A few days ago, Walter Mossberg, writing in the Wall Street Journal, offered a verbal peek at the Mac user interface (see Some General Tips for Switch to Mac From Windows) intended as heads-up for Windows XP users thinking of switching.
I'm not a Mac user, but from reading the article, it seems that the initial learning curve for switching from Windows XP to Linux, is less than that for switching to Macs. Both Macs and Linux are immune to the vast majority of malicious software, so from a Defensive Computing standpoint, each is good choice.
One advantage Mac users have is that there is, at any given time, a single latest and greatest edition of OS X. Someone switching from Windows XP to Vista has about six editions of Vista to deal with, but on the Mac side it's Leopard, just Leopard; nothing but Leopard.
The choices available to someone interested in Linux can be mind boggling. Different editions are referred to as "distributions" or "distros" for short. There are dozens of popular Linux distributions to chose from and I can't even guess at the total available, hundreds for sure. For this article, I chose the desktop version of Ubuntu 8.04. Not the server edition or the MID edition. Not Kubuntu or Xubuntu or Edubuntu or Gobuntu. Just plain vanilla Ubuntu.
Below I offer the Linux side of the various user interface aspects that Mossberg raised and contrast it with Mac OS X Leopard.
Menu Bars
Macs are drastically different than XP on the fundamental issue of menu bars. In both Windows and Linux each running program/application has its own menu bar across the top of its window. Below is a screen shot of Klondike solitaire and the Calculator running in Ubuntu. Solitaire has the colored menu bar because it's the active application.
According to Mossberg, Macs have " ... a single menu bar at the top of the screen that changes, depending on which program you are actively using." That must take some getting used to.
Task Bar
Both Windows XP and Linux have a task bar along the bottom of the screen that provides an inventory of currently running applications. In the screen shot below you can see that Calculator and Klondike solitaire are both running, and that Klondike is minimized.
Just as with Windows, left clicking in Ubuntu on the task bar button for a minimized application makes it visible. Right clicking on items in the task bar brings up the same five options as in Windows (Minimize, Maximize, Close, Restore, Move and Size). In addition, Ubuntu offers an "Always On Top" option and a handful relating to workspaces, a concept you can grow into or easily ignore.
As Mossberg describes it, there is no Mac equivalent to the task bar. The Dock comes the closest but it sounds more like the Windows Quick Launch toolbar in that it holds icons for the programs you use most often, rather than those running now.
Start Menu
The Start button also doesn't have an exact equivalent in Leopard. Mossberg says "Its functions are divided between the Dock and the Apple menu at the upper left of the Mac screen."
Many Linux distributions have a Start menu/button exactly like Windows. For example, here's a a screen shot of Mandriva Linux. The yellow Mandriva button in the bottom left corner is exactly analogous to the XP Start button.
Rather than a single starting point, Ubuntu has three, and they're at the top of the screen instead of the bottom. This was visible in the top left corner of the prior screenshots. The starting points are: Applications, Places and System. The screen shot above shows an expansion of the Applications menu. Below you can see the expanded Places menu. The System menu is the next topic.
Control Panel
The area where all three operating systems seem the most similar is their self-configuration. Windows has a Control Panel, Macs have System Preferences and Ubuntu has the System menu, shown below. Apple offers a hidden path to System Preferences in the Apple menu and wastes real estate by including it in the Dock. Ubuntu makes system configuration always visible while using a minimum of screen real estate.
Keyboard Shortcuts
All three systems offer keyboard shortcuts for when you don't want to move your hands off the keyboard to the mouse. Windows and Linux use the Control key, typically abbreviated as "Ctrl". Macs use a Command key. According to Mossberg, the Command key isn't called that on the keyboard (that would be too easy), it either has "a cloverlike symbol or an Apple logo". He doesn't explain which Macs have which, let alone the inconsistency.
As you can see in the screen shot below of the Gedit text editor, Linux does many of the same keyboard shortcuts as Windows.
Quitting Programs
In both Windows and Ubuntu, when you're done with a program, just "X" out of it. That is, click the X in the top right corner of the application window. You can see in the Gedit screenshot above, that Ubuntu has the exact same three buttons in the top right corner as Windows. And, they do the same thing that they do in Windows.*
Macs will confuse Windows users. For one thing, the "X" is in a circle in the upper left corner. But most importantly, it doesn't shut down the program. In fact, as Mossberg described it, it's not clear to me just what it does. He says that it closes the window rather than quitting the program. Close the window? Could he mean that it minimizes the window? Maybe this is Mac terminology? When Windows and Linux users "close" a window, we're shutting down the program.
Maximizing Windows
Maximizing windows in Ubuntu works exactly the way it does in Windows, you click the middle box in the top right corner. Not so with Leopard, says Mossberg. Never mind that you start off with a green circle in the upper left corner, clicking it results in a window size "deemed optimal for its contents, which isn't always the whole screen." Apparently Apple knows best. Mossberg didn't explain how to force a window to occupy the entire screen.
Double-clicking on the title bar in Windows also maximizes a window. Same in Ubuntu (although you can configure this with a system preference). Other Linux distributions take a different approach. With Mandriva, for example, double-clicking on the title bar rolls up the window so that just the title bar is visible.
Switching Programs
Not much to say here. Both Windows XP and Ubuntu can use the Alt-Tab key combination to switch between running applications. On a Mac it's Command-Tab.
Right Clicking
The Mac legacy is a mouse with a single button. Apparently that's in the process of changing. According to Mossberg "Most desktop Macs now come with a mouse that allows right-clicking..." He didn't say which desktop models do and don't. And, I suspect he chose his words carefully. That is, "allowing" right clicking probably isn't the same as actually having two buttons on the mouse.
He goes on to note that "...you can use almost any two-button USB mouse with any modern Mac". But again, "modern Mac" is spelled out and he doesn't say why some two-button mice won't work. They all work in Windows. Then there a Mac laptops, which only have one button forcing users to fake things out to get right clicks.
Ubuntu, like all Linux distributions, fully supports two button mice and right clicking. Windows users will feel right at home.
Adjusting The Screen
Not a lot to say here. Macs configure the desktop background image, screen saver and screen resolution in System Preferences.
Ubuntu configures this in the System menu under Preferences. You can see this in the screenshot of the System menu above. The desktop background image is either configured using the "Appearance" System Preference or by right clicking on the desktop and opting to "Change Desktop Background".
Final Thoughts
Not to paint too rosy a picture, Linux has more than it's share of annoyances. Firefox running on Ubuntu, for example, wants to open audio .PLS files in the Movie Player program. And, to chose another program, you have to browse the file system rather than a list of installed applications. Even saving the PLS file locally and opening it with the Rhythmbox Music Player didn't produce any sound. Ubuntu knows that PLS files are "MP3 ShoutCast playlists" yet, it can't play them.
But, on the subjects that Mossberg chose to focus on, Ubuntu offers a more familiar environment for people switching from Windows. And, it's cheaper.
For more on Linux, see my previous posting Is Linux right for your mother?, a comparison of Linux vs. Windows at my personal website and Why you want a Linux Live CD.
Update July 9, 2008: As luck would have it, I spent some time with a Mac laptop today running OS X 10.4.11. As a Mac newbie, it gave me a chance to add something to Walter Mossberg's points. One of the first things I noticed was the lack of a backspace key. On Windows and Ubuntu, the delete key deletes whatever is to the right of the cursor. On this Mac at least, the Delete key deletes what is to the left of the cursor, thus, it's the backspace key, at least to me. I didn't bother experimenting to find the Mac way to delete stuff on the right.
The three circles in the top left corner all look the same, they're circles. Sure, they're color coded but I didn't get the memo on what the colors mean and I shouldn't need a memo. Windows and Ubuntu offer better visual clues for their window handling icons. Hovering the mouse over the circles does not produce a tooltip explaining what the circle does. It does produce a symbol in the circle, but it was too small for my aging eyes to decipher.
Finally, the lack of a task bar was a major annoyance. Other than Cmd-Tab is there is a visual way for Mac users to track the currently running applications?
* I have to vent. The gOS Linux distribution has three circles in the top right corner and they all look exactly the same. What were they thinking? If you hover the mouse over a circle a tooltip pops up that tells you what it does. But, the mouse pointer blocks almost the entire tooltip making it impossible to read.
See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.
Last week I wrote that skepticism may be the most important thing you bring with you when dealing with the Internet. A few days later in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg said basically the same thing - "...the most insidious Internet security problems today rely on human gullibility, not tricky software."
His article, How to Avoid Cons That Can Lead to Identity Theft, included this advice "Don't click on links to offers for free software or goods that you receive in an email, especially from a sender or company you've never heard of."
The problem with this advice is twofold. First, the From address of an email message is very easily forged. You may get a scam message that seems like it came from a company you know, but really didn't. Also, identifying a company you know has its own issues.
Suppose, for example, you got an email message about a really cheap price for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. The phony From address could well be subscriptions@wsj.com. Suppose too, that the scam sent you to the www.wsj.biz web site.
Many people know that the online version of the Wall Street Journal is wsj.com. But, wsj.biz has nothing at all to do with the newspaper or with Dow Jones. It belongs to Marc Gaines and the web page that currently displays is a temporary one that GoDaddy provides for their customers. The point being, Mr. Gaines, can do whatever he likes with that website, including tricking people into thinking it offers cheap subscriptions to the newspaper. What better way to learn personal information such as name, address, phone number and credit card number? Perfect for identity theft.
Just because a famous company owns the .com domain, it implies nothing at all about other domains.
In the case of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones owns wsj.net and wsj.us. However, wsj.info belongs to Seth Wilkof who is looking to sell it. Wsj.org is also a scam-in-waiting. Today, it is a temporary default web page, but it belongs to someone named Natalia Skuridina.
Even someone who doesn't know that wsj.com is the Wall Street Journal, certainly knows the organization behind wallstreetjournal.com. That's easy. But what about wallstreetjournal.net? And wallstreetjournal.org? They both belong to Dow Jones, but, that's where the good news ends.
It is not clear who owns wallstreetjournal.info, but Dow Jones definitely does not own wallstreetjournal.us or wallstreetjournal.biz.
You can see who registered a domain by doing a WHOIS lookup at the website of any registrar. For example, at Network Solutions, go to networksolutions.com/whois and at Regster.com go to register.com/whois.rcmx.
I focused on the Wall Street Journal, only because Walter Mossberg writes for the paper. The concept though, applies universally. I get bitten by it myself. Two websites that I visit are www.speakeasy.net and www.witopia.net. I don't, however, visit them often enough to train my fingers to type .net instead of .com. Neither company owns the .com version of their domain name.
See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.
Once again, Walter Mossberg has offered incomplete and potentially dangerous computer advice in The Wall Street Journal. The December 6, 2007 edition of Mossberg's Mailbox had a question from someone whose lone hard disk was divided into two partitions; a small C disk that was almost full and a large D disk with lots of available space. The questioner asked about merging the two partitions together. Mr. Mossberg said that Partition Magic can be used for this purpose and that it "works well."
It is malpractice to suggest changing partitions in any way shape or form without first making a disk image backup. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, you can lose access to all the files in a partition.
I jumped on the Partition Magic bandwagon early. In the late 1990s, before the availability of virtual machines on PCs, we used it in an R&D lab to run multiple operating systems on a single computer. For years I have used it on my personal machines for a host of reasons.
Partition Magic has its fair share of quirks and problems, not the least of which is that it appears to have been abandoned by Symantec. The Partition Magic gripes at my computergripes.com site are consistently the most popular topic on the site.
Among the operations that can be performed on partitions, combining two of them is perhaps the most dangerous. It is more complex than resizing a single partition and is a relatively new feature. Personally, I never attempted it, both because of the risk and because there are other ways to accomplish the same thing.
In this case, I would shrink the D partition to the minimum allowable size (plus a small fudge factor for good luck), then enlarge the C partition to include the space just given up by the D partition.* Next, I would copy all the files from D to C, then wipe out the D partition and, finally, expand the C partition so that it takes up the whole hard disk.
But, before combining partitions, I would look to avoid the whole thing by moving files from the C disk/partition to the D disk/partition.
Some of the poorly chosen Windows defaults that I mentioned last time, can be tweaked to free up space. For example, the Recycle Bin defaults to 10 percent of the partition in Windows XP and System Restore claims 12 percent by default. The minimum for System Restore in XP is 200 megabytes, give it 300 or 400 and you will probably reclaim many gigabytes. Internet Explorer also consumes large quantities of hard disk space. I doubt you will notice any change if you limit the IE cache to 30 or 40 megabytes.
Windows Update creates folders in the C:\Windows folder with names like $NtUninstallKBxxxxxx$. The total uncompressed size of these folders was 245MB, 285MB and 536MB on three different Windows XP machines that I checked. These folders can be moved out of the C disk/partition, as they are used only to uninstall bug fixes. If there is a large collection of pictures, music and/or videos, they can certainly be moved to free up space. Finally, there is the Disk Cleanup feature of XP that exists for just this purpose (get the Properties of the C disk, it's a button on the General tab).
Partition Magic is also expensive. Similar software, GParted, is available for free in Linux (download from CNET Download.com or see sample screenshots). You can boot your computer using a Linux Live CD and run GParted that way. I have done this with Ubuntu and Knoppix but many other Linux versions/distributions also include partitioning software.
You don't read PC magazine for mutual fund advice and you shouldn't read The Wall Street Journal for computer advice.
* I'm simplifying things a bit. There is actually another necessary step: after shrinking the D partition, it has to be moved to the right before the C partition can be be expanded. Also, if after this shrink/resize operation all the files from the D partition don't fit onto the C partition, then another round of shrink/resize would be needed. Backup, backup, backup.
See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.
Software crashes all too often, and since misery loves company, computer users often swap horror stories. Back on Halloween, Lee Gomes did so publicly in the Wall Street Journal. His problem was with the Adobe Premiere Pro, a video editing program and, while I found it interesting, the article didn't offer advice for avoiding or dealing with software crashes. That's what I hope to do here. First though, defending your privacy.
ERROR REPORTING
When applications crash, a window often pops up asking if you want to report the problem to Microsoft. Gomes writes that the Microsoft employees who get these crash reports are "scrupulous ... about respecting user privacy". Perhaps, but the last company I would trust with personal information is Microsoft (just behind Marshalls and TJ Maxx). What's the connection between failed software and personal privacy?
Suppose Word crashes while you are working on a document that you don't want others to see. It's safe to say that pieces of that document are included in the information about the error that's sent to Microsoft. And it is possible, though I don't know how likely, that information from other running programs may also be included.
While just saying no, when asked about reporting the error to Microsoft, is easy enough, it's also easily forgotten. Fortunately, you can configure Windows to never report software failures to Microsoft by turning off the error reporting feature. In Windows XP this is done with:
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Error Reporting button
I suggest disabling error reporting but still getting notified of critical errors.
CONFLICTS
The root cause of the problem in the article was all too common, a conflict with other software installed on the computer. Apparently the other software had mis-labeled something and "that slip-up cascaded throughout Windows...".
It doesn't have to be this way. In a perfect world, each application would be isolated from other applications.
Getting to this ideal is one of the reasons for the popularity of virtualization. For example, important applications can be run inside a virtual copy of the operating system and be the only software installed in that instance of the operating system. Virtualization software lets you run multiple operating systems concurrently on a single computer, so if need be a single machine can run multiple applications with no chance of their stepping on each others toes. Another option, often used with servers, is to limit one computer to a single application. Both are non-trivial steps to take, but when the application is important enough it makes sense.
There is also software, such as Thinstall, to virtualize a single application rather than the entire operating system. Here too, the idea is to isolate an application from the proverbial other kids in the sandbox that may not play well together.
The simplest way, however, to get application isolation is to use portable applications.
The name portable derives from the fact that the application can be run in any instance of it's supported operating system(s) without being formally installed. A portable program designed for Windows XP, for example, will run on any copy of Windows XP and from any disk drive letter, but the portability does not, in and of itself, imply that it will also work on Vista or Windows 2000.
The classic use of portable applications is to run them off a USB thumb drive, but they work just as well running off the C disk. I do this all the time. Whenever possible, I prefer to use portable applications (see this about portable Thunderbird).
An excellent source of portable applications is John T. Haller's portableapps.com. The interesting thing about this site is that Mr. Haller converts applications that were not designed to be portable in the first place. Some applications are portable even though they may not be described as such on their web site. For example, I often use the free EditPad Lite text editor from Just Great Software which is not touted as being portable, but is nonetheless. The same is true of the free, open source, AbiWord word processor. (Both are also available at download.com: AbiWord EditPad Lite)
AUTOMATICALLY RUN PROGRAMS
Complexity is at the heart of many software failures and, as the article pointed out, the complexity of Windows is frequently added to by a whole host of programs that insist on automatically running when Windows starts up. Auto-started programs are a long standing problem because:
- They make Windows start up slower
- They make it more likely that Windows will fail to start up
- They consume RAM and processor resources
- The more programs running in the background, the more that can go wrong
Windows XP has a built-in function (MSCONFIG) for controlling the programs that run automatically at startup time, but it's poorly designed. I am a big fan of a free program called Startup Control Panel, by Mike Lin. I install it on every computer I work on, feel lost without it and never had it cause a problem.
Both programs display a checkbox next to each auto-started program and you control if a given program will be auto-started the next time Windows boots by simply checking or unchecking the box. That's where the similarity ends though, Startup Control Panel is easier to use than MSCONFIG and more complete in its reporting.
For one thing, it's easier to find. Whereas MSCONFIG is one of those things you have to know about to run, Startup Control Panel creates a Startup icon in the Control Panel, just where a function like this logically belongs. Also, after modifying the list of auto-started programs it doesn't produce a confusing warning window the next time Windows starts up.
Windows has many different lists of programs to run automatically and Startup Control Panel shows five of those lists, each in its own tab. As for completeness, MSCONFIG shows 11 programs that are auto-started by Windows on the computer I'm writing this on. Startup Control panel shows 36.
There are two versions of Startup Control Panel. The normally installed version creates an icon in the Control Panel, the standalone version does not need to be installed. The advantage of the standalone version is that it's portable, the program is a single EXE file. The advantage of the installed version is that it's easy to find in the Control Panel (except that you have to use Classic View).
At download.com the Editor's review gave it only three stars, I would have rated it higher. Voters there agree, it is rated 4.5 stars (out of 5) by 229 CNET users.
Startup Control Panel works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP. According to the author it is not needed in Vista: "Windows Vista, after all these years, finally has a very good startup manager built-in; go to Control Panel > Performance Information and Tools, and then click on Manage Startup Programs on the left."
AUTORUNS
While Startup Control Panel is great for non-techies, us nerds are better served by another free program, Autoruns. Originally developed by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell of Sysinternals, the program is now available from Microsoft which purchased Sysinternals a while back.
Autoruns is even more complete than Startup Control Panel. According to the author it has "the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor..." It's so complete as to be intimidating if you're not familiar with things like Explorer shell extensions, browser helper objects and Winlogon notifications.
There are two types of auto-started programs in Windows and both MSCONFIG and Startup Control Panel only show one type. The other type, services, is included in Autoruns. It's extensive list of auto-started programs can be pared down by opting to Hide Signed Microsoft Entries (under Options on the menu bar).
Autoruns has been helpful to me in tracking down assorted malicious software. The bad guys want their software to run automatically when Windows starts up, so Autoruns is bound to have an entry for it. In addition, it has shown some auto-loaded drivers that make for interesting stories that I'll discuss in future postings.
Autoruns is portable and works with all versions of Windows.
FIRST CLASS
When Windows crashes with the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) the offending program may not have been written by Microsoft.
Windows is internally structured like an airplane with first class and coach sections. The applications we use on a daily basis sit in, and are restricted to, coach. First class is where the guts of Windows (referred to as the kernel) sits. But anyone with enough money can get a first class ticket.
To illustrate, software from Andrea Electronics, Meetinghouse Data Communications, Atmel Inc, Analog Devices, Conexant Systems, Parallel Technologies and UPEK Inc. is sitting in first class on the computer I'm using to write this. Technically, these companies wrote driver software, as did three other companies that refused to identify themselves at all.
Once you're in first class you can wander around anywhere. Driver programs, from these companies and others, can thus muck up any part of Windows. And many of them have.
How often is Microsoft at fault when Windows crashes? According to Mr. Gomes, they know, but won't say. That tells me two things: 1) it's often their fault and 2) it's nice to be a monopoly.
Part 2 covers Driver Verifier (a utility built into Windows for debugging drivers), dumps, event logs and disk checking.
November 14, 2007: Updated to reflect the topics in Part 2.
November 9, 2007: Updated to reflect the two different versions of Startup Control Panel.
On October 18th in The Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg wrote his annual PC Buyers Guide. Using his article as a springboard, I weigh in on some of the issues faced when buying a new computer.
Vista security
The first choice anyone makes in purchasing a new computer is the operating system. In judging the relative merits of Vista over XP, Mossberg calls Vista "better than prior versions of Windows, because it has a stronger security system under the hood."
But, according to CNET's Security Watch columnist Robert Vamosi, "most of the security enhancements touted in Windows Vista don't appear in the Home Premium and Basic editions" (see "That $200 Windows XP service pack called Vista"). Specifically, Device Lockdown, Network Access Protection, Enhanced Authentication Model and the Encrypting File System (EFS) are missing. Vamosi also takes issue with security features in the Business editions.
A new security feature in Vista is outbound protection in the Windows firewall. Sounds great on the surface, but as Vamosi describes it, it's a sham (my word, not his). A good firewall that provides outbound protection will, by default, deny everything and let you specify the allowable applications. To avoid nagging too often, some firewalls are aware of common Internet applications and allow them to make outbound connections.
In contrast, the Vista firewall requires you to create a rule for each malicious application known to mankind. Outbound connections from applications that don't match an existing rule in the firewall are, by default, allowed. This pretty much renders outbound protection ineffective.
Microsoft is making the same rookie mistake it made when Windows XP was first released. At the time, they could brag that XP came with a firewall, but, by default, it was turned off. Wrong choice (from a Defensive Computing perspective). It took them about four or five years to enable it by default.
The UAC security feature (User Account Control) in Vista probably gets the most publicity. The initial design asks so many questions that some people turn it off entirely. And Vamosi points out that unlike other operating systems, Vista allows an administrator to make system changes without having to enter a password. Thus one wrong OK click and you're infected with malicious software. Are you too busy or too inexperienced with Windows to read or understand the UAC message? There goes your protection.
What Vamosi calls the biggest improvement in Vista over XP is a feature in Internet Explorer 7 that runs ActiveX controls in a sandbox. Still, he says, you are safer using Firefox or Opera, an opinion I agree with.
In making a case for Vista security, Microsoft points to the included Windows Defender anti-spyware program. But it is available as a free download to Windows XP users. More importantly, though, it's not very effective, at least according to CNET. Vamosi says: "In testing done last spring by CNET Download.com, Windows Defender missed some of the test spyware, finishing well behind other antispyware programs on the market today."
FUD
In choosing between XP and Vista, Mossberg says "buying Vista may be the better choice for the long run. Over time, more and more products will be released that are tailored to the new system."
FUD is a term known to many of us computer nerds. It refers to sales practices used when a product is not good enough to sell itself. The letters stand for fear, uncertainty and doubt. If a software vendor resorts to this, it's a red flag their product can't stand up to an objective evaluation. Mossberg here is slinging the FUD for Microsoft.
Since, he says, Vista "may" (note the use of "may" instead of "will") be the better choice in the future, buy it now. In other words, choose Vista now out of fear that XP won't be compatible with future hardware and software. FUD personified.
James Fallows, who writes for The Atlantic, fell victim to this logic. He eventually wiped Vista off his computer and returned to Windows XP.
If the day arrives when Vista is more compatible with hardware and software than XP is, it will be a very long time from now. And a case can be made that such a day will never come.
Windows XP has been around for quite a while now--six years and counting. There are way too many copies of XP in use for any software or hardware vendor to dare come out with a product that works with Vista but not XP. If you ran a hardware or software company, at what point in the future would you produce a Vista-only product?
Consumers
While Vista is the rule at retail computer outlets, Mossberg notes that "PC makers are still offering XP on a few new consumer PCs."
Where is written that a consumer has to buy a computer marketed to consumers? It's not. No matter who you are, you are free to purchase a machine marketed to businesses, and I recommend doing so.
Flavors
Regarding the different flavors of Vista, Mossberg said "the best choice for average consumers is a version called Home Premium." In some ways though, it's a poor choice.
If your needs are simple or money is tight, Vista Home basic has the advantage of being the cheapest option both in terms of paying for the OS and in terms of the necessary hardware horsepower to support it. At a randomly selected Fujitsu notebook computer, Vista Business cost $100 more than Vista Home basic. And, as noted above, there's those missing security features in the home editions of Vista.
The two flavors of Vista business may have an ace in the hole - the ability to fall back to XP, should the need arise. I say "may" because each computer manufacturer has the option, not the requirement to offer this. Many will provide an XP Recovery CD for their customers who purchase, or have purchased, a business version of Vista. See "The XP alternative for Vista PCs."
The charge for the XP Recovery CD varies by manufacturer, but in general it is provided at cost. In the cases I've seen, it is less than purchasing XP at retail and much easier to install too, as it comes with the necessary drivers, is preactivated and lays down a disk image rather than requiring you to actually install XP.
Video
Unlike Windows XP, Vista has two different user interfaces (separate and distinct from the many flavors of the operating system itself). The Home basic edition only supports one interface, the one that requires less computing horsepower to produce. The other flavors of Vista can use a flashier interface known as Aero.
Regarding the hardware needed to support Aero, Mossberg says "Vista's flashy graphical interface works best with a separate, or 'discrete,' graphics card that has its own memory."
There is a hidden gotcha here that he doesn't go into. Graphics cards come with varying amounts of video ram (also referred to as on-board memory), usually 32, 64, 128 or 256 megabytes. To run Aero, Microsoft says in one place that Vista needs at least 64 megabytes of video ram (for resolutions with less than 1.3 million pixels, give or take), but in another place Microsoft says the minimum is 128 megabytes of video RAM. Go figure.
No matter which number you chose to believe, you next have to deal with the labeling and marketing of video cards which is, unquestionably, designed to mislead. Recently Dell sent me a catalog in the mail, and the fine print at the back contains this description of a video card in one of the computers they offer:
In other words, this 128MB video card cannot run Aero because it has only 32 megabytes of video ram. Not to pick on ATI exclusively, Nvidia does the same. The Dell fine print also contained this:
This truth-in-labeling issue seems to apply to ATI Hypermemory cards and to Nvidia TurboCache models.
The Trivial
Another feature Mossberg cites as an advantage for Vista is better integrated searching. This is very much a matter of opinion. Personally, I don't want any integrated searching. But anyone who does want it can chose from many different XP-compatible products, both free and commercial. Either way, I find it hard to imagine someone switching from XP to Vista and citing the ability to find files on your own computer as a big factor in the decision.
Advice
Walter Mossberg would have probably liked to say more on some of these points but he is limited by the space requirements of his column, which literally is a column (how quaint). This does both him and his readers a disservice. Bloggers are fortunate in being able to take as many words as necessary to say what we have to say.
You don't read PC Magazine for mutual fund advice and you shouldn't read The Wall Street Journal for computer advice.
On Thursday August 30th Walter Mossberg repeated his prior recommendation of the Mozy online backup service. While Mozy can fit the needs of some people, there are two sides to every coin and there is a downside to Mozy too. For the rest of the story, see my recent postings:
Today, July 10th, the web site of The Wall Street Journal is free, sponsored by Dell. Normally the vast majority of the site is available only to paying customers - of either the web site or the hard copy paper.
I mention this to draw attention to an editorial that appeared in the paper on July 3, 2007 entitled Google v. Microsoft.
Background
Windows Vista includes desktop search functionality out of the box and Google offers a free desktop search application that anyone can download from their web site and install. Google complained to Microsoft's antitrust regulators at the Justice Department that there isn't a level playing field when it comes to competition for Vista desktop search applications.
Mistakes
The editorial says
"Web-based applications like desktop search are increasingly central to Google's business prospects...".
The "web-based" description is off base. Desktop search is a desktop application and is not based on the Web. Google's own desktop search application can be installed and run just fine on a computer with no connection to the Internet.
At first I thought this might be just a typo. But the mistakes continued. Quoting again:
"In the original Clinton Administration case against Microsoft, the company was deemed a monopoly because it made 100% of operating systems called Windows..."
Yikes. By that logic, Apple is a monopoly because it makes 100% of the operating systems called OS X. And IBM was a monopoly way back when it made each copy of OS/2. And strike three:
"It is easy for a business with a superior service to peel away the customers of everyone else. That's what accounts for the success of Google's basic Internet search in the first place."
Google never pulled away a single "customer" back in its early days. It converted users of other search engines, such as Alta Vista and Hotbot. I see two differences between "customers" and "users".
For one, users of other search engines never paid for the service. Also, they had very little invested in Alta Vista and the other search engines. That is, there was pretty much no learning curve involved when switching from one search engine to another.
This is very different from say, the competition between Windows and the Mac OS X operating system. Switching involves paying a non-trivial amount of money to get a copy of OS X and a large learning curve to get proficient using both the new operating system and new application programs required to do the same work that was previously done under Windows.
Whatever the advantages of OS X may be, the cost of switching is huge, both in financial terms and time. Switching operating systems could not be more different from switching search engines. To quote myself:
"You don't read PC magazine for mutual fund advice and you shouldn't read the Wall Street Journal for computer advice."
When I said this in the past I was often referring to Walter Mossberg who, in my opinion, has on multiple occasions offered bad computer advice. But this editorial was written by someone who doesn't understand computers at all. It is more off base than Mr. Mossberg ever was.
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