Jon's Ramblings

Hound

2009-02-20T13:52:25Z

Hound with sore foot after visit to vet. Hound pulled a nail off :(

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My local pub landlady

2009-02-05T21:29:06Z

Am pursuading Ang to have a livejournal

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coffee on the move

2009-02-04T11:24:42Z

It just had to be done

will arrive tomorrow -- report to follow

MS Virtualisation User Group meeting

2009-01-30T15:49:07Z

Went along to the MSVUG meeting lastnight held at MS HQ in Victoria

Several sessions, one given by Mr Cleland of Unisys who I have known for gawd knows how long on Cix.

Most excellent evening -- started at 6, finished at 9.30. Lots of real-world hands-on proper experience being shared. Warts and all. Good for MS for supporting this venture

jon

Ouch

2009-01-19T08:49:18Z

globalmotors.net/how-not-to-unload-an-aston-martin-v8-vantage/#more-10499

Tony Hart

2009-01-18T16:24:03Z

Thanks to alan fleming for the link to www.b3ta.com/board/9105744

Microsoft Songsmith

2009-01-17T20:14:12Z

I wont comment on the billions being misspent on MS Research.

But this has to be watched. And listened to.

uk.youtube.com/watch

Windows Mobile redux

2009-01-13T17:54:43Z

Something was nagging at me -- I had missed out something very important about windows mobile.

Ah yes! Internet Explorer! How could I forget this? My only excuse is that I had managed to expunge it from my memory, given it is arguably the worst, most embarrising piece of Microsoft software of all time -- it vies with Office 2008 for Mac for the Golden Turkey award.

Does *anyone* use IE/WinMob for *anything*? It is utterly useless. Beyond contempt. The only reason it is still there on a product you buy today is because... errr... because Microsoft holds you as a customer in similar contempt?

Please dont tell me that someone is actually *proud* of this thing?

Please?

jonhoneyball @ 2009-01-13T11:18:00

2009-01-13T11:18:46Z

I am stood in Tescos at the bread counter where they sell organic stone baked bread made on the store.

It says here "EU regulations mean that we cannot offer presliced organic bread from our instore bakery. We can however slice organic loaves at your request bit this will be done on our regular bread slicer"

The world has gone mad.is it really so terrifying that a crumb of inorganic bread might land in your organic loaf when sliced?

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Big network discs

2009-01-12T13:07:50Z

Tempting, very tempting -- 7.5Tb for 1500 notes

www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm

Microsoft seadragon for iphone

2009-01-12T10:24:05Z

So Microsoft releases seadragon for iphone -- its the infinite zoom stuff which balances client side and server side processing.

Nice, neat, useful. But not the real deal in terms of building those 3D photoscapes.

Amusingly enough, there is no Windows Mobile version of seadragon. Why? Cos the graphics on Windows Mobile devices sucks giraffes through a straw. And the iPhone has killer 3D and 2D graphics -- just look at the 3D apps like Molecules or XPlane

Zune Phones

2009-01-12T10:20:09Z

So everyone was apparantly waiting for Ballmer to launch something called Zune Phones at CES.

And he didnt.

Ah well. Windows Smartphones are things I have a love/hate relationship with. Mostly hate, it has to be said:

Likes:

I like the straightforward and mostly complete OS
The dev tools are excellent
Remote management is excellent from Exchange Server

Dislikes

The OS sucks. Yes, I know this clashes with the first in the list above. But I dont need a Start button on a phone. The phone UI suffers from "if we shrink Windows it will be just fine" and it isnt.

The physical keyboards are just horrible
The touchscreen soft keyboard with toothpick is even nastier

And now the two Really Nasty things:

I usually cannot upgrade a device to the new OS. This is simple unacceptable. Buy a Windows phone today, and it might well be out of date and not updatable in 6 months time. Sorry, but thats a complete killer.

There is no unified store from which to buy apps. And I cannot buy and install over the air, at least I couldnt last time I tried.

I was interviewed recently for Swiss TV and they asked me about the pros and cons of the Apple iPhone AppStore versus the MS route:

Advantages of Appstore:
One place to look -- windows apps are spread across the internet with no catalogue -- a huge mistake by Microsoft
One place to update -- see above -- a huge mistake by Microsoft
Cheap dev tools -- a draw for MS
No review process by end users of store vendor, and then rating process by end users -- a huge mistake by Microsoft
Seed-corn VC finance for startups funded by Apple to tune of 100 million dollars

Advantages of the MS approach
No store lock-in. But no QC either

Errr, ummm, err, thats about it.

Microsoft has tried to do its usual waffly "build a community" arm waving. And has singularly failed. Along comes Apple, and does the opposite to ms in just about every area. And is hugely successful, with many one-bedroom developers having made hundreds of thousands of dollars already.

How could Microsoft have gotten it so wrong?

More nyo

2009-01-09T16:01:18Z

Rehersal

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Technology

2009-01-09T15:11:40Z

Sometimes tech is just great. Today I am at the roundhouse in Camden for the national youth orchestra concert tonight. One of the top five orchestras in the world. Am helping my old chum tony Faulkner with the recording.

20 years ago this would have been a major endevour today I turned up with my r4pro, took a single canon lead aes ebu digital feed and pressed record. No levels to set, cos tony is doing the stereo mix.

Imagine if this had been open reel tape. 14" reels at 30ips. Nightmare. Today I have 78 hours left on the hard disc. Joy!

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Tomtom 940T

2009-01-08T19:31:59Z

Whilst shopping at that dreadful place, PCWorld in Colchester (which now appears to have more flat screen TVs than computers -- and they dont stock 250g Canon photo paper any more in A4 size -- like durrr....) I decided to treat myself to the TomTom 940T, the new top of the range model.

Fab piece of kit. But whats this? Yes, over-the-internet updates of the software. Nothing new there, I hear you cry.

How about nearly FIVE GIGABYTES worth?

Yup, new software plus new maps for europe and new maps for usa...

Jeezuz

3D Mice

2009-01-08T19:00:03Z

computing in bed requires, shall we say, "specialist tools"

The Mac Mini makes a great small computer for TV PVR, Web etc work. But you need a keyboard and mouse

The excellent tiny bluetooth keyboard from Apple is fine for typing. But we need a mouse.

I have used a Kensington trackball for a while, but this requires a usb cable draped over the bedclothes.

Now Logitech have come up with just the ticket -- a device which is a laser mouse when it is placed on a surface, and a full 3D gyroscopic mouse when you lift it off the table top (or bedsheets)

You need some time to get used to its ballistics. But it is really very good once you are acquainted with its acceleration and so forth. Highly recommended.

www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/mice/devices/3443&cl=gb,en

www.logitech.com/repository/172/jpg/1494.1.0.jpg

Bentley V8 Engine

2009-01-08T18:49:52Z

The Bentley 6.75 litre turbocharged engine is a thing of beauty.

if you dont believe me, check out http://gallery.me.com/jonhoneyball#100164&sel=50 which is the interior of my Bentley RT engine during the operation required to change the head gaskets wot I had blown.

The bill was a cracker:

23 December 2008 Invoice No. 001680

Jonathon Honeyball

Re: Bentley Turbo RT – Reg. No R667 OGN – Chassis No VCH 66140 - @ 65,613 miles.

To invoice for:

Vehicle delivered by transporter. Assess engine for potential head gasket failure. Misfire noted cold. Engine run up to normal temperature. As soon as the cooling system pressurised, significant steam was noted from the exhaust. Confirmed head gasket failure.

Engine dismantled to replace cylinder head gaskets. All components washed and cleaned in solvent and blown dry with compressed air. Engine washed down to remove significant dirt and oil deposits.

Engine reassembled with new head gaskets as required. (See photographs)

Additional work carried out.

1. Brake pumps shroud seals disturbed on head gasket replacement. Shroud seals removed and new seals fitted.

2. Top of engine found to be extremely oily and dirty. Engine washed down with solvent cleaner prior to engine head assembly.

3. B bank air injection pipe broke on removal due to severely corroded union. Replacement pipe fitted.

4. Cylinder heads fly-cut to ensure they were totally flat prior to engine assembly. Cylinder block and cylinder heads wiped down with solvent cleaner to ensure there were no greasy marks prior to the installation of the new gaskets and fitting of the cylinder heads.

5. Thermostat inspected and joggle valve found to be missing. New thermostat supplied and fitted.

6. New engine coolant temperature senders fitted for the dashboard gauge and the engine ECU coolant temperature sensors.

7. Front of engine volute casing dismantled. Water gallery O rings , sausage seal and gasket discarded. New top gasket fitted. New volute casing O rings installed, new sausage seal installed with additional sealant to the corner joints.

8. Exhaust system turbo charger waste gate vacuum cover removed as part of the overall job. On removal of the pipe banjo union, the thread in the cover came out on the banjo union. New replacement waste gate cover fitted as required. New wills ring installed when the A bank exhaust manifold was refitted.

9. During head gasket replacement, the pistons and cylinder heads were de-carboned.

10. Corrosion noted to the cylinder heads injector port orifices. Injector port orifices cleaned. Injectors cleaned prior to refitting.

11. New PAS reservoir feed to pump and return hoses fitted during engine reassembly.

12. All new engine driven V belts fitted during engine assembly.

13. Hydraulic systems bled including brakes to expel air after assembly.

Engine commissioned with new coolant and inhibitor. Cooling system pressure bled to ensure full circulation including separate charge cooling circuit. Vehicle road tested and returned to workshop of inspection. All levels checked. Engine checked for oil and coolant tightness. Engine covers refitted.

Vehicle road tested and returned to workshop for re-inspection. Valet carried out. HMSL removed to clean glass.

(click to see the gory details)

However, you might be interested in this:

http://events.imeche.org/EventView.aspx?EventID=446

Head of Bentley engineering giving a lecture on the V8 at the Institute of Mech Engineers.

Titles...

2009-01-06T08:51:23Z

Thanks to my mate Alan Fleming for pointing this out to me:

Click on the Titles combo at https://www.roh.org.uk/myroyaloperahouse/register.aspx

You get the following (snatched from the page source and parsed in Excel):

Mr
Mrs
Ms
Miss
Advocate

Ambassador
Baron
Baroness
Brigadier
Canon
Captain

Chancellor
Chief
Col
Comdr
Commodore
Councillor

Count
Countess
Dame
Dr
Duke of
Earl

Earl of
Father
General
Group Captain
H R H the Duchess of
H R H the Duke of

H R H The Princess
HE Mr
HE Senora
HE The French Ambassador M
His Highness
His Hon

His Hon Judge
Hon
Hon Ambassador
Hon Dr
Hon Lady
Hon Mrs

HRH
HRH Sultan Shah
HRH The
HRH The Prince
HRH The Princess
HSH Princess

HSH The Prince
Judge
King
Lady
Lord
Lord and Lady

Lord Justice
Lt Cdr
Lt Col
Madam
Madame
Maj

Maj Gen
Major
Marchesa
Marchese
Marchioness
Marchioness of

Marquess
Marquess of
Marquis
Marquise
Master
Mr and Mrs

Mr and The Hon Mrs
President
Prince
Princess
Princessin
Prof

Prof Emeritus
Prof Dame
Professor
Queen
Rabbi
Representative

Rev Canon
Rev Dr
Rev Mgr
Rev Preb
Reverend
Reverend Father

Right Rev
Rt Hon
Rt Hon Baroness
Rt Hon Lord
Rt Hon Sir
Rt Hon The Earl

Rt Hon Viscount
Senator
Sir
Sister
Sultan
The Baroness

The Countess
The Countess of
The Dowager Marchioness of
The Duchess
The Duchess of
The Duke of

The Earl of
The Hon
The Hon Mr
The Hon Mrs
The Hon Ms
The Hon Sir

The Lady
The Lord
The Marchioness of
The Princess
The Reverend
The Rt Hon

The Rt Hon Lord
The Rt Hon Sir
The Rt Hon The Lord
The Rt Hon the Viscount
The Rt Hon Viscount
The Venerable

The Very Rev Dr
Very Reverend
Viscondessa
Viscount
Viscount and Viscountess
Viscountess

W Baron
W/Cdr

Good to see that standards at The House havent slipped.

Windows 7 version number

2009-01-05T07:53:07Z

So Mike Nash posts this to the Windows 7 blog:
"We learned a lot about using 5.1 for XP and how that helped developers with version checking for API compatibility. We also had the lesson reinforced when we applied the version number in the Windows Vista code as Windows 6.0-- that changing basic version numbers can cause application compatibility issues. "

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx

Sorry, but wrong. I am getting sick and tired of this bend over backwards nonsense that runs through the whole Windows platform, time and time again.

The reality is that there are a lot of shit apps out there, badly coded and dumb, stupid crap that should never have been released. Pandering to them is not the answer.

Windows 7 should have a hard compatibility barrier, and app vendors (especially the games companies, who have been living in La-La Land for too many years) should pull their fingers out and fix things properly.

Windows now has an almost insane amount of work-around code to pander to incompetence. This is not the way forward.

Grrrr.

Jon

Epilog Highlights Part 2

2009-01-03T14:32:05Z

From issue 43... early 1998... my first ever Epilog column. Apple got SO excited by it that Guy Kawasaki emailed me and asked if he could reprint it out to his Apple Evangelist list... And it doesnt seem to have aged at all in the last 10 years. Wierd.

"
Epilog43

With my consultant’s hat on, I often get asked to recommend hardware for evaluation by businesses and corporates. And its true to say that no-one got fired for buying Compaq, IBM or HP. Sometimes some Gateways or Dells escape into the offices of users and do sterling service. But there is one name that is often strangely missing. So I went on a hunt to see what they were up to, to see whether they could offer a solution for real-world desktop operation in a connected, wired office space.

I have this beast sat in front of me right now. It’s fast, very fast. It is easy to use. It runs Office 98. In fact, I’m typing this into Word 98. It runs FrontPage. And there’s Microsoft Outlook for connection to my Exchange Server email backbone, and I can see my inbox just fine. It has Internet Explorer 4 on it, and Netscape 4 as well. And a big suite of Adobe tools like PageMaker, PhotoShop and so forth. In fact, in terms of software, it has everything you need. It has an Ethernet network connection, peer networking, a nice 17” monitor, full Internet connectivity. Stereo sound too, and a microphone. And a CDRom drive, and a big hard disc. And a very sensible floppy disc arrangement too. The keyboard isn’t bad, and the mouse is perfectly nice.

It is, indeed, the very essence of a modern multimedia computer for home or office. It runs all the sensible software that I want and need to work with, and works with all the other machines around it in the office. The price/performance is competitive too. So it should be on my Recommendable List.

And yet you are not buying it.

It has plug and play that works, far better than the PC to its left. Hardware expansion is no problem – it has room for plenty of storage, and the internal PCI bus takes name-brand industry standard cards. You can plug in several monitors at once, and get a desktop that spans all of them. It doesn’t suffer from stupid limitations like 16 IRQs, and being unable to use a modem on a port near a mouse.

And yet you are not buying it.

This machine has more name-brand current-version software dripping out of its hard disc than you can shake a stick at. Its from a company that has arguably done more over the last fifteen years to further desktop computing than all of the mainstream PC vendors put together.

And yet you are not buying it.

And I look at it, and to be honest, I’m scratching my head. This is a product with a staggeringly bright future, whose operating system today, although a bit creaky in places, is very competent at performing the business and home tasks that you care to throw at it. It runs all that software and integrates with your Novell or NT network, so what’s the problem? And the next major release of its operating system, due months before Windows NT 5.0, will bring back into the fold some fabulous, tried and tested work that was initiated nearly ten years ago. Best of all, this new OS will run on the native hardware, and there is a complete Intel build of the OS too. But if you want to stick with Microsoft OS’s, there’s a runtime for NT and Win95 too so you can run the apps there.

And yet you are not buying it.

If I worked for this company, I would be tearing my hair out. You, dear reader, are quite happy to buy hardware that is appallingly backward, where “prehistoric” doesn’t even begin to do justice to some of its more 1960’s let alone 1970’s thinking – when was the last time you thought rationally about that parallel printer plug, for example? How can we justify column inches and learned discussion about the pros and cons of Intel’s Slot One for the Pentium II processor, when the surrounding machine architecture is so full of utter rubbish, and bitter, twisted nonsensical design? The parallel plug, a keyboard bus that requires a separate mouse port, shared IRQs for the serial ports, the AT bus, base port addresses – the list is endless! Hardware configuration and BIOS’s that look byzantine in their complexity – just what is a “post-refresh burst rate delay” anyway and do I want one, two or four of them? “Plug & Pray” speaks for itself, and is often a bigger headache in the corporate support world than the problem it was attempting to solve.

We’ve still have ISA. EISA failed, PCI64 has gone nowhere. Limited, if none, hot plugging or fault tolerance in mainstream machines. Where is the industry push for good technology like Firewire or even USB? And look at the operating systems – one wrong configuration, and you’re stuffed. “Have you tried reinstalling the OS?” is a statement that brings tears to the eyes of an IT manager. PC 98 spec is a decent enough step, but why is this specification PC98 anyway – why wasn’t it PC90, or even PC87 when the 386 shipped?

In the PC marketplace, whether it be SOHO or corporate desktop, this is just yet more “me too” so-called engineering wrapped up in “all tinsel and no Christmas tree” bullshit. A lowest common denominator “it’ll do” illness, and a cost cutting frenzy par excellence, pervades most everything that most vendors do. No wonder PCs are so expensive to maintain, when the ingredients are this bad. Ask yourself why TCO is such an issue now – when was the last time you thought about TCO on your phone system? Or a fridge?

And you wilfully part with your money for this stuff.

Maybe there was a reason in the past not to buy into the computer that I’m referring to, but I am hard pushed to find one today. My mother wanted a computer to “browse that Internet thing”. She now has one of this brand I’m referring to, and mum@woodleyside.co.uk (please be gentle!) is now a live email address. She browses the web with gay abandon, and is reassured by the happy smiley “system ok” face she sees when she turns the machine on.

Now I will accept that this company has done some stupid things in the past. But that was then. They are now making money. I accept that there were good reasons for corporates not to buy into this platform in the past. But that was then. Maybe, just maybe, its time for a fresh look?

I have a brain. I have an Apple Macintosh. What’s your excuse?"

Clarkson and Truth?

2009-01-03T14:26:47Z

So clarkson claims he has never ridden a bike before:

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1102498/Top-Gear-shift-gear-Clarkson-hit-credit-crunch.html

"The constraints led to self-confessed bike-hater Clarkson having to be shown how to get the scooter started, let alone keep it standing.

However despite his professed ignorance it appears Clarkson, who declared on TV, 'I can't ride a bike' and 'It is the only motorbike I've ever had', may have put in some practise beforehand.

For back in September he was seen out and about on a navy Vespa near his Cotswolds home - just weeks before he travelled out to Ho Chi Minh City to film the Christmas episode.

The BBC had no official comment to make on this discrepancy when contacted by Mail Online."

And what do I find on Dave this afternoon? From his Motorworld series from 1995:

New York Restaurant

2009-01-03T13:36:22Z

Andre and I are going to New York in June, just for a weekend -- he has to go to a trade show.

So we are already planning things -- a visit to our favourite restaurant, Lips, is mandatory.

http://www.lipsnyc.com/

Epilog Highlights

2009-01-03T12:32:34Z

(Was four years ago on Monday...)

Epilog Issue 126

In the words of the Monty Python sketch, “I wish to register a complaint”. Like many of the, shall we say, more mature readers of PCPro, I was born in the 1960s. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to descend into a ramble about how life begins at 40, or even how the wonderful editorial crew of PCPro hadn’t been conceived when I first laid hands on a micro-computer in my distant youth.

No, I am here to complain that science isn’t delivering on the promise. Back in my teenage years, I was an avid watcher of BBC’s Horizon programme, and other science programmes too. However, Horizon always seemed to be the best, the most focussed. It wasn’t particularly consistent, and some episodes were distinctly ho-hum. Others, however were thought provoking in the extreme. As an 18 year old unsure gay man, about to go up to University, their programme about the then-new “gay plague” sweeping San Francisco in 1981/2 was the sort of program that made one sit back and have a really hard think about life.

However, I remember a program they did on the subject of CT scanning – computer tomography, whereby the body is “imaged” using a big ring scanner that looked like a huge mint with a hole. It appeared to “slice” the body into microscopically thin layers, and thus allowed you to peer inside and see what was going on. That wasn’t all – they demonstrated some fantastic three dimensional modelling which enabled individual components of the body to be visualised as solid objects. Suddenly, the body wasn’t a collection of microscope slides stacked on top of each other, but a real thing – something you could almost reach out and touch. It was probably using some super-large Silicon Graphics monster workstation costing hundreds of thousands, but this was almost the stuff of science fiction. Modelling what was going on was going to take on a whole new capability, and we were moving into a new era for medical diagnosis.

Unfortunately, I was also a big fan of science fiction too. Sitting in the flea-pit cinema in my home town, trying to work out what Kubrick’s “2001” meant when viewed through a scratchy, jumping worn-out film print was the definition of hard work. But there, just a few years hence, was a large spinning orbiting space station, and the music of The Blue Danube was forever changed in the minds of the viewers.

Worse still, Mr Roddenberry had redefined the vision of the hospital of the future – the Star Trek medical center was equipped with beds that you laid on, and an overhead computer panel that went “ping” and “bloop” quite frequently. You know, it looked just like that CT scanner. I never really trusted the whirly illuminated thimble device that he waved around – it’s noise just didn’t seem serious enough for the work it was obviously doing.

So why the reminiscences about childhood television programmes? Well, over Christmas my mother finally lost her battle against cancer – she’d had two primary breast cancers and we thought it had spread to her liver as secondaries. What we didn’t know until almost the end was that it was actually a new and highly aggressive primary cancer of the lower intestine, and wasn’t related to the previous episodes at all.

The quality of care she received, both at The Royal Marsden in London and at the local hospital where I took her via ambulance on Boxing Day, cannot be faulted. You know that they are doing their best when you are prescribed a new research drug from GlaxoSmithKline which is so new it has a few hundred patients taking it worldwide, and it doesn’t even have a name yet – just a long number.

Yet, I spent almost one day a week for some 5 months taking Mum down to the Marsden for tests, including a whole batch of CT scans. When she finally fell very ill, she had yet more CT scans.

In my innocence, my mind harked back to the Horizon programmes. When the doctors said they could see secondary tumors, I assumed they were there on the nice big 3D image, maybe coloured an appropriate tone of bright red as a warning. Indeed, I expected they could tell what she had eaten for breakfast too, down to the name of the free-range chicken who had laid the egg.

It wasn’t to be. Talking to the surgeons, I expressed my surprise and disappointment, both at the lack of hard information that they could offer, and my naiveté for expecting clarity and certainty. At such a time, “maybes” and “it’s likely” and “we believe that” is not the sort of words you want to hear.

They showed me the scans. When they had said “it is like looking through a fog, darkly”, they weren’t joking. My vision of beautifully rendered 3D images was taken away and put in the bin. In an attempt to see anything at all, they inject you with “contrast dye”, in the hope that it will improve the quality of the imaging. And even then, everything comes down to the expertise of the person looking at the images, to spot the things that they are looking for. And therein lies the underlying problem – a CT scanner lets you try to find the things you are looking for. It is hard for it to highlight things you are not.

So this is my complaint. I want machines that go warble and ping. I want CT scanners that produce fully rendered 3D images in real time. Most of all I want a clever bed which can tell you that you have stubbed your toe, had a ham sandwich for lunch, and theres something not so happy in your lower colon. After all, I was promised it as a child and now its time for payback. Come back, Bones, all is forgiven. Even your acting.

Win 7 Beta 1

2009-01-03T12:20:24Z

Windows 7 Beta 1 build 7000 has escaped onto the Internet and is now available from various torrent sites. It has leaked because the core beta testers received it a week or so ago, and one of them leaked it onto the Internet, according to a Microsoft source.

This build is likely to be made available to a wider audience, possibly even to the public as part of a planned "hearts and minds" campaign to start building up the position that Vista was just a temporary aberration and that Windows 7 is a release which everyone will want to use, including those who have clung on desperately to the lifeboat called XP.

There is still a long way to go from a Beta 1 release to production ready code. But Beta 1 is remarkably complete. Even most of the helpfiles are in place. This is not really surprising, given that Windows 7 is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary product. It would be unfair to call it "A Vista Makeover", but "Vista Done Right" would not be far from the truth.

This release is notable for a number of things. Firstly, the installation is amazingly quick. In fact, installing it onto a VMWare Fusion session on my desktop machine, I thought my build was incomplete because it took so little time to get running. Next up, this build has the new look and feel for the desktop -- so you can snap windows to the sides, the button bar is translucent and can be drag/drop rearranged, and it has the new features such as 3D style pop-up and windows browsing. Internet Explorer 8 is built in, and is clearly nearing its imminent release.

Performance is excellent, and I have to say this is the most complete and polished Beta 1 OS release I have seen from Microsoft in a very long time indeed.

Even after a few days of playing, I am starting to warm to the platform in a way that Vista never managed. Vista has always had the feeling of being the lumpen awkward unloved child -- full of promise which was never fulfilled, all of which is entirely Microsoft's own fault. The spectre of "the Three Pillars of Vista" is one which will haunt the company for a long time to come.

With Windows 7, they are making strong and meaningful steps to right the wrongs. Assuming no major problems between now and release, or a Vista-esque pulling of key features, this will be an OS that Microsoft can be proud of. There is no other choice -- a second desktop OS flop would be unthinkable for the company

Test of image post of Chicago

2008-12-19T00:36:54Z

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