bruceb news

I set up a new Dell Inspiron 518 desktop computer today – a nice home computer, a lovely case bristling with USB ports and shiny black plastic that will attract dust like nobody’s business, fast and well-equipped, shipped with the correct configuration and working out of the box, as usual with Dell.

Dell ships computers with less preinstalled software than most other manufacturers, even from the Home & Home Office division, so setup is easy. There were a handful of third party apps to take off – Google’s cluttered “Google Desktop” widget/search program and the rarely used Google Toolbar, one or two others. […] continued

T-Mobile introduced the first cell phone based on Google’s Android operating system to much fanfare a few days ago. Although Android has some interesting features and much promise, I don’t expect to see anyone holding the T-Mobile G1 in Sonoma County for a while, since T-Mobile is a fringe player with limited coverage up here (and certainly no connection anywhere nearby to its high speed 3G data network).

Android is a work in progress; comparisons to the iPhone are inevitable and at the moment Android comes up a bit short, but it’s early to make any decisions. In this first iteration, Android is tied in very closely to Google’s online mail, calendar and contact services, which are fully integrated and reportedly work smoothly. […] continued

Since the market for living room computers never developed, Microsoft decided to focus on “extenders,” a different way to deliver media to your television.

Huge numbers of people already have a computer in the house running Windows Vista Home Premium, holding photos and music. An “extender” is a small box for the living room that connects to the computer over a wireless or wired connection to display the photos on the television and play music on the living room speakers. If the computer is set up for it, the extender can also handle all the TV programming and record TV shows like a Tivo. […] continued

Apple reacted quickly to the reports that the latest iTunes update has caused some Windows systems to crash badly. Last night Apple posted another version of iTunes that rolls back the offending hardware driver to an older version. If your system is blue screening, all you have to do is uninstall iTunes, uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support, and then reinstall iTunes from last night’s release.

That’s absurd, of course. As one person commented:

“A kernel level device driver (like the USB driver that Apple installs rather than using the one built in to the OS) will always have the ability to take down the OS.

[…] continued

New slogan for Apple: iTunes ain’t done till Windows won’t run!

After its iPod conference this week – more of a non-event than usual for Apple – a new version of iTunes started to roll out to Windows users. For some people, it’s causing crashes and even causing blue screens after it installs broken drivers without any disclosure or warning.

The problems don’t affect everybody – like so many computer problems, these are likely to be caused by unfortunate conflicts with other programs if they’re installed on the same computer. It’s still being investigated but one writer suggests that any of these factors might cause the iTunes upgrade to crash the computer:

• Roxio disc burning software
• An HP USB printer
• Logitech software/hardware

This writer thoroughly investigated the 80Mb (!) download delivered by the iTunes installer and discovered that it was installing two hardware drivers, including one that has a long history of causing blue screens (fatal crashes) on Windows systems. […] continued

The new iPhone will be available next week, including support for Microsoft Exchange and Windows Mobile/ActiveSync. That means businesspeople in companies run by Small Business Server 2003 should be able to connect to their Outlook email, calendar and contacts over the air, continuously updating both directions. Well, we’ll see – time will tell whether there are glitches or unexpected shortcomings. (I’ve seen one early unconfirmed report that using Exchange over the air sucks the battery dry in short order.)

David Pogue’s column in the New York Times today mentions one thing that I had misunderstood. Apparently the iPhone 2.0 software will also be rolled out to current iPhone owners, enabling them to do exactly the same things. […] continued

[Originally posted October 30, 2007]

I wish we could count on the software and hardware vendors to play fair and treat us well, but it’s not happening. We have to take responsibility for our computers.

When Windows XP and Vista are installed on freshly formatted hard drives, they are secure, rock-solid, and fast. Both operating systems are loaded with features. Vista has a mail program, an address book, a calendar, voice recognition, rich support for multimedia, built-in CD/DVD burning, several backup options (including automatic retention of previous versions of files), and much more.

Mac OS 10.5 offers a virtually identical list of features and a similar secure, stable, fast environment. […] continued

Quicktime has been an annoying bit of software for ten years now. My experience tonight was the final straw. I’ve spent the better part of an hour cleaning it off my system and I don’t intend to let it back. What is it with Apple? Every time I feel like giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, swayed by all the hype, I have an experience where I’m reminded that Apple writes crappy, invasive software.

Quicktime has been around forever, a bit of free software that will play online videos in certain formats. In the last few years YouTube and the other big video sites began using Flash for movies, so Apple shifted its focus to new high definition video formats. […] continued

The market for notebook computers is growing fast. Notebooks already outsell desktop computers in the US and will outsell desktops globally by next year, according to the New York Times. Here’s a report released yesterday comparing global notebook shipments in the first quarters of 2007 and 2008, showing HP and Dell with hugely increased sales and more than a third of the market between them.

You probably have some vague idea that Apple owns the notebook market, right? It’s part of the reality distortion field that Apple has used so brilliantly over the years. (Random example: an article from last fall about the “major shift in notebook buying patterns” and “ominous news for Dell.”) Apple has been selling a lot of notebooks and its market share is definitely increasing, particularly in the US, but don’t get all carried away about it. […] continued

The upgraded iPhone has a tremendous list of features! I’m looking forward to the integration with Exchange Server, which ought to let my clients with Small Business Server have a live, over-the-air connection to their contacts, calendar, and inbox. I’ll write more about the new iPhone after I have some experience with it.

There are two things worth noting that may get lost in the excitement next month.

• It’s not really any cheaper. The sales price is cut in half – welcome news indeed! But it’s not really a discount. Instead, AT&T is subsidizing the sale price and making it back by increasing the monthly fee by $10 for the data plan.

[…] continued