Ballmer: Microsoft lost “thousands of man hours of innovation” on Vista

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft admits that Microsoft lost “thousands of man hours of innovation” on Windows Vista.

Read more about it on this ZDNet Blog:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/ballmer-microsoft-lost-thousands-of-man-hours-of-innovation-on-vista/8361

Bye, Bye IE – We Hardly Knew Ye

Okay, I”m overstating things a bit.

The Conceivably Tech site reports that:

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dropped to a historic market share low in April, according to Net Applications. The company estimated IE’s market share at 59.95% in April, which is about the range that was reached by Internet Explorer 4 more than 11 years ago in early 1999. The big winner was once again Google’s Chrome browser, which maintained a double-digit growth rate and is now more than 2 points ahead of Apple’s Safari browser, which it surpassed four months ago.

Of course, any market share report is open to all sorts of interpretation. IE’s going to be around for a long time. But Firefox is slowing, best I can tell, and Chrome seems to be the horse to beat.

If it’s any indication, my next Windows book will feature both Firefox and Chrome. (The current ones give a nod to IE, but focus on Da Fox.)

300,000,000 copies of Windows 7 sold by the end of the year?

It could happen. With 90,000,000 sold through the end of January, it might actually be fairly easy to hit the 300 million mark.

Microsoft announced that as their sales goal. Softpedia has the details.

What’s really happening with Windows 7’s new Windows Activation Technologies

Ed Bott has put the new Windows 7 Activation Technology patch, KB 971033, through the paces, and found it to be pretty much as advertised. If you were looking for a re-run of the old Windows Genuine Advantage/Spyware debacle, you won’t find it here. Ed says:

I installed the KB971033 update on multiple systems using both the downloaded version and the one delivered through Windows Update. I also uninstalled the update and observed what happened.

From a technical standpoint, I was able to confirm that the WAT update does what Microsoft says it does. I was not able to read the contents of the signed, encrypted packets going across the wire, but I did locate the stored information in the registry and compared it to Microsoft’s published privacy policy.

Ed’s ZDNet post reads a lot like something from the Windows Engineering blog – which is both a compliment and an, uh, observation. It’s clear to me that MS will be thrilled by Ed’s results, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if MS helped with the research. That said, I can’t find any fault with what he’s done: thorough, accurate, and surprisingly supportive of Microsoft.

Read it yourself and tell me if you disagree…

Windows 7 mysteriously re-boots every two hours

If your copy of Win7 is mysteriously re-booting itself every two hours, and none of your changes are saved in the process, chances are very good that you’re running the Release Candidate.

It’s time to get real. Er, get the real version of Win7.

Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article 971767 has the details, but the bottom line is that two-hour re-boots start today, and on June 1, you’ll start booting to a black Windows wallpaper. It ain’t the end of the world, but if you haven’t saved your changes, the result could be, uh, startling.

European IE ballot screen final

Microsoft posted a final screen shot and description of the Internet Explorer “ballot screen” that will roll out across Europe shortly.

I think the most telling detail is this: the technical explanation appears on Microsoft’s Legal blog, “Microsoft On the Issues.”

The browser choice screen software update will be offered as an automatic download through Windows Update for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7… [it] will present you with a list of leading browsers. In keeping with our agreement with the European Commission, this list is presented in random order. You can also scroll to the right to see additional browsers, which are also presented in random order.

I don’t see anything unexpected. Apparently Windows Update determines your location based on your IP address – so if you travel to Europe, but don’t live there, you may see this screen anyway.

Windows Genuine Advantage lawsuit fizzles out

Gregg Keizer at Computerworld reports that the lawsuit filed in the wake of Windows Genuine Advantage phone home discoveries has been dismissed.

Multiple lawsuits filed in July 2006 claimed that Microsoft mislead users by labeling the WGA software as a security update, and failed to tell customers that WGA collected information from their PCs, then frequently “phoned home” the data to Microsoft’s servers. The plaintiffs later combined their cases and asked the court to grant the joint lawsuit as a class-action.

Last month, the judge denied class action status. Last week the whole thing just fizzled out.

Oh well.

Windows 7 Battery issue – it ain’t the message, it’s the medium

I figured this was a non-event. Shows you what I know.

By now, no doubt, you’ve heard about the Windows 7 warning message “Consider replacing your battery. There is a problem with your battery, so your computer might shut down suddenly.” It’s a new message that didn’t exist in Vista, one that’s causing many people much angst. If you have a laptop running WinXP or Vista, and your battery’s been behaving properly, then you install Win7, and you suddenly get battery warning messages, you’re bound to think that Win7 has gone a bit bonkers.

I first saw the report on Ars Technica, which said that Microsoft was looking into the problem. I haven’t heard much about it – none of you have written to be about it – and figured it was another tempest in a teapot.

Kinda boring, actually.

Suddenly it isn’t boring any more. Why? Because Steve Sinofsky – the head Windows guy – posted a response to the allegations on the Windows 7 Engineering blog. That’s interesting.

This is very interesting: it’s the first post on the Win7 Engineering blog since August 10 – six months ago, long before Windows 7 shipped.

Is it possible that MS is going to use the E7 blog to keep up an ongoing dialog with its customer base?

If so, this is a great, new way to interact with us, keep us advised on the happenings inside the Windows team, in an official, reliable way. The E7 blog helped many of us understand the inner workings of Win7 during the development cycle. Maybe it’ll help while Win7’s out in the real world, too.

I hope it’s just the first post of many.