Patchou's Cabana

There are some things in this world that you can always count on to be true: summer comes after spring, rain after the sun, and people request intermediate versions of Messenger Plus! as soon as a beta version of a new Messenger is available. Invariably, negative answers trigger “but whhhhhhhy?!” comments, everybody gets used to the idea, Messenger Plus! gets updated along with the final release of Messenger and life goes on.

Today, something happened that will help shed some light on my no-beta-support policy. As some of you already know, Microsoft recently released a beta version of Windows Live Messenger “Wave 4″. This updated version of Messenger includes new social features, options like tabbed chats, noticebly larger advertisements, etc… Microsoft also modified their setup program, that same setup I downloaded this morning and ran on my computer.

After a quick installation, I was invited to restart my computer, which I did, promptly. This is where things started to get interesting to say the least. After the reboot, I was greeted by brand new error messages I had never seen before in Windows, one in particular saying that my profile, now located in “system32\config\systemprofile”, was not available. Basically, my whole user profile was gone, my desktop empty, the taskbar displayed default blank icons for my old shortcuts and none of my programs remembered who I was. Messenger’s new signin screen was nagging me, coming back after I closed it, and many of the things I tried to do in Windows while trying to figure out what happened displayed error messages. In user terms, my computer was completely “broken”.

After searching a bit about this issue on the web, the only thing I was able to find was posts confirming that this kind of error occurs when a user profile has been badly corrupted in the system and that, in such cases, there’s generally nothing to do but create a brand new profile. For all the tech geeks reading this, yes, I checked the user profile keys in the registry, I tried to clear up the default system profile, etc… I also don’t have anything out of the ordinary running on my station, no shell replacement software, no theming program, no nothing: just Windows 7, Office 2010, Visual Studio and a couple of work tools. I don’t even play games on that system.

Out of despair, I tried System Restore and I have to say it performed admirably. It finally reverted all the changes that the new Windows Live setup had done to my system and restored my user profile to a functionning state. I’ll definitively have to remember to rely more on this feature in the future. In any case, as I refused to admit defeat, I prepped my computer for another try. I erased all the files and settings of my existing version of Messenger (the current public release), did a clean reboot, re-downloaded the setup of the beta version and tried again. Guess what: after the restart, the same error occured, my profile was corrupted again and my computer was back to stone age.

Now, I hope you understand why supporting a beta may not be a good idea. As for Microsoft’s work on this new Messenger, I can say I’m not impressed, at all. I’ve never seen a program cause so many issues on my system and I certainely don’t expect that from an instant-messaging application. Beta or not, I assume that when Microsoft releases something to the public, it’s not going to cause mayhem. I don’t know what that new Messenger is trying to do on our systems but in my view, it’s wrong and uncalled for. Here’s a recommendation for everybody who’s reading this post is: stay away from Messenger beta versions, I certainely will.

Up to recently, I was neutral as far as Apple was concerned. I’ve always been a Windows user, some Apple fanboys always irritated me (Windows fanboys are the same though), but I had nothing against the company itself. Since the success with the iPhone, things have changed.

In the last 2 days alone, I read the following two articles about Apple and how they treat their developers and users. To sum it up: you can’t choose the technology you’ll work with, you can’t choose the features you’ll add and now, you can’t even choose the tools you’ll use for your development. Next time you hear about Microsoft or another software company being sued in Europe, think about them. As for me, I’ll continue to create software with a company who respects and takes care of its developers.

http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-rejects-app-for-using-pinch-to-expand-gesture

http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-bans-adobe039s-flash-to-iphone-compiler-plus-related-applications

It’s nice to have a blog. You can talk about as many things as you want and you don’t even need to navigate through FarmVille messages and weight loss advertisements.

Today, I feel like talking about technology. While selecting the hardware for an office my company is opening in Montreal, I came across an interesting issue regarding motherboard. The P7Q57-M DO is a nice product, from ASUS. It features one of the latest chipsets from Intel (the Q57 Express), lots of cool Intel technologies for businesses, the latest CPUs, etc… go ahead, check-out the links. Heck, it’s even “ready for Windows7″! incredible stuff I tell you.

If you check the picture of the motherboard, you’ll notice it has a bunch of graphic ports: a VGA port, a DVI port and even an HDMI port. Asus’ web site mentions the max resolution for each one, bpp and even frequency. All that for 135$ CAD at Newegg, pretty good deal right? well, maybe, but there’s a catch: if you use one of those cool Core i7 processors Intel has been distributing recently, those graphic ports serve no purpose. The fact is, the new H55/57 line of chipsets from Intel needs a graphic unit embedded in the main CPU to output video. Unfortunately, this tiny detail seems to be mentioned nowhere on Intel’s Q57 chipset page or on Asus’ web site. I bought two of those cards and I can tell you this information is nowhere to be found in the manual either.

Surprisingly, there seems to be no review of this motherboard on hardware specialized web sites, and this is why I felt I had to write this post. I hope it will prevent some of you to make the same mistake I did when I bought those motherboards. If you buy one and plan on using the integrated graphic ports, checkout this support page on Intel’s web site to see which CPU will give you video. As for me, I’ll stick to an i7 and I’ll just combine it with an ATI 5450 (50$, twice as powerful as Intel’s integrated solution and it does not even require a fan). The end result is nice, I just wish Intel and especially Asus had done their homework when publishing their specs and manual.

I’m seeing lots of posts these days about “evil Microsoft” being “greedy” and “forcing” people to buy full licenses instead of upgrades. These words are used about every time Microsoft releases something new and I’m still waiting for Microsoft employees to come at my door and put a gun on my head while shouting “sign this form and install Windows! NOW!!”.

This time, it’s all coming from a post from Eric Ligman on MSDN. Unfortunately, it seems that many people just misunderstood what the article is saying. I’m quoting: “technically possible does not always mean legal”. In his post, Eric does not point a finger at all the people who’re tricking the setup of Windows 7 to install onto a freshly formatted hard drive. His post talks about licenses, and licenses only: if you buy an upgrade license of Windows 7, for it to be valid, you need to own fully valid license of Windows XP or Windows Vista. That’s it, end of the discussion, that’s why upgrades are priced differently from full products. He does NOT imply that using the installation hack breaks your license to use Windows as it does not.

The problem at hand is that people always mix technical things and legality issues. This case is similar to when people were saying that you could change a couple of registry keys in Windows 2000 to make it work like the Server Edition. That was technically possible, but legally, you did not ended-up with a Windows Server license so people using this trick were probably be better off just pirating the real CD of Windows Server in the first place. Eric’s post is directed toward all the general users who may be in search for a bargain for their Windows 7 shopping. Some people would find this way to hack the installation, would not understand the possible legal requirements (= owning a license of XP or Vista) and would happily buy an upgrade of something they don’t have. Those people would not be thinking they are pirating anything and these are the same people who could complain later on if WGA bugs them about the issue (it won’t happen in this case but you see the point).

If I buy myself a GPS and set of brand new tires, I won’t expect Audi to give me a car to go with them, even if that GPS and those tires are designed specifically for Audi cars. The same logic applies to software and software upgrades. In the end, it’s just a matter of paying for what you’re using. I agree Microsoft probably made a bad decision in preventing people from doing fresh installs like they could before, I also find that annoying, but this is not an excuse for pirating it. If you own an XP or a Vista license, you’re free to install Windows 7 anyway you like, really, I don’ t see why Microsoft would mind. And to those claiming Microsoft is ripping them off, I have a solution for you.