Ed Bott's Windows Expertise

I just got this announcement from a Microsoft spokesperson:

Free antimalware protection? That sound you just heard was a shiver going down the collective spine of executives at McAfee, Symantec, and other antivirus companies.

The timing suggests that it could be available with the launch of Windows 7.

More details here.

Last week’s offer from Buy.com lasted only a few hours. But now HP is actually selling its EX470 entry-level Windows Home Server box for $399, which is $150 below what it cost just last week. As Alex Kuretz notes at MediaSmartServer.net:

Encore is the codename for HP’s next-generation Windows Home Server product. I don’t have any additional information I can share about Encore, but I can say this current deal is a good one. Indeed, it looks like normal inventory clearance in preparation for a hardware refresh.

This point in any product’s life cycle is always an interesting one. If you’re the sort who experiences buyer’s remorse when you see a new version of a product you own, then you might want to skip this deal. But if you’re willing to live with the existing feature set and hardware design, this price is excellent.

(Thanks for the tip, Brian!)

The contract is signed, the outline is in place, and the authoring team has had its first weekly conference call for the next member of the Inside Out family. Now all we need is some software to write about.

This is the unsettled part of the book-writing process, as the software coalesces to a point where it’s solid enough to document and we learn enough about its inner workings to write with confidence. Given the design goals of Windows 7 (no major architectural changes from Vista), that should mean we have plenty of low-level stuff we can write about based on the pre-beta release we brought home from PDC. We’ll need to wait for the beta release, though, to begin documenting how the new Superbar and other fun features work.

We’re not exactly sure when Windows 7 will ship, which makes the product planning cycle for Windows 7 Inside Out a little, um, shall we say, interesting? One rumor that still hasn’t been debunked says an “internal calendar†at Microsoft lists June 3, 2009 as the release date. If that’s the case, we’ll have a very busy beginning for 2009!

I guess it’s good news that I can’t find a single Windows 7 book listed as “coming soon†at Amazon yet. Something tells me that our fellow book authors are playing the exact same waiting game we are.

My office is equipped with three uninterruptible power supplies. Each one can run its equipment load for 5-10 minutes in the event of a power failure. These little gizmos really come in handy when very brief power outages (just a few seconds, typically) occur. If the UPS is doing its job, you barely even notice, and you don’t have to restart any hardware or software.

Except when the battery backup itself doesn’t work. See, those UPS units run on batteries, which eventually fail and need to be replaced. It is much better to replace the battery before it goes dead than it is to discover that your UPS can’t perform its intended function.

Long story short, one of these batteries failed recently, and so to honor the occasion I’m going to replace the batteries in all three units. (They’re all roughly the same age, so if one fails, the others are likely to be close behind.)

These are Belkin F6C1000-TW-RK units. Although they list for $159, you can usually pick them up for under $120 (an Amazon.com partner has this model right now for $101.04). They’ve been very reliable through the years, and Belkin’s quality and support are excellent.

So who else has a UPS? Has it ever saved your bacon, or has it failed when you needed it?

The new puppy is here, the new puppy is here!

Her name is Lucy (short for Luciana). Six months old, a rescue (like her new housemate Mackie) from English Springer Rescue America.

Let the “I Love Lucy†jokes begin,,,

Via Cheap Stingy Bargains I note that Buy.com has the HP MediaSmart EX470 1.8GHz Home Server for $400 after $150 instant discount, with free shipping. That’s 50 bucks less than Amazon.com’s price.

[Update 14-Nov-2008: Well, that didn’t last long. As Dan notes in the comments, the deal seems to be dead now.]

Last year at this time, I reviewed this little device for ZDNet and called it “small, smart, and impressively simple.†I’ve been using one of these boxes for over a year, and I can attest that it is a superb device. The software bug that got so much publicity early this year has long since been fixed and the current Home Server code base is rock solid.

Regardless of where you buy this, you will want to beef up the default 512MB of RAM to 1GB or more (follow the links here). You will also want to get another drive or two to complement the single 500GB drive that comes with it.

If you’ve been looking for an excuse to get a home server, this is your chance. The small form factor and headless operation (no monitor, keyboard or mouse required) makes it preferable, in my opinion, to a homebrew box. For any household or small office that includes more than two PCs, it is absolutely essential.

Via Todd Bishop comes the reminder that “Monday marked 25 years since the unveiling of Windows 1.0.†As Todd notes, it took another couple years before the product actually shipped. And of course even the most rabid fanboi has to admit that it was roughly seven years (Windows 3.0 in 1990) before Windows was really worth using on a daily basis.

I know I have shrink-wrapped boxes of Windows 3.1 here, but I am pretty sure the earlier versions long ago disappeared from my garage.

Anyway, Happy birthday, Windows

Last weekend I was part of a fun panel discussion where the main topic was what went on at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in LA. You can listen to me and fellow guests Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera as host Leo Laporte tries to keep things mostly on track (and mostly succeeds). We talk about Windows 7, Azure, and a few other developer-related topics.

Listen here: This Week in Technology, episode 167

Bonus media: a shot of me at a PDC press event, taken by Paul Thurrott:

An incredible likeness, don’t you think?

It’s been almost three years since DirecTV announced its intentions to release a digital tuner that would allow Windows Media Center PCs to receive, record, and play back high-definition satellite programming.

Since then, the DirecTV tuner has become almost as mythical as Bigfoot or Nessie.

So imagine my surprise when I found a signed device driver for the DirecTV HDPC-20 in the pre-beta release of Windows 7 given to attendees at PDC.

Details over at ZDNet.

CNET’s Ina Fried, today:

Huh. Imagine that,