Free Worldwide Tech Support For Vista Service Pack 1

Microsoft is now offering free tech support for Vista SP 1 via email, chat, or toll-free telephone. This offer is valid worldwide until March 18, 2009. The article I found that let this information be widely known is on Digital Inspirations by Amit Agarwal. When you have a look at that article, consider signing up for Mr. Agarwal's free e-mail newsletter. Personally, I find his efforts to gather truly useful information and articles to be superb. His newsletter is one of the first bits of e-mail that I read after family mail. Be careful. It is good enough to be addicting.

This information is also listed on Lifehacker and by Microsoft in its Help and Support pages for Vista.

Peace, Doc

Vista vs XP, Continued

Since my recent post about the impending demise of Microsoft Windows XP, I have seen some articles which suggest that MS may continue to offer WinXP for sale, at least the Home version, for some time past the June 30, 2008 cutoff. Nothing certain, just hints and rumors.

A Computerworld article TechNet subscribers rip Microsoft over XP SP3 ‘farce', stated that Microsoft did not release the Service Pack I for Vista to developers as promised, and went on to say that they would not release the Service Pack III for XP until after Vista SP I was released. Much confusion is produced for developers as well as end users, here, as a Microsoft developer posted that Vista SP I would be available on May 2, 2008, only to have that page removed from his blog. The alleged logic in this is that Microsoft is putting its main effort into repairing Vista prior to updating XP. It also makes sense if a company is trying very hard to push consumers into using a new OS and abandoning an older (and better, in my opinion) OS, so further profit can be extracted.

Microsoft has pointed out the huge number of Vista OS sales that have occurred since its release as evidence of its popularity. Well, Duh. If Vista is the only Windows OS that one can obtain when one buys a new computer, of course its sales figures will look impressive. Only a very few, very small, "white box" computer makers continue to offer XP Pro SPII on their machines. Why do they do that? They make extremely fast gaming computers and XP works better.

As the dust settles somewhat, a few matters appear to have become clearer.

• If you have to buy Vista, get the Home Premium version. Common wisdom has come to a consensus that it works the best of any of the Vista versions.
• Don't try to "upgrade" a Vista machine to XP. It isn't worth the trouble, crashes, driver changes, and incompatibilities with some of your current software. Buying a new machine with Vista pre-installed eliminates many of these frustrations.
• Vista does not seem to run nearly as well on laptops as on desktop machines, probably due to its greater demand on computer resources.
• If everything you are now running is working well for your needs on XP, I would hold out for Microsoft's "OS 7," the next OS in the pipeline, which is rumored to have had its release date moved up from 2010 to sometime in 2009.
• Finally, I would note that the Vista debacle is not Microsoft's intentional plan to irritate its users. With all the legal actions, interoperability problems, changes to changes, and patches to holes which were discovered by hackers even before Vista was officially released, etc., they have had a difficult time with it. It is simply my belief that they should not remove a well tested and working OS from availability before they have something better and more stable to offer. As the wise old barnstorming wing-walker would say it, "Don't leave holt of what ya got till ya got holt of somethin' else."

In the interim, my plan is to stay with XP Pro, buy a copy of XP Pro before it goes off the market, eventually buy a new CPU and install XP on it, but leave a bay open for another hard drive on which Vista can be installed (as a dual boot system) in case I'm wrong. That has happened to me once or twice before in 62 years.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2008, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

Have You Noticed ... ?

Have you noticed a recent confusion within Microsoft about the design and marketing of its software? I think I am seeing one but I am not an expert.

Vista sales and installations have not been going as well as Microsoft had hoped when this operating system was introduced approximately one year ago. Some businesses have been reluctant to adopt it due to incompatibilities with other companies' software and due to some of its own internal instabilities. See this Google search which returns 51,200,000 responses to the search phrase - Vista problems. A Service Pack for Vista is already due out soon, according to many sources listed in the second link. Vista seems to be somewhat "heavy" for home computers and is not as willingly accepted as was XP, especially because the really neat features are only available in the premier business versions, and at a greatly increased cost. Of course the Vista OS was primarily developed for business use from the start. Several months back, there was a somewhat disparaging joke that Vista was little more than Windows XP SP3, at least as far as the home user was concerned. Now, however, it is evidently not a joke. Microsoft has already set a release date for XP Service Pack 3. Further, Microsoft has twice delayed the date that all new Windows computers must be supplied with a version of Vista. I believe the latest deadline is at the end of 2007. Some computer manufacturers are taking advantage of this delay to continue to supply Windows XP machines.

Microsoft has begun to compete more actively and directly with Google and Sun, its primary rivals for online services. Other free office suites are available, such as the free, downloadable OpenOffice.org suite, the free IBM Lotus Symphony, the free web based Zoho Office Suite and others. Since Google has affiliated with Sun Microsystems the two corporations have gone into direct competition with Microsoft. They are offering OpenOffice, the open source office suite which Sun helped develop in 2000, and the basis upon which Sun's commercial Star Office was built. This affiliation will provide much more than the free Docs, Spreadsheets, Gmail, Talk, Earth, etc., applications presently available from Google. Microsoft is apparently offering a free, advertising supported version of Microsoft Works 8. It is making Microsoft Office 2003 more functional and secure with a free download of Service Pack 3 (SP3.) I very recently read, but cannot recall where, that the full Microsoft Office Suite will become available as an online service, but only if you already have Office installed on your computer. Spaces Live versus Blogspot, LiveWriter versus Google's online editor, Microsoft Groups versus Google Groups. I don't believe Google has an equivalent for X-Box and Halo-3, however.

I'm not certain that I am doing anything other than mentioning to you that there is a cyber-"competition" going on among industry giants and that it is bound to have an effect on us. By "us" I refer to individuals, families, and tiny businesses. Microsoft appears to be more actively pursuing small business to enterprise size business. While Google may have aspirations in that direction planned for the future, it currently concentrates on the "small" end of the merchandising spectrum. If Google ever officially incorporates an Operating System of its own, "Katie, bar the door." Many of the hot links above are to searches or to summary articles. I strongly suggest to anyone planning on buying a new computer or "upgrading" (to some, that recently has meant switching back to XP from Vista) that you follow the breadcrumb trail to the real experts and draw your own conclusions. Given my current understanding of the situation, my personal choice is to stick with my XP-Pro OS and Office-Pro 2003 productivity suite for the foreseeable future. Of course I will continue to use many Google applications, as they fit my needs more closely, but my overall preference stays with Microsoft.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"4:00 PM 10/04/07 : GOOG $594.05 +15.02 +2.59% High $596.00 Low $587.01 Vol 05,073,044
: MSFT $029.84 +00.13 +0.44% High $029.99 Low $029.73 Vol 45,016,519"

People may or may not know by this time that Microsoft is offering, free of charge and no strings attached, a download or CD of Microsoft Office Accounting Express either here or here. Ordering the free CD is probably better as this is a 208MB download and arrives almost as quickly by mail as it would take on dial-up. What you may not know is that Microsoft Office Live is offering a free basic website with free registered domain name, multiple email accounts, and a site builder with some very professional templates to advertise your practice or sell items. Of course, they want you to be successful so that you buy a more complex site and other services. Overall, this is an excellent product and a good manner in which to market it.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.