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What does the recent run on Wal-mart's $200 mean, to Microsoft, and to the PC universe in general?

Simply selling out of a product quickly doesn't testify to the product's quality or goodness. Wal-mart's recent sale of PCs loaded with a customized Linux for $200 each was probably a price for many households too good to not try. The litmus test comes after the purchase, and based on Wal-mart customer reviews on the Wal-mart web site this machine gets a solid thumbs up.

This is good news for Linux. Each interation for the Linux desktop delivers a more seamless platform, now apparently, good enough for the masses. It comes with tools necessary for what people need: word processing; spreadsheets; internet; and e-mail. To get a similarly loaded Microsoft (Vista) machine (beefed up to handle the processor hungry Microsoft versions of its applications) would require a minimum of $1000.

You would think this is bad news for Microsoft. It isn't. Microsoft is too big, and too far ahead to care. They should care. Instead, they continue to put out their notion of what users want, increasingly complex and resource heavy applications, expensive and unwieldy. They claim their software is simple and intuitive. Anecdotal experience and reviews say no.

Now, Wal-mart has seeded the market with a computer that "just works", much like Macs, but at a fraction of the price. With its price advantage over Apple, and Microsoft's new Vista foundering, this is an opportunity, maybe the beginning of a tipping point for Linux. It's a modest but encouraging start. Linux users, take heart! Microsoft, take note!

Well, after slicing a finger but still not emancipating my new mechanical pencil from its clamshell container, I'm having a V-8 moment.

NASA is looking in the wrong places for their solutions to protect the space shuttle. Heat shield tiles, who needs them! I say NASA simply talk to the vendors selling $5 crap and encasing said crap in inpenetrable and indestructible clamshell packages.

Encase the shuttle in one of these packages and NASA's good to go. (But watch your fingers when you try to get the astronauts out!)

Another morning, another 30 minutes until my Windows XP box was ready enough for me to begin productive work. Today it was an automatic reboot I'd been trying to defer all day yesterday since I had some things I wanted to finish. Apparently over night Microsoft thought better of my wish to defer and rebooted.

Aside from time needed getting all my applications back online and in a state I wanted, I also had to re-configure and recover lost session work (minor, but an annoyance).

No matter the memory, no matter the CPU, no matter the patch level of Microsoft boxes, time and again I find my start up time eroded around the edges tending to Microsoft's rough edges. (Over the last couple weeks I've begun to get "low virtual memory" dialog from XP, even with a 2G machine, and the machine is barely asked to do much work (I mostly use it to support my cygwin Xwindows, and maybe one instance of Firefox), and ultimately I must reboot to get back responsiveness.)

This is standard operating procedure it seems in corporate PC America. This is what Microsoft has brought to the IT groupthink. This is not the way it always was. Sigh.

Thirty minutes here, ten minutes there, 5 minutes there... it all adds up (including the time to finally stop and write this journal entry), and anecdotally I know others in IT experience Microsoft platforms the same way. I wonder sometimes collectively what the world pays in lost slivers of time fixing and cleaning up Microsoft's mess. I'm betting it's more than the GNP of many small countries. I'd love to have a Microsoft chargeback code... If Microsoft wants to farm out their not-so-superior technology for the world to babysit, and rake in obscene profits with their tacit monopoly, I think it only fair we should be able to charge back our time to Microsoft for our time spent working for them.

As per usual, I've submitted yet another article I expect to be rejected..., here it is for the unwashed:

Steve Johnson, a "web perspective" writer for the Chicago Tribune had a surprising review and some observations of Bill Gates' CES keynote address. He pretty much calls Bill out on the carpet for using the keynote as a platform for a pre-rollout Vista infomercial. From his (Steve's) notes:

Bill Gates, for his "keynote" presentation on the eve of the 40th Consumer Electronics Show, didn't pitch a real-estate sales scheme.

He wasn't on late-night TV.

And he didn't offer a three-easy-payment plan at the end.

But the Microsoft founder's address was nonetheless an infomercial, a blatant pitch for his new Windows Vista operation system that violated every notion of what a keynote address ought to be.

I have just watched the 90 minute video, and I'd have to agree, the presentation didn't seem to be about where technology was and where it was going as much as it was about Bill and co's excitement about the "fantastic" (a favorite Bill word) new computing Vista brings, and how Microsoft was poised to take over your digital living room, and house, and car...

Is it really necessary to shill for your own company front and center of CES when you're pretty much guaranteed the market share? Does Bill really add value to CES?

Recently I sent a rant to an on-line photo printer because their free downloadable software insisted on firing up IE7 on my computer, even though Foxfire is my default browser (translation in my book: I don't want IE running on my computer. Ever, if possible.

To verify their gaffe, I downloaded their software on my other computer with similar results. Bummer.

Okay, here's the scratchy-head part: I've noticed other applications, other interactions with both computers whereby IE7 is started in lieu of Foxfire. And, the other incidents seem strangely unrelated. I checked my file associations just in case that had anything to do with this, all html, htm, etc. are associated with Foxfire. WTH? (e.g., bringing up Google Desktop Indexing status fired up IE7...)

Has anyone else noticed unauthorized/unexpected intrusions (as far as I'm concerned) by IE7 since the Microsoft update?