Category: Technology

Yesterday, I downloaded the final code for Windows 8. As a Microsoft TechNet subscriber, I have access to most of the software produced by Microsoft. I chose to upgrade my main desktop machine just to see what the experience would be like.

Unlike other recent versions of Windows, the installation procedure did not run a compatibility check. With only a few prompts, the software seemed to run on its own. Only at the end of the procedure did I encounter problems. Toward the end of the procedure, the user starts getting prompts to select theme color, some default settings and then tie the installation to your Windows account. (For many years this was called the Windows Live account.) It was at this point that the installation process crashed. I got a message that Windows could not be installed and then the program removed Windows 8 and a few minutes later my computer restarted into Windows 7.

My first thought was that my Kaspersky internet security program was responsible. (I am aware that no existing antivirus product works with Windows 8 but it was part of the experiment to see what the average user would encounter.) I uninstalled the program and did the suggested restart. Again I ran the Windows 8 DVD and about 25 minutes later I was running Windows 8.

The final code provides a much clearer interface than previous versions. Before when I ran betas of Windows 8, every item in my start menu appeared as a tile. It was just a cluttered mess to wade thru but the tile experience on the final code is much simpler. I also installed the beta version of Microsoft Office 2013. (I may blog on this at a later date.)

So far I like the program. I did shrink many of the default tiles to the smaller size and add a few but otherwise everything fits onto one screen. The best thing I found in the marketplace was the app to let me run XBOX programs thru my network on my Windows 8 PC. That looks interesting.

Lastly, on my desktop view, all my stuff is there except my Gadgets. I had read that they were deemed a security risk and MS was planning to end them.

I still haven’t checked out dual monitor capability because my other monitor is the TV and Chef Ramsey does not like to be preempted.

My final word is uninstall your antivirus program and the take Windows 8 for a spin.

After my first attempts at uploading music failed, I decided that the only way to get further into the uploading process with any prospect of success was to convert all songs in my library to mp3 files. Most of my library is in WMA format. It took two days to convert all songs in my library to mp3 files. I used the conversion utility that comes with the free version of Real Player (http://www.real.com).

I then tried to upload music to the Amazon Cloud. Thus far I have uploaded about two thousand audio tracks. Amazon never recognizes all the songs—ever when they sell the identical songs on their website and I ripped them from a factory CD. On average, out of a block of 200 or more songs, the cloud service will identify about 35 to 40 percent of the music. Just as a test for this blog posting, I tried the Grammy Award winning album by Bob Dylan Slow Train Coming. As you can see in the attached screen shot, Amazon correctly identified only six of the nine songs; the other three had to be uploaded individually.

Once the music is uploaded, other catastrophes were waiting to be worked-out. Many songs from the same CD were split into five or six “albums” even thought they were ripped from a single commercially purchased CD and uploaded at the same time. Trying to fix these errors is frustrating and very time consuming. Whether you use the back button or other navigation links in the Cloud Player, you end-up not where you were just working but at the beginning of the list of albums. In addition, the suggestions from the Cloud Player for artist, album and track number are frequently wrong—even when Amazon sells the same CD on their website. Perhaps working in multiple monitors and multiple browser sessions would allow fixing these errors quickly.

Once you think you have all the bugs worked out on a particular album, you have no visible indicator to let you know if Amazon matched a music track with their library or what bit rate a song is in unless you actually download it. I have gone to great lengths to use correct year for album release dates in my library however this information only confuses the music identification routine used by Amazon’s software. Amazon favors the date they made something available for download not the year the album or CD was released originally.

So far I have mixed opinions about the Amazon Cloud Player.

I purchased the Premium Cloud Player from Amazon last night after reading about it on CNET. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57483608-93/amazons-cloud-music-service-gets-scan-and-match/ . They claim to be able to scan and match your existing music from ripped CDs, iTunes, LPs and other sources and replace them with 256 kbps audio which you can download. Amazon claims a library of 20 million tracks and for their $25 fee you can have a library up to 250,000 songs on their cloud service. I did a test of some of my music. My library is over five thousand songs. I randomly picked some for uploading. Here are some preliminary results.

As you can see, the service does not match all tracks. All the above were ripped from CDs that I purchased. Miss Angie and Dan Peek are on available for purchase as MP3 downloads. Both CDs with all tracks are listed for sale as downloads on Amazon. Some Donna Summer and 2nd Chapter of Acts tracks are available on the site but not all.

The next issue is, are the cloud tracks that they matched their regular bit rate or the 256 kbps audio that they advertised? What about LPs that I recorded? Are they replaced by the super audio files that are advertised or is the program just uploading the ones that I made?

Stay Tuned…

Last night I watched the NASA channel. I rarely do but when something important happens then I will make an effort to find it on whatever obscure number it was hidden by DirecTV. I was intrigued by the Curiosity probe that was scheduled to land on Mars late last night. I even set the DVR to record it just in case my wife had me watching more tape delayed Olympic results.

The landing sequence for this one ton probe was reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg drawing.  “a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation” –Webster’s New World Dictionary
If any one step went wrong then this multi-billion dollar project would freefall on John Carter’s head and leave a smoldering crater on the Martian surface. The Curiosity probe was programmed to land with no human intervention since it takes a radio signal about 14 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars. The number of steps that needs to be executed successfully during the fall thru the atmosphere was an enormous engineering challenge. Everything happened according to design and the craft landed like it was supposed to do.

The first photo it sent back was a picture of its tire. Everyone in the Jet Propulsion Lab cheered. Think about it. You sent this complicated gizmo hundreds of millions of miles, land it right on target and to prove it works you get a photo of the tire! I’m thinking dang. My mother-in-law has a whole camera full of photos of her finger in the same frame as Alaskan glaciers and family gatherings. Heck maybe she could have been a rocket scientist too.

As I turned off the broadcast last night I had this mental picture of the JPL folks gathering at the local watering hole to celebrate. I could picture them raising a glass of beer proclaiming, “yes, as a matter of fact we are rocket scientists”.

For more info on Curiosity mission see
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/uploads/infographics/full/10776.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-231

Microsoft recently unveiled some prototypes of a Windows 8 Tablet called Surface. The devices are interesting because they bridge the divide between Tablet devices and laptops. They are faster than the Apple or Android counterparts and run more programs. The Intel version will run Office and most other programs that you can run on your desktop machine but in a portable format. They come with a physical keyboard as well as touch capability. They will support a midgrade CPU and solid state drive.

The Surface computers will make tablets mainstream and not just toys with email and GPS capability. The only concern I have is with the rumors that these tablets will be wifi but not 4G capable.

The tech press is divided into two camps on these Surface prototypes. One group says that Microsoft is just trying to push their hardware partners into going forward with a tablet design that is beyond what is on the market now while the others say that Microsoft needs more products for their Microsoft Stores. The wifi only capability gives some credence to the camp that believes the Surface devices are only prototypes and not the actual Windows 8 tablets that will be commercially available.

The almost simultaneous advent of Apollo (Windows Phone 8) will be an interesting twist to the roll-out of Windows 8. Microsoft is clearly pushing for a unified experience that is scalable from the smallest to the largest consumer computing experience. Both Operating Systems will be able to run virtually identical applications on either platform. Apollo is Windows 8 light and both share similar programming code.

Microsoft has a golden opportunity to reign in Apple and bring competition to hand held devices. Apple can’t thrive in a competitive market because they are not willing to drop their prices beyond a certain point—even in the face of competition. Apple historically will always take shareholders over market share. The boys in Redmond might be late to the party but they will be formidable once they join the battle this fall. If the press conference is to be believed then look for ARM devices in October and Intel ones around Christmas.

Verizon is touting its new “family plan” as some type of an improvement over what I have now. How can that be?

My current plan has two smart phones and two regular phones. Look what this does to my bill.

Here are some of the details:
• A regular phone will go from 9.99 to $30.
• Talk goes from 1400 minutes to unlimited. Currently we use about 350 minutes per month.
• Texting—which most of us never use—will be unlimited. (If you really need texting you can run it thru your data plan and not pay extra. Yes, there is an app for that.)
• Data—which I do use—will go from unlimited to pay as I go.
• Currently two Gigabytes is $30, under the new plan one gigabyte will be $50. A 300 percent increase in cost!

Source http://solutions.vzwshop.com/shareeverything/?intcmp=VZW-VNT-SE-PLANRECMND

To have the same number of phones that I have now will cost $25 more under the family plan. That feels like a kick in the family plan to me. Only a mafia family could offer such a deal and expect us to like it. I would like to add more devices to my plan but not at the kind of prices that Verizon is offering. The price point is too high.

To avoid this plan you either need to upgrade your phones before the plan goes into effect later this month or pay full retail price to keep the unlimited data plan. Verizon doesn’t even offer a 4G Windows Phone and won’t until at least the fourth quarter of this year.

If AT&T will fix their network so it doesn’t drop calls and be competitively priced I just might consider switching. They clearly have a larger variety of offerings than Verizon. AT&T will respond with their idea of a family plan soon. Let’s see if they respect my budget or want to rape and pillage my wallet too.

CNET even agrees with me http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57451500-94/why-verizons-shared-data-plan-is-a-raw-deal/?tag=txt;related

My Android phone has been giving me fits for several months. When trying to run programs, it would lock-up and require me to remove the battery to re-start the phone. I often got the black screen of nothingness. Also, it would just randomly start clicking on icons and start programs all by itself. This behavior also caused me to have to pull the battery and try restarting the phone. These fits of uncontrolled behavior often caused me to pull the battery five or more times. Occasionally I could never regain control of the phone. I would just have to let it sit with the screen off and after a few hours it would behave better.

I had been holding out for a new Windows Phone 7 with a larger screen and 4G speed but I decided that I could wait no longer. Verizon has some bee up their bonnet that prevents them from competing head-to head with AT&T with Windows Phones. If AT&T made me a deal, I might be tempted to go back.
I looked at the 4G Droid phones that Verizon carries and was shocked to see that all but a new Samsung were all old versions of the Android Operating System. I know that “ice cream sandwich” is the newest version available. This is version 4 of the OS, but the new 4G Motorola phones were all stuck in version 2. What is this? Why should I pay $200 for a phone with an operating system three years and three generations behind?

As I was contemplating what to do about a new phone, I learned that my daughter had cracked the screen of her HTC Trophy. She loves the phone and it still works but since it’s not insured, she is stuck with it. She is only six months into a two year contract. This is when I learned that Verizon had pulled all the Trophy phones from their retail stores and only offered the remaining inventory online.

I decided as a stop-gap measure that I would get a phone for me that could later replace the broken one that my daughter has been using. I went to my local Best Buy store and bought myself the HTC Trophy for $30. Best Buy had six in their warehouse and shipped mine via UPS ground. I took it to the store where I had purchased it to get it activated. I logged into the phone with my Windows Live account, tested the phone and then went home and upgraded the phone to “Mango”. Then I started installing apps.

Here are my impressions of the phone thus far:
• Calls are crystal clear compared to the Droid. Often I can’t tell anyone answered the phone until they talk. When there is a pause on the other end, I often check to see if the caller is there or I dropped the call.
• The Blue Tooth is more stable and connects all the time. My Droid usually took several tries to connect successfully.
• The address book is way different than the Android phone. Windows Phone 7 integrates my Live contacts with my Facebook contacts automatically to create one unified entry for each person in the address book. It even uses the profile photo from Facebook in the tiles of the phone. With a single gesture I can find the contact and then scroll thru their information, recent posts and more.
• I’ve read much about the lack of apps for Windows Phones. I can think of three that I used that were not found for the Marketplace. Thus far, there is no Amazon app to access my music stored in their “cloud drive” or apps for the web sites Blastr or KOVR. The game I miss most is Robo Defense.
• XBOX Live Games is the game hub for the Windows Phone. It even displays my avatar from my XBOX Live account. The first time I saw him on my phone, he was playing catch with a cell phone. He tossed it into the air and would then catch it again. Clever animation.
• Loading custom ringtones into the phone is a challenge but it’s not much harder than it was setting up the Android phone. Mostly it is just a matter of having a song snippet that is the right size, length and format and then loading it with Zune.
• The battery life is slightly shorter than the Droid but can usually get me thru the work day.
• I’m still trying to master the camera features. The video is mp4 format.

Some apps on my Windows Phone include:
• Adobe Acrobat
• Amazon Kindle
• Amazon Mobile
• YouVersion Bible
• CNET
• Compass
• Connectivity Shortcuts (Blue Tooth, Wifi, etc.)
• Facebook
• DirecTV
• Fandango
• Flashlight
• Fox News
• XBOX Live Games
• iHeartRadio (Clear Channel internet app)
• Knot Guide (shows you how to tie over 90 different knots)
• Lists
• NetFlix
• Microsoft Office
• Periodic Table
• Photo Enhancer
• SimiRSS (RSS reader of course)
• Stop Watch
• SkyDrive
• Sky Map Free
• Skyrim Herbarium (in case I ever get far enough into Skyrim to use the stuff I find to make potions)
• TuneIn Radio (Internet app for most AM & FM radio stations in the US)
• Voice Recorder
• Weather
• Windows Phone News

This phone is a major step up from the fragmented world of Android. If you want better speed and stability consider Windows Phone 7 on you next phone—unless you have Verizon and then you need to wait for Windows Phone 8.

Many media stories this week have reported that HP is planning to sell their PC division. Their excuse is that sales are sluggish and the computer division has a low profit margin. This is not the real reason. Clearly their bean-counters realize that Obama-care and promises of higher taxes will kill the PC division so they are having the firesale now. The economic excuse is not present conditions but future ones that have prompted this pre-emptive fire sale.

The news for AT&T continues to be bad. First, AT&T has the most dropped calls of any U.S. cellular provider and terrible customer satisfaction results from J.D. Powers. Two weeks ago, it was reported that AT&T’s 4G speeds are actually slower than their 3G speeds. And now, AT&T has received yet another honor. Today CNET is reporting that RootMetrics has conducted a survey of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

In the results shown below, Verizon clearly beats all other carriers. This news comes the day after AT&T announced that they have agreed to buy T-Mobile. Ironically, most folks that I know using T-Mobile are refugees that fled from AT&T because of their high prices and lousy service.

AT&T has become to the cellular phone industry what America Online has become to Internet service providers. If the recent data on AT&T won’t persuade you to change carriers then you deserve to wallow in mediocre technology.

Here is a sample of the press AT&T has received recently.

J.D. Power says Verizon tops in call quality
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20039032-266.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

How AT&T Totally Flubbed 4G
“…if you stand in the same place with a “4G” phone and a “3G” phone on the same network, the 3G phone will be faster.”
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381915,00.asp

Study: Verizon fastest among 4G networks
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20045376-251.html?tag=cnetRiver

It sounds like something from a big budget Hollywood movie but its true. Some clever folks strung together a series of exploits in computer software and came up with the first computer virus targeting Siemens’ computer control software for manufacturing robots. The virus is designed to steal design information and upload it to a remote server. This is industrial espionage on steroids. Oh and it also infects control systems used on nuclear powered aircraft carriers.

It is passed from computer to computer via USB drives. It starts with .lnk shortcut files in Windows. Windows runs these files in the background and the malware installs a rootkit. The virus propagates to any other USB drive that subsequently attached to an infected computer. The Trojan is designed to infect WinCC software. Its sole purpose is to steal design information in control systems. It uses a hardcoded password in the Siemens software; for fans of the movie Wargames it is a backdoor password used by Siemens.

See the complete article in CNET News. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20011159-245.html?tag=topStories3