A bit ago, this blog post crossed my Twitter feed. I read it, and while the schadenfreude made me smirk for a minute, it eventually made me feel bad. The blog post purports to describe how a shitty shutdown dialog became a shitty shutdown dialog. But instead, it documents something I like to call “too many puppies” syndrome. If you are working on high visibility areas of a product – like the Windows Shell – like Explorer in particular, everybody…
I never would have imagined myself in an arm-wrestling match with the floppy disk drive. But sitting where I did in Windows setup, that’s exactly what happened. A few times. When I had started at Microsoft, a boot floppy was critical to setting up a new machine. Not by the time I was in setup. Since Remote Installation Services (RIS) could start with a completely blank machine, and you could now boot a system to WinPE using a CD, there…
Imagine I handed you a Twinkie (or your favorite shelf-stable food item), and asked you to hold on to it for almost 13 years, and then eat it. Aw, c’mon. Why the revulsion? It’s been hard for me to watch the excited countdown to the demise of Windows XP. Though I did help ship Windows Server 2003 as well, no one product (or service) that I’ve ever worked on became so popular, for so long – by any stretch of…
Yesterday on Twitter, I said the following: Suggestion… If you have an XP system that you ABSOLUTELY must run after April, I’d remove all JREs, as well as Acrobat Reader and Flash. This was inspired by an inquiry from a customer about Windows XP support that arrived earlier in the day. As a result of that tweet, three things have happened. Many people replied “unplug it from the network!” 1 Several people asked me why I suggested doing these steps. I’ve begun…
I want you to think for a second about the key you use most. Whether it’s for your house, your apartment, your car, or your office, just think about it for a moment. Now, this key you’re thinking of is going to have a few basic properties. It consists of metal, has a blade extending out of it that has grooves along one or both sides, and either a single set of teeth cut into the bottom, or two sets…
A few times over the last year, I’ve had conversations with people about Windows XP holdouts. That is, that as Windows XP’s impending doom rapidly approaches next April, businesses and consumers holding out on Windows XP will readily flock to something new, such as – ideally for Microsoft, Windows 8.1 – or Windows 7. I’m not so sure. To start, let’s consider why a business or consumer would still be running Windows XP today. Most likely, it’s a combination of…
Just under one year from now, on April 8, 2014, Windows XP leaves Extended Support. There are three key questions I’ve been asked a lot during the past week, related to this milestone: What even happens when Windows XP leaves Extended Support? Will Microsoft balk, and continue to support Windows XP after that date? What will happen to systems running Windows XP after that date? All important questions. The first question can be exceedingly complex to answer. But for all…
Beginning with Windows NT Embedded, an effort was started to refactor the Windows operating system in such a way that embedded device manufacturers could tweak the operating system to only include the parts that they needed to run their application or workload. Though it wasn’t completely decomposed/recomposable, it was a huge step in the right direction. By removing components not necessary to run a certain workload (say a point of sale terminal or a control system for manufacturing), the security…
I recall hearing a story of a co-worker at Microsoft, who was a technical assistant to an executive, who had a Mac. It wouldn’t normally be a big deal, except he worked directly for an executive. As a result, this Mac was seen in many meetings across campus – it’s distinct aluminum body and fruity ghost shining through the lid a constant reminder that this was one less PC sold (even if it ran Windows through Boot Camp or virtualization software….
App hoarding. The dark, unspoken secret. We’ve all done it. I logged on to a Windows 8 tablet I hadn’t used for quite some time, and I was so ashamed of myself. So much junk, so many free apps I downloaded, tried, and abandoned. Only recently have I begun steadfastly maintaining a “two screen” limit on iOS to try and keep the applications on my devices solely to those that I use regularly. This isn’t new, mind you. Enterprises have…