Philoking.com

In my house, we are big media consumers. If you think about music, movies, television, web video and podcasts, between the three living beings in our house, we consume enough for our block I am sure. There are many different ways for media to snake it’s way into your home, but my question is are those ways starting to file down to one?

Think about this, as little as a year ago we had cable, internet, bought movies, iTunes music, Netflix, Redbox and probably a few others I can’t think of at this moment. We had 5 cable boxes, one for each TV in our house. The result was a bunch of singular stations that could only watch what was live (except one DVR) could not share content anywhere in the house and was pretty much catch what’s on or pop in a DVD.

Today things are quite different. We are down to three cable boxes in our house (and considering going down to one, but I’ll explain that later) and everywhere that we regularly watch TV, we can watch TV on demand, all the shows we like to follow. How might we do this you ask?

Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center

I think this might be the best kept secret in the world right now. Sure all my buddies know about it, but I work at Microsoft, so they should. The tipping point was today when I saw that my sister had purchased an Xbox 360, she is no gamer. So what makes this little box so special? The quick rundown of features the Xbox 360 provides that don’t include gaming is:

• Windows Media Center Extender: This gives you access to live TV, Video, Music, Photos and FM radio streamed from a Windows Media Center PC. Basically any Vista computer not running Windows Home Basic. It takes about a $50 investment in a TV tuner if you don’t already have one.
• Netflix Streaming: If you subscribe to Netflix, you now have over 10,000 on demand videos you can watch right on your TV from the Xbox 360.
• Zune Integration: This isn’t where it should be yet, but you can plug a Zune in USB and listen to music off of it. While we are on Zune, if you manage your Zune on your Media Center PC, all of the music you have purchased or downloaded via Zune Pass is available through Media Center.
• Xbox Live Movie Rentals: You can rent movies on demand direct from Microsoft, we are talking same day as they come out on DVD.

That’s pretty slick right? So how does that work in a real world scenario? We have 4 Xbox 360s in our home. I talked about there being 5 Cable boxes before, now there is only 4 360s because I can also watch TV in my office on the Media Center computer’s 24” Monitor.

I have three tuners in my Media Center computer which means that it can manage 3 Live TV feeds. That could be watching one while two record, watching 3, watching two while 1 record, you get the idea. Any combination and it streams the show real time to the Xbox over the home network.

Of course all of the Xbox 360s are also fantastic upscaling DVD players as well, so watching our movie collection plays out of the same box instead of having to add a DVD player everywhere. It’s a fantastic solution. When the cable companies give up on the encryption crap like the music companies are starting to do with DRM, then you will be able to bring your cable into your house with a Media Center computer, perhaps a tuner for each place you will put an Xbox 360 and then an Xbox 360 in each room. Talk about an awesome setup. Might want to run all that wired tho! I have had a few issues with performance if your WiFi connection isn’t that strong.

So now when shows come up we like, I go to the Media Center computer, set up a recording or series recording. When we are ready to watch, we just pick it from the lovely TV friendly interface and we are enjoying our favorite shows with the Cable Box on the curb.

Microsoft announced Windows 7 and are apparently giving up on Windows Vista, the failure…right?

Well, if you pay attention to dates, and I do, then it looks like we have a huge list of failures on our hands, let’s take a look at a few of such familiar utter software failures, shall we?

Here we go, in no particular order:

Apple OS X v10.5 Leopard

Yea, you know I would go there, so let’s just get it out of the way shall we? OS X 10.4 “Tiger” was released on April 29th, 2005. Due to obvious market failure and un-acceptance (note the sarcasm) Apple was forced to release OS X 10.5 “Leopard” just a mere 2 1/2 years after the release of Tiger. The shame! Oh, and in case you aren’t getting my cynicism just yet, “Isn’t Leopard just an updated version of Tiger?”

Adobe Creative Suite CS3

That’s right folks, apparently everyone hated all of the CS3 applications. Released in March of 2007, Adobe was forced to release CS4 in less than two years from the launch of CS3. It offers modest updates to CS3 in many categories and is apparently one big bug fix, why else release it so quickly.

Microsoft Windows 95

Credited for much of the internet boom, as well as being one of the most prolific operating systems ever, Windows 95 was released on August 24th 1995. Around 2 1/2 years later, Microsoft released Windows 98. Realistically it was much like Windows 95, the User Interface was nearly identical. Drivers were compatible and almost all software claimed it was Windows 95/98 compatible. I am sure this should sound familiar.

Apple iPhone 3G

Ok, fine, I am picking on them, but seriously. The new iPhone came out so fast people were flat out pissed that they bought the first one. The original iPhone shipped in June of 2007 and the 3G version (which everyone really wanted) shipped in July of 2008 with zero incentive program to help early adopters upgrade. Ouch!

The Truth About Software

I am going to let you in on a little secret. Software companies are, wait for it… trying to make money. I can tell you from someone who lives inside the Microsoft machine, that when a version of software is shipped, the next version is already in development and the version after that is being planned. I am not exaggerating, that’s how it works. For people to be surprised that Windows 7 is being talked about is pretty funny to be honest. Microsoft has admitted that Windows Vista went through some growing pains and shipped late. All that means is the Windows 7 team had plenty of time to work on their code.

I don’t consider Windows Vista a failure, and I would bet the sales figures don’t tell that story either. I understand the mountain of bad press Vista has received and some of it is warranted. But when the bandwagon got rolling, boy did it start spitting out negativity from tons of people who had never even seen Vista, much less used it. We can thank Apple’s ads that are, to be nice, less than truthful in their depiction of Windows Vista.

The legacy has some really good points outside of that. I am betting it will be Windows Vista that goes down in history as the operating system that brought true 64-bit operating systems to the masses. Go to Best Buy and see how many new PCs are running Vista 64-bit edition.

Windows Vista will also be the operating system that made Windows Media center move from a boutique version of Windows to giving users true, seamless and fantastic media capabilities on their computer, features that you still won’t find anywhere near the Apple OS X/Front Row/Apple TV ecosystem.

Sure there are many other new features in Vista, and all new OS versions have tons of new features, but these two are huge, just you watch.

I recently read this article, posted on Digg.com, and really just want to post my own experience in this exact situation…

Picture this, you just bought built a brand new computer and want to install the brand spankin’ new Windows Vista Ultimate, you plop down $300, and away you go! What does $300 get you? A bare minimum operating system with nothing but MS Paint and Media Player.
So you spend the next 45 minutes installing your bare minimum operating system, it takes 45 minutes because the initial install is 15gb, so by bare minimum I mean feature set, not file size. So after you get installed you try to use the Internet and realize that it didn’t detect any of your hardware (video, audio, network), so you spend the next 2 hours spidering through multiple vendor’s websites who all have their downloads/driver section in different areas.

I hate to tell you, but this is just pure crap. I did just this a few weeks ago. I had a computer that was on it’s last legs, so I went to newegg.com and ordered a new motherboard, video card, ram and hard disk.

The Price

So I can get Vista cheaper cause I work for Microsoft, fine, but I can also find it a lot cheaper than $300, I found it for $222 just looking at newegg. So, first lets break down the cost of software that’s not Linux.

OS X is $129. If you go to Windows Marketplace you can get the Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 Upgrade for $129, but I know, you pesky Linux users are complaining because the Windows machine you DO have probably has a pirated copy of XP on it anyway, it’s ok, you don’t have to admit it, we all know it’s true

So you have to buy retail, I can dig it, so it looks like again, at their full retail, it’s $209 for buy and ship…that’s at Microsoft’s own marketplace (pointing you to Amazon ironically), I am not making it up..look.

So we have shaved $90 off the price lie, and I agree $200 is still no insignificant amount of money, but lets get real, how many people in the REAL world actually build their own computers, odds are that the PC they bought had the price inflated $50-70 and they got it included. I am betting upwards of 95% of Vista users did not build their own PC. But you did, I gotcha, so let’s talk about that.

What’s in the Box

Just MS Paint and Media Player eh? Maybe you should look at that Program Menu just a “little” more closely. Let’s do that shall we? (And since you were mentioning accessories, and not applications, we’ll add those in too.

That sure seems like more than the Linux fanboy listed, and that’s just a cursory glance at my start menu, that’s not including all of the new goodies under the hood. Something tells me that my mom and dad could make do with a Vista machine and not have to buy anything at all besides a good virus program.

45 Minute Install?

What kinda crap hardware are you putting this on man? My install took 20 minutes, another 25 for all the updates. And it was closer to 6GB, not 15GB. Again, out and out lie bro.

No Drivers Detected

So I bought an ASUS motherboard, nVidia Video card and Vista auto detected everything the first time. I spent no time downloading drivers I HAD to install. I did update the video driver to the latest reference driver. But I had a total working system the minute it was done. You sure you weren’t trying to install this on a Circa 1995 486? Just because you can run Linux on garbage doesn’t mean Windows has to run at the dump too.

Sorry to sound so negative, but geeze man, talk about beating a dead horse. I am not a Windows fanboy, sure I work for Microsoft, but I own two Macs, I have used about every flavor of Linux in the mainstream, I know my way around a shell and I spent 3 of the last 4 years developing java code to run on Tomcat and BEA Weblogic on Linux, I am not disillusioned by my new employer. I just get tired of the negative press that just lies out and out to make Vista look bad. When I built the new box I mention here, I officially retired XP, and I have had not ONE single issue with this machine. Beside it I have an HP that I upgraded to Vista 64 bit, changed the video card, it has a TV tuner, I run games on it, again, no issues. I know people have issues, I am not dumb, but usually you can say “what did you install it on?” and have a pretty good idea why.

Read the comments for a good laugh, Linux evangelists really are delusional.

I can’t say that this was an easy decision for me. I had long loved and had great affection for my self built P4 2.4Ghz box running Windows XP SP2 that I had been using for years. The computer had been rock solid and even when I brought home my new 64-bit Vista HP powerhouse, I still used the old computer more often out of comfort and familiarity.

Recently, my motherboard had started to fail and to be honest, I was starting to feel the computer’s age when compared against the newer box. Now logic might lead you to ask why I didn’t just switch to the new box and retire this box completely. The answer would be that I just can’t seem to manage on a single box, and that the new 64-bit machine, while awesome for gaming, Photoshop work, and all my media madness that my iMac doesn’t serve, just has a different bag of tricks than my development machine which I am retiring.

So early this week I placed an order to Newegg.com to replace all of the guts of this machine and make it shiny and new again. It was literally when it was time to install an OS that I made the final decision to install Vista and not XP SP3.

The new (old) box is now a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 3GB Ram, 400GB HD and a nVidia GeForce 8400 GS video card with two 20" LCD monitors and a DVD-RW drive.

The build process went surprisingly smooth. I got home about 5:30PM, grabbed the old PC and the box of parts and went to the kitchen table. I removed all of the offending parts from the case, installed CPU and RAM into the new motherboard, screwed it in place, connected all of the cables and inserted the video card. Once that was complete, I closed the case, carried it downstairs, plugged it in and bam, it was ready to install Vista. I had not one single problem or incedent in the build…..amazing.

By 6:30, Vista was installed and I was updating and installing software. The entire build and OS install took an hour….wow!

It’s now 9:30 and including a break for dinner, all of my applications are installed, and updated, the OS is updated and all of my email accounts, IM, browser faves, printers and file shares are good to go. Now with the exception of two Macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard, all of my PCs are running Vista Ultimate at home and Vista Enterprise at work.

This is one computer crazy household for sure, but now the tide has definitely turned towards Vista being the dominant OS. Our household has 6 running PCs and 2 laptops (not counting work machines) and the OS split breaks down to 3 Vista Ultimate (1 64bit), 2 Windows XP and 3 OS X Leopard. Sure OS X and Vista are tied at the moment, but Dawn’s old PC is giving up the ghost shortly to be updated to a Vista machine as well.

And for the record…I am loving Vista. I kind of look at it like some people do underwear. Sure the new pairs are a little too tight and don’t quite fit your bum like the holy ones, but if you take the time to wash and wear them a few times, they feel just like they should. Give Vista a real chance on a machine worthy of running it, and I doubt you will be dissapointed.

I still get regular comments on this post about the DVD bug I found in Windows Vista  in January 2007. I thought it would be a good time to revisit this post and discuss this bug a bit further.

If I find it still exists, I will use my new position at Microsoft to try and get some answers for you guys.

The bug seems to have several variations but the main point is after you install Vista on a new computer, as an upgrade or clean install from a prior installed operating system, once it has finished installing, the computer seems to lose the disc drive.

The only resolution I have found so far is to put the computer to sleep and wake it back up, then it comes back. That’s hardly intuitive, so lets try and get some resolution.

The fact that my itty bitty ole blog has 28 comments on this particular post tells me it’s not a very isolated case.

I will be sending this blog post and question to the Windows Vista group at Microsoft tomorrow so stay tuned as I update the progress on it’s resolution. Let’s hope they say “Fixed in SP1!”