Trick or treat everyone!

Just when you begin to think this whole exploding battery nightmare is finally over, like a bad Halloween horror film, it strikes again.

About 35,000 Sony laptop batteries sold in the US are being recalled.   They were used all across the board in notebook models from Dell to HP to Toshiba.  So far there are reports of 19 units overheating, 17 of which actually caught fire, 10 of which actually resulted in minor property damage.  More information on the affected laptop models and pictures to help identify them are in the link.  But if in the course the years these were deployed, only 19 of 35,000 have gone bad, chances are you don’t so much need to freak out as just attend to it with a modicum of alacrity.

Sony blames the “defect” (that causes their laptop batteries to explode) on changes to their manufacturing line between October ‘04 and June ‘05.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends that affected users remove their battery and contact their laptop’s manufacturer to request a replacement. Probably best to do post haste, but no need to trample anyone to get your battery to safety before it explodes.

Happy Halloween everyone!

(And yes, this is a real product warning and recall.)

Forrester, a leading IT industry analyst company (amongst other things) has recently released an observation on the underwhelming uptake of Microsoft Windows Vista.

In it, writer Thomas Mendel, Ph.D. (along with Reedwan Iqbal and Jeffrey S. Hammon) surveyed 50,000 enterprise users and found that 87 per cent were still running Windows XP PCs at the big firms, while only 8.8 per cent of the PCs were using Windows Vista. Umm … OUCH! This is the same Windows Vista that has been out for a year and a half, coming on two years now. The same Windows Vista that has already released a Service Pack 1.

Hmm … the same Windows Vista that Dell is hesitating to push.

And the same Windows Vista that Intel isn’t touching with a ten foot pole.

Vista is the Microsoft Windows that no one is “upgrading” (and I use that term loosely) to unless they have to. So it’s no wonder then that Mendel compares Microsoft Windows Vista to the “new Coke”. You remember the “new Coke”, the one that was so bad that Coke had to go back to selling Coke Classic before they lost all of their customers to Pepsi. Only in this case, Microsoft isn’t losing customers to a competitor. Microsoft is losing customers to a product they really really really want to stop sales and drop support for.

Microsoft, a company with their heads really in the clouds lately (or perhaps firmly wedged up their asterisk) denies any such reluctance of anyone to upgrade to Vista. From the Vista team blog Microsoft mouth Chris Flores states, “Not surprisingly, this is something that we, our millions of enterprise customers, and a bunch of pesky statistics don’t agree with.”

Hmmm… Yes. I see. So the hoards of “Stick With XP” communities are just bunk. Businesses are upgrading to Vista left and right. Dell is fully behind Vista. Intel is fully behind Vista. And everyone loves Microsoft with all their hearts. For Microsoft so loved the world, that He sent Vista, His only begotten son, and whoever shalt believe in Him shall not perish, but have everbesting OS.

Horsehockey!

Face it Microsoft, people don’t like Vista. Businesses don’t want to upgrade to it. Home users don’t want to upgrade to it. Vista isn’t everything you promised. Vista isn’t a significant improvement. In fact, in some ways Vista is worse than Windows XP.

Deal with it.

According to Ye Olde Market Watchdog, Gartner, who just posted their second quarter numbers, Apple is number three amongst PC manufacturers. Which sounds pretty impressive. Until you look more closely.

For starters, Numero Uno, Dell, has a 31.9 per cent market share. Second In Command, HP of course, has their whopping 25.3 per cent of the market.

And then there’s The Third Wheel, Apple with its 8.5 per cent of the market share. Is being third really something to be happy about when your share is one third of your next competitor?

But wait Mac fans, it gets even better!

Why? Because Macs aren’t PCs. PCs are PCs because their parts are ever so interchangable. Even though Macs are now built from the same components, Apple keeps a tight rein on what hardware you can actually put in your Mac by being such a closed-system driver lord. Where as PCs are open. And every PC manufacturer, the mighty Dell or the tiny eMachines, still manufactures PCs. Where as only Apple produces Macs. So in proper light the market is not Dell has 31.9 per cent and HP has 25.3 per cent. In proper light its PCs have 91.5 per cent and Macs have 8.5 per cent.

Oops.

Ouch!

Is that an Apple flavored Hurts Donut? Yeah, I think so.

Not that I have anything against Apple, per se. It’s just that no one grabs market share by oppressing your customer, no matter how bright and shiny that Promise Land may be. People want freedom. People want open. And people probably wouldn’t mind affordable or at least fairly priced either.

There’s a reason that Apple has only 8.5 per cent of the market share. It may be impressive to be the third biggest computer manufacturer, but all considered, it’s really nothing to be proud of.

By the third time I mean the third service pack, right? Nope. Not by a longshot. We all know that Windows XP is already incredibly stable and good to go. And if you’ve been updating your system regularly (like by turning on that Automatic Update thing) then you pretty much have everything in SP3 already anyway. All that’s really new in SP3 is a network update to allow “legacy” Windows XP onto shiny new network kit, and some system builder stuff that any of you out there already running Windows XP don’t need because your system is already built.

So no, the third time is most definitely not the charm in that respect. SP3 offers most current Windows XP users absolutely nothing of value.

But it’s worse than that. Far worse. Those of you who payed attention to Microsoft’s Windows SP3 fanfare will remember such events as:

The first automated release of Windows XP SP3 being a big flop because of a “compatibility issue” with Microsoft’s very own Dynamics RMS specialist point-of-sale app for its distribution causing it to be unable to tell the difference between Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1, much to the frustration of many.

The second automated release of Windows XP SP3 being an equally serious problem because of major OEMs (like Dell and Gateway) having “Sysprepped” an Intel-only image onto non-Intel (pretty much just AMD) CPUed computers which caused SP3’s installation to result in infini-reboot. (This of course was in no way Microsoft’s fault for having not done anything to a. make this impossible, b. include simple detection into their service pack, or c. test distribution of the service pack onto several major OEM PCs before release. No. It was all the OEMs fault according to Microsoft.)

Well, those of you who have been leery of and/or so far screwed by Microsoft’s pathetic attempts to release Windows XP SP3 now have reason to rejoice now have more reason to fear. Microsoft is going to try it a third time, according to a. common sense and b. scuttlebut on the Microsoft blogs.

Yes, that’s right, it’s once again time to ghost your entire hard drive to an external source. It’s Win XP SP3 time once more. If you’ve learned any one lesson by now, it’s to back up your entire hard drive before doing major installs like SP3. Norton Ghost and similar products are your best friends. Microsoft … not so much. If you back up your system before fudging with it, you’ll never have to fear the reaper.

Recently I wrote about how chip giant Intel is not exactly in any hurry to “upgrade” to Windows Vista. Well, guess what? Neither is PC OEM giant Dell.

Even though Microsoft has cut off system builders from installing Windows XP in new systems as of June 30th and is forcing them to ship systems with Windows Vista, there’s still a loophole that OEMs like Dell are taking to sneaky extremes. Dell labels it “Windows Vista Bonus”. And I’m sure you’ll agree.

Yes, Microsoft has cut off system builders from shipping Windows XP pre-installed. But there is a clause remaining where “enterprise customers and purchasers of Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows Vista Business editions can choose to downgrade to Windows XP Professional” and Dell is pushing that to a whole new level.

How? With “Windows Vista Bonus” Dell ships you a pre-”downgraded” PC. Yes, that’s right. Dell ships the PC pre-installed with Windows XP Professional. But using a Windows Vista license. The theory being that the customer pre-enacts the “downgrade” clause, thereby saving the customer from actually having to perform the “downgrade” themselves.

Now, you might have noticed the not so subtle use of quotes around the usages of “upgrade” and “downgrade”. That would likely be because it was intentional, as I don’t see how anyone can honestly call Windows XP a lesser experience than the buggy and resource-bloated Windows Vista.

And, apparently, neither can Dell. Or Intel, as my last blog entry on this subject shows.

If I were Microsoft, I’d seriously reconsider my stance on Windows Vista and Windows XP. Clearly the industry leaders are in disagreement with Microsoft on this one, and that’s got to mean something.