Ed Bott's Windows Expertise

Todd Headrick of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server team (hi, Todd!) has an interesting post on the official WHS blog, asking for thoughts on whether the next version should be split into Basic and Advanced versions:

we are back in the product planning phase and culling through all of these suggestions. What if we had 2 versions of Windows Home Server - one for the "basic" household and one for the more "advanced" household. What should we think about using as limits for the number of users and computers for a "basic" version and for an "advanced" version?

For me, the answer is easy. Please, please, please do not release a separate SKU. The basic product allows you to connect up to 10 computers and have 10 user accounts. The product is built on Windows Server 2003, which already has the capability to accommodate additional users by adding licenses. So find a way to let me buy an addition 5-pack or 10-pack of licenses for that server for a reasonable price ($10 per seat sounds about right).

The trouble with splitting into different versions is that the temptation to start segmenting features becomes irresistible. Oh, you want the Frammis service? You’ll have to upgrade to the advanced version. Arrrggghhh!

The original design philosophy of Windows Home Server was (and still is) to be a device that is simple to set up and use and whose functionality can be extended with add-ins and services. For a refresher in that design philosophy, go back and read this post from Charlie Kindel of the WHS team. Although it applies to the storage subsystem, the concepts apply equally to the rest of the product. Here are the first two bullet points from that list:

Must be extremely simple to use. Must not add any new concepts or terminology average consumers would not understand. Simple operations should be simple and there should not be any complex operations.

Must be infinitely & transparently extendible. Users should be able to just plug in more hard drives and the amount of storage available should just grow accordingly. There should be no arbitrary limits to the kinds of hard drives used. Users should be able to plug in any number of drives.  Different brands, sizes, and technologies should be able to be mixed without the user having to worry about details.

Those are really good ideas. Please keep it simple, folks.

One of my all-time favorite Windows programs, RoboForm, came out with an update recently. That’s not unusual. But I was surprised to see this dialog box pop up:

I’ve written about security problems with Skype before, and I’ve also noted one case where I discovered that a Skype add-on to Internet Explorer was causing delays of up to 90 seconds in page loading. But I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen one software developer specifically call out another as part of its installation routine.

For the record, I was able to confirm that the RoboForm dialog box is absolutely correct. With the Skype add-in installed, I had activation problems. When it was disabled, everything worked perfectly.

I was a very early adopter of TiVo, buying my first Philips TiVo box with a lifetime membership way back in 2000, less than a year after the company shipped its first box. I loved it then, and the Spousal Acceptance Factor (SAF) was high. High enough, in fact, that I bought an HD TiVo and signed up with DirecTV a little over three years ago when we moved into the home we live in now.

But DirecTV and TiVo had a falling out shortly after I made that purchase, and DirecTV introduced one of the suckiest DVRs ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public. So bad, in fact, that I willingly paid an early termination fee to get rid of it.

For the past year, our home entertainment system has been a Dell Media Center PC equipped with two external CableCARD tuners and two ATSC (over-the-air HD) tuners attached to an external antenna. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had various Media Center extenders in other rooms of the house. The system has been an absolute joy to use, with an extremely high SAF.

Every so often I get an e-mail from TiVo offering me some sort of deal to come back. Today, just for grins, I decided to see what I’d have to pay to rejoin the TiVo fold.

Read more on Why I’m not going back to TiVo

If you’ve been looking for a Vista-compatible Media Center Extender, Dell Home has both Linksys models on sale for the lowest prices I’ve seen. The bare-bones (but very capable) DMA 2100 is $127.49, and the DMA 2200, which has a built-in DVD player, is $170.

I’m using both models here. In fact, I’ve been busily testing all five currently available Media Center Extenders and will have a full review later this week. Stay tuned.

Excellent, wide-ranging interview with Mark Russinovich over at TechNet Edge. It was posted lasted week, but I just got around to noticing it. I’ll probably transcribe a few portions of it shortly, as they’re worth reading…

If you’re even slightly a Windows geek, it’s worth a listen.

I don’t claim to be an expert on web standards. In fact, very few people truly deserve the label of “expert” in this esoteric field. One is Jeffrey Zeldman, founder and majordomo of A List Apart, which I’ve been reading for years. Looking at my FeedDemon list, in fact, he’s the only web designer I consistently follow.

That means I haven’t been keeping up on the debate over how the community feels pover Microsoft’s decision to more fully support Web standards in IE8. Now, one thing they’re not going to do, apparently, is code IE so it passes the so-called Acid tests from the Web Standards Project.

I thought about this today as I was reading one persistent and annoying ZDNet commenter who seems fixated on ranting about the poor performance of IE8 Beta 2 on the Acid 3 test. I know that Microsoft could, if it chose to do so, build its browser to ace the Acid 3 test. Opera managed to do so. But Firefox has chosen not to. According to a chart Adrian Kingsley-Hughes published based on his testing, Their most recent builds come in at 71 out of 100 on the Acid 3 scorecard, and IE8 Beta 2 hits the low 20s.

I found this early 2008 article from Zeldman, in which he does a pretty good job of summarizing Microsoft’s “We can’t break the web” mentality, which has resulted in a feature called “version targeting.” I found this explanation especially compelling:

Non-standardistas have been writing JScript for years. While the CSS changes in IE7 may have “broken” a site’s layout, IE8’s JavaScript improvements could easily render a site useless. Real DOM support is a game changer. Enabled by default, it would bring many sites to their knees. That would break the web, and not in quotes. Providing IE8’s greater compliance on an opt-in basis is the only way to get everyone over the scripting hump.

Which brings us back to the question: Should a new browser pass some test, or should it move forward incrementally and continue to work as well as possible with the web as it exists today?

Frankly, I don’t care all that much about synthetic benchmarks. Getting a 100 on the Acid3 Test means that you will perfectly render a page that uses every known trick in the web standards guidebook, as written in that test. It does not mean that said browser will properly render the pages you visit every day or that your corporation uses on its intranet. Arguably, meeting that level of performance is more important. I would not want to have to explain to my CEO that no new sales came in this week because our new browser, which aced the Acid 3 test, barfs when it hits the order input page.

But I might be wrong. What I’d really like is some pointers to the experts out there who have already studied this subject and published well-considered opinions with lots of factual backup.

Anyone able to point me in the right direction? If you know your stuff, please help me out. I’ll assume that posting your comments here means you give me permission to use them (with attribution) in a follow-up post. And if it’ll help, I’ve got a couple of signed copies of Windows Vista Inside Out, Deluxe Edition for the most helpful, information-rich comments I get here.

I’ve received a bunch of questions about IE8 Beta 2, so I put together a FAQ page over at ZDNet. It includes answers to a bunch of questions, plus links to installation instructions and downloads for all supported 32- and 64-bit Windows versions. It’s here:

An IE8 Beta 2 Q&A

Also, you might want to check in on my first look at the features in this release:

Internet Explorer 8 gets a massive makeover

and the accompanying screenshot gallery has some good stuff with 14 fully captioned images, each illustrating a key feature or capability:

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

From my ZDNet colleague Mary Jo Foley:

“Even Apple — with a fanbase so loyal that many would throw their iPods and iPhones off a bridge if CEO Steve Jobs told them to — is coming to realize that it’s inappropriate to answer legitimate questions and complaints with silence.”

And just to keep a little balance… The topic of Mary Jo’s post is Microsoft’s marketing effort for Windows Vista, about which she notes,:

Whether you think — from a technology standpoint — Windows Vista finally is the product it should have been when Microsoft released it to manufacturing in November 2006, it’s plain, even to the most loyal Softie, that the marketing side of the Windows unit has been lagging. (I’d like to use a stronger word or two here, but ZDNet is a family blog network.)

I’m working on a big project that will be posted this afternoon at ZDNet. Stay tuned.

OK, all done: Go read my first look at IE8 Beta 2:

Internet Explorer 8 gets a massive makeover

I’ve also put together a gallery of screenshots to give you a sense of what’s new.

All in all, it’s much more than I expected.

One of my fellow bloggers in the Federated Media network, Anita Campbell, has just launched a new site called the Small Business Success Center. It’s a spin-off of her regular blog, Small Business Trends, and it’s sponsored by Microsoft. (Full disclosure: Through the FM network, Microsoft is also running ads for Small Business Trends on this site.)

Along with a few other FM bloggers, I’ve agreed to contribute some posts to help get the conversation started. It’s fun to look beyond the nitty-gritty of Windows dialog boxes for a change and think about some of the broader concerns of small businesses, like the one I run.

Anita’s site is a great resource. My contribution, Is your business prepared for a data disaster? is up now. If you run a small business or are thinking of starting one, go take a look, and feel free to leave a comment.

In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service publishes depreciation schedules for hard business assets like manufacturing equipment and office furniture. On the IRS list, a personal computer used exclusively for business in a “regular business establishment” is considered to have a five-year lifespan and can be written off accordingly.

Back when a computer cost $2000 or more, I used to squeeze at least three, and sometimes four or five years of life out of each purchase. Today, with whole system prices typically under $1000, I’m comfortable letting  a PC go after two years, sometimes even less.

Of course, other peripherals follow different rules completely. I’ve had printers that have lasted 10 years, and monitors usually last for 7-10 years here.

So, how about you? How often do you turn over systems and peripherals?