Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Quietly Previews PC Advisor Repair Tool
notthatwillsmith writes "On Friday, Microsoft invited members of the Windows Feedback Program to try out a preview of a new application, the Microsoft PC Advisor. The new tool promises to 'continuously monitor your PC for problems and give you the solutions to fix them, in real time.' After testing on several Vista machines with a variety of problems, Maximum PC has written a full report on the Microsoft PC Advisor. The short version? Like every other 'PC Repair' tool they've tested, the new apps signal-to-noise ratio is quite bad, and it misses the obvious and important problems, like out-of-date videocard drivers."
Creepy Crawler:
Ext3 file defragmentation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3#Defragmentation
Consequently the successor to the ext3 filesystem, ext4, includes a filesystem defragmentation utility and support for extents (contiguous file regions).
Also: http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/New_ext4_features
Looks like defragmenting is coming to Linux as well, so there goes your argument with that.
Garbageware
Just because an OEM would put Linux on a machine does not necessarily mean it won't come pre-loaded with a large amount of crap. It would, and if you think differently you're fooling yourself otherwise. In fact, I'm willing to bet given the "open" nature of Linux, that the garbageware would not only be installed on the system, it would be a core part of the system. There would be no removing it. While this is merely nothing more than conjecture, it's a very real scenario. Microsoft does not allow the OEMs to modify core parts of the OS, but an OEM could modify a core part of any Linux variant and, for example, include advertisements all the way around your applications.
That's a wait-and-see thing but certainly very possible.
Quote: MS could have done this the Right Way. Chroot is your friend. Programs that whine about XYZ not being where it is, then throwing up a UAC prompt is not the right way to do things. Instead, they could have made a default CHROOT environment for each program, with access to the users home directory.
Unfortunately it isn't quite this simple. In order to maintain backwards compatibility, which is a very important thing moving from here on out, software needs a level of interaction with the system. Whether or not this is/was the correct way to do things is up for discussion, but Microsoft has made it available for software to be coded correctly many years ago. They just never enforced it. Why? Who knows. Now they chose to enforce it, but also offer the user a choice.
UAC and Sudo are very, very similar.
The only exception being that sudo can allow you to elevate yourself and do things without getting bugged again until you are finished.
Of course, it can be argued that this in and of itself doesn't really solve the problem.
If you want to see a fully secure environment, just take a look at SELinux and get back to me. See for yourself how difficult it is to operate an OS and manage it with multiple tiers of users when you don't have root access.
Quote: Once I get it, I need to go into properties (or commandline) and go set the executable bit. If I dont do this, the OS refuses to run it. Now, is his a bad program? Nope. But it solves the "run_anything_from_email" and related issues in MS based systems.
It can be argued that having to flag a program as executable would be a serious problem for the user. Look only so far at the negative reception of UAC, which you took a jab on earlier. Having to nag the user to take extra steps when they just want to run an application is begging for a serious amount of whining. So your proposed solution really doesn't solve this in any way.
Quote: Now, IE will open up and run whatever.
How long has it been since you've run IE? IE will not just "run whatever". It will actually bug the user multiple times whether or not they want to allow the application. There are security dialogs, warnings, and a final "Accept/Install" before you're allowed to run or install any ActiveX file. Again, providing the user a choice. Sure, most users click OK and this is a serious problem, but would you rather the OS just not allow you to do something?
It's actually kind of funny because as the web seems to evolve we appear to be getting more and more to the point where a browser is an execution environment. It's not a si
...but in the end, Microsoft's ... Tool suffers the same problem ... they don't work.
From personal experience of over 10 years with M$ Windows, (I have over 25 years of experience in IT) this is straight out of their play book. This is business as usual. And we use to say that IBM meant I have Been Mislead.
New product released...
New product does not work as advertised...
M$ has NO FIX for new product and knows it...
marketplace does not like to hear that M$ can't fix
M$ provides BS troubleshooting tool (i.e. General Protection Fault, GPF, Troubleshooting Guide (Windows running on top of DOS) was my first business as usual experience with M$ BS). Windows 95 helped, but it still happened. This new PC Repair tool is more of the same.
M$ hopes market will buy BS and not switch forever to another operating system; they want to keep you around and will promise you exactly what they think you want to hear, promising the next release of the software will be better.
They understand once a user switches to current Linux systems (they have improved so much) and users discover what they can do with it (most general users will work with it out of the box without problems) that the users will not be there for the next version of M$ operating system. Especially when you can get it so cheap, a subnotebook for $399 that lets you do almost everything....so many options available...
Not trying to flame or bait anyone, just stating facts as I have experienced it since the days of DOS 2.0. Yes I remember when there was NOT a M$ company out there. Mod me as you wish, but this experience is first hand. If you had wasted days going through that BS 30 - 60 page GPF troubleshooting guide as many of us System Administrators did back in the day, all the while M$ phone support (company paid for it) stating that it had worked for them, therefore it should work for us and they could not understand what was wrong....perhaps you need to reinstall the operating system yet again....
I went through that guide, page by page, line by line twice before I said forget it. It never could have worked and M$ knew it. At my location, I had almost 50 servers (file & domain, OS2, NT, Solaris; email, Lotus Notes and print servers) and 400+ desktops (It was at a telco so the desktops were primarily DOS/Windows, OS/2, Windows 95/98/NT Windows; we had some Sun and SparcStations also - of course they did not run M$ apps) and I did not have multiple days to waste on lies....Don't even try to defend them, they lied out and out. And I KNOW IT because I was forced to live it.
One M$ support person had the audacity to state unequivocally that it worked for him, therefore I must be doing something wrong...that's why I tried the guide a second time, I was pissed and wanted to make sure I had not made some stupid rookie mistake... I HAD NOT!
I would have respected them more if they would have just told me the truth (that they did NOT have an answer or a fix that worked) so that I would not have wasted my time. They could have said sorry, we will have a fix with the next release, in the meantime just remind your users to periodically save their data and reboot their systems. That was the truth.
I know, I know, the marketplace is less forgiving...but is that really a good excuse?
Even with the MacIntosh (my Mac usage was years ago) I would save frequently and now with Linux, I still save frequently...I hate redoing work even if its just a paragraph in a word processing document.
Eventually that was the solution, after the PC was tweaked as well as it could be, to just remind the users to back up their data periodically and reboot when their PC locked up. By the time NT 3.51 & Windows 95 came around you could pretty much count on not having problems if you shut your PC off at lunch and booted back up when you returned. Win 98 and W
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities