Great Windows 7 deal for college students

Just in time for back to school. Microsoft is offering its Windows 7 Home Premium or Pro Edition (normally $120) for just $30 to college students.

To qualify you just have to be a current student and have a working email address from a U.S. university

Offer ends Jan. 3, 2010!

Oh, and while you’re there you may as well pick up Microsoft Office for just $59.95. The so-called “Ultimate Steal” is a 91% savings! The pack includes: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote, Groove, Publisher, Access and Info Path.

Found via geeksugar

My View of Vista (or Why I May Need a Mac)

You may recall when I took Windows to task for treating me like an idiot. Welll, I just bought a new laptop that came pre-loaded with Vista and suddenly Windows XP seems like a lean. efficient OS that treats me like I’m a PhD.

I could rant about how Vista now asks you a third time before allowing you to do any task more complex than opening an application, but it’s a minor annoyance compared to some of the lovely new quirks to discovered.

I still use Microsoft Office for XP. It continues to serve me well and they haven’t added anything significant enough to justify me spending a thousand dollars on an upgrade. (One of the few things I miss about working for a big company – they paid to upgrade your software!). Part of that Office suite is Outlook 2002. I successfully installed Office on the new Vista machine and cloned my email account info, of course telling it to save my passwords. And it all worked fine until I closed Outlook. When I started it up again, it had purged my passwords and thus failed to retrieve my email until I used the account management tool to re-enter the passwords. A Google search on the problem confirmed that it was common to Outlook 2002 and that Microsoft had no intention of fixing it. “Please send us $1000 for newer versions of software you didn’t want to replace”.

But wait! It gets worse. I had no trouble detecting and logging into my home wireless network - except that it came up “Local Only”, meaning no Internet connectivity. After frustrating attempts to figure out all the new “user friendly” nomenclature for networking I gave up and decided to use good old DOS brute force. Finding out how to open a command line window was a chore and when I finally did and tried the old faithful “ipconfig /release” command, it told me that it required “elevation”. Huh? I live at sea level in a one story home. Did I need to hit the roof? My account was set as “Administrator” but apparently that wasn’t good enough.

In a classic Catch-22, I wanted to check the web for updated drivers, but that required web access that Vista wasn’t giving me. I tried plugging in a cable direct to the router and all of a sudden all the connections worked! Sweet! Or not…

I go to a client’s office where I’ve always successfully connected to their wireless network, but I get the dreaded “Local Only”. After seeking help (and I HATE to do that) from their network admins, I was ready to give up and plug into a network jack. Presto! Once I did that, wireless kicked in. See a pattern emerging?

I was on the road last weekend. Tried to connect in the airport. Yep – Local Only. When I got to my destination, I used someone else’s computer to research the issue. It’s common. I tried to follow some of the proposed solutions. But the only one that ever worked was “plug it into a router”. That’s kind of hard in an airport.

Microsoft is mum on the issue. The net community hasn’t been able to overcome it. And my smug, welf-satisfied Mac friends are all saying “I told you so…”

I’m Not a Moron

No – there’s no poll to accompany that statement. Sorry.

That headline is aimed directly at software makers. I understand that there are still a tremendous amount of newbies out there who need software that holds your hand and treats you like you’re 8 years old. Yes, there are families who share a PC who need help with parental controls and network security. But I know what I need and what I don’t and it’s a never-ending source of frustration that it’s increasingly difficult to find software (from the Windows OS on down) that allows you to opt out of idiot-mode.

Let’s start with the biggie: Windows. I’m a Windows guy. I know my way around Unix/Linux but that’ll never be my day-to-day OS. Mac? Can’t work it. Don’t want to learn. Don’t want to join the smug self-satisfied Apple cult. (Especially because iTunes sucks…) I prefer to stay squarely in the overwhelming majority and stay with Windows. But every new version of WIndows, in an attempt to be even more “user friendly”, becomes more infantile and condescending. “Are you sure you want to type a lower-case ‘t’? If so click Yes”. I want to see file extensions. I want to delete files. I want to be able to have a security setting that’s not the online equivalent of SPF 90. If I choose not to allow my computer to automatically download and install updates (and ususally reboot itself), please stop telling me why my computer is in dire peril!

My antivirus/antispam software is even worse! I use Norton 360, but not for long, because there’s no room for choice. I use a different program for my backups. Stop nagging. I already set IE to erase my cache files – stop giving me daily warnings. Monitor what I want monitored and leave me alone about the rest!

I’d like to think that the rest of the world is getting better at this stuff. So how about letting us pick our own level of condescension?