More and more web sites and programs are enforcing complexity requirements for passwords and assigning user ID numbers rather than using your email address or a user account name that you set yourself.

The goal is to make access more secure; the theory is that account ID numbers and complex passwords will be more difficult for an unauthorized person to guess.

That's true, as far as it goes. The problem is that this added complexity and the differing complexity rules for different sites makes it more difficult for the users themselves to remember all those IDs and passwords. That means they're more likely to write them down and keep them in a handy place -- where an unauthorized person can find them.

The nightmare of having to keep all those different sets of credentials in my head makes me long for some sort of standardized biometric user identification method. Sure, biometrics have their drawbacks and they raise privacy issues and they aren't 100% secure either, but it would solve a lot of problems. The government already has my fingerprints; what do I care if Microsoft has them, too?

Meanwhile, I confess that I do keep a written list of my less frequently used passwords, but it's written in a code that only I (hopefully) can understand. I suggest making two of these coded copies, a hard copy and an electronic one. Encrypt the latter and lock the former in a safe. It's not the perfect solution, but I don't think there'll ever be one.

DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER
deb@shinder.net  www.debshinder.com
Deb's Tech Blog    Deb's Personal Blog

Yesterday's post brought a few Fox lovers out of the woodwork, even though I tried to emphasize that I don't mind at all that Mozilla is copying IE on some features (just as MSFT has done the same with good features that appeared first on FF). But some of them asked me to address IE 7's state of readiness for prime time (or lack thereof), and I'm happy to do so.

I've been running the IE 7 betas for what seems like years. There's a lot I like about it, and some things that are still driving me nuts. First off, the IE 7 experience on XP SP2 is very different from using IE 7 on Vista. The latter situation is just great; I've had zero problems with IE on Vista from Beta 2 onward. IE 7 on my XP machine is a different story.

Prior to IE 7 RC 1, the browser (on XP) hated CCN.com. Now, I admit this is a conservative/libertarian household, but I still like to see what the liberal media is up to. IE 7 was determined not to let me do so. I'm sure some folks will suspect President Bush had something to do with it -- especially since the Fox News site always worked perfectly. Whatever the reason, every time I opened the CCN page and clicked on a link, the browser crashed. This was very consistent behavior (on the XP machine only). Although there were a few (very rare) random crashes on other sites, this was the only site that crashed it every time. After numerous attempts, I stopped even trying. If I wanted to read CCN, I used FF.

Another problem with the earlier betas was that I couldn't log on to some of my online bill paying sites, most consistently Shell Oil (this would seem to contradict the right wing conspiracy theory).

I hoped that RC 1 would fix these problems, and it did -- but it also introduced new ones. I can now access my Shell account and read CCN articles, but all is not well. After installing RC 1, I now have the following problems:

• The random crashes have become far more frequent, and there's no consistency now about when and where they'll occur. This is particularly annoying if I'm trying to complete a banking transaction or make a purchase online. Consequently, I've started using FF for financial transactions because I can't afford to have the browser crash in the middle of paying a bill and not know whether the payment went through or not.
• Many pages render badly. Text is misaligned or garbled so as to be unreadable on some pages.
• Regardless of the text size setting, I get a tiny font on some pages (interestingly, CCN is one of them).

So, even though I like IE 7's implementation of tabs better than FF's (for instance, having a new blank tab already there for me to grab if I want to open a new one), love the Windows Live Toolbar with the Blog It button that opens Live Writer with a link to the page I'm on and copies any text I've highlighted, and like the performance and security, I find myself using FF a lot more now because of the above-described problems.

I keep reminding myself, though, that it's still a beta -- and hoping that all of these issues will go away in the final release.

Using Firefox 2 is supposed to mean safer surfing. The browser will reportedly detect when a fraudulent site--like a bogus eBay or PayPal--has been accessed and will alert the user with a dialog box and grayed-out window,

Source: Mozilla releases Firefox 2 RC1 | Tech News on ZDNet

Imagine that. Sounds like ... a phishing filter. Hmm. Where have we seen that before? Oh, I know -- Internet Explorer 7.

Actually, I'm glad Mozilla decided to copycat IE and add this feature; it's a valuable one. But where's the outcry? Remember when IE 7 came out with tabbed browsing, and Microsoft was accused of just copying Firefox?

Personally, I use both browsers. Some sites work better with IE, some with FF. And the browser wars are good for consumers -- the harder each vendor works to capture more market share, the more secure and full featured both browsers get, so we all benefit.

I would love to give FF 2 RC1 a try, but unfortunately I got an error message when I tried to install it.  Some of its features, like dynamic bookmarks, sound very useful. I can't wait to see what it inspires Microsoft to come up with in return.

 
DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER
deb@shinder.net  www.debshinder.com

One brand new, rather cool feature in Vista that I ran across while exploring the Control Panel applets is the Windows Experience Index. You'll find it in Control Panel (Classic View), labeled Performance Information and Tools. When you run it, it measures the performance of various components in your computer -- processor, RAM, graphics (Aero), gaming graphics and your primary hard disk -- and assigns each a score. Here are the results of running the tool on my Dell 9100 with a 3 GHz processor, 4 MB of RAM and an ATI Radeon X600 video card with 256MB of memory:

Processor               4.8
Memory (RAM)        5.0
Graphics                 3.8
Gaming Graphics    3.6
Primary hard disk  5.5

The computer's overall "base score" is based on the lowest subscore. So even though my processor scored a respectable 4.8, RAM garnered a very good 5.0 and my disk transfer rate earned a truly excellent 5.5, the performance of the graphics card brought the base score down. You need a base score of at least 3 to run the Aero interface.

Why does all this matter? It allows you to evaluate the performance of a system as compared to other systems, it allows you to determine which component is the bottleneck to your system's performance, and you can use the base score to determine whether software programs that have a base score rating will perform adequately on your system.

There have been some questions about the accuracy of the tool in the Vista betas. Back in July, ZDNet published this article titled Is Vista's Windows Experience Index fatally flawed? (http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=37), reporting different results at different times on the same system with no hardware changes.

I haven't seen this problem with Vista RC1, but I'll be playing with the tool more and eventually, I'm planning a more formal article on Vista performance tools, including the Windows Experience Index and the Reliability and Performance Monitor.

Two days after my post regarding the need for new innovations in powering mobile devices (Assaulted by Batteries?, September 19), Tom ran across this new idea: batteries that you can recharge through your computer's USB port.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/09/21/Charge_you... 

It's definitely cool, but I'm not sure it really offers a lot over conventional rechargeable batteries that you stick in a charger. In fact, I use a lot of USB devices and I can't think of a situation in which I wouldn't prefer a separate charging device rather than using up one or more of my USB ports. Either way, that electrical power to charge the batteries has to be coming from somewhere.

The photo that accompanies the article implies that you'd be charging your batteries from your laptop. So you could charge the batteries when you're away from electrical outlets. But ... if I'm away from electrical outlets, am I really going to want to drain my laptop's battery to recharge my AAs? There might be rare scenarios where I would, but I can't think of any.

All that said, it is a new and innovative idea, and I definitely want to encourage innovation on the power source front. So keep on coming up with the ideas. Maybe eventually someone will stumble across the solution to all our "power struggle" woes.

Citing several data breaches at agencies like the Department of Veteran Affairs, the presidentially appointed panel recommended that the government "take steps to eliminate, restrict or conceal" the use of Social Security numbers.

Source: U.S. urged to keep lid on Social Security numbers | Tech News on ZDNet

Well, duh. While I'd be all in favor of such legislation, I'm afraid at this point it would be a case of locking the barn door after the horse is gone. So many public agencies and private companies require you to give them your SSN now that our numbers are in hundreds of databases. No law passed now would protect the privacy of our SSNs, unless it included totally revamping the system and issuing all new numbers to everyone. And I can just imagine the mess the government would make of that (not to mention the expense).

Government and non-government security experts having been cautioning us for years to keep our SSNs secret. At the same time, no one will do business with you without one. And it's not just banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions. The cable company, the phone company, the power company -- they all want your SSN to sell your their services.

The federal government itself is one of the worst offenders. The IRS puts your SSN on all correspondence they send you, and to add insult to injury, they insist that you use a street address instead of a P.O. box (unless you live in a place where mail isn't delivered to the street address). Anyone who steals a letter from the taxman out of your mailbox has the perfect setup to commit ID theft.

State governments are no better. Some of them use your SSN as your driver's license number. That means anyone you write a check to, or anyone else who records your DL number to verify your ID, now has your SSN.

Bottom line: it's a great idea, way too late to do most of us any good.

My Samsung i730 Pocket PC phone runs Windows Mobile 2003. It's Windows - but not quite. Sure, you can install your own custom wallpaper, like the Dallas skyline background I use on my Today screen. And you can customize sounds, like the theme song from the Dallas TV series that I use as my ringtone.

But it doesn't feel like Windows without application and document icons on the desktop that I can click to open my favorite programs and files. Well, you can have that, too, with the iLauncher program for PPC. It's not free, but at $14.95, it's well worth the cost.

http://www.sbsh.net/products/ilauncher/ 

 
Samsung i730 PPC with Sony TX laptop

Toshiba is now the third company to say it's recalling laptop batteries made by Sony

Link to Toshiba Recalls Sony Batteries

The Toshiba recall has less frightening overtones than the battery recalls by Dell and Apple earlier in the year. This time, the problem is batteries that won't recharge, rather than ones that present the risk of explosion.

Interestingly, one vendor who hasn't recalled the Sony-made batteries in its laptop computers is, well, Sony. Tom and I both have VAIO laptops that we love, and I can't help wondering about the safety and quality of the batteries in them.

In fact, it seems to me that batteries are the "weak link" in today's mobile devices of all kinds. Ever notice how, in science fiction shows, those futuristic portable computers and other devices never seem to run out of power and die on the hero at the most inopportune moment? Not so in real life.

Case in point: I adore my Samsung i730 Pocket PC phone, but if I could pick one thing to change about it, it would be more battery power in a smaller package. As it is, my device came with two batteries: a more compact 1100 mAh "standard" model that provides about 2-3 hours of talk/Internet usage time, or a bulkier 1700 mAh "extended" version that gives you 4-5 hours but makes the device heavier and less pocket-friendly. Oh, what I'd give for a battery the size of the standard one that would last through a whole day of heavy usage.

Of course, there are solutions, such as taking several extra charged batteries with you, or buying a device like this, to let you charge up from AAs in a pinch:

http://www.thepocketsolution.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Session_ID=45038370000DBBDF000063D200000000&Screen=PROD&Product_Code=PSI-2555&Category_Code=samsung_i730&Product_Count=34 

The same issues arise with my digital cameras. We have three: a Nikon SLR, a small Coolpix 3100 and a super-compact Casio Exilim. Each serves a different purpose and provides different picture quality and flexibility. The great thing about digicams is that you never run out of film, especially with multi-gigabyte flash cards at the lowest prices ever (who would have imagined, a few years ago, 4 GB of storage on a tiny SD card for under $100?). But the limiting factor now is -- you guessed it -- the battery.

The high end Nikon and the low-end Casio have batteries that you remove from the camera to recharge (although you can also buy an optional cradle into which you can insert the Casio to charge its battery without removing it). The Coolpix 3100 takes a different approach, which is more expensive but ultimately more convenient: it uses disposable CR-V3 lithium batteries that look like two AAs joined together as Siamese twins. They cost about $8 each, but they last for a long time. If you don't have the special batteries, you can use rechargeable AAs or even regular AAs, but the latter don't last very long at all. Still, you can find them anywhere, so you're never left with a camera that won't function because of lack of batteries.

I guess our best hope is for fuel cells, and there are a number of companies working on them, but according to most experts, the technology is still years away (http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/New-PC-batteries-...) . In the meantime, batteries will continue to be the weak link preventing us from achieving the always-connected status we see in sci-fi movies. As long as they aren't exploding in our faces, I guess we should just count our blessings.

"Parts of Vista scare me," Gleichauf said at the Gartner Security Summit here on Monday. "Anything with that level of systems complexity will have new threats, as well as bringing new solutions. It's always a struggle in security, trying to build for what you don't know."

Source: Cisco exec: Windows Vista is scary | Tech News on ZDNet

Microsoft should probably take it as a good sign that their competitors are scared. Maybe the parts of Vista that scare him are the ones that will make built-in OS features like VPN more secure, thus reducing the need for third party products such as those his company makes.

Is it possible that a new OS will contain some new vulnerabilities? Sure. Will Vista be that long-awaited mythical beast, the 100% secure operating system? Of course not. But based on everything we've seen so far, Vista is much more secure than XP, which was much more secure than its predecessors. To imply that businesses shouldn't upgrade because "anything with that level of complexity will have new threats" (without even having found or documented those threats) is advice based on pure speculation.

The article goes on to say:

Microsoft has not helped to reassure customers by pushing back the release date of the operating system and changing some of the promised features.

Actually, customers should be reassured by the fact that Microsoft has pushed back the dates in order to ensure that they get Vista right before releasing it. I would be much more wary of the OS if they barreled ahead to release it on a specific date (for instance, in time for the Christmas buying season). Instead, they're doing the responsible thing and foregoing holiday sales for the sake of making sure the features that are included work properly and securely.

Of course, it's human nature to be scared of anything that's new and different, even if it's better. The only thing the remarks prove is that Cisco executives (or one of them, at least) are human, after all. :)

In yesterday's announcement of the new Zune media player and Zune Marketplace, Microsoft (and many press reports) glossed over a remarkable misfeature that should demonstrate once and for all how DRM and the DMCA harm legitimate customers.

Microsoft's Zune will not play protected Windows Media Audio and Video purchased or "rented" from Napster 2.0, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited, Movielink, Cinemanow, or any other online media service

Source: EFF: DeepLinks

If true, this is likely to doom the sales of the Zune player. I say "if true," because when Windows Media Center first came out, there were lots of dire rumors about copy protection that turned out not to be true - yes, it was built in, but you could turn it off.

At any rate, the article is entirely correct when it says:

The real culprit here is the DMCA -- but for that bad law, customers could legally convert DRMed files into whatever format they want, and tech creators would be free to reverse engineer the DRM to create compatible devices. Even though those acts have traditionally been and still are non-infringing, the DMCA makes them illegal and stifles fair use, innovation, and competition.

The DMCA is a bad law, one for which we can thank former President Clinton. It seems rather ironic that it wasn't some "pro-corporation Republican" who gave the record companies and movie studios this legal tool for forcing legitimate buyers of creative content to shell out more and more money to be able to enjoy what they paid for. But politics aside, the unintended (we hope) consequences of the DMCA need to be addressed - before consumers rebel and the music industry goes completely down the drain.

Meanwhile, we like the Creative Zen M. Check it out at http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/zenvisionm/

I've run into a few annoying glitches in beta testing Windows Vista and Office 2007, although overall I really like them both.

Last week, I hit a snag that was driving me nuts. I'd had zero problems with Office 2007 Beta 2 on Vista Beta 1. Then I upgraded to Vista interim build 5487 and started having one problem after another. One of the most annoying was that Outlook starting "shooting blanks" - that is, I was getting blank messages in the Outlook installed on Vista, although the same messages came through just fine on Outlook 2007 installed on my downstairs computer, which is still running XP Pro.

I hoped for some relief when I installed Vista RC1, and indeed, it did cure the blank message problem. In fact, Outlook worked perfectly for several days -- then all of a sudden, I could no longer click on hyperlinks in email messages. That was a major inconvenience, as people send me web links all the time. After a bunch of investigation, I ran across some discussion of this same problem on a web board that pointed to Firefox as the culprit. And then I realized that yes, my problem did indeed start when I installed Firefox on this new installation of Vista.

Some folks said it was caused by setting Firefox as the default browser. I'd never done that, but I checked the default browser settings in IE 7 anyway, and reselected IE as the default. That didn't help. Then I started researching default program settings in Vista, and discovered the solution, which involves changing the default browser setting in Vista itself, rather than in IE. If you're having this problem (and judging by the web discussions, quite a few people are), I give step-by-step instructions for the solution in next week's WXPnews. Check out the newsletter next Tuesday, September 19th, at www.wxpnews.com.

A short while ago (Sept 3: Bye, Bye, Eli), I recounted here the unprofessional treatment that I, along with a few other writers, suffered at the hands of the publishers of my up-until-then monthly print journal, Inside Microsoft Windows Server Security. And there have been a few other times when I've belly-ached, in different forums, about publishers: their author-unfriendly contracts, their habits of changing (umm, sorry: editing) what I write so that it says something I never intended, their late payments, and so forth.

But I don't want to create the impression that all publishers are out to exploit writers, because that's not true. In the publishing world, as in any other business, there are some companies that are great to work for, many that are okay, and really only a few that actually treat freelancers badly.

I've been lucky: most of the publishers I've worked with over the years have treated me very well indeed. Probably the top example is Sunbelt Software, for which I edit and produce the weekly WXPnews (www.wxpnews.com). The company is made up of a group of people who go above and beyond to make those who work with them on a contract basis feel like part of the family. If every writing gig I have were as enjoyable as doing the Sunbelt newsletter, I'd think I died and went to author heaven.

The difference between working for a good publisher like Sunbelt and one like Eli is night and day. I think the way a company treats its employees and contractors is often reflected in the way they treat customers, too. Maybe that explains why Sunbelt is flourishing while Eli is having to cut their budget by doing things like bringing their journals in house and putting out a September edition that's just a rehash of previously published articles.

I just want to take a moment here to say thanks to all the good companies for which we've done writing projects, including not just Sunbelt but also Microsoft, HP, Sony, TechRepublic/CNET, TechGenix, Powered, and book publishers Syngress, Cisco Press, Que, Osborne/McGraw-Hill and others. They're a great bunch, and more than make up for the few bad apples we've encountered along the way.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- European Union officials warned Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday not to shut out rivals in the security software market as the company plans to launch its Windows Vista operating system with built-in protection from hackers and malicious programs.
Source: DallasNews.com | News for Dallas, Texas | Technology

Everyone slammed Microsoft because the bad guys targeted Windows computers, because the operating system didn't keep them all out, because they weren't secure enough.

So what did the company do? Launched an all-out security initiative, which included building firewall, anti-spyware, anti-phishing and many other security technologies into the OS. That should make 'em happy, right?

Wrong. Microsoft, like George Bush, can do no right in the eyes of many people. Now critics, along with the EU, are bashing them for including those security mechanisms because it unfairly competes with third party companies who make security add-ons.

In my opinion, third party products often offer far more robust protections than the built-in security mechanisms do. Savvy users will continue to purchase more sophisticated add-on security products. On the other hand, having the built-in mechanisms is valuable because now at least the technically clueless, who otherwise would be surfing the 'net with no protections at all, have some protection. It's a win-win situation.

Unless you're Microsoft in the court of public opinion. Then there seems to be no way to win.

Link to Exclusive: Black Diamond Official - Esato news

And I thought the $600 I paid for my Samsung i730 was a lot. Here's the mother of all overpriced mobile phones: the Black Diamond from VIPN. It's pretty, I'll give you that. But $300,000 (yes, you read that right: three hundred thousand dollars) for a cell phone? You've got to be kidding.

Can I still get $5/month replacement insurance for that? Somehow I doubt it. Just imagine leaving this baby in the restaurant, or dropping it and crushing it on the sidewalk. No, thanks.

The good news is that there's going to be a MUCH less expensive version ("only" $1500) called the White Pearl. Still too much for me to shell out on a phone, but if I won the megamillions lottery tomorrow, well, I might actually consider that one. You can see it here: http://www.esato.com/news/article.php/id=980 .

How about a nice dull gray version, for about $400?

When I think about it, I'm still amazed that the device I carry around every day, my Samsung i730 cell phone (http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=667), is a full fledged computer with more powerful specs than the desktop system I paid over $2000 for in the early 90s. With 64MB of RAM (I think the Acer I used back then had 32) and a 520MHz processor (as opposed to the Acer's 333MHz), and a 16-bit color screen, it's a "real computer," all right. And it has features I could only dream of back then: voice command, the ability to store 4 GB of data on a tiny SD card, and best of all, a wireless Internet connection that goes almost everywhere I do. All this in a six and half ounce package.

But we humans, we're never satisfied. And much as I love my little computer/phone, I keep looking for Samsung or another vendor to come up with a new model that's just a tiny bit more ... perfect. Number one on my wish list is longer battery life. With the extended battery, I can get a bit over 4 hours of usage (or several days on standby). But the extended battery also adds to the weight and bulk of the device. What I want is a slim battery that will give me a full week on standby or 10 hours of talk/Internet time.

I also want the device made just a smidgeon smaller and lighter. I just saw the new Blackberry "Pearl" (http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/09/07/blackberr...). I'm not a BB fan, but I like the sound of 3.2 oz., not to mention the $200 price tag. My Samsung, for which I paid $599, is now down to $399 at Verizon with a two year contract.

For me, the most logical way to slim down the Samsung is to get rid of the slide-out keyboard. I never, ever use it, so it's just taking up space and adding weight. The onscreen keyboard works great for me. No, I don't break out the stylus every time I want to enter data. I use my fingernails. I realize this solution doesn't work for nail-biters, and lots of people like a thumb keyboard, so I'm not asking that they become obsolete, just that vendors offer ONE model of Pocket PC phone without it, for those of us who don't want/need it. Who knows? They might discover I'm not the only one.

Finally, satisfaction (or lack thereof) with any computer, large or small, comes down to the software. Overall, I'm fairly happy with Windows Mobile, especially with the add-ons that I've installed to improve functionality, like the application launcher program that lets me put clickable application and document icons on my tiny "desktop" just like on my big desktop. But wouldn't it be cool if my phone could run a basic version of XP (or non-Aero Vista), so OS behavior would be exactly like on my other systems? I know, dream on.  But computers as small as the Sony U series (http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/sony_vai...) and the OQO ultra-portable (http://dynamism.com/oqo/main.shtml) have been running XP for a while now, and now that Microsoft has gotten behind the ultra mobile PC idea (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/default.ms...), getting the full OS to run on a phone-sized device doesn't really seem to be that much more of a leap.

Meanwhile, I appreciate what I've got, and I'll just keep on buying pants with big pockets to accomodate my i730 with its monster battery. As long as I can check my email while I'm standing in line at the grocery store or look up my destination on the web while riding (not driving) in a car, I'm happy. Heaven knows when I bought my first VIC-20 way back when, I never would have thought that all this would be possible in my lifetime.

Microsoft has confirmed how much Windows Vista will cost when it hits the shops early next year. 

Source: Microsoft confirms Windows Vista pricing - vnunet.com

Looks like Amazon was right in its "pre-order" prices for Vista that came out a couple of weeks ago. Some folks are asking how the Vista versions compare to XP. Although Home Basic might be thought of as comparable to XP Basic, I can't see much of a reason to upgrade from the latter to the former. One major point of switching to Vista is the new Aero interface, and Home Basic doesn't support it. It does offer better security, but I'm doubtful that many home users will be willing to pay the $100 upgrade price to get a new OS that isn't any prettier than XP.

On the other hand, Vista Business Edition looks to be pretty comparable to XP Pro, and costs the same. Business Edition does support Aero, and also adds support for Tablet PC features (no need for a separate TPC Edition). This will be the choice for most small and medium businesses. Enterprise Edition is only sold through volume licensing and its enhancements include mostly security elements such as BitLocker drive encryption and UNIX interoperability.

Home Premium will be popular with those who want the best multi-media functionality, since it has Media Center built in. And of course, Ultimate has it all: the best of both (business and consumer) worlds - but at top dollar. Not sure how many power users will pay $400 for it (or $259 for the upgrade) when they can get Home Premium for a little over half that ($239 full, $159 upgrade). Here's a summary of the official prices for the most popular versions:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060905-7663...

I want to have a long and happy relationship with Windows Vista; I really do. I'm even willing to give up XP and be faithful to Vista - but only if it's willing to make a commitment to me, too.

Right now my relationship with Vista is reminding me a little bit of those summer romances I used to have when I was in my teens. You know: when you first met the guy, he knocked your socks off with his fantastic looks, and as you got to know him a little, you discovered that he was also smart and articulate. What's not to love? Your first weeks and months together were like heaven on earth.

Then he started to change. Or maybe you were just getting to know him a little too well. He was still as gorgeous and brilliant as before, but you started to realize that he was also a little flaky and unreliable. Sometimes he'd show up for dates, and sometimes he wouldn't. And he didn't play well with all of your old friends, either. Some he didn't get along with at all. If you made the mistake of marrying him, you found that he got slower and crankier as he aged - and more and more possessive. Soon your whole life was devoted to keeping him happy.

When I first took the plunge and installed Vista Beta 2 on my "real" computer (as opposed to VMs in which I had run early beta builds), I couldn't have been more satisfied. It looked great, it was fast and almost all of my programs ran on it with no problem. Oh, sure, there were warning signs, like the way it refused to cooperate with any of the secondary video cards I installed, limiting me to two monitors instead of the four that I had with XP. But I was in love, so I was willing to overlook a little quirk like that.

The real trouble started when I upgraded to Species 5472. Those of you who read my WXPnews editorials already know that story. If you don't, you can read it here: http://www.wxpnews.com/archives/wxpnews-238-200608... 

I have to admit that although I still loved it, I never quite trusted Vista as much after that experience.  This week, I upgraded again to build 5600 (RC1). This is supposed to be the real deal, pretty much what we're going to get in the final release. Like a battered wife whose husband brought home flowers and promised it would never happened again, I was full of hope.

After struggling with it for two days, I'm feeling ambivalent. Still no support for the Geforce 5200 card that nVidia advertised as Vista compatible - but I can't really hold the operating system at fault for that. But when I booted up this morning, I found my monitors were switched: the one on the right that had been my secondary monitor now held my taskbar and sidebar, and in the display settings, it thought it was on the left of my other monitor. It only took a few minutes to correct all that, but it was annoying. Sort of like when you discover that your knight in shining armor snores.

Worse, some of the third party programs that worked on Beta 2 don't seem to want to run properly now. In this new incarnation, I found myself mostly limiting myself to Microsoft applications. Argh. Now he doesn't want me to associate with anyone except his family members.

I'm not quite ready yet to give up on this relationship, but I confess that I do cheat now and then, returning to XP when I get a longing for my four-monitor array. There are so many things that I love about Vista but ... is it enough? I can only hope, as women have done down through the ages, that once he takes those final release vows, he'll change just a little. We'll see.

As many of you know, I've been editing and writing the content for the Inside Windows Server Security journal for a little over a year and a half. I started doing the Journal for Element K and really enjoyed putting out this monthly print publication.

Back last year, the Element K journals were bought by Eli and, after a bit of a go-round in negotiating the new contract, life went on as usual -- until the beginning of this summer. At that time, I received notification from the managing editor there that the journals were going to take a three month hiatus, to allow us to tighten up the production schedule. I thought that was a good idea, as we were submitting copy about five months ahead of actual publication, and in the fast-moving tech world that meant some of the material was outdated by the time it saw print.

Other journal editors were told the same thing. Of course, we wouldn't get paid during the "off" time, but I wasn't too upset about that as I had a couple of summer projects that were going to make my schedule very crowded, so I welcomed the extra time to devote to them.

However, three months came and went, and we editors were then told that instead of starting the journals back up in September, as we'd been led to expect, they would all have a "best of" issue rehashing previously published content. I didn't think that was such a great idea; if I were a reader who was paying for twelve issues per year, I wouldn't be very happy to find that one of those issues consisted of "reruns."

By that time, we were beginning to wonder what was going on. Well, we finally found out. Despite the fact that all of our journals were reported to be selling well, we were notified by email (shades of Radio Shack) two weeks ago that the journals are being brought "in house" and our services are no longer needed. I really didn't care what medium was used to tell me; the thing that bothered me was being strung along for four months, during which time I didn't go out and pursue new gigs to replace that income (which amounts to several thousand dollars per month) because I thought the job would be starting up again in the fall.

I'm sure Eli felt this was a wise business decision, and it may very well have been, but I think it could have been handled a bit differently. And I find it ironic that companies that show absolutely no loyalty or even consideration to those who have worked diligently for them expect absolute loyalty from those same people (the biggest point of contention in their contract was a non-compete clause that, if I had left it as it was originally, would have prevented me from getting a new job for one of their competitors for two years following the termination of this one -- thank heavens for my obsessive-compulsive reading of fine print and my obstinance in negotiating).

So, for any of the readers of my journal who wonder why I disappeared, now you know. I have written for dozens of technical publications and I've never had an experience quite like this before.

With the release of Amazon's pre-order pricing for Vista, it seems MacIntosh fans have come out of the woodwork to join Linux lovers in the mantra that Vista is "overpriced." The funniest of these comments are the ones that accuse Microsoft of being able to "price gouge" because they're a "monopoly."

First of all, the very existence of Mac and Linux operating systems negates the monopoly accusation. But at least when the Penguin Party talks about pricing issues, they have a leg to stand (or waddle) on: you really can get their OS for little or nothing (depending on the distro). Mac's OS X Tiger, on the other hand, costs $129. This is, of course, an upgrade price since you can't install Tiger on anything except a Mac, running a previous version of the Mac OS.

Based on the Amazon pricing info, the upgrade price for Vista Home Basic is $100. Home Premium, which includes the Aero interface that's more comparable to the Mac interface, costs $160 for an upgrade. However, it also includes much more functionality than OS X, with Media Center and Tablet PC software included.

Where it really gets funny is when Macsters talk about monopolies. Imagine the outrage if Microsoft insisted on controlling all the hardware on which its OS is installed and allowing to be installed only on systems it sold. And speaking of price gouging, take a look at the prices of Mac systems vs PCs. Yep, Apple finally came out with an affordable Mac in the mini, but you still pay $599 for a 1.5GHz machine with 512MB of memory and a 60GB hard drive.

Dell is currently offering its entry-level Dimension 1100 for $479 - with a 2.66GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and a 160 GB hard disk. Oh, yeah, and that includes a 15 inch flat panel monitor; adding Apple's smallest (20 inch) Cinema monitor at $699 will more than double the cost of the Mini Mac, although of course you can pick up a cheap 15 inch flat panel elsewhere for only an extra $100-150.

Bottom line: I'm not a Mac hater. I actually like the mini Mac and OS X. But I find Windows much better for productivity applications, and it really annoys me when the Microsoft bashers lay on the FUD, especially when they're Apple pots calling the Microsoft kettle black.