1FPS|by David Chartier

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with passing the Windows Genuine Advantage lately when using Vista across the two (yes, two) Boot Camp and Parallels setups we have. One on the Mac Pro, another on this MacBook Pro. I updated both Vista Home Premium installations to SP1 after I got the green light from Parallels, but they both began tripping Vista’s Genuine (Dis)Advantage alarm and forcing me to deal with Microsoft’s less-than-dreadful telephone customer service.

If you’re in the same bucket and having a wonderful time with Microsoft’s phone reps, Parallels has a couple of solutions and a few workflow tips that should do the trick. First, update to the latest Parallels build that landed a week or so ago (I believe it’s build 5600, and you can use Parallels’ Help > Check for Updates option). Second, check out the instructions in this Parallels knowledgebase article for fixing activation issues and repairing the Windows installation if need be.

One of the best tips here, however, is a simple one: when you’re finished with Windows in Parallels (whether it’s a VM or your Boot Camp install) and you want to shut it down, don’t use the square red stop bottom in Parallels’ toolbar. You have to shut down windows the same way as everyone else by using the Start menu, which allows Parallels to perform some routine processes when putting Windows down and backing away slowly.

For what it’s worth, though, updating to the latest Parallels build appears to have magically fixed both my Vista installations. In fact, I wiped my MacBook Pro last week because Mac OS X choked when I tried to resize the Boot Camp partition. After reinstalling Mac OS X and using Boot Camp to install Vista, Parallels never even gave me the initial activation trouble you usually have the first time you boot from a Boot Camp partition. I haven’t been able to find anything that says I’m just special or that this is something Parallels fixed with this new build, but I’m able to bounce between running Boot Camp or booting its partition in Parallels without any problems now.

I’m starting a new series at 1FPS preliminarily titled “Vistupidity.” I’m writing about Windows stuff a little more often for Ars Technica, which means I usually fire up Vista in either Boot Camp or Parallels/VMware to test something and grab screenshots. Now the Ars pieces are, of course, about whatever product I’m reviewing, so I can’t start harping on Vista or Microsoft’s dreadful decisions in the piece itself.

But that’s where “Vistupidity” here at 1FPS will come in. When I run into these virtual insults to computer user intelligence and perhaps humanity itself, I’ve been making notes and saving screenshots for a rainy day, and I think this is it. Sometimes these posts may be long explorations of the usability problems I find in Vista, and others—like this opening piece—may simply be a short mention of a silly problem that perhaps doesn’t need much discussion at all. I make no guarantee on how often I’ll have a Vistupidity piece, though. It’s not like I make a point to hop into Vista without an assignment. But thanks to the cross-platform wonders of Evernote, I have all the screenshot-snapping and note-taking tools I need to easily keep track of these experiences, so we’ll see how things go.

That said, here’s a Vistupidity icebreaker for #1: Internet Explorer 8 beta. No, it isn’t just for Vista, but that doesn’t make the screenshot above any less silly. This was shot during the IE8 installation process, which I started immediately after finishing the download from Microsoft’s site. Hardwired into the installation process, however, is an “Installing updates” step—for a brand new application.

Are Microsoft’s developers working on IE8 so often, and official updates appearing nearly every minute, to warrant a full-blown “installing updates” step during the IE8 installation process? Should the version I just downloaded be, well, the latest version?

The update step took around 1:30-2 minutes all by itself, but I never saw what the updates were. It just sat there with the continually rotating progress bar that, in reality, doesn’t reveal a single thing about the actual progress of the installation.

Macworld:

As PC users clamor for Microsoft to continue to support Windows XP, company CEO Steve Ballmer called the Vista OS “a work in progress” at an annual Seattle event on Thursday.

“It’s a very important piece of work. We did a lot of things right and have a lot of things we need to learn from. You never want to let five years go between releases,” he said.

The “work in progress” admission is probably the first rational, non-foaming-at-the-mouth thing that neanderthal has said in months, possibly years.

(click for a larger view)

I’m using Safari on Vista in VMware’s Unity mode to let the apps live outside the Windows environment. I don’t care how long this seamless OS stuff has been around, it’s still a little weird to see Windows apps working alongside my Mac OS X apps.

Sidenote: I thought Vista brought larger 256 or 512 px icons to Windows apps, but that Safari on Vista I’m running clearly isn’t displaying a very good icon. Am I wrong about the icons? Or is this a problem stemming from either the Unity mode or simply virtualizing Vista?

Brings a whole new meaning to the term “switcher,” eh?

Never mind that most of the world’s top PC manufacturers have been forced into offering XP as a pre-built option again. A small town computer shop is making money by removing Vista post-sale:

Shop manager Aaron Kaplan said they were prompted to put up [the sign] because so many people were having problems with Windows Vista, including compatibility issues with older software and trouble adjusting to the interface.

[From A computer shop's sales pitch: 'We remove Vista']

Redmond must be proud.

I just finished installing a bunch of new Vista drivers from Apple’s latest Boot Camp release, but I was never asked for a password. Drivers for core stuff like the video card, my keyboard, IR and more. Sure, I was presented with a dialog asking if I wanted to proceed - a dialog I could trump with automated mouse positioning software from 1998 - but never an actual password.

Could someone please explain again how Vista is more secure than a cardboard box? Either I missed one of Gates’ shiny sound bites from that media blitz back in January, or… this is a crock of shit.

iTWire - Facing the full horror of Windows Vista

We’ll give credit to Microsoft support for trying hard, but if you can’t get basic IP working in 2007, something pretty fundamental is going wrong.

In a burst of curiosity, we decided to run Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor, to see if our machine was actually up to the task. The first thing it told us was that we didn’t have enough drive space (apparently, it’s not intelligent enough to realise that Vista is already installed). The second thing it told us was that our display and sound card weren’t certified for Vista. The third thing it told us was that none of the Lenovo utilities on the machine were Vista-ready. So much for certification.

Granted, not everyone’s experience is quite as terrible as the one in this iTWire article, though I am kinda surprised that Lenovo - not your typical hack PC manufacturer - couldn’t get their own software up to snuff. On a broader scale, I’m even more surprised that, even though Vista has had a very public development process that took over five years, companies are still not ready with Vista-compatible products. Why do consumers have to worry about software that doesn’t behave right, or drivers that aren’t certified or even functioning? Everyone from the po-dunk generic product rip-off house to Apple is guilty of dropping this ball.

Is it that hard to develop for Windows (in Apple’s case, I’m entirely willing to accept the possibility that their delay was politically motivated)? Or are these companies just pathetically slow with keeping up? Is there not enough incentive - or enthusiasm - to be ready when Microsoft says ‘go?’

via The Mac Observer

• Till Krüss’s - Pepper Plugins - includes a download watching pepper I’ve been watching develop in the forums; users seem to be darn happy with it
• Typotheque: Eric Gill got it wrong; a re-evaluation of Gill Sans by Ben Archer - this is just the tip of the typography iceberg that I need to learn much more about
• Hivelogic - Hivelogic T-Shirts - I love that software companies are making their own t-shirts now. How cool is this?
• UIScape - awesome, a blog about interactive design
• Ballmer questions Google’s business strategy - this is the last jackass who gets to hurl these kinds of questions around
• Vista: Slow and Dangerous - I just began tinkering with a copy I sadly decided to buy for my blogging efforts at Download Squad. I sadly have to agree; this OS is an absolute mess. I say skip Service Pack 1 and 2 - with Microsoft already scheduled to release Vienna in 2009, why does Vista even exist?

Vista successor “Vienna” planned for late 2009 - Engadget

What the fuck is Microsoft thinking by talking about Vista’s successor barely two weeks after Vista’s launch? The company is taking flak for producing a train wreck of over 50 million lines of code, and for being nearly 3 years late with a product that isn’t much more than a bloated WindowBlinds theme - but promising to do it right the next time around isn’t going to make them look any better, and it certainly isn’t going to help move copies of Vista. Like the student who brags about his idea for the next assignment while handing in a late project, Microsoft still looks like an idiot right now, and flapping their mouths about “Vienna” does nothing but tattoo that stigma all the deeper into their back.

[tags]Vista, Vienna[/tags]