Keep in mind this is just one of many different theories I have on the subject, but this is based on a good deal of observation.

I started using Vista in November of 2006 when it was released to industry. I downloaded it and installed it on my desktop at work almost immediately. Why? Because I’m a technologist. I love technology and it is my job to learn and explore everything that I can. I think that most computer geeks did the same thing, however there was a big difference between my PC and theirs. See, my desktop at work has a Quad core processor, 4GB of RAM, a Quadro FX4600 video card, and a pair of 10K RPM SAS disks in RAID 0. Yes, all that and I’m getting it refreshed to something better in a few months. I would guess that the average geek’s first experience was installing it on their “test” PC – that PC sitting in the corner that isn’t their primary desktop or their gaming rig. That machine probably had a single core processor and a GB of RAM or so along with older, slower video and hard drive. Another possibility is that they installed it on their gaming rig and had to re-install windows XP when they found out that a driver didn’t exist for one of their components or that it negatively impacted their framerate, even if unnoticable to the human eye. Yet another possibility is that they first saw it from mom/dad/friend’s PC that they just bought for $499 from Wal-Mart. Yeah, same problem there. You can probably see where this is going. A bad first impression is very difficult to overcome. My first impression was excellent, and I’ve been able to help many people since then bring their computers up to speed in order to run Vista adequately.

Non-geeks know who to talk to for PC advice and the news was out about Vista and negative buzz around its launch. So the non-geek comes up and asks, “What do you think about Vista?” To which the geek immediately goes into a lengthy tirade about how buggy (cause they don’t have drivers) and slow (cause they don’t have adequate hardware) it is, but they leave off the part about how they didn’t test it right. Then they go into the DRM and activation problems. Yes, Vista does have a much worse license agreement than XP, I will concede that point. After the non-geek friend talks to a few people about this, peer pressure starts to take over. Geeks who haven’t even looked at it themselves start talking negatively about it. The sheeple (sheep people) geeks perpetuate the negative sentiment and then it is difficult to pick out the individuals who have a truly realistic view about the operating system.

A friend at work came to me a few months ago to ask my opinion about Vista. When I didn’t follow the sheep and started giving a balanced opinion he was very surprised that I had some good things to say about it. See, all he had heard up until that point was the negative. We have been hiring IT people pretty regularly this year and each one that comes in I ask their opinion on Vista. It gives me a good idea about their qualities as a person, employee, and most importantly as a geek/technologist. Unfortunately most have just given me the negative buzz on it and leave out anything positive. That tells me that either they have never tried it for themselves and are sheep, or if they have it was either with a bias or with one of the problems described above and they aren’t true geeks/technologists. Unfortunately I do not make decisions on hiring, but even if I did it’s really difficult to find good IT people and I probably would have made the same decisions anyway.

Windows XP had much of the same resistance early on with people vowing to never move away from their Windows 98 boxes. It was able to overcome this because of the huge amount of positive differences between 98 and XP. There is less of an obvious list of differences between 98 and XP. Now there was an operating system inbetween 98 and XP. Windows ME or Millenium Edition is largely forgotten due to many reasons, but most notably because it was not a significant upgrade to 98. The biggest changes were interface changes, and those just mainly added bloat to a very similar underlying kernel. There were serious deficiencies in 98′s security and XP satisfied those. No one has really had a problem with Windows XP though this time around.

So why did Vista fail? It is a combination of XP still meeting people’s needs and Sheeks (sheep geeks? – I like that one).

I have been testing Google’s new Chrome browser, and there are many things that I like about it. If you haven’t heard about it by now, you should have. They made a cute little cartoon to describe the differences in their browser and why they feel it is necessary to have yet another browser. My summary of the positive points are as follows in order of importance.

1. Tab isolation. Independent processes for each tab means is that each tab runs isolated from every other tab. It has happened to me too many times where I’ll be writing a blog post and doing things in other tabs and suddenly the browser locks up. The vast majority of the time it is Adobe that does it, but that’s beside the point. Fortunately WordPress and many web based email clients now automatically save drafts periodically to prevent a total loss when this happens. Still, this is a big advantage for a web browser.
2. Speed. This is especially apparent on Google’s websites, but I did notice speed improvements elsewhere. Part of this is due to the independent processes since one tab won’t block another one. Part of it is due to Google’s Javascript engine V8.
3. Sanity. The autocomplete feature. You have to see it in action to believe how much better it is than what you are used to.
4. The pop-up blocker is not over-protective, yet still blocks popups from view until you want to see them. Some websites still require popups in order to function properly.
5. The interface is natural and extremely flexible. You’ll find yourself moving tabs and windows around like never before. It almost feels like you are in a sci-fi movie manipulating a futuristic computer screen. This is another one where you won’t realize how useful it is until you actually try it.

Now for the summary of negative points in order for me.

1. Bugs. Ok, well maybe I should say bug because I have one that really annoys me. I have a Synaptics touchpad on my laptop and I use the right side as a scrolling area. This action works everywhere except on Chrome. It will scroll down, but will not scroll back up. Until that is fixed the browser is a little annoying to use.
2. Plugins. One of the reasons my Firefox browser is slower than Chrome is because of all the plugins I’ve added into it. There is a reason why I haven’t uninstalled them to make Firefox go faster, and that is because I like them. So it makes Chrome go backwards a little to lose this functionality. Some of my favorite plugins will probably never be supported or ported to Chrome – unless it becomes at least as popular as Firefox.
3. Security. It is a new product and crackers haven’t had a chance yet to do much in the way of independent vulnerability testing. There are sure to be some flaws that can be exploited, and it remains to be seen how responsive Google will be to fixing those and/or alerting the public. I haven’t used it yet for my bank site. I will give it a bit longer for that.
4. Memory requirement. Not so much of an issue for me because I have a good amount of memory on my computers, but it is a concern. When each tab is a separate process that can add up to extra memory requirements. I see this more of an issue on slower/older computers or UMPCs where memory is usually smaller.
5. Compatibility. I haven’t found a site that didn’t look good enough to use yet, however the fact that they emphasized this problem in their cartoon makes me worry that something won’t show up right. Still, they do more testing internally than anyone else except Microsoft is doing. Everyone else relies on the community to test for them.

Some of those negative points were a stretch. You’ll have to check it out for yourself!

UPDATE 11/08/2008: Google updated Chrome to fix the scrolling bug with the Synaptics Touchpad!

I took a look at Microsoft’s new ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld. Below is the advertisement, and if you haven’t seen it you might want to take a look before reading the rest of this.

Do you get it? I’m not sure I totally did, but I’m not sure that’s the point. What I found refreshing about this was that it didn’t talk about Apple in a negative way and it didn’t say anything as bold as the Mojave Experiment to challenge public opinion. What it did was, possibly, humanize Bill Gates. I mean here’s the richest guy in the world trying on a shoe. Do you think he has his shoes specially tailored for him? Did you? Yeah, he probably doesn’t. He has never been one to live large in spite of often being the richest person in the world.

I’m looking forward to the next advertisement in this series. I’d still buy a Mac if they weren’t at such a premium to a PC. A good advertisement is nice to see because so many advertisements just turn up the volume and say nothing interesting over and over again hundreds of times a day. Just the kind of thing to make TiVo and other DVRs more popular. This is the kind of advertisement that you might stop the fast forward to see.

If that’s what they were trying to accomplish then it worked.

Here is what I do for backups.

JungleDisk

JungleDisk is first because of its low cost and extreme versatility. Purchase the full version for $20 and use it on as many computers as you like. I have my same license running on at least 7 computers, Windows and Linux. This gives you a drive location that you can share between computers, and even archive information to. For my desktop and laptop I have a number of programs that use this as primary storage. I store software that I pay for online. I store my photos in it. I store a little bit of music in it.

JungleDisk uses Amazon’s S3 service to store information. This means that all your information is backed by a large corporation across multiple data centers. Businesses use S3 as their means of livelihood, for example Smugmug. I’ve never had a problem with availability. The JungleDisk client that runs on the desktop or server encrypts all your data before sending it to S3. You should choose to create your own key, print it out and save it in a safe place or two along with your JungleDisk registration information. This will ensure that in the event of a disaster that you can recover your data.

My Linux server used to back up every day automatically through JungleDisk to S3. I had a series of scripts that dump MySQL data, and rsync the web structure. I can browse these from my laptop at home to ensure backups are being kept. I also archive old log files. Unfortunately I decided to move to the next version of Jungledisk and it wasn’t compatible with the old Linux client. I have to jump through a lot of hoops to get my headless server to run Jungledisk, so I’m using SCP to home in the mean time.

Mozy

I use Mozy on my primary computer, which happens to be a laptop. The advantage over JungleDisk isn’t great, except that the cost is fixed at $4.95/month. My current backup size is 15.3GB, but I am expanding the selection of files that it is saving, so eventually it will have my entire non-installed base of files that I would like to recover. Mozy’s backup engine seems to be a little more robust and hands-off. Again, I created my own encryption key and saved it in a safe place – JungleDisk, and hard copy.