Degen.Net

In a world of growing danger, hostility and terrorist threats it’s rare that you can pick up the news and find something hopeful coming out of North Korea. Yet that’s what many news agencies are reporting; Kim Jong Il’s ready to shut down the reactors and engage in a diplomatic exchange. Wonderful news indeed.

But how did we get here? Could it be the intricate multiparty talks, or perhaps it’s a new found wisdom and understanding on the part of the North Korean government, hum… well maybe it’s just an example of how Apple is saving the world from nuclear winter; one IPod at a time!

What???    

   

Well, let’s flashback a few weeks. Some of you may recall that part of the strategy to get Mr. Il’s attention was to cut off access to all kinds of high end luxuries, Playstation 3’s, nice French wines, Italian sports cars, oh and IPods. At the time this struck me as a great idea, but I has not prepared for how quickly this approach would yield results!

Love my 1337 Photoshopping skills!

Considering the Nero Burning ROM logo is an image of the Coliseum in flames; maybe it has been naive to ever put so much stock in this application. Having said that, Nero’s CD/DVD burners have been the gold standard in burning software for several years now.

 

All that, however, was called into question lately as I worked through technical issues setting up Nero 7. If you are like any of the many Nero users I have spoke with, the answer is always the same – “everything was running great on my system with Nero 6, but then I loaded the new Nero 7 and everything went to hell in a hand basket!”

So what has changed in this new version of the venerable, rock solid package. To start with Nero 7 makes me wonder if I purchased a CD/DVD burner or a full featured Video/Audio editor, player suite? Ahead (the makers of Nero) have gone crazy with adding a true “SuperSized Suite” of multimedia functionality. I for one am not convinced that all this integration is a positive thing, as it adds considerable complexity to a formerly simplistic package. I just need to burn a disc!

But all the new functionality aside, most users complaints have centered around how invasive the new install of Nero 7 is, and that its subsequent uninstall is next to impossible. Such an uninstall became necessary due to system instabilities encountered in early releases of 7.X. And the uninstall is ugly! We’re talking hand cleaning the registry.

Things looking Up? Version 7.7.5.1 to the Rescue!

So having successfully rid myself of Nero 7 a few months back, I re-installed my limited OEM copy of version 6 and all was good again. But with practically everything not working right under Vista, and some rave reviews about the Nero 7 Ultra capabilities I figured it was time to give it a try once more.

After doing some research it appeared that the most current version (7.7.5.1 as of this writing) was supposedly Vista compatible, so I grabbed the updated version and started the install.

Installation and operation of Version 7.7.5.1 has been smooth on both my Vista and XP test systems, without the incompatibilities I had witnessed in previous builds of Nero 7. Burning ISO and previous version NRG files has worked without a hitch.

I am anxious to test Nero’s support for BIN and CUE formats, as these previously required the use of Alcohol 120, and it would be nice use Nero on my Vista machines (Alcohol has been a bit flaky on Vista, looks like they still need to do some compatibility work.)

All and all Nero 7.7.5.1 appears to have turned the corner on instability issues and with good Vista compatibility I’m changing my opinion of this Uber feature laden burner. It’s nice to have a happy ending in the world of upgrades.

As I push forward with my hands on Vista usage series of posts, I write today with frustrations over application incompatibilities.

I’m doing a routine build of productivity tools on my notebook and was floored to find that PCAnywhere 12 is not compatible with Vista. And not only PCA, but just about every Symantec application as well! Check this link for a full list of unsupported apps from Symantec.

CyberMedia News is reporting that PCAnywhere for Vista will not ship till May or June of 2007, a good six months after Vista’s corporate unveiling.

Couple that with Symantec’s own list of unsupported apps, and obviously someone is asleep at the switch up there in Cupertino. Symantec, let’s focus a little less on mergers and /begin sarcasm – bold new ventures like “Security 2.0” – /end sarcasm, and just work on basic app compatibility!

So I reached the end of my 30 days to activate Vista, and I have to admit the activation process went off without a hitch. Below is a walk through of the screens encountered.

 

When I was greeted by the “you must activate today deal with me box” I selected: Activate Windows Online Now:

 

In my case it did not take but 30 seconds to perform it’s communication with Microsoft.

Success!

As you can now see from the new “system” properties screen the Genuine Advantage logo is present on a system that has been authenticated.

It will be interesting to see if consumers start to hit the same kind of false positive pirated messages that have plagued The XP Genuine Advantage tool. I’d be interested to hear from any of you who encounter problems.

The 31^st of January was a big day for both Microsoft and Dell.  Obviously with the launch of Vista there’s a lot on the line for each company as their mutual fortunes are quite intertwined.

But it was an especially significant day for Dell. Not just because they started shipping systems preloaded with Vista, but as it marked the end of Kevin Rollins stint at the helm, and the return of Michael Dell.

Now many of you might think, “So what? How does a returning CEO to a computer company effect me?” and for the most part – you might be right. In fact the same could be said a few years ago about a company that was faltering, taking mis-step after mis-step in the technology marketplace. Maybe you have heard of them, the name is Apple, and the CEO was Steve Jobs.

See much like the malaise that Dell finds itself in today, Apple was suffering similarly; eroding market share, diminishing customer satisfaction levels, and a general lack of innovation. Regardless of all the “how’s”, Steve Job’s return to Apple galvanized the company. Under his leadership, Apple pulled out from their slow decent toward becoming irrelevant; just another blip in the history of personal computing.  Instead, Apple has once again revived herself and is one of the most vibrant innovators on the computing and consumer landscape.    

Can all this be attributed to one man? Should it matter to every employee that the company’s founder has returned to rescue their corporate endeavor, akin to a noble knight battling a dragon for the love of his maiden? I honestly don’t know – but it is certain that just as Apple needed (and received) an injection of vitality, Dell is facing the same concerns.

This is not a bash Dell piece. I use Dell equipment on almost a daily basis, and have done so for many years. Based on this, it has become apparent that something has been amiss with the Dell experience in the last couple of years.

This is not just a subjective assessment due to press coverage about flaming notebooks, continual outsourcing of support call centers to India, or excessive system build/ship times; no there has been a tangible shift in the PC dominated landscape, and it has been bad news for Dell.

Last quarter’s market share numbers validate this, HP has pushed Dell aside for the number one spot. What does this say when HP, a company rocked by the “Dunn Debacle” and the seemingly endless fall-out from Carly Fiorina’s exit, can surpass the mighty Dell? It says there is a lack of positive feelings engendered toward Dell and their products, and it’s beginning to impact revenues!

 

To that end I’ll make a suggestion. Ben Curtis might be out of rehab by now, maybe it’s time roll with some retro commercials, Dude! 

As you know, I’ve been refreshing my experience on the current crop of Linux distros, last week’s overviewed was Ubuntu 6.10 – “Do you Ubuntu?”  Moving right along in my “which Linux Distro is right for me” Evaluation is SUSE 10.2.

Having not looked at SUSE since before the Novell merger/acquisition, I expected significant changes. After torrenting down the DVD image I threw it into my “classic” test system, an old Compaq P3 with 512 MB of RAM. I’ve used this old beater before for testing, and given Linux’s relatively mild requirements I figured this would be no problem.

Was I in for a surprise.  None of the installation options worked on the P3-733. Not exactly state of the art, but certainly it should have been sufficient. I even put an old NVIDIA MX400 in the system thinking that perhaps the onboard Video was the problem, but nothing.

So over to my Intel Core 2 box. Immediately the installer was up and running. After quickly answering questions about my language and location, I was given the choice of which desktop manager I wanted Gnome or KDE. This was a nice option, one that I have not seen in many new Distros installers lately. I selected Gnome, as I have been using it with most of these Linux evals and wanted to keep things consistent.

Next came partitioning options. SUSE greatly simplifies the process with its prefab selection. There are expert options to go in and modify, but I have to admit, even I was a little intimidated by the way these slices where displayed – so I let it be and rolled with the defaults.

A nice progress bar gives a total time remaining, after about 30 minutes, three gigs have been moved and we are ready for reboot. Upon reboot, I was pleased to see that my Vista install had been auto-detected and was intact, something other distros have not picked up correctly. 

Completing the install after reboot, was uneventful. You are giving the opportunity to create some users and setup Novell support options.  I’m not up on the ins and outs of how Novell’s support options work with SUSE, so I left this blank for now and was able to progress through the installer. I’d welcome anyone’s input as to what you get/don’t get in the “free” vs. “pay” support options.

Also of note is the very different “start” menu or application browser, pictured below. It’s fascinating to see how OS menu systems are moving away form traditional linear designs as they grow more and more conceptualized around tasks, and less about a specific application. This is true of most new modern OSes (Vista, OSX and now here in Linux windows managers.)

Bundled apps were plentiful and featured Open Office and Firefox 2.0. Totem serves that the default media player, but like Fedora and the current Ubuntu it does not default install with many codecs; Ubuntu 7.X plans to support an auto download on demand of unknown/uninstalled codecs, I was hoping to see that in this refresh of SUSE.

And let me clarify somehting about this post, as well as the whole series of Linux Distro overviews, this is not indented to be an over-arcing exhaustive review of SUSE, but rather an accumulation of observations I’m making about the current crop of Linux offerings. There are many great sites devoted to much more granular detail than I can get into here. In a future article I will give some recommendations on sources you can draw from for more info.

Overall this is a very impressive offering and should be considered as a free/low cost PC OS option. Keep watching as I will look at Fedora 6 next in the series.

“No really I want to do that you stupid Vista UAC!” That’s what I find myself screaming at every new Vista install I encounter. At least until this infernal feature is turned off!

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are one of the lucky ones that has yet to sample this latest effort by Microsoft to safe guard Vista users from their own stupidity – the UAC or  “User Account Control.”

In fact UAC has so captured the furry users, it’s been incorporated into the latest Apple “Hi, I’m a PC – I’m a Mac” TV spots in the US. It’s priceless and one of the best in the serious, if you’ve missed it you can see it here.

We all know and hate malware, viruses, Trojans, the list goes on and on.  UAC, attempts to prevent these threats from compromising a system in the first place. It attempts to do this by requiring the user to acknowledge actions that could expose a PC to potentiality harmful actions. Now that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, the problem is in its implementation.

Just like the Apple commercial illustrates, practically every action you do will pop up this “Deal with me box” – that’s a rant for another time. The box gives you the option to allow or deny the action in question. The angst here is that you have to actually understand what you are acknowledging or refusing. This idea goes completely against all logic, as a power user is going to not launch the suspect app in the first place, and the novice will simply say, “Sure, I need that crappy browser plug-in to make my MySpace page crash!” Yeah, good God help us!

As I already stated one of the first things I do when configuring a new Vista install is to turn UAC off all together. Yes, yes, I know this could be opening myself up to untold dangers (all the ones I’ve always been vulnerable to on XP.) So if you want to be a super 1337 user and play it fast and lose, like your’s truly, below you will find a step by step crib sheet to turn this D&mn thing off.

* Regular readers of Degen.Net know that this is a site dedicated to technology and opinion pieces. But once in a while I like to post a column that’s just silly, this is one of those stories *

 

As some of you know I spend a good deal of time in airports. Traveling to and fro, I’ve made a few observations that remain consistent wherever I find myself. Confidently I can say that our nation’s hubs of commerce are plentiful, busy and filled with travelers hurriedly trying to get from one place to another. These attributes are common to all airports today.

Yet for all their similarities there are some stand-out differences between them. Some are small and quaint, while others are large and expansive. In a few you might be lucky to find a hot sandwich, yet others boast complete Day Spa services.

This week was not exceptional in my typical pattern of work – it was off to Phoenix for a customer consultation. So up to the sprawling Dallas Fort Worth Airport (DFW) I headed. For those of you not acquainted with DFW, it is a massive 200+ gate complex divided into five separate terminals linked by a snappy new monorail. Depending on your Airline and destination it’s like shooting dice, you never know which of these five terminals you will be going in or out of till a few hours before your flight. Needless to say, checking your gate assignment before you leave the office is more than just a good idea.

For this flight I was departing from the new international terminal. Terminal D was completed last year and it’s a grand place as far as airport terminals go. Plenty of dinning options, sharp airline lounges, and shopping.. Lots of Shopping. In fact there are probably more shopping options in terminal D than in many malls around the country.

Ok, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but like most malls, terminal D features store directories, multiple floors of vendors, a food court, heck its even got a few of those artsy display areas with water features and strange colored glass panels to look at – not sure why there are there, but they look pretty cool!

Now maybe it’s just me, but I love that store. And even though there are many wiles to entreat your senses at Brookstone, there is one particular display that gets me every time – the massages chair. Ah, heavenly joy packaged in black leather – it beckons me on, “come to me, sit!” I can not resist it.

And this was no ordinary model, it has you covered form the neck down; it’s all good. So kicking off my shoes I sit back in this monstrosity of comfort. It even requires you to put your arms in special massaging arm rests. Hitting the “shiatsu” mode I reclined and all my cares slipped away….

There is only one problem with such a splendid device, sooner or later you need to end the cycle, get up and leave. Now this should not be so difficult right? Let’s just say after a few minutes of complete muscular bliss, it’s easier said then done. Looking down at my watch – Holy Cow – it’s time to catch my plane.

Up till now I have avoided the sales lackey who’s job it is to come by and guilt you into buying one of these hugely expensive contraptions or, if unsuccessful with that, move you along quickly. My luck has just run out.

Steve is that sales guy, he is about 25 and he’s really zealous in his duties at the Brookstone.  Steve does not seam to understand that my flight is 20 gates away and leaves in 10 minutes – He’s focused, he wants me to experience all the functions of the Massage Master 9000.  Only vaguely acknowledging his sales pitch, I express with all the non-verbal cues I can, that I’m running short on time, but to no avail, his presentation has hit full stride now.

Struggling to wrangle my feet free from the form fitting foot attachment, Steve is now reviewing financing plans on the Jumbotron massager that I’ve been sitting in – can’t he see I’m trying to get out of here?  My shoes are on now and I’m adjusting the recline button back to a upright position, almost free. Steve sensing that I was never really interested in the chair wants to demo iPods and Zunes for me now….

Moments later I settle into my exit row aisle seat. It’s not nearly as plush or soothing as the Brookstone one, but as the flight attendant latches the door closed and we taxi to the runway, I vow to steer clear of that vile tempter Brookstone, at least till the next trip!

With the recent news that iTunes is doing all kinds of misbehaving on Vista, a colleague asked, “why would Microsoft allow this to happen on their flagship OS?”  And while at first glance his assumption looks like a valid indictment of Microsoft Vista, I have to ponder is there more a more sinister plan afoot at Redmond?

“C’mon Eric!”, you’re thinking, after all iTunes is a significant part of people’s computing experience – surely this is just another MS marketing blunder.  The reasoning goes something like this, “Not having full compatibility out of the box with a mainstream media application like iTunes, Microsoft is going slow adoption and/or frustrate users of Vista.” And while I do not dispute the truth of that argument let me just roll with this for a bit.

Here is the scenario – Microsoft has drug it’s feet and not put any pressure on Apple to get iTunes ready for Vista on launch day. The immediate responses:

1. Shame on Microsoft, there should be better testing and integration with large ISVs like Apple.

 

 

2. Apple is in no hurry, why does Apple want to support Vista anyway, with OSX and Macintels gaining market share why should they hurry up to support Vista users?

 

 

3. Microsoft has found yet another way to botch the Vista roll out forcing iTunes/iPod users to faultier or loose out on functionality.

Wow sounds like a win for Apple and at the very least a PR nightmare for Microsoft! But is it? Does Apple actually stand to benefit from having its iTunes service unavailable on every new computer that ships with Vista or those upgrading?  Certainly not, over 50% of all iTunes sales are on non-Apple platforms, why would Apple want limit their market to the Macintosh install base (still under 10%?)

On the other hand, why would MS want to slow expansion and continued use of iTunes anyway? Microsoft makes money for every song that is sold on iTunes, remember MS still owns a stake of Apple, and the iTunes store is highly profitable.

Still think it’s a vast Microsoft debacle, try this thought on. If the iTunes incompatibility were severe enough to force people into deciding between their beloved iPod or a new version of Windows, and they just had to have Vista – Microsoft is more than happy to sell you their music solution visa vie the “Zune”.  

See anyway you slice it Microsoft stands to Win – the rest of us, well, I’m not so sure!

Previously when I worked with Ubuntu 6.06, I was a bit underwhelmed. Against this backdrop, 6.10 Desktop proved a pleasant surprise.

The install went fairly smooth. A pleasant surprise was the automatic and correct detection of all my system’s hardware, save for minor problems with my NVIDIA 6600 GT (could not get the resolution support right.)  Finally, all the major distros appear to have gotten it, people don’t want to struggle through a difficult geeky install of a Linux OS. Remember, I’m talking about the “Desktop” version of Ubuntu right now, I’ll come back and address the “Server” version in a future post.

Installation of Ubuntu is a bit quicker than most other distros I’ve worked with recently, especially compared to Fedora 6. This is most likely due to the single CD (Yes, I said CD not DVD.) Another nice touch for novice users is the pre-packaged selection of apps that are installed. All the core stuff like Open Office, Gimp and another must have Firefox (it’s even version 2.0) I like this simplified bundling. While power users might miss the granular app control, ala Mandrake/Fedora, 99% of all desktop users wants/needs are packaged with Ubuntu.

Once the OS is installed and running, you are greeted with an earthy tribal start sound and a soothing warm default color pallet on the desktop. Considerably different that the traditional “cool” color schemes employed by Apple or Microsoft, I’m not sure if I like this one or not? None the less this Gnome interface is easily modifiable.

Soon after the desktop is loaded I was prompted to grab the latest updates. Here again Ubuntu has put a very slick skin on the YUM service. It’s easy, quick and distinctively ungeeky. I applied the 100+ it wanted, impressive considering this Distro is not even six months old.

All and all I am quite impressed by the easy of use and simplicity of Ubuntu 6.10. This Desktop offering is beginning to close the gap that has long kept Linux out of homes and small business.

If you have yet to Ubuntu check them out over at: http://www.ubuntu.com/. I’ll be evaluating Ubuntu Server and some other Linux distros in the coming weeks, I hope to share my discoveries here.