12/4/2008 - Windows 7 "Aero Shake" Demo

It seems like Microsoft is trying to put out the next version of Windows as fast as they can. Who can blame them, really? They're putting out these "Mojave" ads that try to trick users of Vista that the operating system is actually good. It's the same thing that happened with Windows ME. It turned out to be such a turkey that even Microsoft would acknowledge it as their ugly stepchild. While Vista isn't ALL bad, it's just not that much of an improvement over Windows XP, which has turned out to be pretty solid.

From what I've seen of the next Windows version (called Windows 7), I can probably predict that it won't be as bad as Vista. Although they copied Apple again with the new taskbar complete with big program icons, the "Peek" feature actually does look to be somewhat helpful. The interface won't change much from Windows Vista (in fact, if you didn't know better, you'd think it was Vista), but at least it won't be the jarring change from XP to Vista. There is one feature that I had to laugh at when I saw it demonstrated, though. It's called "Aero Shake", and I'll let it speak for itself:

9/26/2008 - Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates (2 videos)

I'm not sure if anybody reading this was able to see it, but Microsoft ran a couple of advertisements for Windows featuring the former TV star Jerry Seinfeld. The ads were soon replaced by the new "I'm a PC" ads which try to counter the PC/Mac commercials Apple is famous for. Why did they recall the initial commercials so quickly? Was it because they made false claims? Were they suddenly outdated? Did they offend some group? Actually, the answer to that last one may be yes. The truth is, the commercials were nonsensical. Now, Jerry Seinfeld may be famous for making the obscure and inane seem funny, but these commercials were neither funny or informative. I have to ask how exactly were they trying to lure people into buying Windows PCs with these ads? These are kind of like all those Superbowl commercials which try to draw attention by being funny or innovative. Sadly, these commercials are neither:

3/8/2008 - Music using ONLY sounds from Windows XP and 98!

You know what stood out to me about this video? Not that you can actually make pretty good music with the beeps and chimes of Windows (although the composition here is quite impressive). It's that when the sound of an incoming e-mail appeared, I actually checked my Outlook window to see what had come in. After so many years of working on Windows, checking my e-mail after hearing that distinctive sound, I guess it's just instinct now. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you the reader had the same reaction. It's definitely like Pavlov's dog salivating to the sound of a ringing bell because it was conditioned to believe that food would appear after hearing the sound.

1/12/2008 - Mac Vs Pc: True Multitasking

It was only a couple of years ago when I would recommend getting 512 MB of RAM for new computers. With all the stupid Windows updates and the necessary anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware software you need, I now have to recommend 1 GB of RAM, and that's just for Windows XP. It's really quite ridiculous. If you had a new computer without the updates and other software, it would run fine on 256 MB. Now, it would just crawl.

And with Windows Vista, it's worse. I don't have much experience with it, but I've been told that you need 2 GB of RAM now for it to run smoothly. How insane is that? Before, 2 GB of memory for a single computer was only needed for high-end desktop publishing or video editing. Now, you need it to run regular productivity software? Unbelievable. This is where the inevitable comparison with Macs come in. Since Macs don't really need all the security software that Windows needs, this is what you can do with 2 GB of RAM:



Try that on Vista.

11/10/2007 - Vista Oops

We all saw previously how a Microsoft product demonstration can go wrong when the product just stops working. Now here comes a Microsoft product demonstration where the product works, but works poorly. Voice recognition software has always been dodgy at best. Even after months of training the product to recognize your voice and speech pattern, there is always going to be the occasional hiccup where it confuses words that sound alike. It's kinda like that episode of Seinfeld with the lipreader. I guess it could be easy to confuse "sleep" and "sweep", but what we see in this demonstration defies explanation:



After watching these buggy Windows systems, I just hope that the air traffic control system in this country isn't run by Microsoft products.

7/12/2007 - Windows 98 Blue screen of death

It's hard to remember just how bad Windows 95/98/Me was. It's a wonder that so many people put up with it only because it was the most widely used operating system at the time. Booting was slow, installing drivers for peripherals was a pain, the graphical user interface would freeze for no reason, and I'm sure we've all experienced the wonderful Blue screen of death. It's cryptic messages still haunt me today.

In fact, the BSoD was so pervasive, it even made its way onto a demonstration during a keynote address by none other than Bill Gates. You would think that everything would have been rehearsed over and over again so that there would be no surprises in an important presentation. It just goes to show that nothing can prepare for the suckage that is Windows 98:



You just know that guy was in the unemployment line the very next day.