Greetings Citizens of the Realm!

A few days ago the Paladin was tooling around online when his attention came across a rather interesting article that had a few quotes from a Microsoft “bigwig” who was candid enough to speak on the record about how Microsoft had “botched” the release of Windows Vista.

The article appeared on the MaximPC site and is definitely worth your time to read (click here to see the article on Vista).

The article goes into depth about some of the many problems that were encountered when Vista was launched, many of which the Paladin has pointed out as well. From the instability of the operating system (meaning, it crashes a lot), the poor performance (meaning, it is very slow), to the annoying security measures (meaning, having to click on a dialog box to “deny/allow/cancel” for even the most rudimentary of tasks), to the huge hardware footprint (meaning, it requires A LOT of computing power, memory, hard drive space, etc. to run it). And on and on and on…

But the real eye-opener of this article (at least to the Paladin) was the discussion with a high level Product Manager at Microsoft who was willing to speak candidly about Vista and its rather disappointing launch. The Paladin was very glad to read that even inside of Microsoft they understand the depths to which this latest incarnation of an operating system has sunken.

The article goes on to chronicle the strides that Microsoft has made since Vista’s launch to improve the system, including speeding up its performance and reducing the number of system crashes a user is likely to encounter. The Paladin has stayed so far away from Vista (indeed, he uses a TWENTY foot poll instead of the standard ten foot model) that he was not aware that such progress had been made with Vista by its creators.

Even so, the Paladin is still advising his friends and those who ask to avoid Vista if they can. The Paladin feels that Vista may ultimately go the way of Windows ME (for anyone who remembers that failed operating system). Plus, as the article points out, Microsoft’s next operating system (Windows 7) is slated to be released in the not too distant future (of course, given Microsoft’s track record on releasing software, it may be considerably longer than that).

Nowadays it can be rather difficult to get Windows XP preloaded on a new computer. Windows XP is, for the most part, not offered as an operating system choice for new computers at nearly all computer vendors (though there are a few exceptions). Even so, the Paladin feels that it is worth the time of his readers to consider doing the legwork to find such a machine when considering a new purchase.

More on this topic at a later time…

For now, we can all rest in the sure knowledge that the folks at Microsoft are aware Vista’s issues, even if their marketing team is not! (and in all fairness to the MS Marketing team that *is* their job…to put a positive spin on everything and accentuate the positive).

Until our next post!

An off-topic post to be sure, but one that the Paladin just cannot resist!

If you have been following the tech news as of late then you are aware that today was a successful test of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In case that means nothing to you, the LHC is a huge collider built in Europe by many countries at an unfathomable cost in order to study particle physics at a level previously impossible.

The news has been quick to report the cost of this collider in billions of dollars, but scientists contend that they should be able to answer questions about the makeup of our world, possibly even about the “big bang” creation of all that we know, with the data they hope to obtain from this device.

Not to be thought of as only “geeks,” some enterprising scientists (with obviously way too much time on their hands) have produced a rap video commemorating this historic event. We present it here for your entertainment:

In case you missed the news, Google has released a “beta” version (a beta version of software means that the product is not fully complete. The publisher desires to get the software out into wide spread use so they can look at problems that only occur on a large scale, as well as solicit feedback from users) of their new web browser called “Chrome”.

You can find an entertaining comic about Chrome produced by the jolly folks at Google by clicking here.

From Google’s own documentation, they recognize that the usage of the Internet and the World Wide Web has changed a great deal since the first web browser was introduced. As such, they feel it is time to start from scratch and design a browser from the ground up for the kind of tasks that are performed by today’s browser users.

From a programmer’s point of view, this is a great idea. The Paladin feels that programming Internet-based systems is way too complicated due to the fact that the technologies involved are a real “hodge-podge” of different languages and tools that have evolved over time. The Paladin cannot wait to see what Google has come up with.

From a user’s point of view, the Paladin would strongly urge all of his readers to think twice about installing Chrome right away. If you choose to do so, keep in mind that there are no guarantees with Beta software as to what it will or will not be able to do. Be sure to install it on a system that is not critical to your day-to-day computing needs. This is just a bit of a “safety warning.”

Remember: While it is always nice to be a pioneer, far too many of the early American pioneers ended up dead along the way!