Tag Archives | Microsoft. Windows

Three Neat New Windows Tools (and Free Coffee)

Posted by Steve Bass on April 14, 2010 at 10:20 am

Bring a reusable travel mug into your local Starbucks on April 15th, and you’ll get a free brewed coffee. Two things I’ll guarantee: The lines will be long and the baristas won’t be perky. And I’ll bet they’ll try to pawn off a cup of their insipid Pike Place brew on you. (Me, I still prefer Peets…) [Thanks, Tom.]

Shaky Videos? Here’s a Free Fix

We’ve all done it (or at least I have): Clicked the video button on the digital camera hoping for a quick, 60-second oooh and ahhhh video. What we end up with is something shaky, jiggly, and not-so-terrific.

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It’s Finally Time to Ditch Windows XP

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 8, 2010 at 12:41 am

(Here’s another story I wrote for FoxNews.com.)

When Microsoft released Windows XP in October of 2001, the software got upbeat reviews and sold briskly. But I doubt if even XP’s biggest boosters would have predicted just how long-running a hit it would be. Nine years later, it’s still the the world’s favorite operating system.

Two words explain XP’s uncommonly long reign: Windows Vista. The much-hyped 2007 Windows upgrade turned out to be notoriously glitchy (especially at first) and short on substance. Some PC users tried Vista and loathed it; others simply chose to avoid it. Either way, XP got a new lease on life.

And then Windows 7 arrived last October. For the millions of PC users who chose to skip Vista, 7 is the upgrade to XP. And it’s a nifty one, retaining what was good about Vista — such as the ability to instantly search your entire hard drive — while fixing every major problem. Features for juggling multiple applications are greatly improved, and annoyances such as pop-up messages are much reduced. Overall, Windows 7 is just plain pleasant in a way that even XP isn’t.

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Who Needs Syncing?

Posted by David Worthington on April 5, 2010 at 6:19 pm

Nearly two years ago, I reviewed internal documents about Microsoft’s plans to design and develop an entirely new operating system called Midori. While I am uncertain about the exact state of the project, bits and pieces of the Midori vision are emerging in the company’s latest technologies.

Owning a PC was once a big deal; now it’s common for multiple computers to reside under one roof. Today’s households are filled with PCs, Pads, and Pods–devices that are loosely synchronized and loaded with apps. Information and applications are getting distributed, with many pieces working in parallel. Midori is intended to support exactly that kind of distributed application architecture, and Microsoft assigned some of its top talent to support the project.

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Windows XP: A Free Copy of Bob in Every Box?

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 29, 2010 at 6:59 pm

I didn’t include this in my history of Microsoft Bob, but maybe I should have–and it’s too fascinating not to share.

In 2008, in Microsoft’s own TechNet magazine, Windows team member Raymond Chen reported that the Windows XP CD included some dummy data as part of an anti-piracy scheme, and that the person who implemented it had some fun with the project:

…he dug through the archives and found a copy of Microsoft Bob. He took all the floppy disk images and combined them into one big file. The contents of the Microsoft Bob floppy disk images are not particularly random, so he decided to scramble up the data by encrypting it. When it came time to enter the encryption key, he just smashed his hand haphazardly across the keyboard and out came an encrypted copy of Microsoft Bob. That’s what went into the unused space as ballast data on the Windows XP CD.

Even if it’s true, it’s a delightfully urban legend-y tale. And no, it didn’t appear in the April issue of the magazine–but it’s almost the same story as one that was an April Fool’s prank.

We’re talking about Bob here, so anything’s possible. Bob being snuck onto Windows XP CDs is no stranger a concept than Bob existing in the first place…

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Bob and Beyond: A Microsoft Insider Remembers

Posted by Tandy Trower on March 29, 2010 at 1:00 am

(Tandy Trower spent 28 years at Microsoft, working on everything from Microsoft BASIC to Windows 1.0 to user interfaces to robotics. In this article–part of our commemoration of Microsoft Bob’s fifteenth anniversary–he recalls his initial reaction to Bob and the Bob-like Office Assistant, and his spearheading of Microsoft Agent, a later attempt to build a better “social interface” of the type that Bob represented.)

After I managed the first two releases of Windows, I shifted my focus to helping improve the design and usability of Microsoft’s products, founding the company’s first user interface design services team. For most products, my team’s efforts involved improving window and icon designs, providing usability testing, defining good design practices, and promoting consistency between products. One of my most unique challenges came with the development of the now infamous Microsoft Bob.

Bob was a very different kind of product than Microsoft had ever created before. It was developed out of motivation to improve and simplify Windows and Microsoft’s application user interfaces, and has somewhat unfairly been considered one of the company’s biggest failures.

Bob first came onto my radar after I received an email from Bill Gates asking me to check on a new project he wanted me to review. The message included a document written by Karen Fries, the Bob program manager. In that document, Karen discussed the motivation behind Bob: the increasing complexity of richly featured GUI applications. There were so many choices for the user in terms of commands and options that it was like going to the supermarket and looking down the cereal aisle and trying to make a choice, or visiting a restaurant with a vast menu.
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The Secret Origin of Windows

Posted by Tandy Trower on March 8, 2010 at 11:41 pm

Few people understand Microsoft better than Tandy Trower, who worked at the company from 1981-2009. Trower was the product manager who ultimately shipped Windows 1.0, an endeavor that some advised him was a path toward a ruined career. Four product managers had already tried and failed to ship Windows before him, and he initially thought that he was being assigned an impossible task. In this follow-up to yesterday’s story on the future of Windows, Trower recounts the inside story of his experience in transforming Windows from vaporware into a product that has left an unmistakable imprint on the world, 25 years after it was first released.

Thanks to GUIdebook for letting us borrow many of the Windows images in this story.

–David Worthington

Microsoft staffers talk MS-DOS 2.0 with the editors of PC World in late 1982 or early 1983. Windows 1.0 wouldn’t ship for almost another two years. From left: Microsoft’s Chris Larson, PC World’s Steve Cook, Bill Gates, Tandy Trower, and founding PC World editor Andrew Fluegelman.
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The Future of Windows

Posted by twenty-eight Windows watchers on March 8, 2010 at 4:03 am

In 1985, almost all PCs sat on desktops, the Internet was a Defense Department research project, and the cell phone revolution had barely gotten underway. It was also the year that Microsoft launched a DOS front-end called Windows 1.0.

Over the past quarter century, Windows has evolved many times, and it will change again in light of Microsoft’s investments in cloud services, mobile platforms, and other new technologies. And as the way people compute and communicate morphs faster than ever, the challenges ahead for Windows are huge.

With that in mind, Technologizer asked some of the industry’s big brains about what Microsoft needs to do to keep its operating system relevant in the years to come. Their advice ranges from merely simplifying the interface to borrowing ideas from other Microsoft products such as the Xbox to giving the OS a complete reboot. Here’s what they (and we) have to say.
–David Worthington, story editor

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Help!

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 2, 2010 at 3:07 pm

It’s a PC convention that dates to the 1980s: Press the F1 key, and you’ll pull up online help. Except Microsoft is now warning Windows XP users to ignore any Web site that asks them to press F1.

As Gregg Keizer is reporting over at Computerworld, a Polish researcher has discovered an XP (and Windows 2000) vulnerability that would let a Web page trick an unsuspecting user into pressing F1 and thereby launching a malicious program disguised as a Windows Help file. Microsoft has published an advisory recommending that users not press F1, and explaining how to disable Help altogether.

It’s a way more fascinating security hole than your average exploit, since it could let a bad guy make trouble for a Windows user at the particularly vulnerable moment when that person is seeking help. But it’s a sobering argument in favor of choosing a modern operating system–be it Windows 7 or Snow Leopard or Ubuntu–over a creaky old one that dates to the start of the last decade.

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PC vs. Mac: The Straight Scoop

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 27, 2010 at 10:32 am

(Here’s my latest FoxNews.com column–this one’s my attempt to compare PCs and Macs for non-geeks.)

Want to start a fight between computer geeks? Bring up one simple question: PC or Mac?

Windows advocates will start accusing Mac users of being members of a fancy-pants cult. Mac fans will maintain that Windows users are the undiscerning owners of hunks of generic junk. It’s a pretty undignified squabble, and both Microsoft and Apple egg it on via contentious TV ads.

Me, I’m cheerfully agnostic: I recommend both Windows PCs and Macs all the time, and use them both, too. The last computer I purchased was a thin-and-light Asus laptop running Windows 7; the one before that was a 15-inch MacBook Pro. When it comes time to buy a new machine, I’ll consider both options. And if your budget permits, I recommend you do the same.

The PC-or-Mac debate has been raging for more than a quarter-century, but making sense of it requires considering the situation as it stands at one moment in time. Here’s my take on things as of early 2010.

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