“Hey I’ve got an idea, let’s release an amazing new music service, and completely shun our biggest user-base and our most popular product!” (not an actual quote, just a dramatization)
This is Microsoft’s idea of how to roll out a new music service – don’t offer it to the hundreds of millions of users of their current flagship consumer PC operating system, Windows (7).
Or here’s another great idea, make it first available on your game console (XBOX). Who listens to music while they are trying to play a game or watch TV (and I don’t mean watch TV through the XBOX)? Oh but there’s an additional $60 per year charge to listen to music on your game console versus other platforms.
How do they come up with this stuff? This is a clear case of management by committee. Straight stupid. When they force me off my Zune subscription with the 10 songs to keep per month, I’m going straight to Spotify with my money.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en
You can preview the next version of Microsoft office today! Note that the preview version is “the service”, rather than the product. Something you’ll want to understand better when the full version comes out.
Most of the posts I looked at for installing win8 on VmWare mentioned the term "slam dunk". Not so much for me.
Here's the resource that eventually helped me out, even though it is for VmWare Workstation and the dev preview instead:
http://www.mywindowsclub.com/resources/5081-Install-Windows-VMWare-Workstation.aspx
I'll try to detail where I went wrong, and what the keys were to getting back on track. First let me note that I believe you need to upgrade to at least Player 4 for this to work.
Wrong:
1. Choosing "Other" as the OS - you can install Windows 8 like that, but you won't get the "tools", which for me meant no networking.
2. So then I chose Win7, but pointed to my ISO in the VM setup. That led to the player running an unattended install file for win7 on top of the win8 setup. That kept failing and looping with an error on the product key. There seem to be indications that "removing" the "floppy" in the hardware portion of the VM setup can help with that, but it didn't help me.
Right:
Choose "Win7 as the OS (with the 32 bit win8). But choose operating system as None/Do later. Then mount the iso as the dvd after the VM fails to boot, and restart the VM. You wind up in setup without the unattended install script, but with win7 VmWare tools, which is exactly what you want.
Good luck, I'm off to play with win8!
http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/zune-2/zune-pass-heads-canada-140761
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/09/29/microsoft-taking-zune-to-canada-revamping-zune-pass/
Don’t read those blog posts wrong, Zune is not lowering the price, it is raising it. Currently I pay $14.99 for the monthly subscription PLUS 10 free song downloads per month. Starting in October new subscribers will pay $9.99 for the monthly subscription with NO free song downloads. (It appears I will be able to keep my plan if I want.)
If we postulate that average song downloads cost or are worth about a dollar, then $10 out of my $14.99 each month was for the downloads, meaning I was paying $4.99 for the subscription service. That was a great deal! Now they want to charge me twice as much? Boo.
Is this a chance for Spotify to swoop in, undercut the new price and steal my business, my money, my loyalty, my heart away from Microsoft? (Sorry for the dramatics, they are aimed at motivating Microsoft.)
It actually isn’t Spotify’s big moment, but as usual the devil’s in the details. Spotify on my iPhone is only available (after the trial) with the $9.99 plan, not the $4.99 plan they also offer. Furthermore according to Spotify’s website, if I am reading it correctly, the premium account only extends to 3 devices (phone or pc).
My current Zune plan includes 3 pcs and 3 devices, but it looks like the new Microsoft plan is for 4 devices total (new users losing 2). However they have thrown in some music videos (psh).
The number of tracks each has seems to be roughly equivalent – today I saw mention of 15 million on Spotify’s site and 14 million on Zune’s. I’m sure that goes back and forth. And I’m sure that the depth on particular kinds of music varies between the services.
Bottom line, this is a bad time for Microsoft to raise the price, because they put themselves on par with Spotify, which was more expensive, but doesn’t require a Zune or Microsoft phone. That said, I’ll probably stick with them while my Zune hardware lasts and I can keep my plan for $4.99/month. After that I’m a free agent!
This is an oldie but a goodie. A tip I can never find when I need it.
How do you create a shortcut that opens Windows Explorer to a certain folder, but with the Folder Tree visible and synced to the folder you are in?
%systemroot%/explorer.exe /e, “c:\yourfolder”
Thanks to:
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/11/xp-tricks-save-time-with-windows.html
My favorite Microsoft pundit, Paul Thurrott, attempts to single-handedly put a hook in Microsoft's lip and drag them kicking and screaming into the present reality. If anyone can do it, he can..
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/mobile-and-wireless2/Yes-I-Still-Love-Windows-Phone.aspx
Check out this error dialog from Microsoft Outlook below.
“The rules on this computer do not match the rules on Microsoft Exchange. Only one set of rules can be kept. You will usually want to keep the rules on the server. Which rules do you want to keep?
The point I want to highlight, is that you can’t see the rules without choosing Client or Server from this dialog. You have to choose which rules to keep, without seeing the rules! So you are forced to throw away personal data, without getting a chance to look at it.
In fact there were some rules I wanted, but I did not know which spot they were on, and I chose wrong and lost the rules.
How hard would it be to show me both sets of rules, and allow me to craft a flexible solution to any replication or collision?
Anybody who thinks this is an ok way to treat customers, will never succeed completely.
The 3-horse smartphone race is on. Apple iPhone, Google Android, and Windows Phone are duking it out for market share and mindshare. They each are amazing advances in their own way, and have plenty of features in common and differentiators as well.
One of the cool features of the latest generation of smartphones that has really resonated with people because of it’s utility and ease of use, is backend cloud integration, which has practically replaced the old clunky desktop pim (personal information management – contacts/calendar/tasks) sync functionality. Apple has the MobileMe platform, Google has all their cloud web services that have blossomed from Gmail, and Microsoft has their Live services.
What is it going to take to pull ahead in the next leg of the race? Something big. As I mentioned this vertical cloud integration to backend web services is something big. They all have it. And each one also allows a certain amount of limited capability for other vendors’ services as well. For instance I don’t have MobileMe, and instead use Nuevasync to sync contacts and calendars with Google’s backend over IMAP and Exchange.
But what none of them have, is great integration no matter what the backend platform. So if you are a Google services customer, but you want to use Windows phone, you are penalized with reduced functionality and convenience. If you are a MobileMe customer who wants to try an Android phone, you’re not going to get the full experience. And you can get your Live mail on the iPhone, but you’re going to have pay a 3rd party or hack to get your contacts or calendar.
Now we can easily guess why these 3 companies would want to tie smartphone users to their web pim offerings. These backend services are very sticky. If you got Hotmail a decade ago, you’re probably still using it, and naturally your contacts and calendar ended up in Live. Gmail customers use Google Contacts and Calendar, and Reader, etc. MobileMe has plenty of loyal diehard fans, even though Apple charges $100/yr for what the other services give away. People change cell companies all the time, as evidenced by the “churn” statistics we always hear about. But if these companies can get us hooked onto their services, we are much more likely to stay with their phone platform, because of the extra integration features.
I think the next leader though, is going to have to be welcoming to customers of other web services, rather than penalizing. In the same way as Google has garnered massive gains lately by supporting multiple carriers and multiple equipment vendors, the big 3 need to equally support multiple backend services well. Or perhaps even offer ala carte – email from Hotmail, contacts from Google, calendar from MobileMe, etc.
(As a footnote I’d like to pre-respond to the guaranteed-to-come accusation that I’ve mistakenly left Palm or Blackberry or Symbian out of the race. Yes it’s just my opinion, and I’ll be glad to change it when I feel it’s warranted.)
http://www.ehow.com/how_5573302_disable-windows-auto-update-restart.html
I’ve had it with Windows 7 (and other versions) restarting my computer without my permission. I go to bed, and sometimes I forget to save the little text file with a couple of notes in it I usually have running on my desktop. Maybe I’ll have a browser open with a couple of web pages it took me awhile to find that I wasn’t done reading. I wake up in the morning and it’s all gone. Well no more. The link above stops that behavior, though it is written in regards to the annoying popup that also accompanies Windows Update when it needs a restart.
It doesn’t stop your computer from running Windows Update, downloading updates, or even installing them, it just doesn’t allow it to reboot. You get to choose a good time for you to do the reboot.
In my search for this I also saw some references to a reg hack, however it doesn’t appear to work on post-WinXp-sp2, unless you kill the Windows Update process. This group policy edit seems easier and gentler.
http://www.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=14532
I don’t understand what happened here. Woot is where products go to die – in other words Woot gets product lots when they are not selling or reman’d or last year’s models. But here we have a highly anticipated item I didn’t even know was out yet. Why isn’t it at Best Buy instead?
This is an Asus Win7 netbook convertible to tablet, with a multitouch touch screen. It sounds like a viable competitor to the iPad, and it’s only $279.99.
Everybody is going crazy about all the Android tablets on the way. I wasn’t aware that Win7 tablets were more than a gleam in Balmer’s eye at this point.
Something fishy about this…
Oh this bug drives me crazy!! I can’t believe they haven’t fixed this yet, it’s been years!
When you create a new calendar item from the mobile web client, it doesn’t create any of your default reminders with it, so you get no notice of the event.
Furthermore, all the syncing services also seem to skip the reminders, or set a pop-up reminder, or just keep their own reminder. I am thinking here of the iPhone calendar and syncing via Nuevasync (imap/Exchange) and desktop Outlook syncing over gSyncIt, though the last time I checked the same was true of the various Microsoft and Google syncing utilities as well.
I should note in Google’s defense that the capability is available via the API.
I note that the iPad can switch between mobile and desktop versions of the web client, so that is an additional way to create appointments besides via a desktop browser, and still get default reminders.
I had a strange feeling when the Cold War ended. Something like being lost. Sure it was great that we weren’t going to be blown to bits any second, but man what a change.
I had the same feeling as the tech landscape has changed the last couple of years. When I first became aware of the computer industry, the titans were raging - Apple, IBM, Oracle, and Sun and their iconic leaders aligned against Microsoft in a battle royal, an epic struggle. Talk about haters – Sun’s McNealy, Apple’s Jobs, Oracle’s Ellison slung some memorable comments in the press.
But that battle petered out. Microsoft is no longer the feisty newcomer trying to teach big iron how to play their own game. Now the tables have turned and they are the entrenched monolith trying to survive obsolescence, frequently called the “new IBM”. McNealy and Sun have both retired from the game. Ellison has gone underground, Oracle becoming if anything stronger and bigger, but no longer boisterous.
But the quiet was eerie. The tech industry needs personality. It needs drama. It needs events to record passing time against. It’s like how the national news will find a key picture or two of a family or a person and show it over and over, to help everyone identify with a disaster like a flood. Sure tons of people are effected, but that one are two are the landmark we use for remembrance.
Well now all of a sudden we have it once again, and in spades, in the mobile computing space. Mr. Jobs, some would say last man standing from the initial conflicts, is taking all the new kids out behind the woodshed for some schooling. He’s got Adobe over his knee on Flash and dev kits, though some are saying this is pure spite over a slight to the Mac platform from a decade ago. He’s calling his ally Google, who had the best apps on the iPhone and a member on his board at one point , some really nasty names. One of his disgruntled ex-employees has doppelganger-ed Palm and now HP into facing off against him. And he’s even found time to take the battle to juggernaut Amazon’s home turf in the book category with the iPad. It’s the wild wild West.
It’s tough to say what would be best for consumers here, competition or cooperation. I’d really love to see some standards develop around PIM (contacts, calendars, etc.), syncing, mobile web-browsing. On the other hand, these guys are going to duke it out by throwing billions of dollars into one-up-man-ship. Look at the acceleration of development of mobile phones going on right now, and compare it to the years RIM Blackberry and Microsoft CE let the market languish.
I’m going to go pop some popcorn.
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/totw/technet.asp
If you need two or more full copies of Windows 7, then you can save money and get lots of other software thrown in, by getting TechNet. Wow. Paul has all the details.
I looked down at my Windows 7 taskbar today to find my virus scanner absent. In fact according to the shortcut and Add/Remove Programs Microsoft Security Essentials was gone.
So I poked around in the logs some, hoping against hope I didn’t have some weird backdoor thingy that had uninstalled it for me. According to the logs it was uninstalled as part of some Windows Update hijinks. Ironically I commented just this morning that I always advised people to stay right up to date rather than trying to micromanage that stuff.
Well something went wrong with the update and MSE could not be reinstalled. I got no notice of this from Windows Update scarily enough. Once I knew that it was Microsoft removing my virusscanner I felt much better. So I downloaded a new installer and fired it up. It failed (and failed and failed).
Eventually I did a Google search on the error code, “0x8004ff07”. It looks like this is something of a common problem, and other people have had it. What wasn’t real clear was how to fix it. Somewhere, and I apologize because I’ve lost the link so I can’t credit them, I read something about removing the uninstall registry key, “[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Microsoft Security Essentials]”. Well though it doesn’t appear to work for everyone, that worked for me. After that I was able to reinstall MSE. Phew.
I’m downloading an update to Java tonight when up pops a message, would I like the free Bing toolbar with that. You could have knocked me over with a feather. All those years of having the Google toolbar and Yahoo toolbar shoved down my throat (and onto my desktop or browser), and now Microsoft? And with Java no less?
Honestly the jury is still out on whether you can use the win7 upgrade media to do a clean install on a blank hard drive. It appears that we can at least say “don’t count on it”. Some people say they can, other say they can’t. Paul provides an arcane, but fast, workaround.
…“In IE, navigate to Tools, Internet Options, and then the Connection tab. Click the LAN settings button and then uncheck "Automatically detect settings."…
This is amazing! Searches of the online Zune content from the Zune software are instantly fixed. And what an amazing difference. I’m surprised I never thought of this because I have seen this setting fix other similar problems.
If you have any cases where there is a initial hesitation by some piece of software that connects to the internet somehow, then try unchecking this setting. The reason is that because IE is the browser that comes with Windows, and the IE proxy settings are exposed via several APIs, they have become the de-facto global proxy settings, and many Windows applications check them before any internet communications. And this particuar setting says “go look around on your local filesystem and network to see if anybody has ever put one of the standard proxy config files in". There’s some long default timeout that will hurt you every time this is examined.
So even if you don’t run Zune software, and don’t use Internet Explorer, you should still go turn this off right now. Very cool!
I don’t know what need/problem Windows Search is supposed to be filling/solving. It never seems to be able to help me find a file when I’m not sure where it is. I believe this is caused by Windows trying to “save me from myself”. That is, they always assume I only want to listen to music, look at pictures, or watch a movie.
But I finally figured away around them today! To find a file, open a command prompt and use “dir”. Don’t know why it never occurred to me before lol.
For instance here is a search for pst files which for some reason Windows Search did not want to show me:
C:\>dir /S mail200*.pst
To open a command prompt just go to the search or run box and type “cmd” without the quotes.
This particular command with switches could be described as, “list all the pst files in any directory under the root that start with mail200”.
This was one my three major complaints about Windows Vista/7. I’m glad to have a workaround now. The other two are file/folder move/copy problems, and the horrible default folder column formats (where all of my files show how many stars they have rather than modified date/time, type and size).
