Microsoft

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Windows Me, 20 Years Later: Was It Really That Bad?

While Millennium Edition is mostly remembered as a disastrous hell pit: it did try to roll up quite a few odds and ends. That’s probably part of why it was so buggy, and XP had more time.
To be fair the Windows 9x line probably brought their operating system as far forward as it could really go without dropping the relationship to MS-DOS. A compatibility issue of decreasing importance by the time 98 SE reached customers, and more and more software came to expect a 32-bit Windows and modern memory management units.
XP is itself long post it’s throw out date: but was definitely a step in the right direction. Part of me remembers it fondly because it was the first time we really had a computing environment that could play games, and want e limited by outdated hardware. At the same time the shiny of business as usual left me ready for a unix environment long beds XP itself became outdated.
Part of me rather wonders what the modern desktop might look like if Microsoft would of had as much ownership of Xenix as they ended up with NT. At least few of us really need MS-DOS or 286 compatibility today as much as we may want Windows 98 or XP compatibility.
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 Surface Duo postures: Every bend and fold you need to know

For some years, I’ve thought it would probably be awesome sauce if you took two tablets and put them in a book like case side by side, and made some kind of software pipe between them for opening apps and sharing via intents.

Microsoft’s Surface Duo definitely represents something much more complete and natural. And sadly just as expensive, or more. But it’s an actual product you can sell your left nut or right tit for. So there is that 🤣.

I would love to see more devices like this. Both in the Duo’s size that can bridge between a phone and a tablet, and something closer to a tablet than a phone.

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Microsoft’s Edge browser is crashing if you have Google set as default search – There’s a temporary workaround

Considering how much of Edge is Google, and both companies histories, I do find this kind of amusing. Given the isolation it almost makes me wonder if some Googly interface somewhere has changed its response in a funny way, or if a Microsoft change relative to Chromium induces a crashola.
In any case, looks like people using Edge should stop sending their address bar inputs to Google ala Chrome.
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Here’s what Bill Gates said about the internet in a Microsoft internal memo 25 years ago today: It’s a ‘tidal wave’

I find this timing a touch interesting myself. Until circa 1998 our family PC was an old Tandy 1000. But it was Web TV that introduced us to the World Wide Web in around 1995 or 1996. It wasn’t that long before this became known as MSN TV, after already getting strong influences from the new corporate overlords.

Actually, I find it kind of interesting that Microsoft was an ISP for a time. In the era between getting our first Pentium based machine, and eventually going to aDSL, they were actually one of the better dial up options available in our area.

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Microsoft to deploy ElectionGuard voting software for the first time tomorrow

I for one, see two good things about this.

Firstly that it has an open source base. Voting machines are not a problem domain where we should accept proprietary software from a contractor as good enough. Some form of open review and code auditing is a good thing, and obscurity is not security here: unless you’re the one hacking the ballet.

Second is that Microsoft, for all the crap we give them over Windows, is actually competent. They have both the experience and the suffering to be an ideal player. Microsoft as a company is more aware of security woe than most of us. Plus, did you catch the open source part?

I never actually thought I’d hear about something involving computers, and voting, and not find myself rolling my eyes, or cursing at stupidity.

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I’ve never had a very high opinion of Microsoft Outlook as a mail client, beyond the comprehensiveness of its rich text editing widget. Today I was kind of reminded why.

Email came in canceling a meeting. I hit the button to remove it from my Exchange calendar, and as typical the email just disappears upon interaction. Usually to trash or something.

Outlook continued to display a badge showing one unread email, or something. Yet I had no messages, no matter how many times I refreshed or tried to filter by unread. Nada.

Then I switched from my tablet to my laptop, and took a gander at Thunderbird and scratched my head. There was the cancellation message at the top, and it was marked unread. Even after whomping get messages.

Checked outlook and despite being excluded from the unread filter(!), there was same message at the foot of my inbox with the blue circle. Tried to load it and I get a message saying that it doesn’t exist, and lo and behold the problem is solved with one more sync….lol

At some point I need to find a mail client that sucks less than outlook, yet speaks Exchange mail, contacts, and calendaring. Sigh, I do miss Aqua Mail for Android: it was such a great client, I used it for both my personal and work accounts. Sadly though it is Android only, leaving me without a good iOS client for my tablet and with meh options for my Debian laptop.

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Surface reveals new holiday lineup and introduces a new category of dual-screen devices built for mobile productivity.

Yippee ki yay, Surface!

The refreshes of the existing stuff are somewhat less exciting; I might care more if the regular laptop can drive a eGPU over Thunderbolt, otherwise it’s mostly iterative goodness.

Far, far more interesting to me is the Neo and the Duo.

Surface Neo is the device I’ve long wanted to see someone build, and have a snow balls chance of not screwing up the productivity side of the software. The keyboard trick, is where I shout, “Fuck, yeah!”. Pretty much it matches up with the oh so wish it becomes a product, rumors from earlier this year.

Duo on the other hand is a long overdue device IMHO. Thanks to how Nadella era Microsoft has played out, I’ve been kinda wanting to see a Microsoft based Android device. It might not be as technologically innovative  as something like the Galaxy Fold, but it’s a step in the right direction.

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BGR: Bill Gates explains why he couldn’t duplicate Steve Jobs’ magic ‘spells’.

“I was like a minor wizard because he would be casting spells, and I would see people mesmerized, but because I’m a minor wizard, the spells don’t work on me,” 

Gates said, according to advance news of his remarks reported by B/oomberg. 

While the minor wizard bit might seem modest but I’ve got to admit: it strikes me as an excellent way of putting it. In a way it also makes me wonder how many table top RPGs Bill Gates may have played over the years, lol