Vista Bug Forcing Reactivation

It didn't take too long for this to crop up. A Windows Vista bug that forces reactivation. This bug in their highly touted Software Protection Platform forces a user to reactive their copy of Windows Vista over things as simple as a device driver update, installation of a program, the running of a program or removal of program. Apparently in some situations the only way to resolve the issue was to call Microsoft.

This is one of the biggest reasons I despise all the activation hoops and genuine windows detection Microsoft has so heavily been investing their time in. Problems such as these cause the paying customer (often times corporate customers - where hassling with reactivating OS's is $$$ lost) trouble. Meanwhile the software pirates will continue to use their tricks to avoid having to deal with any of this. The person that suffers is Microsoft's legitimate customer!

I understand that Microsoft is plagued by software pirates not paying for their operating system or other applications. Inflicting troubles such as these on customer is not the answer though. It's bad enough for a non-technical home user to have to deal with this. It is equally unpleasant for corporate help desk folks to have to deal with this as well. There are enough other issues that aren't directly inflicted by Microsoft to deal with on a day to day basis that people don't need even more issues.

Now Microsoft does acknowledge this is a bug with the OS. However they failed to actually announce this patch until it started hitting the tech news sites. Then they admit that they released a patch at the end of January. Of course you can only get the patch from Windows Update if your operating system is proven legitimate. Brilliant! Microsoft is their own worse enemy these days.

Hosting Provider Outage

My hosting provider was down in the early morning hours today. The first portion was due to an emergency planned outage to repair a building UPS. When the power came back on there were issues with one of their core routers. Looks like things are back to normal now though.

DSL Upgrade...

I finally got around to calling the phone company today to see if there were higher DSL speeds available and to make sure I was getting a fair price on our DSL server (cable isn't available in our area). Turns out I am getting kicked up to 3x our current DSL speed - 512kbps to 1.5mbps - and saving $15 a month! I guess sometimes it does pay to talk to the phone company! The change is supposed to take place on Monday.

Google Launches Business Applications

Google has announced the launch of Google Apps Premier Edition. The Premier Edition will have the following applications available:

Email
Calendaring
Messaging and Talk Applications
Word Processor
Spreadsheet

You can get all of this for $50 per user. The email limit is 10GB and things can supposedly be made ad free. They are also guaranteeing 99.9% uptime for email.

This looks like a pretty good deal to me. There are some reservations, but at an early step forward I think this is a strong start. Several years ago Microsoft stated that common applications would be hosted on the web. And while Microsoft has their Windows Live, it appears that Google is much more structured and organized in their pushing these applications to the corporate customer.

I have recently started making more and more use of the Google Calendar, Docs and Spreadsheets. The Calendar largely due to some repeated issues I have been having with my PDA. I was tired of it failing while I was at home over a weekend and not having any calendar or contact information, so I finally started making more use of the calendar and contacts portion of the Google apps. I have also started using the Docs and Spreadsheets more often as well. I find it convenient to access from multiple computers and operating systems. The links they have added to GMail to open documents in Google Docs has been pretty useful as well.

I am still not comfortable with certain confidential documents up there though, so that is a limiting factor. I also have some issues with margins in certain docs when I print them. I may just be overlooking a setting though. I am looking forward to seeing these hosted applications expand in the future in their features.

"Windows Vista Capable" Hardware

I was browsing /. this evening and someone has linked to a hilarious Dell page touching on the hardware requirements for Windows Vista. The page is here. Once there choose the hardware link and browse the Hardware Requirements portion. The page is covering the various labels they have been putting on computers in preparation for Windows Vista - you know the ones like, "Windows Vista Capable" or "Windows Vista Premium Ready".

On Dell's page here is what they say "Windows Vista Capable" is good for... are you ready? Here it is:

""Great for... Booting the Operating System, without running applications or games."

Great! So Dell is saying that if your computer is only labeled as "Windows Vista Capable" you had better not be wanting to do much more than boot the OS! Good luck to you if you actually want to run an application and use your computer! Of course they are listing the "Windows Vista Capable" hardware as only having 512MB of RAM and I know there are "Windows Vista Capable" machines out there with a GB of RAM. Still sort of funny though!

Saturday Game Report

Saturday’s game was a great time! We had a little bit of a late start due to the show we were getting. My place is out in the country, so sometimes the roads in my area take a bit to get cleared. Everyone made it and only one person got stuck in the driveway. A little pushing got that situation sorted out. We all got settled in and feasted on North Market cinammon rolls!

First up was an adventure called The Blackguard’s Revenge. Lots and lots of undead and our party doesn’t have a cleric. It wasn’t too bad though, luckily despite their sheer numbers they weren’t that powerful. And we all had a good string of Fort saves to keep that pesky level drain problem from being too bad. There were a couple of purple tongued things that were a little difficult, but doable. Then we ran into the Blackguard who was pretty tough. And then on to some big monstrous thing that had spectal hands to deliver touch attacks. The fort saves were quite high - I think my fighter was the only one that had a chance to make them. That critter also tried two Will save based spells which thanks to great rolls by my fighter and a little Action Point help allowed me to make both of them. With that one down it was on to the next adventure.

I am not sure of the full title, Iron Crypt something. More undead and lots of traps. The party rogue was doing a good job at taking care of most of the traps. We aren’t finished with that one yet, most of it has been trap/puzzle based so far.

So a successful gaming day! We played from about 10:30am till 9pm. A full day of gaming!

Saturday Game Day

Saturday gaming session tomorrow! Our gaming group occasionally has a marathon gaming session on a Saturday. Tomorrow is one of those sessions. The guys are coming down tomorrow and I think we are playing from at least 10am to 6pm. I know one person needs to leave at 6pm - I’m not sure if that means we are all stopping or if we will just continue with one person short.

We recently switched DMs back to Crothian (screen name), but we are still carrying on the Eberron Campaign. It should be a fun session - I think our resident rogue has us headed off to some crypt to kill some time while we figure out how to repair our recently salvaged airship. Too bad our party doesn’t have a cleric!