Then, I searched around the other day and found that one of the two biggest features that I used from Azureus’ plugin system had been put into public beta for uTorrent, the web GUI. It is really nice to have a web GUI when you are always close to your computer, such as like I am at college, but don’t really have access to it at the moment for one reason or another. It allows you to start up the program and then just monitor the torrent progress or add new torrents remotely without needing remote desktop or anything. It really is very useful once you get used to using the web interface, and really helps if you want to change the bandwidth usage or priority of a torrent when you are away.

Then I saw the preview of the web interface that has been built for uTorrent. It is simply amazing and is basically like having uTorrent running within the browser as you can change almost anything that you could normally when inside the actual client. I have used 3 different web interfaces for Azureus and none of them gave me nearly the same control over the program compared to what the uTorrent interface does. There has to have been a lot of coding done to make such an amazing web UI, it is simply stunning. The only thing that I wonder about having such detail and control over the web interface and actual program from it is if it will turn into a security risk as you can change basically anything about the program’s settings.

If you do like web interfaces for torrent programs, although I don’t know of many that have them, you should really check out the beta of uTorrent. While it does seem a little insecure with the control the user has over the program, there are options to encrypt the data sent and received from the client over the web. The only thing that could make uTorrent better at this point now is if they also included something similar to the SafePeer plugin for Azureus, which is PeerGuardian for a single program instead of the entire system, just to keep those you don’t want from spying on what you may or may not be downloading at the time.

First, let me point out that I use a Mac, although not primarily. I mainly use Windows Vista and FreeBSD, although mainly Vista. I’m expecting that this will probably receive a ton of Mac fanatic comments and how I’m wrong and everything. It’s expected and I’ve learned that anyone that puts up any comment against Mac will likely receive this. The same basic thing goes for those that are Windows fanatics or Linux fanatics, it’s just something that is sort of expected. It’s not that Leopard or Macs in and of themselves are bad, just that everything about them is meant to look like it’s the best thing to happen to the electronics/computer world ever, and even the smallest things are blown out of proportion.

With that out of the way, lets get on with the reasons why Apple is going to have a bunch of short-comings with Leopard. First thing that is going to hurt it is that it’s going to show up after Vista arrives. Even if it is going to be better, I don’t know yet, it is still going to be behind by a few months, maybe more. Time is always a factor, and the sooner you can release something, the better off you are going to be. This holds true for nearly everything. The world is full of impulse buyers that want the latest and greatest when the get an upgrade. Many people will be upgrading their computers, and with the promise of a new operating system being closer for Windows over Mac, that is going to help Microsoft.

The next thing that I feel is going to hurt them, at least in the long run is the big new program featured in Leopard, Time Machine. Constant backups are great, we’d all love to have them, and Time Machine is a great idea. I’d love to be able to run the program myself, or something similar. Now what is wrong with Time Machine? Well, as we all know, backups take space, lots of space. So, lets say that I’m using my Mac that has Leopard on it for video or movie editting. I have a camera with a DV tape and a few hours of video that I need to edit. Well, to import that, it’s going to take quite a lot of space. I work on my project and in the process of that, the system does one of the auto-backups that are performed via Time Machine. I finish my project and delete all the junk I don’t want, but those files stay in the Time Machine and can be restored. Now, where are all of these gigabytes of backups going? They have to be stored locally to be effective and quick. So, that means that I’ve deleted a project that is several gigabytes to save space, but it isn’t actually gone, it’s still there. Even if the backups under-go extreme compression, to remain lossless, you aren’t going to compress something like a digital video project all that much, possibly 10% at best, saving 1-2GBs overall, depending on project size. So, where is this going, well, you’ve likely deleted more than just that project, or changed more than that. So hundreds of gigabytes of data are being backed up somewhere on your computer over time. Eventually, sooner over later most likely, you’re going to run out of space, and poof, your backups are gone as you need storage for a new CD or something similar. Basically, it’s a great idea in principle, but you’re going to need a terabyte of storage or more to make this work effectively, and have things spanned in some sort of RAID to keep performance up. If I attempted to keep track of all the changes that occur on my Windows system on a day to day basis, I would need at least 100GB of free storage to account for that since I last installed Windows Vista, and that was about a week ago. Think of how quickly all of this would build up for someone and then you’ll realize how much storage this will need and how it isn’t going to work and ultimately fail to live up to the expectations.

The next thing I see failing in some way is iChat. While I don’t personally like the program, the new “camera” feature that is in it isn’t something all that special. Windows Live Messenger, AIM, and Yahoo! all support this currently as far as I know. What is going to cause this to fail is the fact that it isn’t bandwidth friendly. While a lot of people are on broadband, a lot of people aren’t. There is also the fact that upload speeds are miniscule compared to download speeds, and that is going to kill connections offering streaming video. The quality of the video in the WWDC keynote was amazing, but people need to realize that it was likely run over a 100mbit connection. If you tried to accomplish the same thing on a low-level broadband connection out in the backwoods where 1mbit speeds are still pricey, the quality is going to diminish greatly. Also, think of someone on dialup attempting to do this, or people that have bandwidth restrictions in place where you cannot upload or download more than a certain amount per month. Once again, it’s a great idea, although a little behind, but it’s going to fail until broadband is everywhere and high speed broadband is much more common, that being speeds in excess of T1 upload and download speeds, as upload is going to be very important here as well.

The operating system in general I see having a major problem as well. This won’t be a problem such as those mentioned above, but a different problem, mainly the EU. Microsoft has been heavily sanctioned in the past few years by the European Union for “not offering enough options” by integrating many of the tools commonly used by a normal desktop user for everything. Recently, it was for not releasing copyrighted code that makes Server 2003 more efficient than its competitors. You may be saying to yourself that they deserve this, or wondering what this has to do with Apple. Well, if Microsoft deserves all the restrictions put in place by the EU, so does Apple. Why? Well, lets see here… iLife is included with every Mac now, allowing you to do so much more than you can on a standard Windows installation. You can edit audio, create webpages in a GUI, listen to music, watch movies, edit video and create DVDs and so much more. You can’t do half of this on Windows XP or even Vista, let alone try to do this on the “N” editions that they are force to ship now. So, why hasn’t the EU come down on Apple yet? You have far fewer choices here in my opinion than you do on a Windows computer. You have a narrower software selection overall, so there are less choices in general. Now you may say that it’s easy to remove all those applications, well, you can do the same thing in Windows, or even choose another program in Windows, same as on a Mac, but that hasn’t changed anything. If Mac continues to become more popular, it is just a matter of time before the same restrictions come upon them. There is absolutely no reason to include all of those programs on a Mac, but they are there anyway and preventing the competition from getting on to Apple computers.

The hardware and pricing is also always going to be against Apple. In the past, you were paying a lot of money, but you were getting a very well built machine that had hardware like no other computer available. Granted, the systems were very pricey, but at least the cost was backed up with a very stable hardware platform. The only major problem with these older systems is that they are kind of hard to upgrade significantly and are basically going to stay the same throughout their lifetime. The hard drive is the only really easy thing to replace or upgrade. Memory and the graphics cards can be upgraded, but at a high cost, on top of the already expensive system. While memory isn’t going to be as pricey, you can still have issues with non-Apple RAM modules installed. While this may not happen, it easily can, and can cause a lot of issues. The new systems that are based on the Intel processors share the same higher price, although it is reduced from what it used to be. I do not know if they share the “hard to upgrade” part for hardware, but my guess would be that they do as they are still Apple systems. While the newer computers are cheaper and less likely to be upgraded, it is still an issue that the PC and Linux/Unix world of computers do not face. They are simple to upgrade just about anything that you want. The high price is also less justified in the newer Macintels. Where the old PPC based systems were nearly all custom parts that weren’t in anything else, the new Macs use many more off-the-shelf parts that are produced in bulk for several manufacturers out there, not just for Apple. So, while you’re still getting a really good system, the parts going into it cost less, are not quite the same quality (at least in my opinion), but you are still paying a significant amount for several of the systems available. Now, you may say that they are less expensive than a similar OEM system, but that isn’t true either. I’ve priced out Dell Latitudes that have equal or greater specifications than the MacBook and MacBook Pro, and the price was less on the Dell systems, but the Dell’s had better specifications on them. This was also looking at the Education prices at Apple and standard prices at Dell. While Dell may not have quite the same hardware quality, a 3 year Complete Care warranty covers basically everything that may go wrong so that you can get the system replaced if there is an issue. It is hard to get systems similar to the Mac Mini or the iMac, just due to their design, but you can get equivalent or better systems from Dell and other OEMs for less than their price as well. While you wouldn’t have the same space saving design or anything, you would have a better system that was easier to upgrade. I’m sure that the same can be said about the Mac Pro as well. Apple hardware is overpriced and will likely continue to be. Just look at the “Mighty Mouse” which costs $60 or so, but has less functionality than the Logitech MX1000 which is better, unless you’re left handed.

The other thing that is against them as far as pricing goes is that they never offer any big sales. Sure, if you’re a student, you can get a free iPod with a purchase, but what if you already have one? Your “special” has now become useless. While you could sell it and make a couple hundred dollars (depending on the model), it still isn’t the same as if you saved $300 on the system itself. Just think, you’ve likely purchased the system by putting it on a credit card. Unless you pay it off all at once, interest is going to build up. On a different system that had a special running where you save money on the purchase price over getting something like an iPod for free, that is money you’ll never have interest building up on, saving you even more in the long run. Dell and HP, along with other OEM PC manufacturers offer big sales consistently. This past summer, there was a deal at Dell that could have saved you more than 30% on the purchase price of their systems, depending on which you wanted. On a $2000 purchase, that is a significant amount of money that you’ll never have to worry about spending on a system. Apple has not offered any major sale of this sort to anyone that I’m aware of, ever. While they may not be a huge company, maybe spending a few less thousand on advertising and giving a big sale at some point would help out more. Their huge advertising campaign has been doing a lot for them lately, but just how long will it last with the problems users have been seeing with the new laptops, such as over heating and stained keyboards.

The last thing that they really need to adopt is multi-button mice on all computers. While they do have the Mighty Mouse, which is nothing special, they really need more than one button. Why? Well, you switched to Intel processors and developed Boot Camp which allows for Windows to be installed. I’ve seen several people running Windows in some way on their new Intel Macs, either through some sort of virtual machine or by dual-booting. The question is, if you have a laptop with Windows and want to take it somewhere and not take a mouse, how do you right click? While this is easy in Mac OS X, it’s really difficult in Windows. Plus, how do you right click if you have to hold on to your laptop while using it, even if you are in the Mac OS? There needs to be some easier way to right click. Get out of the stone age and put two buttons on the laptops. While it may be cool for some, it is really dumb to not have a second button when it is so useful in any operating system you may be running.

There are other things that are going against the Operating system and the computers themselves, even if they are some of the best systems out there. The operating system is great, but it does have issues, and they are only going to become more and more prominent as more and more people buy into the rediculous advertising campaign being run by Apple. The “Mac v. PC” ads that are on TV are completely stupid and shouldn’t be run at all. They don’t portray either system correctly, it’s just a simple little scheme to make the Mac look like the best thing in the computer world. How much software runs on a Mac? PC’s can do so much more than make a pie chart, have better hardware support, and the virus “problem” isn’t one if people just weren’t stupid. If Apple really wants to take down Microsoft and Vista, they have the creativity and capability of doing so, but their current strategy isn’t going to cut it. They need more compatibility and lower prices before they even begin to make a significant dent in market share.

There are a few different reasons why I feel this way, and I’m sure many others do as well. If we take a step back and look at things, there are a few good signs pointing towards another release sometime rather soon. While 5472 was released to testers no all that long ago, it was about 3 weeks ago now. Many of the bugs that are going to be submitted on a build about any issue is going to be submitted within the first week, at least for the most common bugs that are out there. The article by Robert McLaws are Longhorn Blogs shows this. What the analysis also shows is that build releases have slowly been getting more and more frequent as we approach RTM. These are two big points that are sort of hinting at a new release as many of the issues that exist have been reported.

Another thing that is sort of “hinting” at a new build is the release schedule that was around the Vista Beta 2 schedule. The beta testers received a new build shortly before the release of the actual beta build. This was done to try and detect any major bugs that may have popped up to be sure there wasn’t a big problem when the build went public. The testers had a week or two to submit a few bugs, the received Vista Beta 2. The first RC (release candidate) build is right around the corner, with a planned release this month. It would make sense if RC1 was going to be released in mid-August that a pre-RC1 build was released now to work out any major issues that may exist in the close to RC1 build. Unless the planned August release of the next publicly available build has been pushed back, there should be something soon if a similar schedule is to be kept.

The Windows XP release schedule from it’s beta days as Whistler also point that a new build should be around soon, as the closer it got to the final release time, the more frequent the build releases became. With the release of Vista supposedly happening in November for the OEM companies and around January for the public release, we are getting very close to RTM. In order to get as many issues worked out as possible, they would want to release more and more builds as more and more bugs get their fixes migrated into the main release branch. To be sure that these fixes don’t cause an issue in some other area or bring up an unknown issue, it would be good to have the testers get the updated releass to work out the bugs.

Overall, it will likely be either this weekend at some point, possibly Monday if it follows the 5472 release, or next weekend, as this would make the most sense overall. That would give the tester community 1-2 weeks of testing and still allow for an August release of RC1. While everyone would prefer to have it sooner rather than later, I’d like to see it next weekend or Monday would be best since I would be able to get it as soon as it is released, rather than wait for a lot of other people to start first and get in with the huge train of other downloaders.

What this is about is participation in the Windows Live QnA Beta. Since I was lucky enough to become a Windows Live Butterfly, I got into this program as well. You may be wondering what it is. Basically, it’s a website where you can ask questions on various topics and get answers from the community. It is sort of like a forum, but questions are only open for answers so long. The other nice thing is that you can vote for what you think is the best answer. You get “points” for logging in, asking questions, answering questions and other things, but they don’t really go towards much. There are some really cool features to the site. Basically, they are hoping to gather as much information as possible, so that if you have a question on how something works or anything, you can just go here and look quickly and the info will be there.

Where this post comes in is that I have a few invitations that were recently given out to the beta testers so that they could invite friends to the beta program. Well, I don’t know anyone that wants to join the beta program, at least the people I asked didn’t respond, so I’m offering up some of them invitations here, so if you would like to join the QnA program that is listed on Live Ideas, just leave a message and I’ll send one to you. I’m not going to say that everyone gets in that posts, or how many I’m going to give out, but I will send out some of them to folks if they would like to join. No email requests will be accepted, just comment requests. If you leave a comment and email, don’t expect to get invited. I get enough email already and don’t need anymore. So feel free to request one. I’ll leave a comment when no more are available.

For many people out there, moving to 64 bit has been a very painful process. Manufacturers put hardware out there and then decided that they don’t want to support it, so we’re left with unsigned drivers for our systems, if we can even find those, to get things working. I’m sure that there are many people out there having this issue. The problem I’m having is with my on-board Promise Fasttrack 378 SATA/RAID controller, but there are many other devices out there with the same issue. For some, the drivers aren’t really a problem as it is non-critical hardware, or something they don’t use. I have a somewhat needed drive that is sitting on my controller that isn’t supported, like backups, installation keys for various software/betas I have and install, and just some other random things. It isn’t really needed, just highly wanted. Up until this latest build though, installing unsigned drivers hasn’t been much of an issue. There has been the bcdedit method

bcdedit /set {current} nointegritychecks on

that would prevent you from having to press F8 on boot every time. The latest release of VistaBootPRO has also made this easier, giving you a graphical method of performing the command.

The entire ballgame has changed with 5472 though. You can use the bcdedit method from above and it will say it completes successfully, provided you are in the Administrator command prompt, or set it with VistaBootPRO. The BCD Store will even tell you that the operating system should ignore driver checks. Unfortunately though, none of the convenience options will work anymore. You can use VistaBootPRO all you want, or bcdedit, and nothing you do will allow you to restart your computer and use unsigned drivers. The only way that you can possibly install your unsupported hardware anymore is if you use the F8 method when booting.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say “F8 method” this is what you need to do. When your computer is booting, press F8 as if you were going to enter safe mode. When the menu with all the different boot options is shown, there is one there that says something to the effect “Allow use of unsigned drivers” and you can select that option and continue booting and you can now use unsigned drivers. The problem is that anytime that you start your computer or restart, you will need to do this. It is going to be the biggest PITA most likely about this build, and all the more reason to get things set up the way you like them and let the system on as long as possible.

Another thing that you should do, if you haven’t done so already, is download VistaBootPRO 2.1 Beta. It features the following changes from 2.0:

• Fixed bug which occurred on some systems when renaming entries.
• Added advisement to backup bcd file before making any changes.
• Adjusted font size on pages.
• Refined Check for .net 2.0 framework prior to installation.
• Updated backup file dialogs and default filename.
• Added code to check for valid partition before creating new entry.
• Updated Help File.
• Updated Codebase.

The main reason for an updated release so soon after version 2.0 was the bug occuring on systems with renaming/reordering entries. Sorry for any inconvenience for people on this. It has also been confirmed to work on the latest build just released as well (build 5472), so you will be able to use it on all Vista builds that utilize bcdedit.exe for altering the boot menu.

The one software release that I did find rather notable, I have already posted about. VMWare Server 1.0 was released this week, and was also opened up from being a relatively expensive application to being free to the public. The really nice thing about VMWare Server, at least in comparison to Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 which is currently in its beta stages, is the features of VMWare Server. Microsoft’s Virtual Server, while being compatible with Virtual PC (also free now), is not openly compatible outside of Microsoft’s own line of operating systems. So, where many people are running a Linux operating system on their server, seeing as Windows Server 2003 is likely out of the price range of many home consumers, people can still run this on their actual server computers. You also have much better virtualization technology and support with VMWare. You can use USB devices from within the virtual operating system, which many people see as a huge benefit. The virtual networks are also much more organized with VMWare. The other thing that it offers over Microsoft is performance, although this is only a slight benefit. The VMWare virtual machines will tend to run slightly closer to how the real operating system would run compared to Virtual Server 2005.

The next release, which some people are happy about (I don’t really care) is Virtual PC is now free for the public as well. It isn’t nearly as advanced as VMWare Server or VMWare Workstation, but for the general user, it is likely much more user friendly. I have never actually used it myself, but seeing as how Microsoft tries to design many of their products for the average PC users out in the world, I would imagine that the entry level virtual machine program from Microsoft is no different. While it is much more likely to work with Windows when compared to VMWare, it will not be as highly portable as VMWare is, and it also isn’t as specialized. Even with all the differences aside, the fact that virtualization is coming into the real world at reasonable prices (doesn’t get better than free!), is a real step forward in my opinion. This will surely open up the doors for product testing to many more people out there, and should also allow for more experimentation by people. Hopefully, many more people will now give Linux a shot as it will be much easier to do so with free virtual machine products out now.

Another product that is hot off the development line and into the beta testing scene now is the integration of Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Users of both networks can now chat back and forth with each other using their respective clients. If you are using the latest version of Yahoo!’s instant messaging client, you can add MSN/WLM contacts to your list. If you are using WLM, you need to go to the Live Ideas site and “sign up” to add Yahoo! contacts to your buddy list. I say “sign up” because you don’t really have to do much signing up, just click the button to try the service and then sign out of Windows Live Messenger and sign back in. Just make sure to download the latest version of WLM if you don’t already have it, it would be 8.0.0792. After that, you are all set and can chat amongst your Yahoo! friends now as well as WLM friends. Now if Microsoft would just implement tabbed conversation windows in their client, they would have the best service out there for instant messaging. Also, if you would like to submit feedback about the product, feel free to go to Connect and sign up for the beta program there and you will be able to get your feedback to the developers more easily.

Another huge release today for the beta testing community was that of VistaBootPRO 2.0 from PROnetworks. Many people downloaded, installed, and used VistaBootPRO 1.0 to make altering the new Vista boot menu much easier, especially when compared to trying to use the command-line bcdedit.exe utility to try and edit everything. There are several changes to the program from the initial public release. The GUI has been revamped and is sporting a new skin and style. The backend has also undergone a major change, migrating from Visual Basic over to C#, and has been optimized to run better than the previous version. The folks at PROnetworks are hoping to make the pains of using bcdedit go away and that is the reason they are providing an easy way to alter the boot menu without getting frustrated with the command line. Also, stay tuned to the website as there is a development going on which may remove the two boot screens altogether for users using Windows Vista and a “legacy” operating system, such as Windows XP.

In other news, again from the Microsoft front, the highly anticipated release of Windows Vista for this weekend did not occur today, but this is only the start of the weekend. There has been much speculation over this in the past week based on several different things. The Beta Testers are hungry for a new build and can’t wait to get their hands on something new and start churning out the bugs once again. The screenshots posted earlier this week of Build 5466 added to the anticipation. In case users are wondering where this may have come from, it is likely a TAP release to a vendor to test out a specific feature, that or someone has some really good connections. For users wanting more information, this build is likely not going to be public and will likely be limited only to the beta testers. However, if you’ve downloaded and activated Beta 2, stick around for RC1, which should be released in August. As for what build folks are expecting, no one really knows for sure, at least no one that does know is saying anything. Speculations abound and it could possibly be something in the neighborhood of Build 5472. Based on previous news about a new build being produced internally everyday though, it could be as high as 5490, seeing as build 5456 was released about a month ago now.

About a month ago now, I mentioned that I found a great deal on Dell computers that they were offering to higher education students. It was a sale that was tremendous, about $5-600 off computer systems, and the upgrade parts were reduced in price as well. I’ve been wanting a laptop for a long time now, so I figured that this was my chance to actually get one. The problem with it was, though, that the sale ended on June 30, and there was no way I was going to be able to purchase it by then on my own. I configured a system as I wanted to though just to see how much I would need in the odd chance I could buy one, but there was no luck though. I even went as far as adding the system to my cart and then getting the shipping and handling, along with tax info. Basically, I knew how much this would cost down to the cent.

I then noticed this very small link while viewing my shopping cart. It was a link that asked if I wanted to save an e-quote. I looked at it, then read over the description of what an e-quote was and decided that I would save one. I went ahead and saved a decent Latitude D820 laptop and later recieved a notification of my e-quote being saved in my inbox. Then, the end of June came around and the sale was ending, but Dell had long removed the page, they actually did so about half way through the month, ending the sale rather from a public perspective. But, I still had my e-quote, so i went in and retrieved it. The laptop that I configured at the beginning of the month showed up and then a really interesting link came up.

After retrieving the e-quote, you can also reconfigure the laptop. If you click the reconfigure link, it just takes you back to the original page where you customized it previously. It was still June, so I figured that the pricing and everything would still be the same just for June. I resaved a new e-quote on the system that I was more likely going to buy, and even more impressive Latitude D820 laptop. I got the same notification again that my e-quote had been successfully saved and that I could retrieve it later. The thing that makes the e-quotes really nice is that you have an entire month of having the system configured at the price it was configured for. Basically, by saving my e-quote at the end of June, I was securing this price until well into July, and nearly August.

The other day however, I went back and retrieved the e-quote that I saved at the end of June again. I figured that the sale was over and that the system i saved back then was the last I would be able to get as far as options went, and the only option left was to get the money and buy it. However, I was wrong, very wrong. The same reconfigure link was still there. Went to the reconfigure page and the same option prices were still there. I looked over the system and didn’t really make any changes to it, but figured i would go and add it to the cart and check the final price once again. I then noticed that the same option was still there to save an e-quote. I haven’t given this a try yet, but from the looks of things, people would be able to take a sale price, save an e-quote on the item, and extend the sale period indefinitely. The only real restrictions on the e-quote that is saved is that if they are no longer offering a piece of hardware that was saved in the e-quote, it is no longer valid. Otherwise, you could configure a standard system and be able to keep the same price until they stopped making or selling the item.

So, if you ever see a sale at Dell, you can configure the product that you want, save and e-quote, and continue doing so until you have the cash to buy it. There will no longer be the missed sales of something that you wanted but couldn’t buy at the time.

However, anyone that is running the 64 bit version of Vista, be it Beta 2 or Build 5456, may have noticed that VMWare Workstation does not want to install on the 64 bit build, although it works fine in the 32 bit equivalent. This really disappointed me when I installed 5456 as I still had a bunch of Beta 2 testing that I wanted to accomplish, along with Server 2003 Beta 2 testing, upgrade installation testing, Linux operating system work. Basically, I had a ton of plans for VMWare that really fell through when I couldn’t get VMWare installed in 5456. It also never dawned on me to try and test out the server beta product. I figured that if Workstation wouldn’t install, why would VMWare Server Beta, they should be the same thing more or less.

Today, I found out that this assumption was likely incorrect. I went and registered for my free copy of VMWare server, and decided that I might as well download it, even though I didn’t think that it would work. I then gave it a shot, just to see if it would install, seeing as VMWare Workstation quit about half way through installing, I could find out quick. Also, there usually isn’t any harm in trying, so I started installation. I was amazed when it got all of the way through without any errors and notified me of its successfull installation. Just because it installed properly though didn’t completely convince me that it would work. So, I decided I should just test that out as well, seeing as how I have about 10 different virtual machines sitting here already configured and everything. To my amazement, it also worked fairly well.

I did have to change the default network adapter from the bridged VMNet0 adapater to VMNet1 to use NAT instead. For some reason, it does not want to allow me ot use a bridged network connection. My guess is that it has to do with the networking driver that is used, and the increased security in Vista. I also have issues with the virtual floppy drive, but that isn’t really worrying me to much as I don’t really use the floppy drive for anything in the virtual machine. The really odd bug of hogging all of the system resources possible for a good minute or two is still there, but beyond that, VMWare Server 1.0 seems to be working great in Windows Vista x64 now. Luckily, I decided to test it out, although I’m not sure what really prompted me to do so based on my past experiences with VMWare Workstation and also VMWare Player turned out.

• MD2
• MD4
• MD5
• SHA1
• SHA256
• SHA384
• SHA512
• RMD
• TIGER
• PANAMA
• ADLER
• CRC32
• EDONKEY

The one negative aspect of the program is that it is currently only command line, which may be a bit intimidating to less exeperienced users, but I will work on creating a GUI front-end to the program to make it easier for people to use. In the interim though, I have created an ‘installer‘ of sorts that will automatically extract the file to the System32 directory so that you can use the command directly from the command line.

Then, there is what is likely the biggest reason that Windows is considered unstable, Windows ME. It is quite possibly the worst operating system ever released, and was extremely unstable. A user could install Windows ME, and even as they were starting it up for the first time, they would get a BSOD. If you didn’t restart or shutdown your computer everyday, it was likely that it was going to BSOD and shut off randomly, if it didn’t do this on you already. If users got their Windows ME computer to stay on for a week without problems, many would likely consider them very lucky. Then, there was the whole issue of driver compatibility, or lack of compatibility. Since ME never really caught on, manufacturers soft of just skipped an entire generation of Windows and mostly just made products supporting Windows 98 or 98SE instead. With all sorts of random problems, lack of drivers for a lot of common devices, and just a poor system in general, I think this one poor operating system is haunting Windows to this day.

There was later Windows 2000, which never really came into the home user arena and stuck mainly with businesses, although gamers seemed to like 2000 a lot as it was very stable and ran games very well. Ever since Microsoft ditched the 9x series, which included ME, and switched back to the NT Kernel, Windows has been very stable. Now many people still say that Windows XP is very unstable, but I don’t really see how this is true. I have worked on hundreds of different installations of Windows XP, both Home and Pro, plus MCE and Tablet PC, and I have yet to see where Windows itself is actually the culprit of the operating system being unstable. Windows Vista seems to be behaving in the same fashion, even in the beta stages. While, there have been times when Windows Vista, or its alpha versions, codename “Longhorn”, have been unstable, it has been very stable for a number of testers in the world. What is it then that is causing Windows to get a bad reputation as being unstable, even if it isn’t.

I would have to say that the quality of the hardware underneath the hood of the computer would be the largest contributing factor to how well any operating system performs. Mac OS has been rock solid for a long time now, and despite the fact that they are pushing out a ton of security updates now, it continues to be, even on somewhat sub-par hardware. The big reason behind this is that Apple makes nearly everything in the system, and therefore, can essentially make a problem free operating system if you know the hardware that can go into the computer. Where as Windows has to be able to handle millions of different combinations of hardware, Apple has to deal with only a small handful, with the video card being the only major component that can really change all that much. With Windows, you have to worry about the motherboard, video card, chipsets, processors, network adapters, audio adapters, and pretty much anything that can go into the system. With all of these combinations, it’s no wonder there are some problems sometimes.

Now, you may be saying that Linux and Unix do not suffer from the same issue, but I have seen and heard of unstable installations of Linux. Usually, it’s also on the same computers that have issues with running Windows as well, not much of a coincidence. The computer is much more than the operating systems that run on them, and thus, poor hardware results in a poor user experience. If the end user selects quality hardware to put into their computer, they are going to end up with a very stable operating system, no matter what they install. But, if you have low quality components, and many OEM manufacturers do, you can end up with a very poor computer. While there are several people that have much more luck with Linux and Unix even when Windows doesn’t want to work properly, Linux and Unix have a huge developer base compared to Windows. You have several thousand distributions out there, a few hundred of them have funded projects for development, plus a ton of individuals writing their own drivers and patches to fix things. The nature of the operating system itself allows for it to be much more flexible, and thus can deal with sub-standard conditions better in certain situations.

There is also the fact that there many of the people in the world that do run an open source operating system tend to be running it on a decent computer as well. This is because they are already experienced computer users and know the difference between good and bad when it comes to system components. That, and if one is going to run solely Linux, they usually look for compatible hardware so that custom drivers aren’t needed and they can get up and running quickly with the built in drivers. Odds are, that if you took the average Linux system and put Windows on it, Windows would not have a problem running either. It is really hard to compare Windows and Mac OS, seeing as they just become somewhat compatible, but all reports that I have heard thus far say that Windows is very stable on the new Intel based Macs. In fact, some users are having fewer problems with Windows on their Macs than they are with OS X on their Macs, at least after figuring out the right-click issue they are. So, what is really the cause for an unstable operating system, is the operating system itself, or the components underneath the software that are making the system go that are the real issue?

For those that do know that Windows Vista is out there and what it is, you’ve likely noticed a big increase in security related workings in Vista. Things like Windows Defender being integrated to prevent spyware, to a two-way firewall that blocks inbound and outbound protection. There is also UAC, which is meant to ask for user confirmation when a program or action is going to modify something that will affect the entire system, like Windows Updates, driver installation, or program installation. This prevents things from getting into places that they aren’t meant to be without you know, and also helps prevent them from running. To make computers safer for younger people, there are also Parental controls built into the operating system that act to prevent the younger users from accessing web sites or doing other tasks that involve certain things without parental approval, and all actions are logged. Basically, Vista is out there to protect the user from dangerous content, and does an ok job.

But, there are other security issues that many people probably don’t know about. The big one, that was a huge issue with Windows XP, is the built in Administrator account. In Windows XP, this account was likely not touched by millions of users, and since it was left as active and had no password, was a hacker’s dream come true. Some folks left it there as the fallback account in case something went wrong. Either way, this is a huge security issue, and is something to watch out for. In Vista, they have somewhat fixed the problem. The default Administrator account is the only full administrator account on the computer, meaning no UAC prompts or anything. They can do anything without any annoying prompts or other questions. So, to prevent a security issue, this account is disabled by default now. The problem is that there is still no password set on the account. While that doesn’t matter so much for many people as you can’t specifically log in to the system with this account normally, it does allow users to log into this account without questions in Safe Mode.

Now, while that shouldn’t be a concern, it does allow unrestricted access to everything if the user boots into safe mode. While I personally do not see this as a huge issue, there are many out there that do. Why don’t I consider this major? Many people say that this is a problem because it allows that account open in safe mode and someone could just log in and change the password(s) on your account(s) or, possibly a child turning off the parental controls. My argument against this fact is that, if you leave your computer open long enough to have someone restart into safe mode and log in with that user account, a changed password or altered parental controls are the least of your worries. You aren’t going to have a remote user gain access to your system and alter things as the account is disabled an unusable when users are normally on the system. It also doesn’t pose a threat, or shouldn’t pose a threat, for businesses, as they should take measures to secure their systems, and likely do the same thing with Windows XP currently. I also say this isn’t an issue due to password altering tools that can be used via booting off of a CD, which would essentially be the same thing as safe mode altering of passwords. There really isn’t a huge valid argument that I can see for this being a major issue like some are making it out to be.

The other security issue, which I would consider to be HUGE, is the installation DVD. Now many people might wonder why I would consider the installation DVD to be a huge issue. Well, if you’ve ever had to use the recovery options, you would recognize why. The command prompt there allows full, unrestricted access to the system. Where Windows Vista would give security dialogs when trying to delete or move files, the command prompt doesn’t do any of this. The only way to really protect yourself from this type of problem is BitLocker, which, in its current state, isn’t much help. If a user shows up with an installation DVD and a portable hard drive, they could just copy anything and everything from your system over in a few minutes, just by restarting the computer and booting off of the installation DVD. Basically, there isn’t much a person can do to prevent this type of issue.

Now, one could relate this to the Administrator account, but this is failsafe. Users can alter the password on the Administrator account, but many do not change any of the boot information, leaving the system completely open to changing the boot media and gaining this type of access. Now, some may say, why not just take the hard drive itself, or even the full computer? Well, that is very noticeable. Just restarting isn’t that noticeable, people may just think it just randomly restarted, as seems to happen often according to Apple, even though it really doesn’t since people have stopped using Windows ME. Basically, a restart is much less noticeable than just stealing the stuff. It can also be a lot easier to do and is essentially toolless. It is very easy to carry around a DVD and portable hard drive. Carrying around all the tools one may need to remove a hard drive isn’t exactly as easy, and just stealing the entire tower isn’t as practical. Due to the change in the NTFS version that Vista uses, many popular Live Linux distributions won’t necessarily work either to copy data.

The ideal solution to this is to have the setup program that runs after installation require a password for the user account that is created, and then apply that password to the disabled Administrator account as well. This will prevent having accounts without passwords, making the first ‘hole’ harder to exploit. The way to fix the second issue would be to require the user to log into the installation, much in the same way that the Windows XP Recovery Console does. If you don’t have an administrator log in, you can’t do anything as far as the recovery tools go for the setup DVD. These are two fixes that would essentially prevent any access to the system in an easy manner. Then, if BitLocker is fixed and it actually starts working, that would add another level of security to the system and make it even harder for data to be taken from the system without authorization. Hopefully, the developers look at these issues and make some attempt to try and address them so that the security can be enhanced even more for the next Windows operating system.

So, what makes it seem like IE7 Beta 3 is not so good? Well, one of the first things that makes this look like a not so good release is the fact that uninstallation instructions where posted shortly after it was released to the public. The fact that these instructions cover such a wide range of different situations one may encounter is not really good. A public beta should not need instructions for removing it besides a simple “Uninstall this like any other program/update”. Granted, there are always going to be a few that have issues, but the fact that this was posted publicly shortly after the release is not good. Also, the fact that the page has several comments from a wide variety of users experiencing problems is not good. There should not be so many problems with a program released to the public. Granted ‘beta’ sort of says there may be issues, there should not be that many problems as many average users do not understand what ‘beta’ really means.

What else is there that points to this being a not so good release, well, user feedback elsewhere. There have been several posts and topics created at support forums, such as PROnetworks and Neowin, with users experiencing issues after installing IE7 Beta 3. Things like IE no longer working after installing, failed to install but removed IE6, preventing other programs from working, and a load of other issues. Why are people having so many issues with a public beta, especially one that would be used to the scale that IE is? My guess is that the version that was released (Build 5450) did not go through enough internal testing prior to release and had unknown issues which popped up soon after thousands started installing. The fact that it did not experience issues during pre-release testing says that it should be ok, but if the systems that it was tested on where essentially the same, they just confirmed that it works on that platform, and not something different, or for users with different configurations.

Even though the update has been causing a ton of issues for the people that have been brave enough, or lucky enough to get it installed, there are some really nice features that are in the new version that were not in Beta 2. Things such as tab-reorganization, where you can rearrange the tabs into whatever order you want them in. News feeds will now auto-update in the background while IE is running, so you don’t have to constantly go to the site and update the feeds manually. Along with updating the feeds, you can also mark the messages as read too. Users will also see an improvement to website compatibility, although there will still likely be several sites, mainly secure sites, that won’t want to work properly. Then, you also see the standard bug fixes and security updates that have been applied to prevent issues, although it apparently wasn’t enough.

Well, times have changed a lot since that article was put out. Mac has been pushing out updates left and right. There are constant restarts where you used to be able to leave the system on months at a time. Now, users are lucky if you can leave their systems on for more than 2 weeks before another update is out and you need to restart again. The Dashboard, which is supposed to be a user-friendly feature to display what you want right at your fingertips has turned into a huge security problem. Scripters have now made malicious widgets, running junk in the background on your Dashboard. The iPod and iTunes explosion in popularity has not helped the security issues either. With their increase in popularity, more and more folks moved over to the Mac platform, and thus put more attention on the operating system and its components from the hacking community, and not the good side of hacking either. This added attention has brought up security vulnerabilities on nearly everything and likely a lot of unwanted attention.

Now, even more people are switching over to the problematic Macbooks and Macbook Pros, just because they can still run Windows if they want. Both models have had numerous reports of wireless issues across the net, and no sure-fix method of getting rid of them. But, when Windows installed on the same machine doesn’t have any issues with wireless, just figuring out how to emulate a right-click, it is obviously some issue with the Mac itself. The Macbook Pro has also suffered from several heat related issues, often getting to scalding hot temperatures. Apple’s public statement was that a piece of plastic was covering the fan outlets, but many people have blamed the problem on so much thermal compound was used that it became a heat insulator instead of a conductor. Either way, something that shouldn’t have happened. Now, there are reports of folks getting the new, pearly white Macbook, using it for a little while, and then stains are formed on it from where people are resting their hands. Overall, there are several issues that are showing up now that Apple has made it big in the world, although still not anything close to Dell, HP, or other big OEMs with PCs.

So with all this new publicity and unexpected attention from people looking for holes in the system, what is Apple doing? They are locking everything down. Pretty soon, Apple’s Mac OS is going to be just like the operating system that everyone seems to hate for some unexplained reason, Windows. They’ve locked down the code for nearly everyone, unless you have a PPC processor and are constantly putting out security patches. The once, stay on forever system, has turned into a hope to stay on for a month. Why you need to restart your computer after nearly every system update is unreasonable. I updated Quicktime, WHY DO I NEED TO RESTART? There are security patches coming out for nearly everything. The base system, loads of patches for Safari, built in applications, then iTunes and Quicktime. What was once considered the most secure operating system has been falling to its knees slowly as more and more issues arise. They’ve been hanging in the background for sometime now, and it seems that they should have stayed there and avoided the whole iTunes/iPod fad, and now the rediculous advertising for reasons to get a Mac.

They claim to be problem free and feature rich, but give it time and it will be the same old operating system that they are making out Windows to be. Constant restarts or freezes only on a PC? Hardly. There are many things one can do to get something to freeze on OS X, and you do the same thing you do in Windows when it happens, force quit the application. Rarely does Windows just ‘freeze’ out of the blue anymore, and hasn’t since Windows ME went out the door and they switched over to the NT Kernel for the operating system. Constant restarts, well, yeah, they happen a lot on a PC, about every time you restart your system for security updates, which are happening more often for Mac these days than for PCs. A Mac can talk in something else’s language, like a digital camera, well so can a PC, you install the software and it sees everything fine, same you would do on your Mac. Create stunning things with built in functions… well you could before on Windows. Then everyone started complaining that they don’t have any freedom to choose their applications and everything got stripped from the OS. What did Apple do? They decided to cram more junk in that many won’t use, and they get away with it. Tell me what you can’t do on a Mac with a built in product and tell my why it should be there by default when it was forcibly removed from Windows? Mac people, enjoy the functionality and security while you can as the day is quickly approaching when everything you know and love about your Mac disappears.

The odd part about it is though, that it doesn’t do the logical step and just ignore anything that isn’t needed. It goes through, installs everything first, then goes back and uninstalls all of the language packs and stuff that aren’t needed for the system based on your configuration. For some reason, it also goes through and uninstalls some utilities that users may find useful. The most notable one that I saw while packages were being uninstalled during installation (sort-of unintuitive isn’t it) is ntfsprogs. A set of utilities that allow Linux/Unix users to work with NTFS partitions from Windows. Now, many people won’t need these utilities, but what is the point of going through and installing all of this stuff if you’re just going to uninstall it a few minutes later? I mean, it’s called installation for a reason, you’re supposed to be installing stuff, not uninstalling it. I guess the folks over at the Ubuntu development labs are still learning this though.

Even though it does do some really funky stuff, do not discredit Ubuntu as a Linux distrobution. Its ease of use and huge userbase allow for great support, so it is a very n00b friendly distro to work with. Although, I do find things such as this kind of odd.

The first thing one may notice is that there are a lot more svchost.exe processes running by default when compared to Windows XP. This is likely due to the increased security and the hope for better stability in Vista. Now, you may be wondering how running 2-3 times more stuff makes it more stable or more secure. Well, the reason for this is that under XP, each svchost.exe process accounted for several different services within Windows. Many times, there were critical system services running under the same processes as other, not very important services, and there were also large groupings of tasks for each process. This has changed in Windows Vista though. The individual tasks that svchost.exe is taking care of are now much more distributed and split up more evenly now. Critical services also do not appear to be “bundled” with as many other services under one process, if the process is running multiple things at all. This makes things more stable as it prevents a bunch of stuff from stopping if one service has an issue. It also makes things more secure for about the same reason, as any security issues in a given service prevent access to as many other services.

There are also other services and processes that are new and are really unknown as to why they are running. Some of these are probably not going to be used at all by many users, but they start up anyway. They also seem to start up prior to having anything run that they are associated with. The most notable of these are two services/processes started for Windows Media Player. Both of the services deal with networking, and are possibly from the network sharing feature that is in WMP11. The problem is, there is no easy to find way to actually disable these, and they also startup without notification. While many users probably will never notice this with the PCs that are likely to ship with Windows Vista, during the beta with testing, the extra resources that these unknown and unnecessary services take up slow down the computer.

There is another service that is possibly needed, but likely not, that is the “Trusted Installer” service. This service is obviously for installing things, but, it is started before anything is even installed by the user. So, apparently, something is installing in the background, as there isn’t any real apparent need for this service to be running otherwise. There are similar services, which may have some sort of functionality, but there is no indication that they should be running immediately after installation. Overall, there is a lot of stuff that just sort of runs for you. I’m guessing that it’s trying to get more out of Vista with less user intervention, so that things are already running when the end user attempts to run them. That would provide faster startup of the item since it would not have to wait for the service to start. The problem is, that if the user never actually uses what these background services are there for, it’s actually defeating the purpose. If the program the service(s) are there for are never used or run, then they just sit there consuming system resources with no purpose.

So, who is really configuring this system for performance? If it were me, I would have the system start only basic things upon first startup. After this, there should be something to remember what is used and what isn’t. If something isn’t used, then it should remain off. If something is used, it should be started. If it is not used after a certain period of time (1-2 weeks) then it should be set as off again. There shouldn’t be any reason that Windows Media Player services are running on initial boot, especially when I haven’t even opened WMP yet. Why should something running when I haven’t even used it?

So far, I’ve barely closed the bug reporting tool that is used with Vista. In fact, in the first 12 hours of this build being installed, it wasn’t closed. There were also several bug reports filed in that time. So far, this is probably the buggiest build I’ve worked with that is still usable. There were past builds that were more troublesome, but I couldn’t use them as they just wouldn’t work and posed to many problems for day to day use, which I’ve been doing for some time now. So far, many of the problems that I am seeing are in the administrative areas of the build. The firewall, management consoles, and the control panel are all displaying things that shouldn’t be happening. The big issue that I’m seeing that is really odd though is that the individual management consoles are missing something, GUI related, functionality, something, but the full Computer Management console which has many of the functions built into it for easy access to a lot at once is working fine and doesn’t really have any issues. I’m not really sure how you can build two things that are nearly identical yet one works and one doesn’t, or one looks different than the other.

Other issues that I’m seeing that shouldn’t be there are things that work, but not until after you restart a time or two. In past builds, the firewall would start prompting you immediately if there was a program that it didn’t recognize accessing the internet. Now, it takes a couple restarts before it starts prompting about allowing access. The Welcome Center can’t be turned off until you log in for a second time either. I’m not sure what it is, but there must be something going on that is preventing stuff from happening in the first couple logins. I also see the firewall issue as something that should probably be addressed as that is kind of a security hole if it isn’t working properly. It’s really nice that all programs I had accessing the internet were doing so just fine, Winamp, WLM 8, Thunderbird, Flock, and I had no prompts for allowing access for them. Who knows what might have been able to get out and possibly in if this was a computer that wasn’t protected from the outside world. I trust my setup fairly well, so it didn’t bother me all that much, but I hate to think what might happen to a standard user or the average Joe out there if this would happen to them.

Even though this thing is buggy and has random oddities, there are a few improvements that have been made and are worth mentioning. The big one that has been a major point for a few months now is the User Account Control (UAC) feature. It has been the most annoying thing for most beta testers since it has been introduced. While it is a great concept, it has been poorly implemented in past builds. You would be getting restriction prompts and access denied messages when trying to do simple tasks, like deleting stuff from the desktop, or installing programs. They have done a good bit of work on it and while there are still prompts, they aren’t quite as annoying now, unless you have sound. They have added the critical error sound to the UAC prompts. It’s nice to know something needs attention, but it is the wrong sound, and shouldn’t be around if accessibility is enabled to make use easier for blind persons as that is the reasoning behind the sound. So, hopefully, the small issues that are still around in UAC are being looked at and fixed for the future builds. It’s nice to see that they are in the process of listening to folks and revising the system though.

The other thing that has seen some improvements once again has been Aero, the graphics theme and probably the most notable new thing in Windows Vista. If you are looking as to what some of these changes may be, head over to the PROnetworks gallery as there are quite a few screenshots of various things in the build. It is really nice to see how the details are being worked on and different views are getting more refined. Things like Flip3D, which used to look nice from afar, but kind of ugly up close, have received work to make the window edges smooth, and the transitions between open windows smoother as well. The transparency also seems to be better and clearer, that is if you can get Aero Glass to work. If you have trouble with it, see if this helps, as it seems like this has been a somewhat common issue for some reason in this build. Not sure what it might be though as transparency is working just fine for me as it has been for a long time now.

The other nice thing about the graphics in this build is that they kept the animations functions that could be added into Vista Beta 2, so if you want to get some cool effects with windows, try this out. Save the following code in notepad it as “dwm.reg” someplace that is easy to get to (like the desktop)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM]
“Animations”=dword:00000001
“AnimationsShiftKey”=dword:00000001

Now, double click the file to add it to the registry. You’ll likely get a prompt about administrator rights being needed, this is normal though. Then, all you need to do is open up the services panel and stop and start the Desktop Window Management service. You can get to the services management console by typing “services” into the start menu search box. After restarting DWM, if you hold down on the Shift key, all the windows will minimize and maximize much slower allowing you to get some amazing screenshots. This also works with Flip3D, so you can slowly rotate through all the open windows you have.

Application compatibility has also changed some. While things are mostly compatible, there are some difference. The things that I’ve noticed thus far that have changed are NOD32 and VMWare. In Beta 2, VMWare Workstation was working mostly fine. It had some issues during the initial startup and also caused some BSODs when shuttind down virtual machines, but it worked fairly well. Now, in 5456, it doesn’t seem to want to work. It could be that it has to do with this install being 64 bit and I had Beta 2 installed as the standard 32 bit install though. The other big change that I really like is that NOD32 is working again without issues. In Beta 2, there was an issue where NOD32 would cause 100% CPU usage for some reason. Some users got around this by disabling IMON (Internet Moniter), but that didn’t seem to work for me. So, I tried it out again and it seems to be back in business. If you’re wondering what NOD32 is, have a look at their homepage and a review I wrote. If you are wondering about other programs that may or may not work, well, I can’t do to much help there as I haven’t really gotten everything installed yet. I do know where you can find a fairly decent list of programs that do and don’t work though. If you are wondering about Build 5456, see here, and since many people are still working with Beta 2, you could see this about the public release.

A couple final notes about this, I’ve been having fun using this build and will continue to do so until the next build is released. If you are wondering if you should install it or not, I would say that if you can live with minor bugs being everywhere, go for it. Otherwise, I would just stick with Beta 2. So, thanks to Microsoft for providing Vista 5456 to us.

Digg this

For a background of what BitLocker is, for anyone who may not know, it is encryption for your drive. While XP Pro had encryption, it was meant for small scale applications, such as encrypting a single file or folder to prevent others from reading it or accessing it. Windows Vista still has this encryption feature as well, but BitLocker is basically it’s bigger brother so to speak. BitLocker is full hard drive encryption, securing everything on the encrypted partition. While this probably isn’t really necessary for home users, it will likely be a good thing in some business environments for computers that contain personal information that shouldn’t really be out in the public. To keep things secure, you store the encryption key on a removeable device, such as a USB drive or floppy disk and just insert that to boot the system so that it can decrypt the drive and unlock it for use. To safe gaurd the key so that you have at least a backup just in case, you have several options for backup copies during the process of enabling BitLocker.

So, on to the setup of BitLocker. It is really a fairly simple process to do. You go into the Control Panel and then to Security, where BitLocker lies, since it is a security feature. Then, you can just follow the wizard and enable BitLocker. A note is that it will need a partition on the drive you are booting from to put the boot files on since you can’t access boot files on the encrypted drive as it unlocks the drive after selecting the operating system you will be booting into. Then, just save the encryption key to a removeable device, and then back it up to an appropriate location, or several locations if you wish, and restart. In the process of restarting, BitLocker will start to encrypt the drive. This is all well and good, and really expected by the user.

You may be wondering what is wrong then. Well the problem is that as soon as you restart, the system becomes extremely slow. I sort of expected it would slow down some, I mean the entire drive is encrypted and would have to be unencrypted before everything was back up to speed. There is more than just a small slow down though, the system is basically slowed to the point of being unusable. In the process of encrypting, next to nothing was responsive and several times, Explorer and other running programs would freeze. It took about 3 times longer to boot after BitLocker was first enabled before the drive was actually secured. Applications would take forever to load and pretty much nothing worked. Luckily, I started this up just before going to bed, so it stayed on overnight. In the morning, I awoke to find that the system was still extremely slow and unresponsive to nearly everything.

So, it’s Windows, if things aren’t working, you restart and look again. Big mistake there. Upon rebooting, the system was much slower at starting up than when BitLocker was encrypting the drive. It went through the loading screen normally, so I figured all was well, but boy was I wrong. The loading/boot screen was the only thing that proceded normally. From there, everything else was much slower. The black screen that shows for a short time just after the loading screen stayed up for a good 2-3 minutes, if not longer. Then I got a funny colored screen just before the large orb shows up, and that stayed there for another 2-3 minutes before getting to the start orb. It then goes to the blank screen with the mouse cursor and the build information in the bottom corner and proceded to stay there for a good 5 minutes.

BitLocker is so good that it prevents the user for using their own system, talk about secure. I’m not sure if the system would become responsive eventually after letting it sit for a while, but given the issues that I had before the drive was encrypted with stability and responsiveness and the slowness I was seeing after restarting, I was not about to attempt waiting. There was constant hard drive activity after restarting, so for 10 minutes straight the hard drive light was on as I was waiting to see something, which never happened. Instead, I put the install DVD back into the system, used the reset button and just reinstalled. The really nice thing about BitLocker was then found out, in that it prevents Vista Setup from properly formatting the drive. So I used the advanced option of Format to try and clear the drive and reinstall. That appeared to work, but didn’t and in setup I got sent back to the first screen and had to go through the install sequence again. The nice thing is that you can still delete the partition and recreate it to get things back. So, now back to reinstalling programs again. Luckily I didn’t get to much stuff installed prior to using BitLocker and it was just the downloadable programs installed.
Windows Vista courtesy of Microsoft

Now, I have hardware issues the same as any other person out there. My hardware issues aren’t really major though, at least at this point. My only issue is the Promise 378 Controller which I can get around at least for now. Basically, my system is set for Vista and pretty much has been for some time now. My GPU is supported by default, and is pretty new, so ATi will continue to support it. I’m still running with on-board sound which is good enough for the time being. Other than that, I don’t really have anything special on my system. I do have the Logitech MX3100 keyboard and mouse combo which has a set of drivers and a configuration utility, but that is much less of a priority on the driver scale than other things. I’ve been running smoothly for months now, and since Logitech enabled support for Vista in their driver package, things have been even better.

What really annoys me though are all of the people out there complaining about hardware support. Some of it is warranted though. Setup not having any drivers that it can install that works with critical system hardware, like is happening with some nVidia cards, is something people have a right to complain about. But then there are these other people complaining about a printer not working, or a scanner or something else. Well, the last time I checked, Microsoft wasn’t in the printer business, so why should they be writing printer drivers, or any other drivers for that matter? Now you’re probably going to say, “What about Microsoft keyboards, mice, and the like?”. Well, I’m pretty sure that another company writes the drivers for those to. Not sure who it is though. You can complain about that to the folks over in Redmond as they should be on top of this one, I’ll allow that. But there are people complaining to Microsoft and the developers for their HP, Epson, Cannon, or any other printer not working, or a scanner. Creative sound cards have also had their fair share of driver issues in Vista. Why are people complaining to Microsoft to get their printer or sound card working though.

If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft isn’t making the majority of hardware that isn’t supported folks. Complaining and whining to them won’t get you far in getting supported drivers. While the developers can try and talk to the companies about supporting the hardware, and I’m sure they are, talking to the hardware manufacturers is going to get you further in the end. It isn’t Microsoft’s responsibility to make sure your hardware is supported, it’s the original manufacturer’s job to do that. So if you have a non-working printer, head over and have a chat with HP, Epson, Lexmark, or whomever makes the printer and have a chat with their technical support. If you and fellow testers that are having similar issues all start barking up the right tree, hardware support will come to you a lot faster. There have been several folks complaining to Creative for a lack of support on $2-300 sound cards, and that has actually brought some beta drivers out into the open. They aren’t working out to well from what I hear, but they are at least there.

My personal opinion is that you can just be glad there is support for older hardware. Look at Apple and the Mac line. They support hardware that they installed and a very limited amount of other hardware. They have left all driver development for anything they didn’t install or offer up to the manufacturer’s, and in the end it has brought out drivers. The less they support and the more people use it, the more the manufacturer’s have to worry about not displeasing its users for fear of losing business. Heck, there application support is even worse. Vista has a good bit of backwards compatibility, there is even a compatibility mode that can be used to try and get older applications working. It’s even pretty good at tricking some installers about the OS version. Apple doesn’t guarantee anything, and when OS X 10.4 Tiger came out, there were a lot of broken applications for a couple months. Then all the vendors pushed out updates and things went back to normal. There is very little support in the Apple/Mac world that I’ve seen for backwards compatibility.

So, what should Microsoft do about this? I would tell them to support as little as possible in the default install. Offer a base graphics driver that supports 1024×768 and 32 bit color on 90% of the video cards out there. If it doesn’t offer that, have 800×600 and 16 bit color as the backup to work on 99% of the cards out there. Then have a boat-load of built in IDE/SATA/RAID/SCSI drivers to support most of the common controllers out there so people don’t need to download and install them. A base set of networking drivers for both NICs and modems should also be included so that most folks can get online for activation and updates. The last thing that needs some support would be USB and PS/2 mice and keyboards. After that, leave all other support up to the hardware manufacturers. Do you really need sound, not really. There are instances where this is a necessary option though, like accessibility for blind users, so there has to be sound support, but I don’t think built in sound drivers should be required. This would force all the support to go to device manufacturers. If they have good support for the current operating system, at least one major version back of an operating system, and then start pushing out updated drivers for the next major version after the first beta drops, people will buy their products. If they have crap support for everything, people won’t buy their products and the company dies. It would be as simple as that to get all of this grief geared towards Microsoft about hardware support going in the right direction, but I doubt that any of us will see anything even close to this anytime soon unfortunately.

Then, in comes reality. As always, things don’t always follow what we are wanting them to, and so far, UAC is no exception to this rule. UAC is likely one of the most criticized items in Vista at the moment. Where the user would expect to be able to delete items as they please (mostly) or save things where they want to, UAC comes in and displays itself, hindering productivity. For any user actually playing around with Vista, I’m sure you’ve noticed it, there isn’t really any way that you couldn’t have unless you were prepared and circumvented it from the beginning. So, is UAC really the answer that we’ve all be looking for in securing our systems and preventing all the junk that is out there floating around the web? I think that it somewhat is, but it needs a lot of refinement. We can look at what UAC is and where it is going, and see where Microsoft is going wrong with the implementation of it.

To do this though, we need to look at similar security implementations that are currently out there. So, what have others done to accomplish the same thing that UAC is trying to do? We can look at a similar implementation of this in what is likely the origin of this type of security, the Linux and Unix arena. Here, you have one user that can do anything, root, and other users that are there to perform day to day tasks. The standard user(s) can do basically anything they want on a daily basis, like surf the web, check their email, programming, watch movies, listen to music, you can really go on and on with what this simple user can do. The thing that they can’t do though is modify the system in anyway. A standard user cannot add more users, they can’t install programs or updates either. Why you might ask? Well, programs have security holes, updates can cause more trouble than they’re worth or break things, and adding more users give more folks access to the system. This is why we have root, to perform all of the management tasks associated with running the computer. They make the decisions about the programs, updates and users. If a user needs to install something or modify a system setting, many standard Linux operating systems give users an easy way of elevating their priveledges to do so, provided they know the root password. This has worked very well and also very securly for some time now, and isn’t changing any time soon. If it didn’t work, then it would have changed long ago, but it didn’t since it is basically the best implementation of what Microsoft is trying to accomplish from what I can see. The security here is basically flawless and would really have no trouble that I can see standing up to a majority of the issues faced by Windows currently. It may be slightly annoying at times, but it really is one of the best security implementations around right now.
Then we have the only major competitor to Microsoft at the moment, Apple with Mac OS X. The implementation of this type of security here is essentially the same as it is for Linux/Unix, seeing as OS X is based off of FreeBSD. The main thing is though, OS X has a root user, although it is disabled by default and essentially not used at all. You have the main Admin, which can essentially do anything, and many times, is the only user on the system. If they attempt to do something that is going to affect the system, like updates, you need to enter the password. It is similar for system preferences and settings, at least it can be. The admin user can also add less priveldged users and specify what they can and cannot do, such as change preferences, install programs and the like. Overall though, OS X is less secure than Linux, but still offers the security prompts when attempting to modify the system. However, it is really hard to tell how the security that OS X does have would stand up to the threats that are currently plaguing Microsoft products. So far, they have held up fairly well against the threats posed against them, but more and more issues are surfacing as the system becomes more popular. The biggest issue currently are folks installing gadgets that have malicious code behind them. Other than that, there really isn’t anything currently posing a major threat to the system, although Apple has been releasing many more patches for holes than previously as more and more holes are being found due to the increase in popularity.
Then we get to Vista and its UAC protection. It is intrusive, annoying, and hinders productivity immensly at its current stage of development. You need to confirm deleting files from your desktop, saving files outside of your user profile directory, moving files, changing settings, installing programs. It seems as though you never get done seeing the prompts asking for confirmation to use your computer. It almost seems as though they want to make sure you want to do every action that takes place on your own system. Luckily, the developers have been listening to loads of feedback from testers, the public, and everyone that has touched Vista in some way, shape, or form, and are currently working to improve the system. The latest release, which went out to the beta testers this past weekend, has a slightly reformed UAC system. It is an improvement over what was available in the public Beta 2 release, but still a major pain to the standard user. The biggest issue now is that prompts are no longer showing up in the foreground and are instead launching behind everything else, even if nothing else is open. The have reduced the number of prompts that a user is seeing, but there are still far more than most users will ever want to put up with. There are also issues with detecting which programs require elevated priveldges and which do not. The system is still under a lot of work and hopefully will not be an annoyance or hinderance to work in the future, but it still needs a lot of work.

So what does need done? Truthfully, a lot still needs to be done before the UAC “feature” will be considered useful. The big issue that I see currently is that the prompts cannot show up in the background. If they are going to be there, they need focus and now. Putting them in the background only slows everything down as it is possible that you won’t notice it. The next issue that needs sorted out is that it needs to be able to recognize 99% of the applications that are going to need elevated priviledges to run. If it doesn’t see this, then it is hurting productivity by slowing down the user, as they will have to close the program if it does manage to open, then go back and start it up again, hopefully not losing any work in the process. It also needs to recognize when a program doesn’t need the higher user rights 99% of the time and avoid a ton of false positive results. If it is wasting the users time prompting them about running a program or doing something that it doesn’t have to, it’s slowing things down. It will also need to develop an ability to learn in some way and remember previous actions taken for a given situation. Things like a certain program that needs elevated priviledges running during startup. It should ask the first time and then remember it, much like the Windows Firewall currently does for programs accessing the network. If they can successfully get these things down, it would be much better for the end user as that would essentially eliminate many of the prompts that are there that are causing an annoyance.

Overall, I think that the product team is doing a decent job with working out the issues currently seen with UAC. They have listened to what users want to see and have done their best to implement it. Since the testers can find many issues before they can be fixed in the actual product, it is likely taking the public or the testing community much longer to see the changes that are being implemented. Build 5456 has given a small preview of where it is going, but it is still under going a lot of work. Hopefully the entire system is revamped over the next month and as the time for Release Candidate 1 (RC1) nears, the prompts will be much less intrusive and much more bearable for everyone using the operating system. In the interim though, we can watch the UAC Development blog and see what information the team is giving out publicly about the development of the whole system that is annoying so many users in its current state.