Apparently, Barb Bowman knows a secret…. but there’s no indication as to what it is 🙁

I’m hoping that it’s something cool like MCE functionality from the Sidebar in Vista but who knows? Hopefully all will be revealed shortly – as I hate knowing that I’m in the dark about stuff…. 🙂

The eternal hype machine that is Robert Scoble, has reached a new level of obscurity with one of his posts today but he’s got my attention….

You know, even inside Microsoft people have no clue as to what’s coming next week. I was just showing some people here the videos of what’s coming next week and they said simply “wow.”

So what’s he planning? Well, I’m presuming that it’s something different so it won’t be:

I’m guessing that as it’s to be announced at PDC I’m guessing it’s something to do with Vista. Quite what, I’m not at all sure – WinFS is in Beta, Visual Studio is about to be released, SQL 2005 is almost a go…. so what’s it going to be? Something cool I hope – I sincerely do!!

Some have accused me of overhyping what’s coming next week. Well, I don’t want to ruin this chance to keep expectations low (the industry hasn’t seen such an opportunity to take advantage of such low expectations to perform some shock and awe in years), but damn this is the most excited I’ve been about Microsoft since I joined.

…..

Yes, it’s been a while since we’ve shipped something significant. Yes, we have missed out on several new trends like the iPod and search. Yes, Steve Jobs‘ accusation that we’re just copying his company has looked pretty true.

But now it’s time to change the world. Again.

Go ahead, accuse me of hyperbole. Of FUD. Of mud throwing. Whatever. Let’s get together for beers next week and you look me in the eye and tell me that I overhyped this PDC.

btw – I have to say that if this next quote doesn’t get you fired for blogging – nothing will!! 🙂

I think I’ve been underhyping Microsoft. I had lost my belief. I was almost ready to get Steve Ballmer to throw another chair and go work for a cooler or at least smaller company.

I’m listening Robert… amaze me…… PLEASE

It sounds like my earlier rant may have been listened to (although I suspect that I’m not the only one to complain) 🙂

Based on this ZDNet Australia article a new technology called “Freeze Dry” will be a part of Windows Vista. Full details are included in the article, but here’s a short quote the whet you appetite:

“some patches require machines to reboot, users who leave documents open and unsaved run the risk of losing that data if the machine is automatically updated. Freeze Dry eliminates that problem by automatically saving application state and documents and then restoring them once the system restarts”

It just sounds way too cool – from a Sys-Admin perspective, it makes WSUS (and it’s successors) far more powerful, and as a home user with Windows Updates switched on it should mean that I’ll never loose another Blog post!!

Thanks to Ed Bott amongst others for the heads-up.

Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft Monitor makes an exceptiionally good point in his post Make the Music Available to All

He’s pointing out the pain involved in making stuff available to multiple users on Home PC’s / Networks – that stuff being music / photo’s etc.

To quote him:

“Problem: Making music easily available to everyone. The music collection comes from four sources: CDs I ripped, purchased DRM content from MSN Music or Napster and subscription stuff from Yahoo! Music. Authorizing the computer to play DRM downloads or subscription music was easy enough. Making that content available to all three people wasn’t as easy.”
…
What I’d like to see is a common music database or content list easily made available to, at the least, Windows Media Player and, ideally, to other digital media software, too.

Because there is no simple mechanism is place, I had to open Windows Media Player under each user account and search through the 3,300 song library. Better would have been one search that made the list accessible to all three user’s Windows Media Player. I even went so far as to put all the songs in the Shared Music folder.”

It’s an excellent point – and a problem dear to my heart. This is one feature that would really make Vista a worthwhile upgrade for home users – Microsoft need to wake-up and realise that as well as making it secure, they REALLY need to work on “making it work” if it’s tricky for me as an MCSA to share music with my girlfriend on the PC we share at home and to make it available on my laptop as well – then what chance does the average Joe (sorry for the pun) have?

Well, the install of Windows Vista Beta1 on the Compaq D330 failed – an error copying files apparently – which means I have to start again….. you’ve NO idea how annoying typing in the product key gets at the 10th / 12th time of asking…..

I tried the 2 dvd’s I burnt originally and then tried a freshly burnt one too….. so I’ve got the hump with that machine for the time being!!

I’ll just have to go back to using Virtual PC on the old machine I think – although it’s painfully slow…..

I’m trying it on some spare kit here now – a Compaq d330D P4 2.6 with 512Mb RAM – just as a straight install – stuff the Virtual PC idea….. I’ll post on progress in a bit – in the meantime I need to find my install key …. off to MSDN I go again….. I really should write it down somewhere!! 🙂

Well, I left the Windows Vista Beta 1 install runing overnight, and it finally completed – and I have to say, I’m fairly impressed!! Given that it’s running in a VM on a 1.7 Pentium, performance is acceptable – the rest of the box is useless whilst it’s running – but what the hell!!

Installing the Virtual PC add-Ons makes a big difference – the graphics are much improved, and performance seems a touch better as well. I suspect that I might have to load it on my 3.4 P4 at home as well – see if that makes things a little happier!!

All in all, not a bad start to the day!