Print - WinInfo Short Takes

An often irreverent look at some of the week's other news, including last week's power outage, Windows Live, Samba stupidity, Visual Studio 2005 SP1 stupidity, Xbox 360 warranty, Origami 2, Xbox 360 games, a nice Zune analysis, Christmas, and so much more...

WinInfo Blog

Short Takes

- Live Search Losing Users

- Samba Man Leaves Novell Because of Microsoft Deal

- Microsoft Sells First Copy of SUSE Linux

- Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Vista

- Microsoft Bumps Xbox 360 Warranty Up to One Year

- Origami 2: The Quickening

- And the Best Selling Xbox 360 Game Is ...

- Analyzing the Zune

- Happy Holidays

==== WinInfo Blog ====

by Paul Thurrott, thurrott@windowsitpro.com

You might recall that, in last week's painfully unexciting Short Takes, I mentioned I was almost killed by a falling tree on the Microsoft campus last Thursday. I was in town for several meetings, as well as an all-day reviewers’ workshop on Friday. That workshop never happened because the Microsoft campus, all of Redmond, and much of Washington state lost power sometime in the evening between Thursday and Friday. And you thought I was exaggerating about the wind and rain.

Power outages can be fun for a short time. After confirming that the Microsoft campus was closed for the day, I headed out to the supermarket with some friends to see what was up. In Redmond, the supermarkets are on the same backup electrical grid as the police and fire stations, so there was some power--and some food--to be had. Had this power outage happened in the Boston area, the scene would have been straight out of a survival movie, with cars ramming into each other at intersections and people fighting over the last can of spam. But in the Seattle area, people are a lot nicer than that, and everyone was following the rules of the road despite the lack of streetlights. Even the dimly lit supermarket was calm and orderly. Good for them, although I did joke that we'd see Seattle's true colors if a single Starbucks were to be opened and people were forced to line up for that.

Anyway, we enjoyed a couple of meals of spam, deviled ham, crackers, cheese, and chips, as well as beef stew and coffee cooked over the fire in the fireplace, although I did belatedly realize we could have hooked the coffee maker up to the SUV's power adapter. (Relax; it's a hybrid.) In an unintentionally comic moment, my friend and I spent Friday night huddled around an iPod, connected to a single unpowered speaker, wrapped in blankets, and listening to the audio portion of episodes of "Real Time with Bill Maher." Coincidentally, we had earlier discussed how weird it was to think that people used to gather around radios each week in the 1940s. Cue the laugh track.

We ended up being lucky: The power came on sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, but as we had had plans to go to Victoria, British Columbia, anyway, it didn't matter much. Others weren't so lucky: Many of my friends at Microsoft were without power through much of this week, and although the people I was staying with could afford to joke about who we'd eat first, this type of thing isn't very fun when you've got kids. It's astonishing to me that the power could be out for so long, but there you go.

Speaking of weather, I'm told that my editors at Penton in Colorado just got nailed with about two feet of snow. Kind of puts the wind and rain of Seattle in perspective, but I bet no one lost power in Colorado, and if they did, it didn't last very long. Seattle is typically a temperate place, but any kind of serious weather shuts the whole area down for days. Places like Colorado, the Midwest, and New England are more prepared for this kind of thing, I guess.

Victoria, by the way, is absolutely beautiful. I had never been anywhere in British Columbia before, although I'm a huge fan of Quebec, on the other side of the continent. Neat place.

Finally, the Windows Weekly podcast is on hiatus this week and next because of the holidays. We'll be back January 5, 2007.

==== Short Takes ====

An often irreverent look at some of the week's other news

by Paul Thurrott, thurrott@windowsitpro.com

Live Search Losing Users

Despite billions in research and development and, frankly, a pretty darned good product, Microsoft's Windows Live Search continues to hemorrhage market share, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The firm says that Windows Live Search and MSN Search fell 12 percent in November to 8.2 percent of the total search market. That's a far cry from Google and Yahoo!, which both grew in November. Google's share of the market rose 31 percent to 49.5 percent of the market, and Yahoo! grew 27 percent to 24.3 percent of the market. Curiously, Microsoft says the usage slide was expected since it was bringing Live Search out of beta, but I have to believe the company wanted to do much more than that. At this rate, Microsoft could fall into fourth place: AOL Search grew 11 percent in November to seize 6.2 percent of the market.

Samba Man Leaves Novell Because of Microsoft Deal

In a textbook example of biting one's nose to spite one's face, Jeremy Allison, the high-profile open-source programmer who developed the Samba networking solution, has quit Novell, citing the recent agreement between Novell and Microsoft as the reason. Allison has accepted a job at Google--which is unlikely to enter into any high-level Microsoft pacts anytime soon--where he'll continue working on Samba, which helps Linux-based PCs connect with Windows-based systems over a network. "I have decided to leave Novell ... due to the Microsoft/Novell patent agreement, which I believe is a mistake and will be damaging to Novell's success in the future," Allison wrote in his resignation letter. "The Microsoft patent agreement has put us outside the community, and there is no positive aspect to that fact, and no way to make it so. Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs." It's too bad Novell didn't have a high-profile open-source programmer who could help try and make a difference. Ah well.

Microsoft Sells First Copy of SUSE Linux

In related news, Microsoft this week ... sold a copy of Linux. Seriously. Under the terms of its agreement with Novell, Microsoft sold SUSE Linux Enterprise subscription certificates to Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group, and AIG Technology, all of which can now benefit from the "interoperability, patent cooperation agreement, and road map for bidirectional virtualization solutions" that the Novell and Microsoft agreement provides. Although many in the open-source community are obviously skeptical of this agreement, I do believe it marks a new era of interoperability that's important for business customers, who often need to mix Linux and Windows systems in their environments, but are leery of the costs and complexity. What's needed, of course, are high-profile open-source programmers who can help make this heterogeneous future a reality.

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Vista

This week, Microsoft released an update for Visual Studio 2005 (and all the various Visual Studio 2005 standalone products) that helps make Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) work better with Windows Vista. Visual Studio might very well be a wonderful development environment, but I'm curious as to why these guys can't make more elegant updates. To install this silly patch on Vista, you have to go through a mind-blowing series of steps in which you really, really have to know what you're doing. There are different patch versions for each Visual Studio product, and they're all available separately instead of simply being bundled. The whole thing is a mess.

Microsoft Bumps Xbox 360 Warranty Up to One Year

As my son kicked over our Xbox 360 the other night, the silent scream that was building inside my head threatened to turn an accident into an international incident. But the Xbox 360 miraculously survived the fall, although the "Call of Duty 3" disc inside did not. (Have you ever seen how scratched up those discs get if they're inside an Xbox 360 when it falls over? It's astonishing.) Anyway, for those of you who worry that your $400 investment is going to turn into an expensive (and loud) doorstop, Microsoft just provided a bit of breathing room: This week, the company announced that it was expanding the Xbox 360 warranty from 90 days to one year in the United States and Canada. That's a significant expansion, and should offset most fears about the durability of the device.

Origami 2: The Quickening

Will Microsoft ever learn? Last year's release of the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC, code-named Origami) was an absolute disaster. The over-hyped device failed to sell well in any market, and users complained that it was too big to be used as a PDA and too small to be used as a true PC. Well, fear not, they're trying again: At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month, Microsoft will show off Origami Mach 2, which will support Vista and come in a wide range of form factors. Color me unimpressed. Again.

And the Best Selling Xbox 360 Game Is ...

Although Microsoft made a big show of announcing that its "Gears of War" for Xbox 360 had sold two million copies, I'm guessing it won't be as ebullient about the following news: “Gears” isn't the best-selling Xbox 360 game of all time; heck, it's not even the best-selling Xbox 360 game of this holiday season. Nope, that designation goes instead to the three Burger King promotional games that are being sold through the fast food chain. The games have sold more than two million copies, thanks to their low $3.99 pricing and non-stop TV advertising. (And seriously, who isn't creeped-out by the bizarre bigheaded Burger King character in those ads?) If only we could deathmatch Burger King vs. Ronald McDonald online.

Analyzing the Zune

This week, CNET's Ina Fried has a great article analyzing Zune sales. And here's a shocker: Zune sales are very much on track with Microsoft's estimates. According to sales data from Current Analysis, Zune is currently holding more than 10 percent of the market share for MP3 players that sell for $200 to $299, despite news reports of dwindling sales and mostly horrific reviews. The Zune has averaged 13 percent of the revenue share in its first three weeks on the market, causing Apple's share to fall by a similar amount. But here's an interesting statistic: The Zune is selling poorly in college towns, suggesting that its hipper-than-thou marketing isn't reaching kids as Microsoft had hoped. And laughably, the Zune is selling best in, you guessed it, Microsoft's hometown of Seattle.

http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-6145311.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news

Happy Holidays

We won't be publishing WinInfo on Monday, December 25, 2006, because of the Christmas holiday. Merry Christmas, if you're celebrating. We'll see you again on Tuesday.

once an MS hater, always an MS hater. the guy's rationale is totally based on his anti-MS feelings. well he'll be at home at google. sad to see open sauce idealists be so...childish.

"In an unintentionally comic moment, my friend I spent Friday night huddled around an iPod,..." Who is this "I" friend, and why would you talk about him huddled around an iPod? Two possible corrections: 1. My friend, I, spent Friday night huddled around an iPod... 2. My friend *and* I spent Friday night huddled around an iPod... Sorry, this was too funny to pass up... More on topic, there are *still* thousands of people without power in Washington. I heard that they are trying to get the number to below 1000 before Christmas. Imagine spending Christmas without power! Speaking of losing power, on the Saturday night after the storm, we were coming home from a Christmas party and we noticed, as we approached our home, that *everything* was black. Even the city glow that reflects off the clouds was mostly gone. We later found out that a substation only a few miles from us blew up, sending 50,000 people without power. Flames could be seen for hours. Our power company could not come near the fire for 12 hours. The whole experience was eerie.

"The over-hyped device failed to sell well in any market, and users complained that it was too big to be used as a PDA and too small to be used as a true PC." This is exactly the size I'm looking for. PDAs are too small and not powerful enough to be used as a computer and laptops are to big to carry with you everywhere. I can't wait for the next generations.

@Live Search Google > all others. MS should have already learned this lesson with MSN.com -- despite MSN.com being the default homepage in IE6, people still used Google. Live.com's status as default for IE7 will do no good for getting people to use it more than Google. Google's already in the lexicon, MS. Give it up. You were late to the game and you've already lost. @Novell Novell died when NetWare 5 was being rapidly replaced with Windows 2000's implementation of Active Directory. Ever since then, Novell's been this bizarre SUSE Linux vendor. Novell filled a necessary networking void, but like all third-party innovators, MS eventually came to the market with an integrated solution and killed them. Novell's a sinking ship -- it's smart for that guy to go. @MS Linux Beware of the trojan horse. @Xbox Warranty Apple hardware always has a 1-year warranty, be it a computer, iPod, or peripheral. Looks like Microsoft copied Apple again. @Origami2 Paul, another retro movie title: "Origami 2 - Electric Bugaloo." Let me guess, Origami2 will run its own branch of Vista, something like "Windows Vista Ultimate Tablet PC Edition 2008". MS should be working on improving its Smartphone OS instead of developing UMPCs. Windows Mobile 2005 is still a crashing nightmare. @BK XBox games While I am not an Xbox 360 owner, I have to say that the response to these BK games is pretty cool. The games themselves look decent and their simplicity reminds me of the games from the 80s and 90s. Developers should start thinking about making simpler, cheap, games focused on good fun, instead of epic, major-motion-picture games. Not everyone has 60 hours to play through a game. @Zune Sales MS knows the Zune is going to sell bad. Heck, they're selling it for a loss. Just like the Xbox brand, they're hoping the Zune brand gets just enough momentum for the second generation product to be a success. I'm interested in the International Zune sales figures.

"I'm interested in the International Zune sales figures." How about zero (0) Zunes sold outside the US? Does that make you happy? Zune hasn't even been released outside the US. I didn't expect it to do well (at least initially) in college towns. College kids are not exactly early adopters. Regarding Live Search, MS should have probably partnered with Yahoo! instead. That would've put more pressure on Google. Some of the Windows Live products are actually pretty good but the whole experiment hasn't really been successful. Bad marketing, maybe.

"Google > all others. MS should have already learned this lesson with MSN.com -- despite MSN.com being the default homepage in IE6, people still used Google. Live.com's status as default for IE7 will do no good for getting people to use it more than Google." And yet, Google and the EU still complained about the IE7 search box potentially defaulting to Live Search.

1. So if the college kids aren't buying Zunes, who is? 40-somethings? And how much of these sales are just holiday bursts? I'll be interested to see how Zune fares during the rest of the year when people aren't buying gifts. 2. I'm sorry, but "Origami Mach 2" is a stupid name. Actually, just the "mach 2" part is stupid. Microsoft has to get some better "name-thinker-upers" quick. 3. Livesearch: I tried this and was pretty impressed. The interface is clean and decidedly Aqua-like. The results were good. But, Google does those cool things with their logo for special events and I found myself going back to see them. :) Still, Livesearch is pretty good - aside from the terrible name again.

@Nate: I was on the MAX line at Merlo Station when that transformer blew; it was very frightening from only 50 yards away. When I got home (Bethany area) you could still see the smoke and flames. @ BK Games: Amazing games that have the feeling of the old SNES style games we enjoyed 15 years ago, with high def graphics. My kids will love these stocking stuffers. Can’t top Gears of War though.

@skark47 "How about zero (0) Zunes sold outside the US? Does that make you happy? Zune hasn't even been released outside the US." Reminds me of another product that was sold only in the US. It was called the Sega 32X. That product did well against the National and International product leader for that market. "College kids are not exactly early adopters." Bullcrap. Plenty of college kids get iPods for holiday/graduation gifts. Or they buy them themselves if they have the spare cash. The truth is, no one wants a Zune. I'd bet that half the Zunes received as holiday gifts will be returned for store credit.

"I'd bet that half the Zunes received as holiday gifts will be returned for store credit." It's already happening: http://tinyurl.com/ym6qcy

"Reminds me of another product that was sold only in the US. It was called the Sega 32X." WRONG! the 32x was released in Canada too, but sold dismally, especially since the Sega Saturn was released less than a year later and made it obsolete. lostanostuff: ooooh, using an ebay sale page to back up a FUD comment? hmm...let me try: http://tinyurl.com/ybr2wr i guess there's 819 losers, ahem, i mean users that hate their Macbooks too. :p

Try harder next time, "Waethorn". The Zune in question was a gift, which the person is selling because, well, s/he considers it inferior. A listing of all the Macbooks for sale on ebay means nothing, except for showing how well they hold their value (unlike, say generic PCs or DELLs, which have more value as boat anchors on the resale market). The good news is, if you like crap, there are sure to be plenty of Zunes available for DIRT CHEAP on ebay in the coming days. I had to laugh last week listening to the Kim Komando computer show (BTW "waethorn"...the number one tech radio talk show in the US): She was giving out gifts all day on the show, and gave someone a Zune. Her comment: "You can give this to your daughter, but she probably won't want it". LOL...best laugh I had all week. "WRONG! the 32x was released in Canada too" We've already pointed out to you that Canada does not count as its own country, so the original statement was correct. ;-)

"The Zune in question was a gift, which the person is selling because, well, s/he considers it inferior." absolute FUD. yet another made-up fact from the Cupertino camp. funny how they make up stories to back their claim. then again, I guess a <5% marketshare means that 2007 will be the "Year of the Mac". keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night. btw: it's no wonder the rest of the world hates your country. I can travel to many places in the world with my country's flag in view. heh, even in Mexico (your neighbour, if you didn't already know) they advise that Canadians wear flag pins because thieves would rather rob Americans. also, I can travel to one of the nicest countries for tourism and they welcome me with open arms. that country is Cuba. mmmm....Havana cigars.... heh heh. I don't have to play the "bend over, insert carefully" game to smuggle them into my country. it's a good thing too, their rum is some of the best in the world and their bottles are HUGE. you, on the other hand, should probably grab some lube.

you should really open your eyes when you read something - it really helps! a huge amount of the MacBooks on eBay are new-in-box. I had to skip 3 pages before finding used ones. oh and its funny how cheap those one year old G4 Powerbooks and G5 Mac Pro desktops are. ya, that's really holding value. they'll be useless after Mac OSX Longhorn, I mean uh, OS 10 Service Pack 5, since Apple won't be supporting these money pits after that. nice way of supporting those people that were ripped off THOUSANDS for these systems, Apple! they'll be three years old when the SIXTH Service Pack for OSuX ships and won't be able to run any new software whatsoever. given a few very minor upgrades, a three to four year old PC can run Vista AND Office 2007 AND almost anything else available on the market quite well (excluding some newer games, which may run slow, but will still run).

"absolute FUD. " I'll bow to you on that one. I went back and checked the URL I posted, and I put up the wrong one. Coulnd't find the original, which was as I described. In the absense of contrary evidence, you win. Yipee. "...they'll be useless after Mac OSX Longhorn, I mean uh, OS 10 Service Pack 5, since Apple won't be supporting these money pits after that." Waethorn, you're so misguided. It's really sad. My main computer is a 2001 867MHz (!) Mac that originally shipped with OS9, but runs the current Mac OS and all current versions of Apple's iLife suite, Final Cut Express, and Adobe Creative Suite. It outperforms my year-and-a-half old DELL (especially when multitasking) to the point that it's laughable. I've upgraded it (Yes! Upgraded a Mac!) with USB 2, four internal hard drives, two DVD drives, maxed out the RAM, and am considering a processor upgrade. I could replace it, but why? It's a workhorse, it does everything I need it to do, and it's built like a tank. Of the three Macs I own, I still use it for the bulk of my work. It's a remarkable machine. It's a bit slow compared to a modern machine, but again--for most tasks, it's more than fast enough. Drop in a new processor, and I can probably get another couple years out of it with no problem. I've bought and sold several Macs and PCs in my time. I know from experience that PCs simply don't hold their value the way Macs do. There's no way you can seriously suggest otherwise. Your statement: "they'll be three years old when the SIXTH Service Pack for OSuX ships and won't be able to run any new software whatsoever" is just ridiculous. You've been drinking too much Redmond flavor-aid, or perhaps you've been stuffing those Cuban cigars you love so much with something stronger. And as for, "btw: it's no wonder the rest of the world hates your country", that's BS. I and my friends have traveled extensively, and there's none of this hatred you speak of. Talk about a provincial view of the world...

"you've been stuffing those Cuban cigars you love so much with something stronger" and i can do that. legally! why on earth would you upgrade a G4 with a processor upgrade? you do realize that processor sockets have changed over the years don't you? G4's are no longer made, but i'm sure you can buy a faster one on "iBay" or something. sorry, but you can't put a Core 2 Duo in that machine no matter how heavy your sledge is. even Pentium 4's with Hyperthreading will run circles around any G4 (and G5). silly Mac user. funny how Apple has just decided that PowerPC's were the completely wrong direction eh? remember this: http://tinyurl.com/yaelmx yet more false propoganda perpetuated by JobsInc that turned around to bite him in the a$$. i use Adobe Photoshop CS2 on a 1.66GHz Core Duo notebook with 2GB of RAM. wonder why? because i'm not dinking around with <2MB JPEG's. i've got several high print quality images with multiple layers at 1000 dpi designed for poster-sized prints. those files themselves are over 900MB in size, and will consume well over 1100MB of RAM when loaded. at the same time, i'm also often editing several DV video streams with Sony Vegas. try doing that with an 800MHz processor. now that's laughable. btw: as a followup to my point about mashups and Apple, here's another example: http://tinyurl.com/ycljsj

I wouldn't say that PCs don't hold their value. If you buy big name PCs that go for the lowest price points possible, yeah they are going to crap out on you. But what the sad thing is, is that for a mere 4%ish more price, the parts you can get go up astronomically in quality. Better build on the mobo, even the NIC, and you will notice much more longevity.

"and i can do that. legally!" That explains a lot, "Waethorn". "i'm also often editing several DV video streams with Sony Vegas. ry doing that with an 800MHz processor. now that's laughable. Um...NO PROBLEM with FCP on the very Mac I mentioned. Can't imagine trying it on a PC with a similarly-equipped processor. What's laughable is using "Vegas". Honest to God...what a joke.

"Um...NO PROBLEM with FCP on the very Mac I mentioned" ya? so why'd you stutter there? keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night, while you hold your iPod close to you. i've tried video editing on G4's and all I gotta say is ewwww! i hate Premiere Pro. it's a good program and all, but the interface leaves much to be desired. i rationalize the difference between Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas as the same difference as between Office 2003 and Office 2007. anybody that's actually used both knows what i'm talking about. both are powerful and have mostly the same features, but Vegas has a better workflow to get complicated stuff done relatively easy (relative to Premiere anyway) Apple: "Final Cut Pro - we changed the name to make you think it was a different product from Premiere Pro. After all, the same guys worked on Premiere for the Mac. I guess Windows users already know better though, but good on us - our Mac users don't!" Vegas has a much more elegent network rendering option that doesn't require a separate program, was first-to-market with HDV support (Sony helped develop the standard after all), and is just a better-made program. it's audio editing is top-notch too, but of course, it started out as two programs: one for audio and one for video; and merged into one amazing app. i don't bother with Sound Forge anymore, since Vegas covers everything. oh and if you actually knew anything rather than just spouting FUD, you'd realize that FCP/FCE is actually optimized for Intel, NOT PPC. mmm...that 17x performance boost in Intel over PowerPC's (according to Apple) looks pretty good right now.

here's another laugh - Vegas Movie Studio + DVD costs $180 less than FCE and yet.... where is the 5.1 audio support in FCE? where is the 1080p support? where are the video tutorials? where is the DVD camcorder integration? sorry, but i'll stick the cheaper software with a better workflow, more options and support, and runs on cheaper hardware, albeit at a faster speed. you can just stick to a mac.

"Final Cut Pro - we changed the name to make you think it was a different product from Premiere Pro." Apple bought Final Cut from Macromedia. I'm sure you know this. It's true that Randy Ubillos was responsible for Premiere and the inital version of Final Cut when it was owned by Macromedia. But they are light years apart in functionality and feature set. "if you actually knew anything rather than just spouting FUD, you'd realize that FCP/FCE is actually optimized for Intel, NOT PPC. mmm...that 17x performance boost in Intel over PowerPC's (according to Apple) looks pretty good right now." You're playing in my sandbox now, Waethorn. Vegas is widely regarded to be a joke (although it's improved somewhat under SONY's tutelage), and you know it. And yes, I'm fully aware of how much faster FCP runs on Intel hardware than on PowerPC, since I run it on both. What's your point?

actually, bonch, if you must know, Vegas really hasn't differed all that much interface-wise since Vegas Video 1.0, when i started using it. Vegas 6 was the first version from Sony, and even still, Vegas 7 isn't really all that much different. they added XDCAM support, some slight alterations in the DVD camcorder support. minor bugfixes and minor, yet noticeable speed optimizations. updates to various codecs to improve performance, etc. etc. it has also won major awards (even Vegas Movie Studio has), and is used by several high-profile studios. their media management is also organized using Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine (soon to be SQL Server Express). obviously the choice has been made on whether to pay for an overbloated, overpriced Final Cut Studio on inferior hardware at a higher price, or go for a faster, easier workflow on cheaper, faster-performing machines. i've seen it as cheap as $499US online. oh, and Adobe doesn't make you buy the entire studio package in order to get professional video editing. and you are COMPLETELY wrong about there being huge differences between FCP and Premiere Pro. they are nearly identical, and i've tried FCP on a 20" Intel iMac to know that. i hate BOTH programs equally (since they are the same). the only main difference is that the Mac versions uses the Quicktime wrapper for DV, whereas the PC version uses an AVI wrapper for DV. both use standard ISO MPEG-2 DV compressors though, it's just that the wrapper dictates which program you can play it in. also, the Mac version offers some minor integration with the FC Studio apps, whereas the PC version offers integration with Adobe apps (of which are greater in number and in quality). the interfaces are nearly identical as is the feature set. saying it's "light years apart" is complete FUD. methinks you've been drinking too much of the Jobs' Kool-Aid. too bad too. i could've made some for you from the Jim Jones Cookbook i keep on my bookshelf just for Mac users.

I'd prefer beer instead of the kool-aid......if I am going down drinking then please pass the Heinie.....