August 23rd, 2007

Best mobile VoIP headset ever

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 6:53 am

Categories: Gadgetry, Hardware, Mac, Mobility, Windows

Tags: VoIP, Mobile, Plantronics, Headset, Marc Orchant

I’ve been using the new Virtual Phone Booth from Plantronics for the past few weeks and it has utterly transformed my Skype (and Gizmo and Google Talk) experience. Formerly, I have either relied on the built-in microphone and speakers on my laptops (with the attendant howling and echoing that too often seems to plague VoIP calls) or used the excellent but too-bulky-for-travel Plantronics DSP 500 headset. That big unit has been a great solution for voice recognition and podcasting but is not exactly comfortable or convenient for all-day work.

The Virtual Phone Booth is a pair of noise-isolating earbuds with an integrated microphone boom on that connects either directly through the microphone and headphone jacks on your PC or using an included USB adapter. The sound quality is excellent and the comfort is all-day, forget-you-have it-on. Folks I’ve been talking to via Skype and other services have repeatedly remarked on the excellent sound quality and in local tests with Audacity, the recording quality is more than sufficient for podcasing and screencasting duty. Volume and muting controls are built into a slim tub on the cord which also features a small clip to attach to your shirt.

The Virtual Phone Booth packs into an included hard case that’s about the size of a candy bar so it slips into the gadget bag with no problem and gives me a completely portable solution with no compromises when I’m out and about or on the road. This unit is a definite keeper! The Virtual Phone Booth retails for about $110.00 and is compatible with both the Mac OS and Windows.

I’ve also been using the latest Bluetooth headset from Plantronics, the Voyager 520. I’ve used the Voyager 510, an over-the-ear boom style headset, for years as it’s one of the most comfortable headsets I’ve used with excellent battery life and the relatively uncommon ability to multi-pair which allows me to use it with both a laptop and a mobile phone or with two mobile phones (yes, I am a gadget freak).

The 520 is a more conventional pod-shaped design that offers the same benefits and even better battery life. Plantronics has designed a new molded rubber earpiece that does a great job of isolating outside noise so that even in noisy environs on on a windy day the saound quality is excellent. The ear hook, unlike many headsets I’ve evaluated, is made from a very soft and flexible material that does not chafe or scratch. It’s a single button design which makes adjusting the volume or using other functions very easy. Plantronics has also designed a nice desktop stand (pictured here) that makes it very convenient to pop the unit in for a quick charge.

The Voyager 520 retails for $99.00 and worked perfectly with my MacBook, Lenovo Tablet PC, Nokia N95 and Apple iPhone.

August 15th, 2007

Skype release 2.7 beta for the Mac

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:21 am

Categories: Mac OS X, Mobility, Productivity, Software, Windows

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Skype Technologies S.A., Beta, Marc Orchant

Skype has just released a beta version of Skype 2.7 for the Mac with Chat groups, Address Book integration, auto-redial, improved file transfer, and more. Downloading it now. I live in Skype – it’s my office number and preferred IM and video chat environment. I also use Gizmo Project (especially on the Nokia N95 and N800) and a number of IM clients but the bulk of my contacts and friends are on Skype so that’s where I look first. These enhancements will make it all the more useful and bring things more on a par with the capabilities I already enjoy when working on the Tablet PC.

August 5th, 2007

Vista IE7 issue remains unsolved for many users

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 9:54 am

Categories: Productivity, Software, Vista, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Windows Vista, Marc Orchant

When I read stuff like this, it confirms my belief that there’s something very broken in the world of Vista. Here’s a very knowledgeable user and talented developer who’s confounded and befuddled by a well-documented and still unaddressed issue affecting Vista users running Internet Explorer 7. The problem manifests itself as an annoying and increasingly frequent hang or time-out during which the PC is essentially rendered useless. This is not a productivity enhancing experience folks. This is a huge time sink. The emphasis below is mine.

I updated some of the drivers on the Toshiba the other day so maybe that’s what’s going on. I know there’s a specific order these drivers need to be installed in or else “things can go wrong.” What those things are I don’t know. Maybe that’s the problem I’m running into. The only cure I understand is to do a clean install and there’s no way I’m going to set aside a dozen hours to reinstall everything and get this machine back in order. I’d rather limp along until I find another Tablet PC. Right now I have my eye on a Lenovo with dual digitizers and the forthcoming Dell Tablet PC.

Sorry in advance if this doesn’t align with your experience and you’re a huge fan of Vista for whom everything is working just fine. IMO, this is yet another indication of how far Microsoft has to go to get Vista to a position of equivalent performance and stability to what we’ve come to expect to from XP SP2. Again, this is not an isolated incident or a case of PEBKAC*. Problems like this are all too common and are being widely reported and discussed in the tubes. Do a search and you’ll see what I mean. It’s increasingly evident that Vista is not a ready-for-prime-time operating system yet.

* A lovely acronym favored by tech support people which stands for Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Update: my buddy Ed Bott takes me to task for using weak evidence and he’s right that a lot of hits on a search engine from a query like the one I suggest is hardly conclusive. And, as I commented on his post, there are really two issues here. One is an IE7 problem that further investigation reveals is affecting users of XP and Vista. The other is the larger issue of whether Vista is ready to be a shipping product for the millions of people who were led to believe that their late-model PC was Vista-compatible or Vista-ready and have since discovered that this is not the case. If, as Ed argues in his post, the best scenario is Vista installed on a new PC at the factory and upgrades even on Vista-compatible or Vista-ready machines are a problem waiting to happen, then Microsoft needs to come clean and say so.

August 1st, 2007

The Vista productivity debate rages on

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 8:53 am

Categories: Productivity, Software, Uncategorized, Vista, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Windows XP, Tablet PC, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows, Marc Orchant

Well I seem to have hit a nerve (or struck a chord at least) with a lot of people with my recent post about the decidedly mixed reaction to Vista. It’s the most heavily trafficked and commented post I’ve made here at ZDNet and reading through the comment thread reveals a few interesting topics of conversation. Aside from the ever-present Linux (or Mac OS) vs. Windows comments that are a staple of any contentious thread here in ZDNet-land, the actual issue I hoped to address – productivity – was well covered along with the historical perspective suggested by more than a few commenters that things were not so different when Windows XP (or Windows 2000) were first released.

I don’t pretend to be a historian where such things are concerned but I can say with no reservations that my personal experience with both Win 2K and XP was nowhere near as disappointing or frustrating as what I’m going through with Vista. I recall that when Windows 2000 was first available, the company I was working with at the time had a mix of NT Workstation and Windows 98 SE machines and the upgrade was a huge improvement in both performance and stability. There were, of course, the Service Pack releases that continued to improve things (well, at least until the last one which was a freaking nightmare that we mostly avoided as we had already moved on to XP).

Windows XP was a big UI change – hold the Fisher-Price jokes please – but was also a significant change in the interaction design dimension as well. I remember being very excited about the improvements to the shell experience when I first dove into XP and, despite the changes in Vista, many of those core ideas live on. XP Service Pack 2 was a watershed release in my opinion. As a Tablet PC user, the updated Tablet PC bits in SP2 were a smashing success and made that form factor more than a curiosity and “cool but I don’t really need that” feature set.  The way Windows updated and protected itself was also radically changed during this time.

Getting back to the original topic of discussion, all of these releases made me feel more productive which, to date, Vista really has not. As a number of commenters noted, it seems that many of the decisions made related to how controls work and where they were moved to were made more for the sake of change than a comprehensible improvement in user experience.

It’s also all too easy to send Vista into a weird fugue state simply by getting a little “mouse happy” and trying to perform too many operations quickly. The system almost always recovers once it’s caught up with all my clicking but it’s distracting and irritating to see all of my windows dim out and watch that spinning circle thing spin around and around. And no, there’s nothing that’s in any way less than up-to-date about the system I’m using Vista on – it’s a recently released and well-configured Lenovo ThinkPad X61t Tablet PC with 2GB RAM, a big hard drive and a Core 2 Duo processor.

The jury’s still out and I have no doubt that ultimately many of these issues will be resolved with the now-rumored performance releases and ultimately a SP1 release sometime in the future. Right now? I’m still wrestling with very mixed feelings.

July 25th, 2007

Vista is taking body blows

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:59 am

Categories: Microsoft, Productivity, Software, Uncategorized, Vista, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, Marc Orchant

I’ve been on a bit of a blog and RSS hiatus the past couple of days and have been working my way through tales of destruction and distress (the 365 outage, not Lindsay Lohan’s latest episode), news, and views. In my reading, there’s a recurring theme that beats louder all the time. People are just not loving Vista.

James Fallows, one of my all-time favorite columnists, just wrote that he’s going back to XP. Valleywag, (almost) always amusing, albeit at the expense of accuracy from time to time, reports that the official release of SP1 for Vista appears to be slated for a 2009 release. And David Berlind really nails it in his discussion about the way the world is changing around Microsoft when he writes:

Today, I’m a user of both Windows XP and Windows Vista and while I remain convinced that Vista is a better OS than XP, my usage of XP serves as a constant reminder that when it comes to getting my work done, I’m not getting it done any faster or better in Vista. In fact, because of the way several things have been moved around in Vista, and because of the way Internet Explorer 7, in an effort to protect us from ourselves, locks up the Web in a chastity belt, I often find myself being slowed down by Vista. It may only be a matter of time before I get used to it (and figure out how to reconfigure IE7 with the necessary wiggle room). But the bottom line is that (a) I’m definitely not more productive and (b) if I finally get to a point where I am more productive, it won’t be by much.

Nothing I’ve read (or written) sums it all up quite as well as this paragraph. I like Vista for a lot of reasons. The visual appearance is great. The new bells and whistles (the sidebar and gadgets, integration of RSS, and built-in productivity apps like Calendar and Contacts for example) are very nice although such things have been available long before Vista on both XP, some via third parties, and on the Mac and Linux. But when it comes to actually getting things done, Vista feels like it’s getting in my way far more often than XP or the Mac OS (both of which I continue to use daily).

Having left the world of full-time gainful employment for the juggling career that is independent writing and consulting, productivity is my paramount concern. I have too many projects running concurrently to put up with an OS that creates stumbling points or friction in my work. And based on my soon-to-be-patented curses-per-hour algorithm, Vista is anything but friction-free. I recently wrote about my frustrations with something as simple as using removable USB memory stick. Given that I do a fair amount of gadget and software testing, I can say with some authority that installing device drivers and applications is not easier or faster in Vista. and even basic things like hibernating, starting up, and shutting down feel like they take a lot longer than in XP.

The luster of shiny new-ness wears off quickly these days and I’m on the fence with Vista. While I’ll keep it on the Lenovo X61 Tablet PC for sure (the new Tablet bits in Vista are that good), I’m less certain about some of my other Windows-powered devices. I’m about ready, time permitting, to repartition the hard drive on the Asus R2H UMPC to set up a dual boot with XP because Vista is just so broken on that device in ways both large (overall performance) and small (too many modal dialogs that are too big for the native screen resolution).

I don’t think Microsoft can afford the pace they’re setting. Vista SP1 needs to be officially released sooner than 18 months from now. And Windows 7? I’m not even going to think about that for a while.

July 12th, 2007

Is Vista stupid (or is it me)?

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 8:12 am

Categories: Vista, Windows

Tags: Stick, Microsoft Windows Vista, Marc Orchant

OK – brief rant here. Why is it that when I’m using a USB memory stick, Vista is apparently incredibly stupid about removing the device when I’m finished working with it? First, the OS refuses to allow me to safely remove the stick if a window is open. How dumb is that? Second, even after dutifully closing all windows, files, applications, etc. and clicking on the Safely Remove Hardware button in the tray, Vista leaves the dialog box informing me that I may now safely remove the hardware open after I’ve removed the stick. Seemingly forever. Until I dismiss it manually. XP was smarter than this. So I ask again: Is Vista stupid or is it me?

If you know how I can fix this behavior please post a comment. It’s driving me batty!

June 28th, 2007

Fake Microsoft security bulletin in the wild

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 5:53 am

Categories: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Windows

Tags: Security, Vulnerability, Sophos Plc., Microsoft Corp., Phishing, Hacker, Marc Orchant

If you (or someone you know) receives an e-mail about a zero-day exploit affecting Microsoft Outlook do not, under any circumstances, click on the links embedded in the message. It’s a phishing scam folks. The Security Bulletin (MS07-0065) it points to doesn’t exist. And just because it can never be said too often, I’ll say it again here. Microsoft does not alert users to security issues via e-mail. Ever. That’s what Windows Update is for. Details from Sophos are available here.

In the closing paragraphs of their announcement, Sophos describes why this vector has become so popular for phishers and hackers – people have learned that patching their systems against exploits is part of their “job” in keeping their systems running properly but haven’t yet completely grasped the potential vulnerability that awareness creates if they allow themselves to be duped into reacting to messages like this.

“Security bulletins from Microsoft describing vulnerabilities in their software are a common occurence, and so its not a surprise to see hackers adopting this kind of disguise in their attempt to infect Windows PCs,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “The irony is that as awareness of computer security issues has risen, and the need for patching against vulnerabilities, so social engineering tricks which pose as critical software fixes are likely to succeed in conning the public.”

In examples seen by Sophos experts, the emails have contained the recipient’s full name, and the company they work for, in an attempt to lull user’s into a false sense of security.

“By using people’s real names, the Microsoft logo, and legitimate-sounding wording, the hackers are attempting to fool more people into stepping blindly into their bear-trap,” continued Cluley. “Users need to be on their guard against this kind of confidence trick or they risk handing over control of their PC to hackers with criminal intentions. They should also ensure that they are downloading Microsoft security updates from Microsoft itself, not from any other website.”

Update: Well, a number of commenters have corrected me  on my statement that Microsoft does not provide security alerts via e-mail. Apparently they do – on an opt-in subscription basis. And, apparently, the e-mails are PGP-signed (although, as the person who informed me of this pointed out, the vast majority of people don’t have PGP installed). My best advice to those of you who prefer to be safe rather than sorry is to use Windows Update to check for any security (or performance-related) updates.

June 26th, 2007

Codeweavers 10-step program

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 4:16 pm

Categories: Linux, Mac, Microsoft, Software, Uncategorized, Windows

Tags: CodeWeavers Inc., Microsoft Corp., Marc Orchant

Codeweavers, the company behind CrossOver, an engine that provides Mac and Linux users the ability to install and run some Windows applications without a Windows  install or license, have just released a 10-Step Program for Computing Nirvana. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek poke at Microsoft and the dominance they enjoy over the computing world. I’m warning you up front that if you’re a Microsoft zealot, you’re probably going to hate this. If you’re a Microsoft basher, you’re probably going to get at least a few laughs out of it. And if you’re hewing to the middle ground and refuse to succumb to either of these magnetic poles, you’ll probably see both the truthiness and folly in this sort of thing.

It made me laugh and got me to click around their site a bit so I guess that qualifies as a success. Heck, it amused enough to write this.

June 23rd, 2007

New OneNote Powertoy adds search and replace

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:13 am

Categories: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Software, Tablet PCs, Uncategorized, Utilities and Add-Ins, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, OneNote Powertoy, Daniel Escarpa, Marc Orchant

Daniel Escapa has just released a new Powertoy for OneNote 2007 that adds a basic search-and-replace feature to the application. I’ve long wished for this ability in OneNote. The add-in currently supports text only (no support for searching against pre-recognized text which makes sense in a certain way since what would it replace a result with?). Like all Powertoy releases, this is unsupported by Microsoft or the author so use at your own risk, your mileage may vary, back up all of your data before installing, and other cautionary admonitions apply.

June 13th, 2007

A cautionary Vista story - steep curves ahead

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 9:16 am

Categories: Vista, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Windows Vista, Marc Orchant

Chris Shipley, the executive director of and impresario behind the DEMO Conferences is hardly a technology lightweight. Every year, she and her team evaluate hundreds of emerging technology companies and products and cherry pick the best and brightest to appear under the DEMO microscope for their legendary six minutes of scrutiny. So when I read something like this, I know there’s trouble in Vista-land:

I’m exhausted! I’ve been running hard up the Vista/Office 2007 learning curve for the last two weeks, and I’m just plain worn out. Productivity is in the basement. Frustration has reached all-time highs. And all I’m trying to do is write a column, synchronize my e-mail, launch a presentation and review a financial spreadsheet. It’s the stuff I’ve been doing for years.

Uh oh. I felt the same pain often enough while climbing the same curve to be completely sympathetic. Of course, I have a huge head start on Chris and others who are just climbing onto the Vista and Office 2007 train now. But I completely understand her frustration, particularly with some of the seemingly arbitrary, change-for-change’s-sake differences in Vista.

The best example, as Chris points out in her lament, is how much harder it is to establish and save a wireless connection in Vista. The process doesn’t make sense, requires more steps than in XP, and has a bad case of amnesia even though I have dutifully identified and named my common connections every way I think I’m supposed to. I’m hoping the whole user experience in this aspect of the Vista experience is seriously reworked in Service Pack 1. It’s a failed exercise in interaction design IMO.

I appreciate the attention Microsoft engineers paid to security, but I have come to believe that the plan was to make certain connectivity features so difficult to configure that you would choose to avoid connecting through public networks at all. What could be safer?

Heh. Right on. Hang in there Chris. You’re not alone.