Windows Live writer

I was able to get Windows Live Writer working tonight. I followed the directions at that page for those having problems getting the program to install. Only took a few minutes to remedy the problem after which Live Writer installed without a hitch.

This is the first post I’ve written using Live Writer and I’m already very impressed. This program has the most logical, easy to understand setup of any of the blog editors I’ve tried. I also like how it pulls the template from my theme so I can see what my post will look like in real time.

It’s fantastic to see Microsoft put out such a quality program while even in beta. It’s even better to see them support competing platforms such as WordPress. I can see myself spending more of my time in Live Writer than I do in Word.

One more thing that impressed me was that I woke up this morning after posting about my installation problems and saw a reply by a member of the Live Writer team who apologized for the problem and helped explain the error in more detail. That led me back to the site in search of a solution.

I’m blown away at how easy it makes handling images. I just dragged an image into this area, resized it in seconds, wrapped the text and added a custom border. All in about 30 seconds. That would normally take me several minutes to do in standard WordPress editor.

If first impressions are any indication, Microsoft has a winner on its hands in Live Writer. I’m glad my friend told me about it.

Ed Bott says Vista is Windows 95 + 12 years

I won’t hide the fact that I’m down on Vista. I had high hopes for the latest OS from Microsoft, and given the massive Microsoft hype-machine, I figured it would be a substantial improvement over Windows XP.

It didn’t take long to realize I was dead wrong. I’ve written about my problems with Vista here, and here and here. Several friends swear that Vista runs fine for them and that might be the case but my experience with it has been atrocious.

Ed Bott from ZDNet says that Vista is following down a very similar path traveled by Windows 95. In short, both products saw massive hype, followed by long beta programs, then incompatibility issues, followed by service packs that eventually made for a decent OS when Windows 98 came around. It took three years to get it right.

I tend to agree with Ed. But my expectations have changed drastically since Windows 95 arrived. I’m no longer willing to put up with constant driver problems, heavy handed DRM, degraded performance, and software compatibility problems. Since Windows XP works well for now I’ll stick with it until ~~Windows 2010~~, Vista is stabilized.

Zune Theme

For those of you who have decided to stick with Windows XP, but want a different look give the Zune Theme a try. It’s a little darker but not so dark. Unlike some of the other themes I’ve tried this one is very polished and doesn’t include any annoying bugs. I replace the default desktop it comes with but leave everything else as is.

I installed it about five months ago and really like it. It was created by Microsoft so it’s easy to install and doesn’t require any third party software.

You can download it directly from Microsoft here.

Windows Vista not so ultimate

Always a glutton for punishment, Chris Pirillo continues to run Windows Vista. Chris has probably figured out by now that running Vista means dealing with wacky errors, strange behaviors and hardware that refuses to run under Vista. Just this week my boss brought in a CD-R full of pictures that I was able to view on my XP machine but wasn’t visible under Vista. This makes no sense to most people, but is just a way of life for those Vista early adopters.

I don’t hate Windows Vista anymore. It’s just a faint memory now because Windows XP works great 99% of the time. If XP is working well for you, there’s absolutely no reason to upgrade to Vista at any price. Having said that, if you buy a new machine and it comes with Vista, you might enjoy it. Vista includes some nice eye candy and feels polished when the underlying hardware is full supported. But it certainly will not run any faster than XP and may run significantly slower if driver issues exist.

Maybe when Microsoft ships SP1 I’ll decide to try Vista again. But I got burned so badly, I may never upgrade when XP continues to run without a hitch.

Here come the fake blogs

I guess if Steve Jobs gets his own fake blog so should Steve Balmer.

I doubt the Steves give much thought to these blogs and likely dismiss them as childish. What’s interesting to think about is that these two fake blogs have value to some degree because neither of these guys have an actual blog. I’m not surprised that Jobs doesn’t have a blog since Apple doesn’t encourage blogging to the degree that Microsoft does.

The best way to combat a fake blog is with a real blog. If either of these guys started a blog, I doubt many people would be interested in the fake ones. But until that happens, the fakes will fill the void.

Who else should get their own fake blog? I’d like to see a fake Ray Ozzie blog even though he has a blog, but it’s seldom updated.

DirectX Creator: Vista broken for gaming

I guess I’m not the only person who has run into problems with Windows Vista. I was reading the latest CPU Magazine, specifically a column titled, Vista Bombs, by one of the founding creators of DirectX technology when he worked as a Microsoft employee. He’s now the CEO of Wild Tangent.

Here is the first paragraph to the article and he only gets more blunt:

Well, I hate to say I told you so, but after five years in development and 50 million lines of code, Vista arrived to deafening accolades of silence. Before Vista launched, I wrote several columns warning CPU readers that the early beta versions looked critically flawed, insecure, bloated, and broken for gaming. What I heard from many readers and Microsoft was, “Oh that’s just the beta, it will all be fixed before the launch.” The best thing about Vista having launched is that I’m no longer the only one saying these things. Vista is out there for everyone to judge and is shaping up to be a bigger, more expensive failure for Microsoft than Windows Me.