microsoft,bugs,general ranting

Microsoft, in a bid to stem the rate of piracy of their software, has come up with the "Genuine Advantage" program. It allows you to check you 25 character key to determine if it is valid or not. They spend significant time and resources trying to keep up with Apple and the company wants paid for its efforts. Fine, I have not itch with that. But when they can’t even figure out if the key for the software they sold me is valid or not, that is a totally different story.

I bought Vista at the time they were running the "buy Vista now and get a free upgrade to Windows 7" promotion. (Before you castigate me, consider the number of web sites that still only run in Microsoft Exploder.) I elected to download both and burn my own CDs if needed (read "instant gratification"). Microsoft dutifully sent me a key for Vista which works just fine.

(Sorry for the delay. Figured I had better go and check that Vista was still ok. It is.)

Yesterday I wanted to load a program on my Windows 7 instance (remember Windows in Parallels on a Mac) and was shocked to find out that the key I had been using successfully for quite some time was no longer valid. In other words, Microsoft thought I was a pirate! I tried checking the key with the tools they supply (like Genuine Advantage) and they told me I had a bogus key. So I called the Microsoft Store, who connected me to Tech Support, who connected me to Tech Support Escalation, who sent me back to Microsoft Store, who sent me to Tech Support, who finally sent me to the one person who said "I’ll look into this and get back to you."

And she did. She got me an answer that fixed my problem. While I wasn’t happy at getting the run around I did and I certainly wasn’t happy that Microsoft couldn’t decide if the key they sold me was valid, at least I did get my problem resolved.

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ms office 2008,ms office 2004,iWork 09

A little history… When I purchased my first Mac laptop in late 2005 I also bought Office for Mac:2004. All I knew from work was Office and iWork seemed…slim…shall we say. It only had Key Note and Pages- both version 1 I think. When I updated to Leopard on my Intel-based Mac, I also switched to iWork – Apple had added Numbers after all and I was tired of Microsoft quirks messing with my Mac. And there was no way I was going to go to Office for Mac:2008 – no VB and macros, just AppleScript?

Times change and things usually come back to byte you.

A little more history… I was recently asked to get some files off a PowerMac 520. For those of you without the score card, a 520 and an MBP have no common interfaces. The 520 lacks FireWire, the Ethernet is an older style interface, the MBP doesn’t have a modem or floppy disk, etc. Oh one other thing: all the files the client wanted were done in ClarisWorks!

My solution was to buy a USB floppy drive, and then -  file by file – convert them to Word 4/5 format. Then copy ‘em to the floppy and load them into the MBP. One hitch: the Client wanted them in Pages ’09 and Key Note ’09 format. Pages doesn’t speak Word 4/5 format and neither does Key Note.

I loaded Office for Mac:2008 onto my pristine Mac – so sad. I could read the files in Word:2004 but I couldn’t get to output an RTF Pages could read. I figured Word:2008 would. Yeah, I went and bought Office for Mac:2008!

And the process works: read ‘em in ClarisWorks on the 520, save them as Word 4/5, write to a floppy, load to the MBP from the floppy, read them into Word:2008, write them as RTF, read them in Pages ’09 and save. Of course all of it has to be done manually – you can’t automate much.

And yes, as soon as I’m done, Office for Mac is toast – I hope…

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mac os x,snow leopard,10.6

“It’s Here!”

From Apple: Apple today announced that Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users for $29. (Box photo from the Apple website and is Copyright © 2009 Apple, Inc.)

Apple focused on making the OS more compact (7GB smaller on the disk), more stable, and faster than Leopard. It’s 64-bits out of the box yet retains 32-bit compatibility, improves security, reduces the OS foot print, better multi-core support via Grand Central, better graphics support via OpenCL, and a faster QuickTime X. For those lucky enough to use a Mac at work (not me I’m afraid), you’ll be getting Microsoft Exchange support right-out-of-the-box.

What About Mircosoft?”

Apple will beat the Microsoft to the punch with their next generation operating system by two months. Microsoft has announced availability of 22 October 2009 for Windows 7, their replacement for the ill-fated and much-maligned Windows Vista. Whilst I don’t normally shill for Microsoft, if you are still running Windows XP, you can upgrade to Vista right now and get Windows 7 when it comes out for FREE. (That alone should tell you something about Vista!) And provided you aren’t getting an OEM’d version of Windows 7 (i.e., you buy it straight from Microsoft), I think you will like it’s speed and enhancements. All that “value added” bloatware is missing.

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microsoft,windows 7 beta,windows

Microsoft has started the beta period for Windows 7, their next release of the Windows operating system. Hopefully, they will focus on speed and stability – both characteristics that seemed to be lacking in the DRM-laden Vista.

Apparently, I’m not the only person interested in trying the beta. Enough people tried to download it when it became available January 9th that Microsoft’s servers overloaded. They’ve added more capacity and you should be able to download it now. Originally, the public beta was going to be limited to 2.5 million downloads but after the server issue, they have decided to allow access to the download through January 24th even if the limit is exceeded. Be warned though, the beta is about 2.4GB so a broadband connection to the Internet is a must.

The beta is available in 32 bit and 64 bit versions. I chose the 32 bit version. Initially, I had trouble installing it as a guest OS in Parallels. Poking around on the Internet seemed to indicate you needed to start from Vista and upgrade. Doing a bit more reading on Microsoft’s web site showed you could install Windows 7 on a bare system (do the Custom install). I decided to download the beta software again but this time I didn’t burn the ISO to a DVD. I started the install and voila!

My setup is a MacBook Pro, 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, 3 GB RAM, Radeon 1600 chipset with 256 MB VRAM, runnning OS X 10.5.6 and Parallels 4.0.3810. I allocate 1 GB of RAM and 128 MB VRAM to Windows 7. So far, things seem to be working ok.

In addition to the OS itself, you get a copy of Internet Explorer 8 beta. Note that this IE8 is not the same as the IE8 beta you can download for WinXP or Vista. IE8′s rendering engine isn’t quite there yet. I noticed on some of the Microsoft web pages that bullets don’t render quite right: the bullet prints on one line, the text of the bullet on the line below.

Since you can’t run a Windows-based machine without virus protection, I went back to the Microsoft site to see who had an AV package for Windows 7. They have links to AVG, Kaspersky and Norton. Since I have a fair amount of angst about Norton bloat-ware, I chose the beta version of Kaspersky 8. A couple of reboots and we were up and running.

Next task is to download FireFox and maybe some of the Windows Live Essentials stuff.

Caveat emptor: This is beta software. Expect bugs. Don’t use it for production work. There is no direct support. Per the Microsoft web site: The Windows 7 Beta will stop working on August 1, 2009. To continue using your PC, please be prepared to reinstall a prior version of Windows or a subsequent release of Windows 7 before the expiration date. We recommend doing a custom (clean) installation.

Until then, have at it!

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