Windows 7 ludicrous upgrade policy

Using open source software has many benefits, including visibility of the code, security, community , reliability etc etc. The one thing that I really enjoy above all else is the freedom from the old days of license keys and license management.

It was always a pain when a new version of anything from Microsoft came out, figuring out what license you had, and how much you would have to pay them to get the software you really needed. They would argue that it's simple if you just buy a new machine, which is true, but not everyone wants to do that currently.

I then came across this chart posted on CNET, which to be fair has been slated as preposterous by even the worst Microsoft shrills. I did have a little chuckle though, when you think how easy Linux upgrades are.

In Linux land, if you want a different distribution that best fits your requirements, in either 32bit or 64bit release, burn to CD/DVD or USB and then install. Simple. When upgrading any Debian derived machine you just click a single button, and everything remains in place, just the latest releases of code and an improved environment.

Now look at the chart for upgrading to Windows 7 ;-)



All this just to get an Operating System with no applications installed in most cases, as you can't upgrade but have to do a fresh install. There is no doubt that looking at this chart that Microsoft is being run by committee's now, and it was like that in the bad old days of IBM, not a very exciting or inventive place to be.

I think I'll stick with Open Source thanks.

Installing Karmic Koala in VirtualPC - a great relief after Windows 7

After my fun and games with Windows 7 yesterday, I downloaded the latest alpha build of Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala - to have a look at the new and emerging features, but also just to check how this installed with VirtualPC v3.02, and was it quicker and any easier. The resounding answer is definitely yes. I just pointed the virtual CD/DVD drive to point to the downloaded iso image and started the virtual machine.

I booted into the live cd and had a look around first, no issues, everything just worked. I then clicked on the install icon, and six screens later clicked on install, must have taken me five minutes in total. The install to the virtual hard disk took another ten minutes including installing the tools and voila , I now have a fully functioning, fast booting OS to explore. What a difference to yesterdays downloading fest. and installing three applications to just stand still.

That is the big difference, after that 10 minutes, everything is installed and ready to go, the photo album manager, music player, browser, full office suite, photo editor, voip tool, IM tool, etc etc and the candle stick maker.

I have absolutely no doubt that if every user had to install Windows 7 from scratch and all their applications , people would love it a whole lot less, and it is one of the reasons that the pre-installed monopoly for Microsoft is such a bad thing for consumers and the computer industry.

I just hope that Larry Ellison of Oracle fame now throws his hat in the ring and does something interesting with open source on the desktop, along with Google, Debian, RedHat, Canonical, Novell and Apple. I think we can say for the first time since IBM and OS/2, Microsoft has some serious and large competition to it's monopoly. I hope everyone delivers on this potential, as the real winners will be all of us.

Windows 7 a lot of money for not very much

I keep around an old windows XP virtual machine for things like CV's that agents will only take in word format, and I haven't been bothered to change it over to Google docs yet, but I will. So this VM gets powered up now and again on my Ubuntu Desktop to do this one task, and then it gets put away again.

So I thought I would take the Windows 7 7100 build for a spin and try it in VirtualPC, as I had already built a test VMware one. Well, the install went pretty well and once it had rebooted I was sat with an empty desktop, with no applications again. I fired up IE8 so I could download Mozilla Firefox, and it forced me to go to the Microsoft home page. I then downloaded some anti-virus software - AVG - and installed the Virtual PC drivers, another reboot.

I finally installed all the Microsoft patches and another reboot. It must have taken me about 45mins in total, to end up with a working virtual instance, and all I had installed was a browser and the anti-virus. Now that's OK, as I will put on my copy of Office, and I can continue to edit those CV's, but I then got to thinking about the point of this.

With virtualization and the standard hardware reference model that you get, I don't ever need to upgrade my XP virtual image, and it will continue to work until I can be bothered to move it to Google Apps. I know you won't be able to get security updates etc, but then I don't use it for seriously surfing the web anyway. I can also run it with no network connected if I wanted, and isolate it from the outside world , simply for it's legacy value.

So the question here is, why would I possibly spend £200 on Windows 7, the answer is I won't. When the RC runs out next year, then I will just delete the VM and that might be the driver I need to move over to Google apps completely.

I think a lot of people need to think very hard about upgrading to Windows 7, it might be new and shiny, but what exactly are you getting for you hard earned money. In my opinion not a great deal. Especially when you could go and buy a brand new Acer Netbook for £149 with all the software you could want, and spend the rest on treats for yourself.

I'm very impressed with VirtualBox 3.0.2

I have been using VMware workstation since before version one, and it has always served me well up until now. I have started to read lots of good articles on how good Sun Microsystems latest release of Virtualbox has become, so I decided to download it and give it a whirl. Well I can also add my thumbs up to version 3, as this product has moved on extensively since I last tried it.

The migration of some of my older VMware virtual machines was painless, and building a new Windows 7 virtual image was fast and every bit as painless as using VMware Workstation 7 beta.

The suspend and resume is much faster with this version than the latest VMware release, though VMware does have debug mode switched on which might account for some of that. I also really like the seamless mode, which allows you to show just the start bar from Windows and the currently running apps. This works very efficiently, and again I prefer it to the Unity mode in VMware.

Another enormous benefit is that it is free, in both price and spirit, VMware workstation is $200, and the development community behind the project are working towards interoperability with other virtualization methods with makes your virtual images more portable and flexible.

Well, I certainly won't be dropping my VMware just yet, but I'm using this new release more and more, and if it continues to impress, then I suspect it will become my preferred desktop virtualization product.

Get it here Virtual Box

Only a fool could possibly think Linux is not ready for the desktop

The evidence is everywhere, and it became even more apparent a few seconds ago when I needed to get a few albums for my daughter. I started looking around the airports shops only to find that they have given up selling the old CD hardware. So I thought I will just log on to the net and download them from the Amazon mp3 store, DRM free of course. My laptop connected immediately to the wifi connection, and I was up and connected to a network I had never seen before in seconds.

I have had the Amazon mp3 downloader software on my laptop for a while, so getting them was a 1 minute point and click with my browser, and voila! , they are now on my hard drive. I have just uploaded them to my Ipod mini using Rythmbox , and they are playing a treat.

All this was done on my Dell XPS 1330 with Ubuntu 9.04 Linux happily sitting on the disk, with not a whiff of any of Gates or Jobs proprietary nonsence anywhere. I'm typing this post with the latest version of Googles Chromium browser and feeling very smug ;-)

Would I change any of this for Windows 7 or Snow leopard? Not on your life, why would I possibly want to waste £200 on an OS that comes with zero apps, when I have a fully working fully functioning system that offers so much and delivers on a daily basis.

Which albums I hear you cry. Green Days 21st Century Breakdown and the Gossips Music for Men. They would not normally be my cup of tea, but they are for my daughter.

If you want to free yourself from the Blue screen, costly, virus ridden , expensive, slow , proprietary hell that is Windows and hardware lock-in that is Apples OSX, then just click here.

What on earth is all this fuss about Windows 7

I have just download and installed into a VMware virtual machine the RC version 7100 of windows 7. The funny thing is that VMware thought it was Vista, and selected all it's default settings as if it was.

Now I only keep a virtual machine copy of windows around for legacy apps, so it doesn't play much of a role in my IT life, but I would like it to be as fast as possible and to work with VMware as seamlessly as it possibly can.

I have to say , having tried Vista in a virtual machine, and deleting it within hours of it's install due to it being completely unusable, I didn't hold out much hope for Windows 7. In it's defence it certainly runs significantly faster than Vista with the same amount of virtual resources: 1GB RAM, 16GB Disk, 1 processor.

My problem is though, it looks just like Vista, and with a default install appears to offer nothing over my XP SP3 virtual machine. Now I have only just installed it, and I may find some killer feature down the line, but after 2 days of having a good look around it , my opinion would be that it's on the surface XP with a new theme. Now hopefully there has been a lot of good coding underneath to make it more secure, and I have noticed it has copied Linux in that it now requires a positive affirmation before it installs new apps, which is good.

I will keep it on my machine and do some more testing, and I'm going to install it onto a USB key so I can test it on my Asus 1000 netbook if it will install on a flash drive. I certainly won't be buying a copy as XP does exverything I need for a very rarely used legacy app support system, by I was expecting an awful lot more from this OS considering the hyperbole that has been flying around the blogosphere and the web.

This product would certainly never offer a platform that would make me switch from Linux as my default platform, as you get so many apps straight out of the iso, why would I want to waste hundreds of pounds on software , and spend time installing it.

The biggest problem for any IT literate person is the amount of time you are going to have to spend installing apps just to make it vaguely useful: Chrome, Firefox, Anti-virus, Openoffice etc etc etc - just name your favourite app. here. No, this in my opinion is definitely nothing to get excited about.

The virtualization offering is also a complete mess with this release. What other OS requires you to download a completely separate product , once you have downloaded and installed the OS? Then it will only install on specific versions, and it will only offer support for another Microsoft OS? Great for large companies, but naff all use to anyone else. You would be much better of installing Virtual box or Vmware workstation and getting the real deal, or better still, just installing Linux and have it all built in from the start. This is complete nonsense from Microsoft, they should have built a proper hypervisor in from the ground up, and is yet more proof this is nothing more than Vista II.

The total myth of Windows ease of use

Over the years I have heard from many people how easy it is to use Windows and how complex Linux can be , and that you always have to spend most of your life at the command line.

Well just look at this post on how to install Windows 7 onto a USB pen drive.

Windows 7 onto a USB drive

It is laughable the stages and processes you have to go through to achieve this goal on Windows, using the command line like it is going out of fashion. Admittedly to to anyone who is technically savvy this is not rocket science, but I think it would blow most Joe six packs into the weeds.

In Ubuntu , you click on a very simple and extremely useful Utility , and install as many Linux distro's as your heart desires.

Ubuntu USB drive creator

If you would like to go further and have multi-boot USB pen drives then you can just download and use another great Linux USB creation tool - unetbootin

No, anyone who says that Linux is more complex than Windows either has not used a modern Linux, and is therefore talking from lack of real update experience, or they are so blinkered that no matter how complex the task is on Windows, they just can't be objective. I use Windows, and it does some things well, but modern Linux is just more useful, in more situations, more often.

Just download Ubuntu 9.04 and see for yourself - Ubuntu 9.04