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I mentioned in a previous post, that I had decided to take a spin on using a computer running nothing but Microsoft software. To qualify that, only Windows 7, Microsoft Essentials/Live free software and Microsoft Office. The computer is running the final retail build of Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Live Essentials (Mail, Messenger, Writer, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery) as well as Windows Security Essentials, Windows Live Mesh, Zune and Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview.

What’s Not to Like?

I like objective journalism, so I’ll start with the problems. There are a couple, nothing that can’t be solved with some free non-Microsoft software. To be fair, these same holes also exist on OS X from Apple.

The first problem is FTP software. Sure Windows has a command line FTP tool, and you can technically FTP with Internet Explorer, but that will never compare to FileZilla. For the un-initiated, I run this blog, and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is how you upload and modify files on the server. When doing software upgrades, adding plug-ins or doing theme changes, it’s a must have utility and one that has to be rectified with non-Microsoft software. I’ll install FileZilla and call it a day.

The second problem is image editing. Not photo editing, Windows Live Photo Gallery does just fine for your image adjustments, cropping and red-eye adjustment types of things. I am talking about creating blog images, doing actual photo manipulation, etc. I have a license for Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Mac, and I won’t buy another for this computer, so I will probably install gimp or Paint .net. Both applications are admirable at the basic stuff, neither can come close to even Photoshop 7, but they will get the job done for my purposes on this laptop.

The last one is bookmark syncing. Windows Live toolbar is good for syncing across Windows computers using only IE, but I use Macs and Firefox a lot. I like keeping the sites I am working on in sync, so I use X-Marks for it’s ability to sync across all browsers on Windows and Mac.

Three applications, so far.

What is Rockin’?

It’s not something you spend time looking at usually, but I have to say first I am loving Windows Security Essentials. It’s anti-virus software just how I like it, invisible. It doesn’t nag me or constantly tell me it’s downloading updates.

I’d love to say all of it’s rocking, and it is, but that’s not a very fun read now is it? The details you really need to know are that Mail works fantastic with Gmail via IMAP, I was quite happy to see that. Mesh is of course awesome, Zune I love, and this handy app Windows Live Writer is just beyond awesome.

What’s Next?

I’ll try to keep this up for the rest of this month, dropping in to tell you which holes I found and what I chose to fill them with, but the idea here is on this machine, I’ll use Microsoft Windows, it’s family of free applications and Microsoft Office, filling in any holes I find with free software along the way. I am a pretty heavy need user, so I would imagine if I can pull this off, any average user can do the same easily.

Last night it was time to upgrade my personal laptop to Windows 7 RTM. My wife and I were finishing a silly horror flick that we had started a night previously, and I decided to just knock it out. By having started the movie the night before, I was already against a tight timeline. I had probably an hour and a half tops to be ready to close it and go to bed.

I stuck in the Windows 7 DVD, restarted the machine and started the install. The basic install itself took about 18 minutes start to finish, when I rebooted on my desktop, I had some updates to hardware drivers to install, so that took another ten minutes or so. When finished, the relatively new HP laptop was ready to go with not one single device left undetected and installed.

My next goal was to see how far I could get it installing only free Microsoft software. I thought this would make an interesting blog, so I decided to get it as far as I could, and compare it to an out of the box Mac machine with iLife. I am thrilled to say that with the exception of Garageband, it’s just as capable, and this particular laptop cost nearly $450 less than the cheapest of Apple’s laptops. So this is the question I pose to you before I start: If you could buy a laptop, with the same or better specs, a graceful stable operating system, secure software and a wealth of home productivity applications for $550 instead of $999, why wouldn’t you?

What’s In The Box

Before I go off the deep end about why Live Essentials is a separate download (one finger salute to the EU) let’s talk about what is in the box. So we start with Internet Explorer 8. IE8 is a very fast, stable and feature rich browser. I recently made a concerted effort to use it more than Firefox when I am using Windows PCs (I spend quite a bit of time on Macs) and found it to be a solid browser with some very nice features. For those of you with very basic word processing needs, WordPad for Windows 7 has adopted the ribbon and has all the features you need if you are just writing letters or have a child writing papers for school. You’ll probably want to upgrade to Microsoft Office at some point, and 2007 does and 2010 should provide very affordable “Home and Student” versions.

While it’s no Adobe Photoshop, Windows does provide a painting application out of the box and it has been given some new mojo for Windows 7. It’s still a basic application, but my 12 year old son loves it. He draws and prints all of the time.

While we are talking about doodling and wasting time, what about games? While OS X does ship with a very capable Chess game, Windows 7 ships with 11 games. You get Chess Titans, FreeCell, Hearts, Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, Internet Spades, Mahjong Titans, Minesweeper, Purble Place, Solitaire and Spider Solitaire. Not only fun casual games, but some connected games as well so you can play with real people online, that’s a nice built in perk.

For those multi-computer geeks, Windows 7 ships with Remote Desktop software, you can connect to your machine from another machine on the network and work with it, very useful. (Be sure to read ahead to “Free to add at any time” to learn all about using Live Mesh to do this over the internet)

Beyond that there are tons of accessory applications. You get backup software, disc burning software, audio and video playing software, calculator, notepad, sticky notes, screen clips, etc. You also get Windows Fax and Scan and Windows DVD Maker, both handy if you need them.

Oh yea, one more thing (sorry to steal your line Steve) you get Windows Media Center. Windows Media Center allows to do so many things, especially when this cheap laptop we are discussing came with built in HDMI. I am one cable from having sound and video in HD on my TV. With a tuner, I can record standard and high definition TV. I can view my photos, videos and listen to music on my computer. It’s totally integrated and a fantastic experience. If you haven’t checked out Media Center yet, you are missing out. As if that wasn’t enough, Media Center also has built in Netflix support.

Free to add at any time

Now that we have covered what’s in the box, let’s take a look at what is not in the box, but only a free download away. <rant>Just to be clear, the reason you have to download this stuff separately, is that the US Government and European Union have decided at different times that making Microsoft leave functionality out of it’s software, so you can purchase it separately from other companies was “In the consumer’s best interest.” I am obviously biased, but the next time you walk down the software isle at Best Buy, and see three to four dozen different PC security software suites that cost from $50-150, and suck the life out of your computer performance wise, be sure to write your congressmen and thank him or her for looking out for your best interest. </rant>

The first free download I made was “Microsoft Security Essentials.” Security threats are real, so it’s nice to make sure you are covered from the start. It’s also nice to get the software free and not have to pay a subscription to maintain it’s usefulness. It’s a simple and unobtrusive application and as far as I can tell makes no hit to your system performance *ahem Norton*.

Once I had that installed, it’s time to add some fun stuff. Windows Live Essentials is your fun power pack. The key applications here are:

Windows Live Messenger: This is your communications app. Set it up and you can talk to all of your MSN, Live and Yahoo contacts all over the world, with audio and video chat as well.

Windows Live Mail: If you use Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, POP3 or IMAP mail, here’s your mail client. It handles all of your mail needs including integration to mail photos with Live Gallery.

Windows Live Writer: If you blog, this is hands down the BEST BLOG TOOL ON THE PLANET. I love this application.

Windows Live Photo Gallery: This is your photo management app, printing app, sharing online app and also crop, adjust and fix app.

Windows Live Movie Maker: Make your next home movie. It allows you to download your clips, sequence them, add music and photos and publish or burn to DVD.

Family Safety: If you share your computer with kiddos, this is your parental management.

Windows Live Toolbar: Integrate all of the Live Services into your browsing experience.

These apps are great, I personally use Live Writer and Live Mail all the time, and I have friends who regularly use Windows Live Movie Maker and Photo Gallery with great results.

Mesh is the Word

Now that you have your beautiful PC singing and your software is loaded, how do you manage all of the cool stuff you create? Apple has this little tool called Mobile Me that gives you some sync features, they charge you $100 a year for it. Microsoft has this fancy little tool called Windows Live Mesh that is absolutely free.

What if I told you, that by installing a little program on your computer, you could not only have remote access to your machine to take full control of it from anywhere in the world, but you can also synchronize folders across multiple PCs and access the contents of those folders from a web browser on any computer.

This isn’t science fiction folks, and it won’t cost you a penny. I maintain three Mesh synced folders on most of my PCs. I have a folder called “Personal” on my desktop of every computer I use, I also have one called “Work” on all the machines I use for work. I also have one called “Drafts” buried in the documents folder of all my PCs that keeps my blogs in progress synced. With this setup, anytime I save a file, I save it to a mesh folder, and when I move to another machine, the file is already there waiting for me to continue work.

If I forget to save something there, I remote desktop into that machine via Mesh and copy the file to that folder so it syncs across for me to use. Beat that!

If you need more convincing, Live Mesh works on Macs and Windows Mobile Phones also.

iTunes? Bleh….Long live Zune

The last free bit of software I had to download, is Zune. Zune is Microsoft’s digital music and video marketplace. Totally integrated with Media Center and Media Player, you can use it to listen to your music, buy new music, subscribe to it’s all you can eat music service, rent TV shows, watch music videos….a ton of stuff.

With Quick play, Smart DJ, and Mix View, Zune is not only a fantastic music player, but it’s also the best music discovery experience anywhere. With my $14.99 subscription I download probably 8-10 albums a week regularly. Throw in a Zune device and the experience gets even better.

The Point

The point should be simple now. Those snarky Apple commercials that tell you that you’ll never need to buy software because all Macs come with iLife, forget to inform you that Microsoft’s array of free software covers all of your bases also. It actually covers quite a bit more of them if you ask me.  If you do the simple math, it really becomes about "which OS do you prefer.”

I won’t go into specs here, because you literally cannot find a new HP laptop with specs equivalent to a white Macbook, they just don’t sell laptops without more ram or more disk space, honestly. We are just going to compare cheapest to cheapest and forget the fact that the HP has double the ram, double the disk space and a bigger, higher resolution display (and HDMI, faster CPU, faster video card, more memory card options….who’s counting right?)

That’s exactly $450 folks. $450 for the functional equivalent of GarageBand. But since we are comparing, for $99, you can get ProTools with a high quality audio recording interface. So we’ll make it $350 and see if you can call it even with a straight face. I can’t.

Disclaimer: I am not a Mac hater, I carry a Macbook Pro every day, and have two iMacs and a Mac Pro at home. I actually love them. I just don’t love them with blinders on, I realize the shortcomings, I understand the significant price premium, and I don’t use them exclusively. I still use Windows PCs for development, managing email and chat, playing games, managing music and my Zune, Media Center, Office and more. Computers are simply tools, use the right one for the job you are doing. When the job is general computer use, don’t let someone tell you one is definitively better, they are just different.

Sometimes we find ourselves using several computers regularly. Many times bloggers will find inspiration for a great article, but run out of time before it can be finished. If you use Windows Live Writer to compose blog posts, and you should, you might have run into this little problem. Luckily Windows Live Mesh comes to the rescue.

Windows Live Mesh

Installing Windows Live Mesh is a breeze. Go to https://www.mesh.com/ and sign in with your Windows Live ID, if you don’t have one, set it up real quick. Once you install Windows Live Mesh, you will have a little taskbar icon that looks like a blue ball. After it’s all set up on both machines, start the following tutorial:

Step 1: The Source Machine

Browse to the folder that you want to sync, in my case on Windows 7 it is Libraries > Documents > My Weblog Posts > Drafts and right-click the folder. Select “Add folder to Live Mesh.” Leave all settings default, and choose OK.

Your folder may vary if you use Windows Vista or Windows XP, be sure to browse to the correct folder. Also keep in mind that this approach will work even if the destination folder is on a different version of Windows.

Once you have shared this folder, it will be available for you to sync on any machine you have Mesh installed on, as well as available online through the web interface at www.mesh.com if you need to access it from a machine that does not have Mesh installed.

Now let’s set up the destination machine.

Step 2: The Destination Machine

We are assuming you have Mesh already installed and the desktop on the destination machine should have a light blue folder shortcut that has the same name as the folder you shared in step one. Double-click that folder and it will show the folder name in the first text box, and the location on your desktop in the second text box.

Click browse to the right of the second text box, and browse to the Drafts folder on this machine. If you are on the same version of Windows it should be in the same place, if the versions are different it might be in a slightly different location. On either machine it should be inside your Documents folder somewhere.

Once you have completed this step, a dialog will come up confirming that you want to sync the folder to this location and asking if you want to merge to this location, you want to merge, that way drafts has a two way connection and anything you start on one machine, will be available on the other.

Considerations

There are a couple of things you want to take note of. The drafts that you start on one machine, will not show up on the recent list on the second machine. The recent documents list is stored in the registry so it is not synced. The drafts will still be easy to access, just click open in Windows Live Writer and they should be right there under “Drafts.”

The other thing to consider is publishing. When you publish something you will get a unique publish ID assigned by the system. If you open a published draft on the second machine and attempt to republish, you will have unexpected results. Instead of updating, it will publish again as the second machine will assign a new publish ID. This technique is best reserved for sharing unpublished drafts.

So here is the scenario. I have a crap load of computers. Any given day, it’s very likely that my grubby little hands touch three Windows Vista desktops, one Windows Vista laptop, a Windows XP laptop, two Mac desktops and a Mac laptop. I also carry a Windows Mobile phone. All in all that is 9 devices that I might use to create or consume files.

What Does It Do?

Upon logging into my Live Mesh account, I see a browser Window that looks something like this, well exactly like this:

The circle you see is all of the devices that I have connected to my Mesh network. (As you can see a few of my computers are not on my Mesh network) You can also see that a few of my devices, my laptops, are shown as unavailable.

Each device has different capabilities depending on the platform. The following table shows what you can do with Mesh depending on the system you are using:

So while the Remote Desktop feature works fantastic, right now it’s limited only to Windows XP and Vista, it does work very well over the web though and if those are the environments you use it’s a great feature.

The above image shows a Live Mesh folder through the web interface

 
The above image shows the same folder on a Windows Desktop.

The real bread and butter of Live Mesh is available on all platforms and that is file syncing. Let me give you a scenario that I cooked up to show you exactly what you could do with Live Mesh:

How Can It Be Used?

So I just moved to a new area and I am looking for a new house. Today I have a few houses to look at that I might be interested in. So while I am sitting home listening to music on Zune Pass (this is going to be an over-zealous Microsoft demo can you tell?) and locating the listings on-line, I am also entering the generic details like Address, # of bedrooms/baths, square footage, etc. into a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet that I happen to be saving into a Mesh enabled folder on my computer.

I finish looking at the listings and hop in the car to check them out. Now, since the Mesh enabled folder on my Windows Vista desktop computer is synchronized to my Windows Mobile phone, I open up the spreadsheet I just created to type the first address into my GPS. That’s right, the file is already there and only enough time for me to walk to your car has elapsed. Not bad!

So now I am at the first location and I think it’s a great place but there are a few things that I want to talk to an inspector about as well as a few things I want to take photos of for my own information. I pop back out my Windows Mobile phone and snap five or ten photos to help job my memory later.

I repeat this pattern while looking at the next few houses until lunch when I stop at Starbucks for a tofu wheat flavorless but very trendy bagel and coffee for a working lunch (I really stopped at McDonalds, shhhh). I pop out my Macbook Pro (because you are in Starbucks after all, status quo yo!) and re-open my spreadsheet I have been using all morning and add a few notes and attach the photos that I took this morning, the same photos that have just finished syncing to my Macbook via Live Mesh, and resave the spreadsheet.

I continue my afternoon looking at more houses and go home and update the spreadsheet with the new information how I did earlier and this time I save it to my shared folder.

It just so happens I have an aunt who is a real estate agent and I decide I want her opinion on the houses that I am looking at, but we live very far apart and don’t have much time to catch up, so I resave my spreadsheet to a folder that I have created on Live Mesh for us to use and add her as a member to the folder. She goes to the web, logs in, opens the spreadsheet, adds her notes to my houses and photos and saves it back.

I look at her notes in my spreadsheet and start to make an informed decision.

Summary

Now consider this scenario for a second. Look what all was done with media on several different devices in different locations. No copying, thumb drive transporting, emailing, waiting. It’s all nearly instant. I can work how I want to work. Everything I need is available no matter where I am or which device I am using. That’s just the beginning of the power of the Windows Live Mesh network.

If you haven’t yet used it, go to www.mesh.com, set up your own account, and see Mesh for yourself. It’s an amazing technology.