Greetings Readers!

Russia’s state anti-monopoly service has decided to launch an antitrust probe of Microsoft because it hates Vista.  Apparently Russia is complaining that Microsoft is cutting back on its shipments of Windows XP even though there is still demand for it.  It seems Russia would rather use an old, far more insecure operating system than use Vista.  They claim it is because there is still a demand for it which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because Microsoft certainly isn’t the only company to have ever killed or in this case slowed down shipping a product that still had a demand for it.  I have come up with two theories as to why this is happening. First, they really hate Vista.  Despite the fact that it has been giving me trouble as of late, Vista isn’t bad enough that it would warrant this kind of response.  My second theory is that the botnet and virus writers have infiltrated the Russian anti-monopoly office and are doing everything they can to keep people on an insecure operating system they can more easily exploit.  Personally, I favor the second option.

The hearing is set for July 24th so hopefully more will be revealed then.  What is your theory?

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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

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Here are the shownotes for episode #23 for the Global Geek News Podcast.

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Stories:

• Sprint loses 182,000 customers, $594 million; may outsource network to Ericsson
• Newspapers only get 33% of Kindle sales
• Stuff you can’t do in the Windows Mobile Marketplace
• Microsoft to distribute Windows Vista until January 2011 and end mainstream support April 2012
• Seeqpod fire sale to Microsoft not a done deal
  
• South Carolina tells craigslist to remove prostitution or face criminal charges
• Anti-DMCA crusaders fight for your right to crack DRM
• Navigon pulls out of the GPS business in North America
• Blu-ray making money, sales up 72% in 2009

Hosts:  Jeremy Bray and Wesley Faulkner

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Here are the shownotes for episode #21 for the Global Geek News Podcast.

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Stories:

• 83% of businesses won’t deploy Windows 7 next year
• Twitter worm attacks continue
• Skype founders looking to buy Skype back from Ebay
• CompUSA comes back from the dead with 30 new stores
• Systemax buys Circuit City’s brand and domain name
  
• Sony in talks to offer free, full-length movies on YouTube
• France slaps down proposed anti-piracy bill
• Court:  Your Myspace page isn’t private
• Barnes & Noble may jump into the e-reader market
• 72% of guys prefer gaming to their girlfriend

Hosts:  Jeremy Bray and Wesley Faulkner

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Greetings Readers!

First off, I want to apologize for not blogging much lately.  Life has been very busy and I have been rather uninspired until a day or two ago.  Also, the Global Geek News Podcast will return next week.  Now that that is out of th way…

Have you ever noticed how terribly long it takes for virtually any version of windows to shut down?  Unless it is a completely fresh install, it often can take 5-10 minutes.  In my case, its usually closer to 10 minutes.  For a shutdown time, that is pathetic.  We don’t put up with it from other devices such as our tvs or game consoles, why do we have to put up with it from Windows?

I have noticed this problem for many years.  Whether it is with XP, Vista, or to a slightly lesser extent, Windows 7, it seems like it takes forever for Windows to shut down.  If you have to reboot, you might as well go to the movies because the bootup times are typically as bad or worse.  What is windows doing that it is taking it so long to shut down?  I have tried many things but nothing seems to help.  I have tried killing every application and process I have running before shutting down but it seems to make no difference.  What could the problem possibly be and why hasn’t it been fixed in all these years?

In my fairly limited Linux experience, I never had this issue.  I don’t know if this problem affects Macs or not but I certainly never hear of it having this issue.  If it does or you have an experience you would like to share, please do so in the comments.

Microsoft really needs to address this issue as it is a huge productivity killer and electricity user.  I can’t say I have gone looking much lately but I have never heard any comment on this.  Occasionally I come accross some guides that supposedly help with the problem but still don’t solve it.  I think its time we put pressure on Microsoft to fix this issue that is a plague on all Windows users.  We must demand a higher standard from the company we have come to depend upon.

What has your experience been with this?  Post it in th comments as well as tips or links to tips to help this problem.

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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

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Greetings Readers!

Have you or somebody you know experienced confusion with Windows Vista because of the large number of versions?  While I admit that I was never confused by the version differences other than the fact that I found the whole idea stupid, it seems that Microsoft wants to create more confusion yet again with 5 versions of Windows 7.

Late last week, a screenshot surfaced from what is supposedly build 7025 of Windows 7 showing 5 different versions of Windows 7.  Apparently Microsoft didn’t get the memo that having so many versions is confusing to the average consumer.  The average consumer doesn’t understand the differences between Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate, rather less business or anything else.  Few consumers know what the different features are at the time of purchase rather less if they will use it.  The average Joe doesn’t understand things like full drive encryption or some of the media capabilities that come with Windows.  Unfortunately, Microsoft has taken the route of confusion instead of making things easy on the consumer.

Of course this is better for Microsoft than it is the consumer.  Rather than trying to limit customer confusion and be the customer friendly operating system, they try to make money by making people think that premium is better than basic and ultimate is better than both and trying to get consumers to purchase them whether they need it or not based on the fact that it sounds better.  After reading the book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (I cannot recommend this book enough, it is great!), I completely understand what they are doing here but I don’t believe it is a good thing for the consumer or Microsoft.

Windows 7 Starter is likely the most stripped down piece of crap version of Windows 7 there is (I am not saying that Windows 7 is crap, I actually love it, I am just comparing it based on the names of the other SKUs).  Assuming this isn’t a completely stripped down version for Netbooks (the beta which is Ultimate runs quite well on netbooks), Microsoft actually expects to sell few if any of this version.  Why have this version you ask?  To make the others look better.  If the price difference isn’t that huge, the average person is going to go for the version that sounds better.  Microsoft is simply trying to capitalize on this.

The bad part about this strategy is that it leads to confusion.  What is the difference between the versions?  What is the best bang for my buck?  What features do they have?  Will I ever use these features?  Are there better third party alternatives to what is offered built in?  These are only some of the bigger questions that the average consumer is stuck with when you have so many different versions.  If you want to be seen as the most consumer friendly version, especially with companies such as Apple gaining strength, confusion should be your enemy.

I will admit that just having a single version of Windows isn’t necessarily the best answer.  I believe that there should only be 2 versions of Windows, a business version and a home version for everybody else.   Much like the business version of Vista, the Business version of Windows 7 should have things such as full hard drive encryption, more protection against hardware failure, remoting support among other things that the average consumer doesn’t really need.  Of course there are plenty of other vendors that sell such software, so if there are any power users out there that need this functionality, they can easily get it.  Business should also be stripped of some of the media capabilities since it is usually better to have employees working rather than streaming movies to their Xbox.  The consumer version on the other hand should have a plethora of media capabilities and the stuff that the consumers might want to do.

That said, I know there are some consumers that want some of the business features such as the hard drive encryption but don’t want to use other software such as TrueCrypt.  I also understand that some businesses are very media focused.  My solution to this is to have a store where you can buy certain features of the other version if necessary.  By using a method such as this, people will get what they want on their machine without all of the other crap.  This would greatly simplify things and make it much easier for consumers to determine what they need and get it instead of being up-sold to the Ultimate or whatever version so you can have the features of everything even if you don’t need it.

Get rid of the Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium and Ultimate versions and just call it Windows 7 Home and then the Windows 7 Business version.  Two versions is all you need.  Anything more and it causes confusion.  If Microsoft wants to put Vista behind them, they need to fix the mistakes they made with Vista and I believe this is probably the biggest one.

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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

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