Just noticed one of those little changes in Vista RC1. This certainly wasn’t in Beta 2. If you are waiting a while for Vista to connect to a wireless network, it adds this notice:
That reads “Connecting to the network is taking longer than usual”. Well gee, thanks. Now what are you going to do about it?
Also, here’s something worth updating every once in a while: My Vista System Stability chart:
Vista lets you know how stable your system is, by computing a whole bunch of factors, including programs and drivers installed and uninstalled, application crashes, unexpected shutdowns (bluescreens) and other things. The report isn’t perfect, both because it does a rolling average and because it doesn’t give Windows a huge “F” every time you see a bluescreen, but it gives you some idea is things are getting better. The day I installed Vista was a 9.17, because of all the installations that day, dropping to a five the next day, and slowly reaching a 2.09 yesterday.
Of course, the goal is a 0, so we’ve got a ways to go.
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Vista, Windows, General |
no comments
Turns out Microsoft refused to pay the licensing fees for the Frutiger font, instead creating a virtually identical font called Segoe UI, which is the main font in Windows Vista. The sad fact: Microsoft was offered the chance to license the original for just one penny per copy of Windows. Jeez, were they frightened the $2,000,000 charge over the first two and a half years would severly decrease their billions in profits?
Read the whole article at Typophile, which also alleges the owner of the font can’t fight Microsoft’s clone because he is seventy-five and dying of lung disease.
(via Digg)
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Vista, Windows, General |
no comments
Two stories from Kotaku about the much-discussed Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive. First, reports are that it will hit the ground in Japan on November 22 for 19,800 yen, which translates to $167.85. That is an amazing price, and if the add-on hits the U.S. for anything under $200 it will be a huge hit, and make the PS3 look silly.
The other rumor, much less believable, is that games will start shipping with two disks. One will be the standard Xbox 360 DVD, and the other an HD-DVD edition of the same game, complete with higher resolution videos and the Xbox Live extra content preloaded on the disk. This is very unlikely, since the manufacturing of twice as many disks is just an unnecessary cost, and Microsoft keeps saying games won’t run off the drive. Maybe a year down the road, but two disks per case is a bit strange.
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Xbox 360, Xbox, General |
one comment
Gamespot reports that Flight Simulator X, the much-anticipated new version that is supposed to look great, has finished development and been released to manufacturing. It is done, and will make its retail street date of October 17.
Flight Simulator X bears the Games For Windows packaging and ships in two versions. The standard version will hit at $50 and include:
The Deluxe edition will cost $70 and include:
FSX requires Windows XP or Vista, and requires a 1 GHz processor, 256 MB RAM for XP (512 for Vista), a 14 GB hard drive, and a 32 MB DirectX 9 compatible graphics adapter. You can download a demo, which includes 3 aircraft, 3 missions and 2 airports.
(via Digg)
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Applications, General |
no comments
You could always include random text in Microsoft Office, and it would take this form:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Besides being “yuck”, this text is too short to look believeable. Microsoft has changed the behavior for Word 2007. To get random text, type “=rand()” and hit enter (you can put a number in between the parentheses to get that number of paragraphs). The new text reads:
On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document. You can use these galleries to insert tables, headers, footers, lists, cover pages, and other document building blocks. When you create pictures, charts, or diagrams, they also coordinate with your current document look.
You can easily change the formatting of selected text in the document text by choosing a look for the selected text from the Quick Styles gallery on the Home tab. You can also format text directly by using the other controls on the Home tab. Most controls offer a choice of using the look from the current theme or using a format that you specify directly.
To change the overall look of your document, choose new Theme elements on the Page Layout tab. To change the looks available in the Quick Style gallery, use the Change Current Quick Style Set command. Both the Themes gallery and the Quick Styles gallery provide reset commands so that you can always restore the look of your document to the original contained in your current template.
It appears to have been lifted right out of the Word help file. Besides being longer and more believable on a sample document, the random text includes instructions of how to style itself, making it a quick tutorial in designing quality Word documents. Each of those instructions expose you to the best new feature set in Word: One-click creation of great looking documents.
(via Digg)
For more information on creating incredible-looking Word documents in Word 2007, read this post on the new Word blog.
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Word, Office, Applications, General |
no comments
The first two certified Games For Windows titles have been shipped: Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy and Company of Heroes. Games For Windows is a unified branding scheme designed to help sell PC games and make the experience closer to that of game consoles.
According to an article at Shacknews, this is what it takes to get the Games For Windows logo and box style, along with the store shelves and marketing Microsoft is promising for partners:
- Support for launching or running the game through the Media Center interface.
- Support for Xbox 360 peripherals, specifically the wired controller.
- Use of Direct3D as the default renderer.
- Easy and quick installation, moving as close to insert the disk and play as possible.
- Technical and compatibility specs.
- Compliant with the Windows Vista Games Explorer, including parental control features.
Publishers can also get special notice by taking extra steps, or Showcases, like support for 64-bit Windows, multicore processors, Direct3D 10, and the Windows Error Reporting utility, as well as using Windows Live Anywhere and including features exclusive to the PC version. Most interestingly, developers are not supposed to list if the game works on Windows 98 and 2000, even if they know the game does.
(via Digg)
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Vista, Windows, General |
no comments
Microsoft has likely spent a lot of time this past week asking the simple question: $250 or $300? Since Apple released the slightly improved iPod 30 GB at a $250 price, Microsoft has been scrambling, realizing its target price of $300 was quickly becoming a non-starter. The big debate has to be: Do they match Apple’s price, costing them $50 of profit (or added losses) for every player sold, or do they try to claim the player is just plain worth the higher price.
Daily Tech has a quote from a Microsoftie who seemed a bit taken aback by the price reduction. The real question is: Did Microsoft get rattled because its player is now more expensive, or because they planned a $250 price point, a major announcement that now looks more like catch-up than a market breaker?
(via Digg)
There have been many reports that Apple makes a significant profit on its iPods, far more than you’d expect. The real question might be: If Apple can make a huge profit, why is Microsoft losing money on each Zune? The Zune’s wifi feature can’t cost more than $10-15 in hardware, so why can’t Microsoft draw a profit? Is Apple just that smart? Is the sheer volume of iPods giving them an unfair materials advantage?
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is listing the Zune at $284. The fact is: They’re Wal-Mart, and more than anyone else, they’re likely to have a price early. Either the Zune is $300 (and that’s a discount), or Microsoft is planning a lower price announcement, but Wal-Mart has the original price.
(via Gizmodo)
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Zune, Windows Media, General |
no comments
The Windows Live Mail Desktop team has released a new version. This one comes with the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as at least one cool feature: You can right-click a folder and give it a color, which allows you to seperate at a really quick glance the different sections of your inbox.
They’ve also improved the virus scanning, added sending photo mail through POP accounts, user prompting to handle duplicate contacts, and handling of automatic updates.
(via LiveSide)
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General |
no comments
The invitation-only beta of MSN Soapbox is set to begin today (Tuesday), according to LiveSide. Soapbox is the MSN Video upload site, which supports AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, 3GPP and DV videos up to 100 megabytes. Further compounding the confusion about why this isn’t a Windows Live service, the signup page to get an invite is at ideas.live.com. Specifically, click this link and enter your email address to get an invite. Eventually. I guess.
Kurt Shintaku has some interesting things to say:
In case you’re wondering, Warhol has only been accessible by Microsoft employees from Microsoft’s internal network, hence the reason there hasn’t been any screenshots or anything published on the web. Suffice it to say, they’re going to announce it tomorrow so everyone will get the chance to take a look at it. It’s really bandwidth efficient, you can “copy” the co[n]tent locally to your own machine if you have the right tools (instead of using some proprietary wrapper around it like you do with Google), it’s optimized to your network speed, and doesn’t require any plug ins or anything.
I’m guessing that they won’t be using Flash, which means higher quality videos. Optimizing for bandwidth is nice, too. As usual, Microsoft will get accused of being “me too”, but will bring some innovative and useful features to the table. I can’t wait to start using it.
September 19th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Windows, MSN, General |
one comment
