Something fishy about Windows 7

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Been playing with the new 7022 build of Windows 7 which [cough] arrived on my desktop as a handy ISO file.

And something has been bugging me about it. Couldn’t put my finger on it. Something really just a bit out of kilter.

Then a Twitter posting by Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless inside Microsoft pointed it out. There are bubbles coming from the fish. Fish don’t breath, and certainly don’t exhale bubbles. Maybe this is just one big Windows 7 super intelligent joke.

Apparently the fish is actually a Siamese fighting fish, known as a “betta fish”. Pronounced beta.

When Windows 7 succumbs to a virus, will we see boils and skin rashes and dead fish on the bottom of the screen too?

Microsoft asks laid-off workers for its money back

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Microsoft is facing the mother of all PR disasters, after it sent out letters to some of the 1,400 workers it laid off last month, asking them to return overpayments in their severance pay (source: Techcrunch.com)

The report doesn’t state how much Microsoft overpaid the fired employees, but unless it was a lottery jackpot-sized mistake, surely a company that made a profit of $4 billion in the last quarter alone could afford to put it down to experience? 

Click here to read a copy of the leaked letter

99% Flash Player Penetration – Too Good to be True?

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Adobe makes much of the fact that its Flash player has become” the world’s most pervasive software platform” bridging the worlds of PC, Mac and Linux. Nowadays this claim is generally taken as read but ultimately it depends on the ubiquity of the Flash player as advertised on the Adobe site.

But should the claims be taken at face value?

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If you’re going to do something stupid, do it well

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

So Dell has launched its own download store, describing it as “an online music and software superstore where consumers can easily download a wide variety of songs, and the most popular gaming and software titles”. And I suppose that’s fair enough.

Even though I give Dell a bit of a hard time about the fact it’s even attempting to rival the likes of Amazon and iTunes in this week’s podcast, my biggest problem isn’t with the fact it’s offering a download service; it’s that it’s doing it so badly. (more…)

Amazon charges £5 to wash Lily Allen’s mouth out

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

They say manners cost nothing. On Amazon.co.uk they cost precisely £4.99. The wonderfully cheap Amazon download store is currently flogging the explicit version of Lily Allen’s new It’s Not Me, It’s You album for the astonishingly cheap price of £3.

Want the same album without the effing and blinding? That will cost you £7.99.

Who’d have thought a bleep machine and a couple of asterisks could be so expensive? 

At last! A phone that doesn’t lie

Monday, February 16th, 2009

There are many things I’ve learnt to distrust over the years. PRs who start a conversation with the phrase “have you got 30 seconds?”, my Dad’s woefully optimistic assessment of the carnage he’s unleashed on his PC, and West Ham’s back four, for instance. But none more so than the battery indicator on mobile phones.

They are pathological liars. They’ll spend two days displaying five full bars of battery goodness, only to chomp their way through the remaining bars in six-and-a-half minutes. I’ll never buy a Sony Ericsson phone again after the time I left the house with the full five bars of battery, only to end up on the motorway hard shoulder a couple of hours later, barking instructions to my girlfriend in a demented verbal shorthand, because the battery had inexplicably drained down to the last sodding bar.

And what does the phone do when it’s approaching battery Armageddon? Does it go into Apollo 13 mode and start shutting down every last unnecessary amp of power? No, it starts twittering out “battery low” warnings like a budgie on Speed, serving only to chip another few seconds off your remaining talktime in the process.

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The real power behind Conficker

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

So Microsoft has dug into its pockets and come up with a reward in an attempt to help find who wrote the nasty piece of malware known as Conficker. And it’s working with various internet bodies like ICANN in an attempt to try to shut it down.

However, I can exclusively reveal the name of the person involved. I can even describe him – American, white hair, distinguished. Has a long history in computer engineering. And has recently retired from Microsoft. His name: Jim Allchin [corrected]. (more…)

All the week’s reviews

Friday, February 13th, 2009

The big launch of the week was AMD’s move to its AM3 platform. Finally allowing the use of DDR3 with its CPUs, we received a motherboard and several new triple and quad-core processor models, which we promptly fired through our intensive benchmark suite with pretty impressive results.

At the more budget end of the scale we saw HP’s Compaq CQ2000, a beautifully designed small-form-factor PC with a 20in TFT for a mouth-watering price of just £286 exc VAT. We’ve seen cheap mini-PCs and nettops before, but this is the first we’d really want in our living room.

We also reviewed Toshiba’s latest business model, the Tecra R110-112, which came in bright white with a vast array of security features and reasonable power too. (more…)

Microsoft summed up, in one tortuous sentence.

Friday, February 13th, 2009

After news of Microsoft retail stores, a quote:

“We’re also working hard to transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience at retail by improving the articulation and demonstration of the Microsoft innovation and value proposition so that it’s clear, simple and straightforward for consumers everywhere.”

That little gem was from chief operating officer Mike Turner. Try reading it out loud, and see if you can stop yourself chuckling when you reach the part about it being clear and simple. For added effect, you might want to have a list of the six versions of Windows 7 to hand.

First-aid Friday fun stuff

Friday, February 13th, 2009

If your Friday is beginning to feel like a long trudge up a slippy hill with rocks raining down on your head thrown by bureaucratic monkeys from towers, then our our sister site iGizmo could have just the half-time oranges to make the slog a little easier. They’ve got a horribly addictive quiz designed to test the mettle of even the most hardened tech geek.

The aim is simple: identify ten zoomed-in pics of technological bobbins in as short a time as possible. The winner will go on a leader board and be crowned Lord High Geek and brought tithes, tokens and offerings by his subjects. I made the last part up, but the quiz really is marvellous so I recommend you take a look-see.

Just so you’ve got something to aim for, I did it in 13.6 secs, which is to the top ten what Paula Radcliffe is to the Olympic medal positions.

If you’re still rooting around for fun Friday things to do, can I also point you towards our devastatingly good roundup of the top ten greatest Flash games, and Robokill – which is so good I might name my first child after it.

Enjoy your weekend.