July 2007 Archives

You've almost certainly heard by now about a set of Vista hotfixes currently being circulated in pre-release form that address a great many issues people have brought up before: slow copying of large numbers of files (which bit me a couple of times), better sleep / hibernation support, and so on.  They're alleged to be either public hotfixes or the first precursors to the long-rumored Vista SP1.  (There was never any suspense about whether or not we'd get an SP1 for Vista -- it was just a matter of how soon.)

But would I install the pre-release versions of these hotfixes?  In a word, no -- not least of all because of the simple fact that they're a) beta-only and b) only originally intended to be downloaded and tried out by selected folks.  I have no delusions that they'll spread far and wide, and that there's no practical way to keep such a genie in its bottle -- but I'm also not about to gamble with my system stability as it is.  For the most part things work very well.  When the pieces are final, then I'll make a full backup and apply them -- and by that time, Microsoft should have gathered enough feedback from their beta testers to close any lingering "millionth-mile" issues.

Or maybe I could snag them and try them out on my guinea-pig machine ... hm ...

The tech blogs have been exploding with news about Microsoft filing a patent for what appears to be some kind of ad framework that's embedded deeply in an operating system.  As Ars Technica put it, "Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your hard drive to show you advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware."

So what's really going on here?  Two theories come to mind:

1. A free albeit ad-supported version of Windows, or
2. A pre-emptive patent to keep someone else -- including adware makers -- from doing the same thing.

I'm leaning slightly towards the first of the two theories, although I suspect an ad-supported Windows would be something that MS would bundle with cheap hardware as part of a strategic partnership, and not just give away.  Of course, if they did just give it away, that wouldn't be bad -- but it would kind of miss the point as to why people choose a free OS over Windows.  (Speaking for myself, I'm happiest with Windows right now, but I've learned anything is possible given enough time.)

This is one of those utilities that deserves mention here simply because I can't fit it anywhere else: VoluMouse.  Hotkey + mouse wheel = instant volume control.  The program also gives you a lot of flexibility over which hotkeys do what; even a guy like me (with a shiny multimedia keyboard!) can benefit from something like this.  Enjoy.

In my last post about the Task Scheduler and System Restore in Vista, I speculated a bit about changing the scheduling for System Restore as a way to reduce the amount of disk-bashing that takes place when I fire up my notebook.

Here's how I theorized it: Most of the time, I only use my notebook for a few minutes a day -- for instance, to write a blog post somewhere before going to sleep.  This means that almost every time I fire up the computer, the Task Scheduler activates a belated task to create a System Restore point, and I see a lot of disk activity.  Since I don't use the machine that often and keep any data on it backed up elsewhere, having System Restore run nightly isn't as important.  I don't want to turn System Restore off completely, just have it run less frequently.

To that end, I edited the schedule for System Restore to run once a week -- on Monday night -- and the end result is far less disk-bashing whenever I sit down with it at night.  Here's how to do it.

1. Open the Task Scheduler (UAC), and navigate in the left-hand pane to Task Scheduler Library | Microsoft | Windows | SystemRestore.

2. Double-click the task named SR to bring up its properties, and select the Triggers tab.

(Note: The disabled "On workstation unlock" task was one of the triggers I experimented with to see how well it worked.  You won't see such a thing in your own Vista install.)

3. Edit the Daily trigger.  I set it to run Weekly, on Monday, at 12:30 AM.

Obviously you can use any schedule you think is fitting of your computer's usage patterns.

4. Click OK to close all the dialog boxes.

I rebooted after this just to be safe (and to create a Restore Point anyway).  Obviously I don't recommend this for systems that are used a lot more regularly than my notebook -- I left my desktop system as-is, for instance -- but with a little judiciousness you can fine-tune the behavior to suit your usage habits.

Microsoft finally issued some word about the status of the missing (?) Windows Ultimate Extras.

We want to let our Windows Vista Ultimate customers know that we are actively working to deliver the remaining Extras that we identified in January.  Our goal is to provide the highest-quality, most secure and reliable offerings, and as a result we are continuing our work on these offerings.  We apologize for taking so long to provide a status update to customers. ... In addition to Windows DreamScene and the remaining Language Packs, we plan to ship a collection of additional Windows Ultimate Extras over the next couple years that we are confident will delight our passionate Windows Vista Ultimate customers.

"Over the next couple years" ... That about squares with what I suspected the Ultimate Extras would be: at best, a blank space to be filled in later, and at worst, a hedge they could use as a promise of future functionality that can remain undefined.  If something comes along that's worth the price, great -- but if it comes along by the time the next version of Windows is already on the way, I'm going to feel a tad cheated.