After few minutes looking for the guy, I think I found the author for the article – Mark Russinovich, “Technical Fellow” and his Springboard series.

There is my take on it.

As a developer I do not like UAC, as an administrator, I do see where it is coming from and what it is trying to achieve.

Problem Vista faced immediately was that many applications were written with little to none analysis about security implications.

How often do you see applications expecting be able to write into system areas, starting with registry, windows folder, even Program Files (which not recommended for user data)? Probably as often as you see an application. And truth is that I am not an exception here. Lets learn from our mistakes and address this in any future code. It is a change in application governance enforced by the OS maker. It could be good in the long run.

What can one do to ease the pain?

1. disable UAC, make it all run in admin mode… not good…
2. make application run in XP mode… better…
3. Ask for application improvements in future versions… best – application should not try accessing system areas. There is really no need for it in reality.

I am with Marco about the speed. Vista IS slower on the same hardware compare to XP. Well, so was Windows 95 compare to Win 3.11, remember? Microsoft is shooting for future hardware instead of considering fit-in for existing systems. Bad move which might cause them slower adoption of the new OS today. It might improve with the rotation of the hardware, but not right now.

Search service would run better as a service versus an application since it is a service and can utilize system resources better, especially by working when user is not even using the computer (log off, not shutdown). And yes, using multiple indexing engines will slow down the overall system, since all of them will do the same job. As a result, aside from marketing war (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft), having only one WILL BE better.  I turned off Google and MS immediately after installation. How often do you search versus performing other operations?

4Gb is the memory limit for XP. Actually it is less then that… Hardware can have as much as you want but XP will only address 4Gb, no “buts” here. (If you do know a trick pushing above 4Gb, please let me know, I’ll let know our sysadmins…)

Notice that when talking about drivers author referring to Video drivers (WDDM). Higher requirements for video effects (you do like Mac interface in Leopard don’t you?), it requires better video handling. I do not see why should we complain here. I am personally sick and tired from ATI drivers incompatibility, where having two GC on my system cause different experience from one monitor to another.

Sorry Marco, but I hear more frustration from early adoption of the Vista in your post then it could be from straight analysis. I have high respect for you and would expect more from guru like you.
Comparing with Apple? Leopard is running ONLY on the hardware from one vendor and one vendor only, who dictates ridiculous prices for the piece of hardware. I am still to see raise of the “OpenMac” or fall – all depend on the take Apple’s lawyers. People like Mac for slick design, this is where roots are. and it is comp for designers for many years. It is cool, it is simple – this is why it attracts students, writers, artists, … Microsoft only starts a first steps in this territory, baby steps…

There were talks for a while that Web 2.0 is coming. We have seen astonishing growth of the Social network solutions, virtual offices, companies rushing into Virtual machines business (Virtual PC, VMWare, Virtual Box, Citrix, etc), remote desktops (Mac, Windows RDS), widget engines (Yahoo, Google, …), etc…

Did we already pass this milestone? Was Microsoft late for the party and simply wants to catch up and outrun others?

Microsoft once again wants to be THE solution for everything by introducing Live Mesh:

Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about.

With Live Mesh, you can spend less time managing devices and data and more time connecting with family and friends or collaborating with colleagues.

Is it the next big thing or a big bluff? Time will tell. Concept is not new. We have seen many features available in Live and via other service/network solutions, so it all comes to implementation and features. But one thing for sure is that Microsoft is looking into making next step from MS Live offering, going even more in the wild space of the World Wide Web.

More info:

• Reuters – Microsoft links data on phones, PCs in “Live Mesh”
• Full Text of Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s Mesh Memo

As it was announced Feb 21, 2008

Microsoft announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice. These changes are codified into four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions: 1) ensuring open connections; 2) promoting data portability; 3) enhancing support for industry standards; and 4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

Along with everything else over 30,000 pages of documentation on API has been made public.

As I said earlier, Microsoft seems to make a rough U-turn on their policies after facing a few big lawsuits in EU and many complains from developers community in past few years.

Now Balmer really can put his “Developers, Developers, Developers…” mantra in the air again.

As it was reported by BetaNews this Friday

Now developers no longer need to request access to the binary file format (for Office 2003) documentation in writing or by mail, the spokesperson said; they can now download all the documentation they need directly from Microsoft

Read a full story here.

PS. There is a small thing in the air – are all those changes because Bill is stepping aside? Off course not

No-one was allowed to look at the code for the purpose of to see how it works.

I, as a Pascal/Delphi developer for many years, enjoyed availability of internal source code of components and system functionality since it was always part of Delphi as we know it.

Well… it is about to change for MS code as well… not all the way… but…

In SD Times’ “.Net Source Code Released” from February 15, 2008 it is confirmed that Microsoft is changing its license policy in regard to source from “The .NET Framework source is licensed under the read-only reference license, the most restrictive of the company’s Shared Source licenses.” to more open version when “license does not apply to developers creating non-Windows software that has ‘the same or substantially the same features or functionality’ as the .NET Framework.”

You can find more from ScottGu’s Blog along with exploring a new license text itself which is called Microsoft Reference License or MS-RL. Scott also provides example of how to enable code reference with Visual Studio 2008.

I am sure there is always a twist in every story, but I think it is a good step forward for Microsoft.

Buttons on the Surface are sluggish, but an idea is great!!!! Well, almost…
Watch how it should be presented or how it could be advertised (Apple style).

Or might be they just used different table? Oh, this is Linux, but how similar it is…
Do you know how it works?
Do you know how it should work? MS really should headhunt for Jeff Han’s version of it or just buy the company and integrate to make Surface a success. I guess coffee mug does affect the process…

I would think that few years in development one would have a presentation more like that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHB40jeTOw
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65?gclid=CJ2P47S76ZACFQwsOAodOUvxYw
http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/65

Recent news: CNN took upon PP solution and is using it as “Magic Wall” in their election night’s coverages.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2008/01-062008CESBillGates.mspx

Post note: Buttons on the MS Surface are slugish though, but Surface is great!!!!
Not that great as PerspectivePixel version - read more here.