Kirb’s Musings

Kirby Witmer’s ponderings, ruminations, and meditations of… anything.

I was trying to install the Blackberry Desktop Manager on Windows Vista, but it kept aborting on the following error message.

error 1325 favorites is not a valid short file name

Frustrating. Turns out its a simple fix. Simply set your Favorites back to the default location. I had my favorites folder pointed to a network location and for what ever reason the installer didn’t like that. Apparently its a bug in the Blackberry installer program.

Long Zheng blogs about a leaked new Windows Vista Ultimate Extras sound scheme.

P.S. In case you are wondering this is one April Fool’s joke that I swallowed hook, line, and fishing pole. Did you get tricked into believing any?

Uh-oh. It looks Vista didn’t win the PWN to OWN contest after all. Although in reality it was a cross platform flaw in Adobe Flash that was exploited. Get a Mac Vista Ubuntu.

Needless to say I was quite surprised at receiving a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 at the Windows Server 2008 launch event this week. It was definitely worth going.

      Microsoft has finally released the much anticipated Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Although its not “publicly” available for download from Microsoft yet, it can be found online at various other places. I’ve installed the service pack on both a desktop and a laptop now and I’m well pleased with it. Its worth installing simply for the annoying “slow file copy” bug fix which is included. Hurray!! Of course, there is a whole lot of other fixes included as well.

Check out these screenshots.

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I know you didn’t ask for my opinion, but I’m going to give it anyway. Windows Vista Ultimate Extras are a joke. One example, just check when the official Extras blog was last updated.*
* The last post was on 3/14/2007 for those who don’t feel like looking.

I was at a Microsoft Partner event back in 2007 where some people were upset that the Ultimate version of Vista was not included in the Action Pack. It looks like that is about to change, because I just got this email from the Microsoft Partner team. Here is an excerpt from it:

One full-install licence key for Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 for internal use, so you can learn more about this product’s benefits and features for customers who need a single PC to fulfil their work, travel and entertainment needs. We plan for this software to be delivered in your regular Action Pack quarterly update (April/May 2008).

I’m pretty happy about that. I just about fell for the buy one get one free offer they had offered to me earlier this year as a bonus for beta testing Windows Vista, but now I’m glad I didn’t.

It would appear like we might just see some good things coming from the Microsoft Surface team at this year’s CES. Although the team sure isn’t giving many clues. Its a bummer I can’t be there, I would love to have my hands on one of those.

Engadget has a post up comparing the featuresof Vista and Leopard, and you would think its Word War 3 by the comments. (Ohh, by the way, there is exactly 666 comments over there now as I’m writing this post.) Its funny how people get all fired up about which OS is the best. I’ve worked with enough Operating Systems in my short life to know they all have big flaws.

However, Vista is still the best.

 Update: And don’t even get me started on this. That’s a huge reason why I don’t more appreciation for Apple than I do. They are so arrogant.

Microsoft today released to a select few users a SP1 Beta for Windows Vista.

Some improvements include:

• Removed some of the delay in logging in to your computer, especially domain-joined computers.
• Overall responsiveness is a lot better. i.e. copying files, resuming from hibernation or sleep mode, etc.
• A lot more improvements listed here.

All of my desktop computers have been running Windows Vista for some time. In the beginning it was a real trial, because a lot of programs and drivers didn’t work well at all. Quickbooks and Adobe Reader to name two. I must say however, that in the months since Vista has been released, HUGE improvements have been made in program and driver compatiblity. And alot of these improvements have been pushed out via Windows Update. I’m looking forward to Service Pack 1 though, especially if it fixes that annoying “slow copying of files” bug.