster Lift Might Actually Be More Cruel Than the Wheel | Gizmodo

The hamster wheel… on one hand, it keeps the hamster in shape. On the other, that hamster going nowhere. This elevator leaves us, again, floating in moral ambiguity. One one hand, it’s a LEGO elevator. On the other…well, just watch.

A Perspective on 3-D Visual Illusions | Scientific American

In this illusion, two identical side-by-side images of the same tilted and receding object appear to be leaning at two different angles.

Linux for housewives. XP for geeks. | ZDNet

The computer proletariat is rising up - and computing will never be the same. Tiny, sub-$500 ?netbooks? like the Asus Eee are the hottest thing going in notebooks today. And some surprising things are happening. Like housewives on Linux.

NASA sets date for final shuttle mission in 2010 | Physorg

Following a detailed, integrated assessment, NASA selected target launch dates for the remaining eight space shuttle missions on the current manifest in 2009 and 2010. May 31st, 2010 will be the final launch for the time being.

Apple Just Gave Out My Apple ID Password Because Someone Asked | Consumerist

All the security in the world can be rendered useless by human error, it seems. Marko Karppinen, a software designer, says Apple gave his password to someone who simply emailed them and asked for it.

Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft Over XP | Gizmodo

We came across this jewel from 2003… this is a leaked memo from Microsoft, it’s several pages of Gates just laying into his design and programming staff for his personal experience when trying to install Windows Moviemaker.

Come back for more links tomorrow!!



+ Would you like some Wine with your cake? By Jason 18 June 2008 at 1:50 pm 775 views No Comments

Hot on the heels of FireFox 3.0 being released (have you downloaded it yet??), the Wine team has announced they’ve finally hit version 1.0!

The Wine team is proud to announce that Wine 1.0 is now available. This is the first stable release of Wine after 15 years of development and beta testing. Many thanks to everybody who helped us along that long road!

While compatibility is not perfect yet, thousands of applications have been reported to work very well. Check http://appdb.winehq.org to see the details for your favorite applications.

Congrats guys, it was a long time coming!!!  For those who don’t know, in short, Wine allows you to run Windows programs in a Linux environment.  Right from their about page:

Wine is a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems. Windows programs running in Wine act as native programs would, running without the performance or memory usage penalties of an emulator, with a similar look and feel to other applications on your desktop.

The Wine project started in 1993 as a way to support running Windows 3.1 programs on Linux. Bob Amstadt was the original coordinator, but turned it over fairly early on to Alexandre Julliard, who has run it ever since. Over the years, ports for other Unixes have been added, along with support for Win32 as Win32 applications became popular.

Cool, huh?  Speaking of cool, check out the cake that Microsoft sent over to the FireFox crew:

Mmmm... cake!

Now that’s class!  Those of you may remember that this same thing happened for the launch of FireFox 2:

Mmm... old cake!

Gotta love the sense of humor these guys have!



+ HARC 1 - Vista Tips for the Average User By Jason 01 May 2008 at 4:35 pm 311 views No Comments

Welcome to the first edition of my Helpful Article Corner (HARC)! I think once a week I’ll post some articles that you can read that will all fit a common theme of some sort. This will be different than my daily links, as those are just random interesting links that I’ve come across each day or so, and these will be articles I’ve chosen over the week that all fit a common theme! So sit back, enjoy, and let’s see how this goes!

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Today’s topic will be “Vista Tips for the Average User.”

As you may know, Windows Vista is the brand new Operating System for your home PC that was released by Microsoft as the long awaited successor to Windows XP. A lot of people have expressed concern over Windows Vista and it has caused a lot of grief, as it is very different from XP and most of the support is quite technical in nature. Here to help you along are some great articles, written for non-technical people, that should help with some of the questions surrounding the new OS.

Tips for installing Windows Vista on your computer

You’ve had your eye on Windows Vista since it debuted and now that you know you can make your desktop look pink, shiny and have bubbles floating around as your screen saver you have every intention of spending your next bonus to ensure you get your very own copy of Vista as soon as you can. Your only concern now is if your three year old computer can handle a Vista installation and if you will be able to install it on your own. [Click to Read More]

Tips for starting your computer faster with Vista

We’ve all been there…sitting at our computer desk, waiting, tapping impatiently for our computer to finish restarting so we can continue playing our favorite game. It’s terribly frustrating to watch your computer begin to start up only to have to wait another ten minutes for it to be usable, but thankfully for all of us impatient people in the world, there are ways to decrease the amount of time it takes for your Windows Vista computer to start up. [Click to Read More]

Using parental controls in Windows Vista

As parents, we now have to worry about not only strangers approaching our children at school or on the playground, but we also have to be concerned about strangers approaching our children online. With social networking sites, emails, and role playing games abundant on the internet it can be incredibly difficult to track our child’s movements and protect them. With the parental control feature found in Windows Vista, we can use our operating system to help monitor our children online, keep them from sites that as parents we feel are unsafe, and even keep them offline when they have too much school work to do! [Click to Read More]

Using Windows Vista System Restore

At one time or another we’ve all installed a program or opened an email with a virus that caused our computer to blue screen with random errors or simply operate at a snail’s pace. It can happen to the novice computer user or even the skilled technical support guru and thankfully Microsoft knows this and plans for it. [Click to Read More]

How to downgrade from Vista to XP

If you are one of the many computer users who have been using Windows Vista only to find yourself unhappy with it’s features and your computer’s performance, you still have the ability to downgrade to Windows XP. As long as you own your own Windows XP version on a CD, the process is simple. [Click to Read More]

There you have it! Five articles for the maiden voyage of our new Weekly segment! I hope you all enjoy this, and if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

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