And He Blogs

This is a post that I’ve been contemplating for a while and it will not just be a rant, but offer some advice for fixing issues with Windows Vista. I’ll also offer a little perspective to Microsoft’s new OS, something lacking in today’s blogospheric culture. It took an article in PC World to say enough is enough. That and the fact that today marks the last day you can purchase Windows XP in retail stores. In their latest issue, PC World declares Windows XP as one of their top products of 2008. OK, I get it. Very funny. XP is better than Vista - it’s “leaner, meaner and less bloated than Vista” says PC World. Let me give you one advantage that XP has over Vista. There weren’t any blogs around when XP was released. If there were, you would have seen the same gnashing of teeth that you see with Vista’s release. Today, what you have is a cacophony of users, mostly repeating the meme of Vista is a disaster/nightmare/abomination, the “worst version of Windows ever”. I’ve even heard the comparison to Windows ME. Meanwhile, a bizarre love affair with XP has begun.

Now I admit that I was ready to blame Vista for certain problems I was having. As I pointed out then, there were some audio issues that needed to be ironed out. There also was some weird behavior in the copying function, which has since been corrected with Service Pack 1. However, I have been mostly happy with Vista. I upgraded my Toshiba Tablet PC because XP was giving me fits. (I now believe, by the way, that the computer itself was a big part of the problem). So what’s so good about Vista? Well, let’s start with what was Windows XP’s biggest problem.

Security. It’s better in Vista. Have you read all the headlines about Vista being a security risk, and all of the people hacking Vista? Me neither. However, this has actually been turned into a complaint, with a generous amount of help from Apple with their “switching ads”.

“Oh, this sucks. Now my computer is too secure.” Like it or not, more people are trying to hack Windows. More than 90% of the people using computers in the world are using Windows PCs. User Access Control (UAC) can be frustrating. It can, and possibly should be tweaked. But compare it to XP. For XP to be functional, with the need to install plug-ins for web browsers, and the need to do other system file manipulation, it’s almost essential that it be used in admin mode. Not a good idea. Vista forces you to use a computer in protected mode. The additional (and maybe excessive) prompts are the trade-off for more security.

There are lots of other good things about Vista, not the least of which addresses the complaint of XP’s “Fisher Price” interface (remember that one?). Vista looks good and it functions very well on a relatively new PC. Search and indexing are much improved in Vista. Partitions are easily resized. It has very good Tablet PC support with much better handwriting recognition. It has very good built-in voice recognition. It does a much better job of isolating programs that have crashed, so that they don’t freeze the computer. Vista Media Center is much improved. And so on.

What will happen to Vista from here on out? Well, it will grow on people. Drivers will be improved and programs will be updated to run better on Vista. A majority of problems with Vista lie in poorly written drivers and software, and not with Vista itself. Sure, I want Vista to work better. I want it to work great. So in that spirit, here are some tips to get you there:

Ed Bott’s “Fixing Windows Vista, one machine at a time“, and

Vista Tweaks Part 1 & Part 2.

And here is some nice perspective on the similarities to when Windows XP was the new kid on the block:

Hasta La Vista, Windows XP

There I feel better.

UPDATE: After I published this, I noticed that Ed Bott had posted an audio interview with Larry Magid of CBS News, talking about XP’s last day and whether Vista is a worthy upgrade.

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Fellow Virginian and IT person David Carter-Tod wrote a post that was spot-on about setting a tone for customer service at a Comcast office. It’s the kind of post that maybe we all imagine writing while we’re standing in line thinking about how things work, or don’t. Well, as you can see, David wrote, and it doesn’t look like it took too long for Comcast to read it and respond. I had heard that Comcast has been lurking around Twitter, looking for these kinds of issues and responding. I’m going to ask David if he can follow up and report the results. That would be Comcastic!

UPDATE: Comcast gets right on it! Well done.

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So we’re nine days on in the era of Edupunk, and it appears things are perhaps calming down, but not before some rather intense discussions, conversations and kicking over some garbage cans. Let’s see there’s Jim’s original post, the comments, the definition, the critique, the defense, the “narcissism”, the Wikipedia article, the other article (and the comments), and finally the end. There have been lots of arguments about what Edupunk is, whether it’s even worth talking about, along with all of the other non-productive hand-wringing and smack-downs. In less than a fortnight we’ve gone from a made up word, to a term, to an ideology (puhleeze).

Look. See the picture at the top? It’s Jim Groom. Who on earth would take this guy seriously? This is the man, your hero, that coined the term Edupunk (or is it all caps - EDUPUNK?). Need I say more? Do you know what Jim posted about right before his seminal Edupunk meme (Jim says it’s not a meme, by the way) was born. He blogged about ME. What about me? How do I fit into Edupunk? Why didn’t I take off as a meme??? Seriously.

Hey, we kind of know what “Edu” is all about. Everybody is doing their best to make a difference, trying out things, making mistakes. You know learning. “Punk” is about anger. Sometimes misplaced. Often completely irrational. There were some very ugly people associated with punk in its early days. They were angry. Angry at authority. It wasn’t productive. They would eat their own. They would self-destruct. Think the guy in the foil hat is “punk”? Seriously?

So with punk already 30+ years on, Jim started a little revival, angry at the corporate hijacking of education. Um, in case you haven’t figured it out, Jim can be a hot head. Hyperbole flows in his veins instead of blood, but he’s a good man. Someone I am glad to have here at UMW, and proud to call a friend. Someone I take great pleasure in cutting back down to size once in a while . . . OK a lot

So here’s how it kind of happened, as portrayed in a scene from one of my all-time favorite movies Sid & Nancy.

Here are all the pretenders that think they know Edupunk.

So let’s go a little lighter with the Edu-”punk” mantras. We all know education has to change. Just let’s not be punks about it.

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