Vista

I've had a number of friends, family, acquaintances, or whatever feel like just because I work at Microsoft they can let me know how terrible of an operating system they think Windows Vista is, how slow it is, or how Linux or MacOS are taking over the world. I've read the insane amounts of media coverage of the problems that people have and seen the lawsuits over the performance of computers running Vista. I've seen the commercials by the rest of the industry portraying Vista as the slow, old, dumb operating system. And up until now I really didn't think much of it.... You see I came from the "other side" of the industry, working at Sun Microsystems and developing software in Java for Linux/Solaris for all of my career. I'm used to people trash talking Microsoft and so I guess I just hadn't really changed my mindset completely from the years of brainwashing by Scott Mcnealy on the evil empire.

But just lately I've been starting to see some positive articles about Vista which made me think about it a little bit more [1] [2]. When I left Sun and came to work at Microsoft I hadn't used Windows or Office or any other Microsoft product for at least 5 years. On my first day at Microsoft, I was handed a new laptop and told I could do whatever I wanted with it.... I seriously considered Linux as I was more comfortable, but decided to go with the flow a little bit and so installed Vista Enterprise. At the time (Feb, 2007) Vista hadn't been out long and was getting hit pretty hard in the media. I plugged my laptop in, started up a network install of Vista with Office and went to get some coffee (Seattle does have good coffee). Since that time I've been given a new laptop with better hardware specs, had a couple of desktop machines that I put Vista on and got a new PC at home that runs Vista Ultimate. I guess another part of the reason that I didn't really think too much about all the things that people were saying about this operating system, because, for me, Vista just works. I think I just figured most of these people that were griping and complaining were just the typical Microsoft bashers who are never going to have anything good to say because MS is just the "evil empire" and nothing we do here will ever convince people otherwise. Getting these people to see good in Microsoft products would be like convincing George Bush that global warming is real.

Sorry I got off topic there. Vista just works. I haven't had any problems whatsoever with any of the 5 or 6 machines I've had running this operating system and it has accomplished what an operating system should do because I don't even realize that it is there, I am able to just go about my work and can use my time and brain cycles to solve more important problems. While I was at Sun I felt like I was pretty proficient at managing my Solaris boxes and my Linux systems including a laptop. But one thing I remember is the constant struggle to get things working and keep them working smoothly. I just don't even think about those system administration type of issues anymore.

I guess the thing I'm trying to say is that all of the media hype is completely overblown. Vista is a great OS and is getting better all the time with the continous updates that are being pushed out for it. If you're one of those people who are just bashing it without trying it, well you let me know where to send you a copy, and once you've tried it out then you tell me what you think.

Google Crack

It's like anything else, the more you use something the harder it gets to stop using it. Maybe it's because that thing is so enticing that you become mentally addicted to it. Maybe it's just that you use it for so long that it becomes a habit and habits are hard to break. Maybe it just becomes your mental model for how something should function so everything else that has different model seems wrong. Whatever the reason it's hard to quit...

With drug or alcohol abuse people are sent to detox where they are taken off of the drug completely until a physical addiction can be broken (my naive interpretation). With cigarettes people are given patches or gum to ease the dependence by slowly lowering the amount of nicotine that someone requires. With other things that are inherently good where people just want to change their behaivor, any type of approach can work, but the change still difficult...

Hi, my name is Mike, I work for Microsoft, and I'm a Google-aholic. I've tried to quit many times but have been unsuccesful. There are a lot of areas where I am addicted to different degrees: Search is what put Google on the map, I use there search almost exclusively as it has been the superior seach tool on the internet and I search a lot; Maps have become an essential tool on the web and I typically find myself using Google Maps; You're reading this post on blogger which is a Google property, my family blog receives much more attention than this blog and has become an essential part of communication with my distributed relatives; Many other Google products are part of my daily life including Picasa, Google Earth, iGoogle, GMail, and Google News.

I've always tried to be a good corporate citizen at the places that I have worked. When I was at Sun I used Solaris and Linux on my desktop. I used OpenOffice/StarOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, Java, Netbeans, everything OpenSource, everything not Microsoft. I even got many in my own family to use these same products. I was on the Scott McNealy bandwagon and supported what we did at Sun.

When I joined Microsoft a couple years ago I had to learn how to use Windows and Office and Outlook and Internet Explorer and Visual Studio and all the other great products we have at our disposal here. But it's only been recently that I've begun thinking about the other "software" I use and how my actions impact the strategy of other divisions at Microsoft. This has led me to check myself into Google Rehab where I intend to ween myself off of competitor products over time.

I'm starting with the big one: Search. The first intervention was to replace the default search provider in Internet Explorer with the Live search provider. At work I've replaced it with an internal tool called the Live Search challenge which takes a search query and sends it to Live Search Beta as well as Google and displays the results side by side. (I said I was doing this slowly). I've tried switching my search provider before but was seriously disappointed by the quality of the results on Live or MSN, but the new Live Search is greatly improved and the results are much more relevant these days.

I've also started distancing myself from Picasa. Microsoft recently made available the Windows Live Photo Gallery that, quite frankly, is a much nicer tool than Picasa with far more features. The one problem that it has is that it is a little more difficult to post pictures to my Blogger account, but Windows Live Writer fixes that. And an eventual migration from Blogger to Live Spaces will also solve that. An interesting aside here is that Microsoft is the one that provides that better interop story in this case, with Google products only supporting their own properties, likely because there is no market for Windows Live Spaces, but interesting none the less...

I'm not sure how things will go. I'll try to keep you updated. I may fall off the wagon here and there at some point, but hey, it's a journey.