Given up on Vista

So after a couple of months using Vista on my new laptop, I've given up and gone back to XP. The last straw was when Vista wouldn't recognise my new digital camera, even though it's just a standard USB disk device. After an hour or so of futile poking around in device manager, I finally did a google search and someone recommended telling Vista to look in c:\windows\system32 for the drivers it needs. Incredibly that worked, but by that time I was so furious I made up my mind to reinstall XP the next night.

It's *so* good to be back on XP. Everything is faster, my disk isn't constantly churning, my sound works properly (no stuttering), I can login using my fingerprint reader again, and Windows Explorer works properly. The only things I miss are the sidebar (solved by installing desktop sidebar), and the search in the start menu (which I can easily live without).

Don't get me wrong, Vista is not terrible. It's just that for me on this particular laptop, the pain outweighs the gain. Maybe I'll try it again in a year or two, when we've had a couple of service packs and the drivers are all sorted out.

First impressions of Zune

Got a free Microsoft Zune as part of a promotion related to my website, so I thought I'd post some thoughts.

Overall I have to say it's a big disappointment. First of all, you can't use it as an external drive, so you can't store abitrary data on it. There is a hacky workaround circulating on the net, but it's very kludgy. This limitation alone means I'd never recommend anyone buy one.

The second problem is the PC software (to sync your media with the Zune). The interface is truly awful. I found myself having to consult the help to work out how to do the most basic things. And the help isn't much good either. Explaining this interface to a non-technical relative doesn't bear thinking about. So think twice before buying one as a gift for someone.

I haven't bothered signing up for the online marketplace stuff, so I can't comment on that. But I read bad things about it, so I'm not really tempted to try.

As far the hardware goes, the screen is excellent - big and bright and very usable for looking at photos or even video. The controls are reasonably intuitive. The earphones are mediocre - not close to the quality of my 30 quid Sennheiser PX100 headphones. With decent headphones, the sound quality from the Zune seems fine - similar to my PC.

The software on the Zune itself is ok, but not great - the built-in themes are ugly (subjective, obviously), skipping between songs is slow, and the equalizer only has presets (no direct control over bass and treble). Oddly there seems to be hardly any noticable difference between the preset values - Rock has slightly more bass than Folk, for example, but it's only noticeable at very high volumes.

Add in the fact that there's no AC charger (I'm expected to take my laptop with me when travelling, obviously) and the whole Zune experience leaves a lot to be desired. I really can't see myself using it. Probably end up on ebay. Along with quite a few others, I imagine.

BTW I have no experience with any other similar devices (e.g. IPod), so maybe they all suffer from similar problems. I doubt it, though.

My MSDN bug has disappeared

Logged into the MSDN feedback center today, to see the progress of the ListView bug I reported (see previous blog entry). To my surprise all record of the bug has disappeared. So I used a direct link to the bug, and I got this:


Page is hidden

This feedback is not being displayed because it may identify a possible security vulnerability.

Please re-submit this feedback, and all other security-related issues, at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/alertus.aspx. Please refer to our FAQ for more details.


So apparently the bug is a potential security vulnerability. Actually that makes sense, because it brings the process down. Could easily be due to a buffer overrun or similar issue that could be exploited by a bad guy.

The strange thing is that I've heard nothing from MS on this - not even an automated mail saying that my bug was closed. And the message on the web page isn't too encouraging. Do they really expect me to report the problem again via a different web page, after they've apparently wiped my original bug report?

Perhaps I should just forget about doing the right thing and cash in?