Microsoft Wants to “Just Fix” Host of Windows Flaws

A new option on some of Microsoft’s online troubleshooting guides offers to “just fix it,” but is it enough?

Over at Cnet they have an article up about Microsoft’s fairly new Fix It feature. Since around December, Microsoft has been adding a cute little Fix It button to some of their help guides, which promises to automate all the steps that Microsoft recommends you take in solving a particular problem, apparently by getting a little Playmobile figurine to hit your computer with a wrench.

Only a small portion of Microsoft’s database of thousands of troubleshooting guides have Fix It buttons so far, but the list is constantly expanding. Some examples of guides with Fix It buttons include help for slow internet performance, problems with sleep and hibernation after using Disk Cleanup, and dealing with a active desktop restoration button that appears after installing Internet Explorer. According to a podcast by Ina Fried of Cnet, many of the fixes are related to repairing registry keys that have been manipulated by malware.

It’s a unique approach to troubleshooting that looks like it may take some of the frustration out of the process, but like many of Microsoft’s would-be solutions it seems to miss the point.

Microsoft has long had a reputation of releasing buggy, unstable software, and with the release of Windows Vista that reputation wasn’t exactly changed. Vista, to put it simply, was a mess, which made very few significant improvements over earlier versions of Windows and seemed to bring a host of new problems.  It is probably safe to say that very few people were enamored with Vista, to put it lightly.

So Microsoft’s new Fix It feature comes as a sort of backhanded favour: it promises to make things easier for anyone using Windows, but it wouldn’t even be necessary if Microsoft had just gotten things right in the first place.

The Fix It button seems representative of Microsoft’s overall approach to software design, which has always been narrow and shortsighted; rather than focusing on fundamental problems with their products, and trying to design a piece of software that avoids most of those problems altogether, Microsoft seems to come at each new error or crash piecemeal, fixing the symptoms of each and leaving the greater issue of overall stability and usability unaddressed.

The problem is that making a bunch of tiny fixes to specific bugs and flaws doesn’t address the underlying problem: that Windows has always been buggy, unstable, and full of security holes. It seems that a much more reasonable approach would be to simply make an operating system that works the way it is supposed to, instead of an OS that hogs resources and leaves users vulnerable to all sorts of bugs and exploits.

For example, fixes that repair registry keys damaged or modified by malware are all well and good, but more important is making a registry system that isn’t so easily attacked by malicious software. Developing Windows in such a way that the registry is significantly less vulnerable seems like an absolutely necessary step in creating an OS that is usable, yet Microsoft has been very slow in actually addressing the issue.

This isn’t to say that the Fix It button is a bad idea, of course. If I had the choice between manually trying to fix something and having it automated, I will obviously choose the automated process. But, if I had the choice between automating the fixing process and simply not having the problem in the first place, I’d obviously choose to not have the problem at all. I don’t want to work for my operating system, I want it to just work.

Of course, no piece of software is ever free of bugs, and even the best designed operating systems are going to have flaws. In this regard it is always good to make the solution to any problem that might occur as simple as possible.  Microsoft does deserve some credit in this regard. Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s outrageous to ask of Microsoft that there simply be less problems with their products in the first place, rather than leaving the consumer to seek out a solution on their own, whether it be through a manual or automated process.

Some might argue that it is simply too much to ask of Microsoft that such problems never occur, but such a complacent attitude will never remedy the problem. Microsoft is a very large and powerful company with the lion’s share of the market in their grasp, which means their products are going to be the focus of most malware. But this also means that Microsoft has an obligation to work that much harder at making their software and operating systems work properly, so that the consumers who pay good money for Microsoft products get what they pay for.

Overall, Microsoft’s Fix It button is a good idea, but it is not the good idea; Microsoft’s main focus should be on making their operating systems have less risk of problems in the first place. Hopefully with the release of Windows 7 we will see a step in this direction, but if things continue to go the way they have in the past we might just end up seeing more quick fixes.

Chrome 2.0 Beta Released, Catching Up to the Competitors

Google has released pre-beta version 2.0 of their Chrome web browser.

The release has added some new features including: form autocomplete (the browser remembers what you’ve typed into text fields for quicker use), full-page zoom, autoscroll, profiles, spell-checking improvements, docking dragged tabs, bookmark importing and some more technical features such as SafeBrowsing implementation, a javascript engine update and more.

There are numerous little bug fixes and some new and spiffy CSS features. Chrome also has new window frames for XP/Vista users that support the Windows cascading and tiling capabilities.

Profiles can place Chrome settings in different categories for different users. You can have one profile you use on your laptop when you are at work and a completely different profile setting for when you’re at home to help ensure you don’t stumble across some naughty pictures while on the job.

You can update to the new version at the Chrome website and test it out. If you don’t like the new version Google gives you the option to downgrade to a previous version of the browser. This update has made some much needed improvements to the feature-lacking browser. Chrome is catching up to its competitors at a rapid pace, but still doesn’t have all the features and options you can find on the already established browsers on the web.

You can get a full list of the major changes at the Chromium Developer Documentation page.

Workable Beta of Windows 7 Leaked

The beta version of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 7, has been leaked to the web.

The ISO file for Windows 7 is available on many Bittorrent sites, allowing anyone with an internet connection and the proper peer to peer software to download and install the almost fully-functional operating system.

This latest leak is build 7000, rather than the alpha version 6801 that was leaked earlier this year, and has 32 bit architecture. According to some reports the beta is very stable and usable. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet had this to say about his experience with the leaked OS:

I like Windows 7, a lot. Microsoft seems to have put a lot of effort into developing a core operating system that is free from the pointless frills of the likes of XP and Vista. The OS is solid and fast and based on what I’ve seen so far I’d have no problems in rolling out beta 1 and using it daily.

While Microsoft might not be happy that their latest OS has been released for free on the internet, the positive response to this leak may come as good news for the software giant. The resounding failure that was Vista has left many PC users with a sour taste in their mouths, further cementing many PC users’ opinion that Microsoft products are of inferior quality compared to Linux and Apple’s OSX.

Microsoft has tried to regain some of the public’s good will with a series of weird ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld, but what they really need to do is simply make a solid, usable product that doesn’t fight against the user. Vista and many of its predecessors, such as the all-around awful Windows ME, have tended to be bloated, unstable resource hogs with unnecessary, sometimes downright user-unfriendly features and woefully little focus on straightforward performance.

It seems like it should be an obvious strategy for Microsoft to adopt: make an operating system that just works and it will gain popularity. But the fact of the matter is that Microsoft has controlled an enormous share of the operating system market for almost as long as PCs have been used by the greater public, and the software Goliath has never needed to change its approach.

But if Windows 7 is in fact as solid as the early reports are indicating, it might be the case that Microsoft’s approach has finally taken a turn towards benefiting the user and not just Microsoft. And just in time too, as Microsoft’s share of the market has dropped below 90% for the first time in recent history while Apple’s increased a small amount.

(Author’s disclosure: I actually found those totally wacky Seinfeld, Bill Gates ads pretty funny.)

Good Old Games Releases Beneath a Steel Sky For Free

The classic gaming site Good Old Games has added two free games to their collection of downloadable oldies.

This week Good Old Games released Beneath a Steel Sky, the classic post-apocalyptic point-and-click adventure game, to their catalogue as a completely free download.

Beneath a Steel Sky puts the player in the shoes of the main character Foster as he makes his way through the dystopian Union City in a quest to save his tribe.

Lure of the Temptress, another classic adventure game, was also released for free by Good Old Games.

Besides these two free games, Good Old Games also offers a host of other vintage games available for a fee. Every game is completely DRM free, meaning you don’t have to hassle with copy protection, and is compatible with Windows XP and Vista, removing the need to mess around with DOS emulators and virtual memory and all those headaches.

Each game costs either $5.99 or $9.99, which is a small price to pay for such high-quality, hassle-free classic gaming.

Some other titles in Good Old Games’ catalogue include some personal favourites of mine, such as Simon the Sorcerer, the Jagged Alliance series of strategy games, and the original Fallout series of RPGs.

It’s always a pain navigating seedy abandonware sites trying to track down a copy of a game I loved as a kid but can’t play because my old floppies have become corrupt. And it’s always made worse when I find that they don’t work on my modern computer, or that they can’t be downloaded for legal reasons, but also aren’t available for purchase due to their age.

Good Old Games looks to remove all that hassle for a price that is well worth the admission. As a fan of old games it is nice to see a site like Good Old Games give classic video games the attention they deserve with a professional distribution system, comprehensive support and a slick website.

Good Old Games updates their catalogue every week, and you can click here to check it out.

XP Prices Are Rising

Dell has tripled the surcharge it will charge users who wish to downgrade Vista PCs to Windows XP. Dell’s Inspiron 1525 notebooks and 530 desktops can be ordered with XP Professional preinstalled for an extra $150.

There is still a strong user base that prefers Microsoft XP to Vista, this is shown in the fact that the XP downgrade deadline has been pushed back a couple times now. Under Microsoft licensing, Vista can be downgraded only to XP Professional until July 31, 2009. Many are still requesting XP with their new PC purchases, but Microsoft’s downgrade fees are trying to force users into purchasing the unpopular Vista.

Though the Microsoft brand is linked with PCs in the minds of many consumers, that does not necessarily mean they will be herded like sheep into purchasing Vista. The demand for XP is still high, even if starting to slack a little lately. When Microsoft tries to penalize customers with fees instead of improving their current OS, there is going to be backlash. This may turn out to be the jumping point for some who considered buying a Mac, or it may lead some users to pirating their choice OS instead of paying extravagant fees, especially with the recent economic slump where people are trying to save every penny they can.

The stigma has been set, many people do not trust Vista and most of them don’t even know why. Regardless of the cause for the Vista hate, Microsoft is not fixing the problem by forcing users to purchase the OS. We’ll only have to wait a few days before the Apple ads roll out and start smack talking Microsoft about this latest feat.

Windows 7, the next OS in line from Microsoft, is the company’s hope of eliminating the stigma. Industry analyst Rob Enderle says, “Windows 7 is designed to fix this problem [the Vista stigma], but it will need stronger demand generation marketing than Microsoft has yet proven it can provide. Windows 7 is estimated to ship in 2010, but may come sooner if Vista acceptance does not improve.

My personal experience with Vista has been iffy. I tried to keep the prejudice out of my mind while using the OS, but I still found myself disliking certain elements from the very start. I use my girlfriend’s HP laptop with Vista often enough, and it is constantly riddled with error messages (many of which don’t make any sense). Much of the OS is clunky, but there are a few redeeming qualities.

I myself am a mac user, but I have owned nothing but PCs until a little less than a year ago. I am running Leopard but I also have a second partition on my computer, this is where I have XP installed. I will not be putting Vista on my computer anytime soon. XP has its own share of problems, but I encounter far more on a regular basis with Vista than I do with XP. Everything I still need to use on my Windows partition still supports XP and I don’t think that will change for a long time.

What do you think? Is Vista a needed or wanted upgrade? What are your experiences with XP and Vista?

Extensis Adds Adobe Illustrator and InDesign Support for Universal Type Server

Universal Type Server, Extensis‘s font management software, has been updated with plug-in based support for Adobe InDesign CS4 and Illustrator CS4, plus compatibility with the 64 bit version of Windows Vista.

The update, which is free for owners of Universal Type Server, allows users to make use of the program’s centralized font management features within Adobe products. Universal Type Server allows fonts to be held on a central server and distributed to design teams efficiently and consistently, and through a collaboration with Adobe the program’s functionality has been deepened, ensuring ease of use and cross-platform effectiveness.

Features include corruption checks to flag bad fonts, font pinpointing and auto-activation, ensuring designers need not wade through an enormous list of fonts, an attractive and simple user interface, real time or on-demand font synchronization, to ensure the entire design team has access to the right fonts at all times, and web-based remote administration.

Rifling through fonts by myself can be frustrating and difficult, so I can only imagine what a chore it is to collaborate a whole design team’s font usage. This program seems ideally suited for just that, giving administrators a great deal of control over font databases while keeping font acquisition simple and quick for designers.

Universal Type Server starts at $1,395 for the lite version, which includes 10 installs, and is available for Windows and Mac. Free trials are also available at Extensis’s site.

The Addiction of StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon has carried many web surfers deep in the night, into the wee hours of many mornings by offering a never ending stream of interesting randomness that is always just a click away.

It’s an adventure. Your clicks bring you to visuals and sounds you never would have expected to find on the internet. Before stumbling existed, web surfing consisted of search engines and links given to you on web forums or by friends on IM. Surfing used to be a mundane process where you knew what you were looking for and only needed to find a way to get to it.

Stumbling has brought us unseen destinations, exciting vistas of information and opinion and stupidity, the exotic dangers of a random NSFW page, and the mindless time wasting flash games we would never have found otherwise. StumbleUpon has given people a reason for being on the internet when they have nothing else to do but explore.

Everything is within your grasp, everything is only a click away. Whether you know it or not, when you stumble your way through the internet you are set on a quest. Your quest is to see the entirety of the internet, its best and its worst. The more clicks you take, the deeper into the web you travel and the more difficult it becomes to leave. You enter a vastness that is impossible to comprehend, yet it is all veiled behind the mask of the click. That click, the next one might take you to something wonderful, some amazing thing no one else has seen before, you might discover the next greatness that will make you an internet rock star to your peers. One click, just one more, just one more, one more…

Parents have always told their children that it is best to take things in moderation, this also applies to the click of StumbleUpon. Most stumble addicts out there know who they are, and that’s a good first step. No more stumbling through papers and meals, no more stumbling until the crack of dawn scares you into your bed. We can enjoy StumbleUpon, but we must not abuse it. The world misses you, and we only want to see you again and we hope you are doing well.

It is the evolution of the web. We’ve moved past railways and roadways and are now flying through the internet, teleporting from destination to destination. There is a new world to explore, and its all at your fingertips, just one more click away…