Tech IT Easy » XP

Cue the scary music

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:28:27 +0000

Today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

I have nothing to say that I haven’t already said before.

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Awakening from the OS X vs. Windows War

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:07:17 +0000

It’s a strange sensation to be in PowerPC land. To those that don’t know, that was the (IBM) technology which Macs were previously built on, before moving to the much more flexible and powerful Intel platform. My first Mac, bought in 2004, was a G4 iBook. I loved it and remember even writing an ode to it on this weblog. It is currently still alive in the, hopefully, responsible hands of a family-member.

What made the G4 special was that there was no going back to Windows. You could emulate it, v e r y s l o w l y , but you really had to make due with what Mac OS X offered you and I loved that idea of being stranded on an island and having to make the best of it. As a result, I learned a lot about my Mac and it also spawned plenty of blog posts on better Mac productivity here.

But now that I am on a Macbook and have been logging on to Windows via Bootcamp regularly, my reality has somewhat changed.

H A R D W A R E !!!

Macs vs. PCs… I was always aware of the hardware differences, particularly quality-wise. If you do the simple math, my 2004 iBook, now 5 years old and expected to last at least 2 years longer. I don’t know what it’s like in PC-world (not the mag), but I imagine you won’t get this kind of return on investment (ROI) under EUR 1000 ($1500). And by ROI, I mean, on the road ROI, as my laptop was constantly with me travelling. If you have a dusty EUR 200 ($300) PC server lying around somewhere, I expect that will probably last you half a decade as well.

I’m pretty certain that today, if I were to choose either Windows or OS X, I would still buy Apple, simply because they build their machines so damn well. Dvorak, when the Macbook Pros were just launched, called them the Bentleys of computers, and I whole-heartedly agree.

S O F T W A R E !!!

My post today is really about the software-war, which is what most Apple (and Windows) fanboys seem to focus on. And I’m here to tell you that there is no more software-war! Apart from a few (somewhat important) design-flaws in Windows (unfortunately I haven’t tested Vista or 7 yet), the migration between both platforms is fairly flawless.

All the major applications exist on both platforms: Office, programming, designing, picture- and video-manipulation. I don’t want to step on anyone’s territory, I know that, for some of those, Macs are better and for others, PCs are. But for the everyday-consumer like me, you can use both platforms as a tool.

Where I was mostly worried, ironically, was not anything that was inherent to the Mac platform, though I did argue partially that it was some time ago. It’s a free software called Quicksilver, which allows you to launch apps, find and manipulate files more quickly than using shortcuts and the mouse, or even Spotlight. It has taken over my day-to-day so much, that I no longer have files lying around on my desktop, the Dock, and rarely use the Finder either. The reason is that, for launching stuff, using the keyboard together with search, is much much faster than going somewhere “manually.” Imagine doing the same on the internet and browsing to every address individually, instead of having Google and predictive text…

But even that has no longer become a problem on Windows due to a number of alternatives that exist and of which I chose SlickRun as my number 1 replacement.

I will not go into the Design aspects of the Mac OS, which are without a doubt superior to Windows (XP at least). But where software as a tool is concerned, the war is over! I can survive just as well on Windows as I have on OS X.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps marks an end to my pro-Mac posts (though, let’s wait for Snow Leopard to be sure). Who knows, I may eventually even (gasp!) post a review of a Windows software here soon.

Vincent

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Is Microsoft doing right with the "I'm a PC" ads?

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:20:11 +0000

So some short thoughts. Plenty of people have been criticising both the Seinfeld+Gates ads and now the crowdsourced variant of “I’m a PC.” I’ve only really read three points of view, namely Micheal Arrington’s (a media guy), John Gruber’s (a Mac-head), and Jason Kottke’s (an (alternative internet-)culture guy). All three have been fairly negative about it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZdkHylJ3w&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

Jason writes:

“That’s the problem with Microsoft’s ads. They’re still #1 and the bigger company, but by referencing Apple’s successful ad campaign, they’re acting like Apple is #1.”

I think this pretty much echoes John’s point of view.

The problem here is that both treat PCs as being one market… the Apple-one, which is students, “stupid users (like me) who don’t want to know what’s under the hood,” and a certain type of individualistic professional. In that market, yes, Apple appears to be doing quite well.

Microsoft has a somewhat different segmentation of customers. It has the three above, it also has the cheapskate (those that have it pre-installed with a $400 PC or those that pirate it), the business-traveller, and the Dell-crowd (lot’s and lot’s of grey machines in big equally grey buildings).

What has Microsoft done with the “I’m a PC” advert? It has attacked a strong player in one segment that it and Apple are both competing for. Apple’s “I’m a Mac” has been promoting Macs as the easy and elegant solution, while Microsoft-PCs are the clunky and slightly psychotic alternative that nobody wants. By showing a diverse set of PC-users, Microsoft simply removed the foundation that Apple built this last year and a half, and has levelled the playing-field.

Is it a me-too ad? Definitely! But we all know about Apple by now and there’s no use pretending it doesn’t exist. Will it affect Apple’s bottom-line? I’m not much of a believer in advertising, but at the very least Apple will have to change their game. I think that Micheal Arrington makes a similar point here.

Does this have any effect at all on Microsoft’s no. 1 market, the Dell-one? It does if you believe that students, “stupid users,” and individualistic professionals will bring about a revolution in the work-place, which may happen eventually. In the short-to-medium term (the one the stock-market cares most about) however, my gut tells me that all of this is pretty irrelevant to that business-only segment, which cares about creating products that work on a massive scale, and about buying PCs that become cheaper with economies of scale.

Vincent

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What is the frustration-cost of Windows?

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:48:17 +0000

Last night, I was called in to check on a friend’s Vista-PC, which kept showing blue screens of death, at sporadic moments. The error-codes were just a collection of numbers and letters, and a Google-search just revealed that it could be a ‘hardware or software problem.’

I’m not going to go into the problem here, but I’ll just say that we tried to run the Windows system restore disks, which crashed half-way through, in the midst of formatting the drive. Vista PCs have, as you know, not been sold with the actual installation-CDs, though I understand that this is a right right now and the owner will go to the store and ask for them. After which, I will install Vista (my first time), as well as all the apps she needs for her productive day.

I’m angered that things like this are still happening! Having been a Windows user since 3.1, the only version that I’ve never had problems with was 2000, and XP now runs fairly good too. Vista, I’ve never tried, but I understand there were some driver-related problems, much like the 64-bit version of XP.

Typically, diagnosing and repairing a system like my friends will cost several hundred euros, if not more. And that is… if the store actually knew what it was doing! The error-codes, as mentioned, don’t point to a specific problem, and they previously suggested replacing the hard-drive, which she did and which didn’t fix the problem. Right now, the way I see it, I’m going to be installing a new Vista on it, the drivers, and the software. I’ll see if that holds. If it doesn’t, I’ll assume it’s a hardware-problem, and one piece of hardware will have to be removed after the other, to diagnose the cause.

Total time used to fix: 1 hour last night, 2 hours Vista CD pick-up, 2-3 hours installation & restore. And that isn’t counting that there’s 3 people involved, some gasoline, not to mention the months of trauma that she’s been experiencing through this problem. As well as whatever store-time + hardware-replacement-costs may be involved.

But why does it have to be so hard????!!!!! It really mystifies me how much of mess the open PC-architecure, in combination a fairly open ecosystem of hardware & software, is. You literarily have no idea, if there’s a piece of dust on a RAM-stick, if there’s a faulty driver, if an app is causing the mayhem, or if the problem is a Windows-update that went wrong. And, in case you are wondering, this is a HP-machine.

So, I ask once again, what the frustration-cost of Windows is? In my estimation, it’s pretty damn high, and I already suggested to them to get a Mac. It may be 50% more expensive and non-upgradeable, but the fact that I don’t have to worry about things like BSODs, is priceless.

I should disclose that I’ve been a Mac-user for 3 years now, which was both a hardware- and software-based decision.

Vincent

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My agenda @ TechEd 2007 EMEA

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:12:55 +0000

If you’re serious about software development &/or IT infrastructure, you can’t miss the Tech Ed developer training event between November 5th and November 9th in Barcelona. All the best developers from the very best European software publishers will be there. And I’ll be there too (as the outlayer, the worst developer in the room), to support IDEAS startups Chief Technical Officers making it to the EMEA TechEd. A few days ago, I chose the sessions I am going to attend. It’s going to be a great learning experience, not to mention the fun side as I’m going there with a bunch of wild animals from the French Developer & Platform Evangelism group of which I belong to at Microsoft. So, here’s my agenda for Tech Ed:

Mon, 5 Nov 2007

Putting the User Back into Architecture

Windows Live Platform: An Open Discussion

Why Software Sucks

Principles and Patterns of Security

Life Beyond Distributed Transactions: An Apostate’s Opinion

Implementing Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition

Tue, 6 Nov 2007

ASP.NET: Why, What, How and When?

Build Your Own Software Factory

Understanding Software + Services

Improving Software Safety and Reliability

Applying Ergonomics to the User Interface

Wed, 7 Nov 07

Exploring the Building of Software + Services

Applications with Microsoft S+S Reference Bits

Communities? Can They Really Help My Business, My Day-to-Day Job, and My Career?

Identity for .NET Applications: A Technology Overview

Agile Development with Team System

Thu, 8 Nov 2007

Exploring Event Driven Architectures

Self-Paced Hands-on Labs and CommsNet Open

ASP.NET Roadmap

The Irresistible Forces Meet the Moveable Objects Auditorium

Understanding the Data Mining Add-Ins for Excel

Software Plus Services

Fri, 9 Nov 2007

Blogging Panel

Top 10 Mistakes Developers Make – Tales of an Over-Worked IT Pro

Windows CardSpace Case Study 1: Identity Providers – Experian

The Future of IT

Web Application Security

Not bad, is it? I look forward to being there sooo much. And on top of that, I have many friends to visit in Barcelona.

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Scrum and XP from the trenches

ceciiil — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 18:17:47 +0000

Sprinting the stories

Scrum and XP from the trench describes how Scrum has been used to apply some Agile project team management methods on real life projects. Henrik Kniberg modestly describes this as a paper while it actually happens to be, well, an excellent practical guide.

The specific jargon may make it a bit slightly difficult to dive into, though. Sprint, scrum master, stories, when iteration, project leader or use cases could have done the trick. This could result in having the author sounding like some kind of sectarian, at least for the first 10 or 20 pages.

However, regardless of the actual Scrum radical approach, the project and people management tips in this book make it a definite must read to whoever is interested in these area of professional software development .

10 lessons in Project Management

The first half of the book mostly describes a Sprint (iteration). 10 brilliant project management tips bubble up from this description :

Complete transparency on the projet. All people in the team have clear tasks assigned to them, and everybody knows who is doing what, what are the objectives and dependencies.
Cost estimates are carried out by developers. I’m sure you fellow developers know how terrible that is to meet estimates and deadlines a manager (a technical one if you’re lucky) commited to. Having developers estimating their work (as long as you can challenge them) makes everybody comfortable.
Never ever compromise on quality to add more stories in a sprint. Rather have less stories.
Seat the whole team together
15 mins daily status meeting. Hard time for procrastinators ahead …
Always end up the Sprint with a demo. So many reasons : it motivates the team, you can communicate more easily on what you’ve been doing, and hey ! you have to have something working !
My favorite one : the large taskboard to track the Sprint progress. No fancy colorful excel sheet that no one bar the managers can understand or even bother go through : just a board with colorful stickers for tasks and the Burndown graph. Instant view of the progress, daily updated, always accessible.
Keep the managers at bay
Post Sprint retrospective. This helps finding out what could have be done better, validate the initial estimates, the velocity, have the team to talk to provide feedback, etc …
All meetings are time boxed.

Applying XP with relunctant people

An interesting section of the paper talks more about how Scrum (team organisation) fits nicely with XP (programming methodology), going with the following main eXtreme Programming features.

These are : Pair programming, Test Driven Development, Incremental design (no need to over design at the early stages of the project), Continuous integration, collective code ownership, fighting overtime which eventually happens to be counterproductive, etc …

This is another story to apply these. In particular Pair Programming.

Here comes the other main quality of this book : suggesting different ways of dealing with people to put in place such controversial practices, especially when the most relunctanct people are the ones that never actually experienced those practices.

Each time Henrik describes different situations with different type of oppositions from the developers and suggest an appropriate way of dealing with it. This smooth, clever, thoughtful and yet assertive approach definitely are (from my experience) the most efficient and the less frustrating ones, from both perspectives.

It’s free

And that’s not the only reason why it’s worth having : this is an excellent book, fun and easy to read : strongly recommended if you’re interested in project management methodologies, even if you dont plan to apply such radical technique as Scrum.

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