by Shaun | Oct 6, 2015 | Linux, Microsoft
Microsoft. For years I’ve used their products. I’ve usually been quite happy with them to be honest. That satisfaction only lasts as long as you don’t have a problem that needs their assistance. Then frustration builds.
You speak to some guy in Mumbai. He speaks English, but doesn’t really understand you. Anyway, as it is he is limited by the parameters of his job; he has no authority to help you with anything outside of the norm. He can’t help you so you are passed to another department.
You are put on hold. After 20 minutes of being on hold you speak to someone else, explain your problem and he tells you that you have been transferred to the wrong department. He transfers you again and you are put on hold again. Now you have a choice. Do you continue to waste hours of your life or do you give up in frustration?
There is no complaints department that you can contact to voice your complaint about their service and see if you can get your issue resolved. All of the people you speak to are low level (no one high level works on a technical support phone line). These phone support systems are set up to give you the appearance of being able to get support without actually giving you support.
You can see reviews of Microsoft customer support here – customer service scoreboard. Largely negative, yes, but in the interest of fairness I have to say people are more likely to complain than they are to say job well done.
I would also like to say that I don’t think Microsoft are alone here. Most corporations, especially in the IT space, use such a system. I do believe part of their business model is to set things up like this so that people just go away and try to sort out their problems themselves without bothering them. Either that or pay for premium support.
But what is the alternative? If you work on a laptop you usually either have a Windows PC or you buy a Mac. Macs account for 10% of the market (roughly) and Windows accounts for most of the rest. When you buy your laptop it comes with Windows pre-installed, so why bother with anything else anyway?
In my case I wanted to do it to see how relevant Windows was to my day. To see if I would miss it if I didn’t have it. Also, Windows is a commercial product; it costs money. Linux, which is the alternative I chose, is what is known as open source software is free.
My laptop has Windows installed and I didn’t want to wipe it just like that. I may do it at some stage, but I’m not that brave.
Fortunately you don’t need to wipe Windows from your hard drive these days to try an operating system. All you need is a usb drive. With most modern laptops, you can set it up to boot from the usb drive.
Onto the usb drive you put an operating system. What I chose was Xubuntu, which is a type of Linux. If you are no technical, you may have heard of Linux but don’t really know what it is; it’s not familiar to you.
You may not know it but it’s actually all around you. Android is Linux based. Macs actually run on a Unix like base (Linux is a type of Unix). Chances are that the web server you go to is powered by Linux.
The image at the top of this post is Xubuntu by the way. As you can see, it doesn’t look very foreign to a Windows user.
Anyway, without going into the technical detail, I put Xubuntu on my usb drive, booted from the drive and there I was, running Xubuntu.
It recognised all my Windows files, so I could grab any documents I needed. It came with the Firefox browser pre installed, so I could get onto the web straight away. Network setup was as simple as putting in my wifi password and sound took no configuration.
I have written in the past about the shift from desktop centric computing to cloud centric computing. The main driver for this is internet apps that run via the browser.
What I found is that 90% of my computer time is working within a web browser. I develop websites in WordPress. It doesn’t matter what platform I run. I research using Google, which of course is browser based.
But what about if I want to edit a Word document, or an Excel spreadsheet? You have options. Two are online and one is not. You have Onedrive, which is actually Microsoft (but they don’t charge you for it so that’s ok). You have Google Docs (from Google obviously), which offer a word processor and a spreadsheet. If you want software there’s Open Office, which apparently has over 100,000,000 downloads (bit of social proof there) and runs on Linux.
But what if I want to run Powerpoint? Are you for real? In that case, seek help. Never heard of Death by powerpoint?
Anyway, I went without Windows for a day and I didn’t even notice. If you want to try it as well, go to pen drive Linux where you can download a utility that will allow you to make a bootable Linux drive with no hassle whatsoever. You will also need Linux. All you need to do for that is search Google for “Linux distros”.
I know the experiment is not for everyone, but if you try it, you will be amazed at how little you use Windows.
by Shaun | Jul 8, 2015 | Microsoft, Windows 10
About a month ago, Microsoft announced that they were releasing Windows 10 on July 29th. At the time I wrote that the Windows 10 release date was optimistic, given the work that I felt was still to be done on the product, and Microsoft’s own history of delaying releases.
From my perspective, it was the little things.. like the start menu that still doesn’t work and the ctrl – alt delete to unlock the screen that is hit and miss. It’s just not ready for mass consumption.
However, for good or for bad, Microsoft announced the release date. Now it appears they are backtracking on the date, although not officially.
Allow me to explain how a release can still be officially happening without being released to most people. People like myself, who get a thrill out of working with new technology, even though it isn’t mature, will get the first opportunity to download the product. Then, once all of the bugs have been ironed out, the rest of world will get a chance. How long that takes is anyone’s guess.
What this smacks of is corporate sleight of hand. I need to briefly explain how the rollout process of new software works. It starts with an alpha release. This is a really rough copy of the software, with lots of bugs. Bit by bit the the bugs are ironed out, to progress to a beta release. The beta release is usually pretty good, but still hasn’t got all the bugs out and isn’t quite as polished as the end product. Finally there are release candidates. These are effectively full production versions of software, but the company wants to limit the release to a select few people just to make sure that all is good.
Once that is explained it can be clearly seen that a release date that is only being released to those that are already on the Windows insider technical preview list isn’t a general release, it’s a beta test, or a release candidate at best. The general release is available at an undetermined date at some time in the future.
I understand and accept that a general rollout to a billion desktops world wide is going to be a challenge. I can accept that it may have to be staggered. What I can’t understand is why they committed to such an unrealistic date in the first place. And their explanation of the situation is about as credible as some of the explanations politicians give for their backflips.
For more about this read this article at Forbes – Windows release delayed and here, Microsoft’s own blog announcing the details of the rollout.
by admin | Feb 27, 2015 | Microsoft, Windows 10
I’m a geek when it comes to technical stuff. So when I found out I could have a look at the Windows 10 technical preview, I was excited.
I downloaded the preview and decided to install it (after backing up all of my important files that is).
Here’s how it went.
Firstly expect to wait a LONG time. This update is going to see your computer out of action for several hours (several meaning at least 4 probably more).
Unfortunately so far I have found at the other end, things aren’t quite ready yet. Which is a shame, because I am really impatient. I want Windows 10 on my system badly.
The interface is fantastic.
I’m a web designer, I love computer interfaces. And of course new interfaces make everything seem special. Your tired looking old computer gets a new lease of life.
But… There are too many bugs at the moment.
This is to be expected of course. This is not a production version. Software companies release these things in this way to iron out the bugs.
My experience was that the product at the moment is quite unstable. After installing it and starting it, it took me three attempts at logging in before it didn’t crash on me within the first five minutes. I repeatedly got the message “you don’t have permission to run this” when attempting to open a program.
I needed to update my mouse driver, but when I tried to, the installation didn’t work. But worst of all from my perspective was when I tried to work on WordPress website I am creating, I got the message “Error establishing a database connection”. I’m sure I could have troubleshot this if I had the inclination but to be honest it’s just not ready.
Time to roll back, put up with Windows 7 for a little bit longer. A beautiful interface is a nice thing but not at the cost of error free running. Apparently it’s slated for release later this year. Of course having been in the industry for a while I know that what they say and what ends up happening are two different things.
On the plus side the rollback to Windows 7 was fast (about 15 minutes) and trouble free.
by Shaun | Jan 22, 2015 | Microsoft, Windows 10
The big technical/geek story of the week has to be the impending release of Windows 10.
First thing to ask is why Windows 10? Whatever happened to 9? Well apparently this is something to do with the fact that they don’t write Windows from scratch. There is a huge codebase that travels from one release to another.
This is quite understandable, given that these type of products have millions of lines of code in them; It is simply not feasible to rewrite the next release from scratch.
Anyway, the old codebase has references left over from Windows 95/98, and so that there is no confusion with the operating system version, they decided to sidestep the problem by simply naming their newest version Windows 10.
The really great news for people who have Windows 7 or 8 installed is that it is a free upgrade.
No, that is not a misprint. Free. For anyone who knows Microsoft they will realise that this is almost unheard of. Microsoft is one of the most profit oriented companies in the world.
However, Windows 8 was not well received. Well to be honest it was just about completely rejected. So in the past few iterations of Windows, we have gone from XP (a very well received operating system) to Vista (almost universally despised) to the back on track Windows 7, to the disliked Windows 8.
Clearly, Windows only gets it right every second time. Apparently the word in technical circles is that this is the one they have got right.
What is at stake for Microsoft?
Good question. I really don’t know for sure. Microsoft is still a very profitable company despite the changing computing trends – 22 billion dollars profit in 2014 – but it’s profit is coming from different things these days.
Xbox is the division that is on the rise, with a 120% rise in income for that division from 2012 to 2013. Microsoft is also moving into the cloud computing space in a big way, so services like this will keep it going strong for a time.
Add to this the fact that good or bad, most PCs come bundled with Windows, so whether it’s a dog or not you’re stuck with it.
But.. computer operating systems have been at the core of Microsoft since the company’s very beginning, starting with good old DOS. It would be a great humiliation for a company such as Microsoft to see Windows decline to be just a bit player in the computing world then eventually disappear .
So humiliating defeat is a risk if they don’t get it right.
There is a also massive potential upside. Microsoft recently bought Nokia. From memory the deal was worth 7 or 8 billion dollars.
Windows 10 is a cross platform product. That means that it can be installed on PCs, tablets and phones.
At the moment there is a great deal of consumer resistance to Windows phones. The choice of phones is generally considered to be either iPhone or and Android phone. No one wants to be caught with a product that is on the nose.
However, if Microsoft get it right, their phone division could take right off and these days phones and phablets are where it’s at.
I for one am a sucker for snazzy interfaces. The first screen shots look pretty enticing. Perhaps I could be persuaded to buy a Windows phone if it looked cool enough. Perhaps a lot of other people could too.
When can I have it?
According Microsoft “later this year”. Microsoft have form on this. “Later this year” means any time between now and 2024 in Microsoft speak.
Microsoft are in the process of releasing a technical preview. When I can get it, I’m downloading it. May as well live dangerously. Will let you know how I go.
by admin | Sep 22, 2014 | Android, google, Microsoft
A Friend Asked Me The Other Day, “What is Android?”
Strangely enough I had to answer him with, “I don’t actually know”. OK, of course I knew it was an operating system (an operating system, for those who are not technical at all, is what your computer runs on).
Now, if my friend had not been totally lazy, he could have looked it up on Wikipedia, but he didn’t. If he did, he would have found out that Android is a Linux based operating system.
Back in the olden days (in my grandfather’s time). There was an operating system called Unix. OK, it’s still around, but it’s not generally used for your average office worker or home user. It tends to be used a lot for scientific applications.
Linux is the offshoot of Unix that was supposed to be for PCs and home users.
Unfortunately Linux doesn’t have that much appeal to home users, for two reasons. Firstly people are used to Apple and Microsoft, which are relatively user friendly to non technical people. Secondly, Microsoft had the apps market all sewn up with their office products. Very hard for Linux to compete with that when everybody is sending Word documents that people want to be able to read.
So that is the origin of Android, but where is it now?
Well in 2005 Google (once again this company that has become top dog in the computing world appears to be calling the shots) purchased Android. It was another prescient move by a company that seems to be able to see the future of computing. The question is, does it see the future or does it make the future happen?
In 2005 most computing was still done on the desktop computer (usually running Windows).
There was at this time a bit of a shift happening towards laptops as prices of laptops came down and corporations realised that they could tether more people to work out of hours if they had a laptop, but it wasn’t an overnight shift.
Since then the shift away from desktops has accelerated. One of the main factors in this I think was the sudden availability of wireless. Why be tied to one spot when you can sit anywhere in your house or office and be connected?
Next was the shift from laptops (usually running Windows) to tablets. This has happened mostly since 2010. The iPad started the shift, but lately the Android tablets have taken over.
At the moment 50 per cent of web browsing is done on phones and tablets and that percentage is growing
With remarkable foresight, Google has sewn up the market for the devices that are the future direction for computing. Eighty five percent of phones run Android and 70 per cent of tablets. Windows phones are nowhere. Nor are Windows tablets.
Could Microsoft become extinct?
Yes it could. It sounds outrageous to think of now, but yes. Those who don’t believe this possible probably have never heard of Novell. Novell was the biggest computer networking company in the World in the 90’s before Microsoft took off. It’s now nothing more than a subsidiary of another company. Its decline occurred because Microsoft outflanked it in much the same way Google is now outflanking Microsoft.
Microsoft is not done yet, but unless they evolve, there’s a possibility of decline. Empires rise and fall pretty fast in computing.
By the way, just in case you think I’m some kind of Google loving, Granola munching, vegan hipster who hates Microsoft, this article was written on a laptop running Windows 7.
The surface tablet is dead
