News Blog

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interview with Atsutoshi Nishida, Toshiba's chief executive, that's kind of interesting for what it doesn't say. The article's headline is "Toshiba's Plan for Life After HD DVD" and the Q&A appears in the "Boss Talk" column, which seems to put executives in a warm seat rather than a hot seat. By that I mean there are a couple of hard-hitting questions ("Isn't the loss of the format war a blow to Toshiba's strategy?), but after you're through with the piece, you get the feeling that the interviewer, Yukari Iwatani Kane, really let Mr. Nishida off the hook.

Personally, I don't really care how Mr. Nishida spends his free time, but I am kind of curious what his thought process was when he decided to go to war with Sony. If you remember, over a year ago there was actually a moment when Toshiba and Sony were in negotiations to settle, but in the end they just couldn't come to an agreement on a unified format. I would have asked Mr. Nishida whether he regrets not making a deal earlier--and why he thought he could win in the first place. I also would have inquired what his plans were for a standalone Toshiba Blu-ray player. I mean, if you're going to ask him what Toshiba's plans are for life after HD DVD, you've got to ask if a Blu-ray player is in the works--especially a BD-Rom drive for Toshiba's laptops. Make him answer the question, right?

Well, without having the question asked, Mr. Nishida did answer in so many words that no Blu-ray player was imminent. He basically said that Toshiba would combat Blu-ray by selling upconverting DVD players that would cost less than Blu-ray players and be just as good. The exact quote: "And we're going to improve this [upconverting feature] even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images." That so? Well, what was the point of the war in the first place then? Jeez, Louise.

Anyway, I don't expect to see a Toshiba Blu-ray player in 2008, but Toshiba may change its tune in 2009. What do you guys think? Can Sony and Blu-ray be beat by cheaper upconverting players? Is DVD still the future?

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.

Rupert Murdoch plans to give away the digital version of the Wall Street Journal, making News Corp. the latest company to give up on paid subscriptions.

"We are studying it and we expect to make that free," Murdoch was quoted by the Associated Press as he spoke to a group of investors in Australia. He said that "instead of having one million (subscribers)," the company will receive readers "in every corner of the earth."

Murdoch is banking that a free model for WSJ.com, which recently announced that it had topped the 1 million-subscriber mark, will send readership skyrocketing and that advertisers will then flock to the site.

According to the AP, the Journal's subscribers generated about $50 million in annual revenue.

Few online services have succeeded at making a go of paid subscriptions but the Journal was widely considered to be at the head of the pack. In September, The New York Times stopped trying to sell subscriptions to premium content .

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.

Still, Mossberg is a computer hobbyist, rather than a true techie nerd.

You don't read PC Magazine for mutual fund advice and you shouldn't read The Wall Street Journal for computer advice.

Note: This story was updated at 6:00 a.m. PDT to include a correction from a New York Times representative regarding TimesSelect subscriber figures cited by the New York Post.

Citing anonymous sources, the New York Post has reported that rival Manhattan paper The New York Times is planning to do away with TimesSelect, the subscription-only content on its NYTimes.com Web site. According to the article by Holly M. Sanders, the main obstacle at the moment is reconfiguring the site's software.

A Times representative told CNET News.com that the company isn't releasing any statement beyond: "We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com." The representative did point out, however, that the Post had made an error: Sanders' article said that the number of TimesSelect subscribers had fallen from 224,000 in April to slightly over 221,000 in June. According to the Times, TimesSelect subscriber numbers have actually risen from 220,090 in April to 224,580 in June.

The demise of TimesSelect, which has been in operation since 2005 and puts archived content as well as popular opinion pieces behind a subscription wall, has been rumored for some time among New York media circles. Adding fuel to the fire is News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch. When speaking about his decision to purchase Wall Street Journal company Dow Jones, he suggested that the Journal might free up its own premium content.

New-media pundits have typically been very critical of TimesSelect, considering it a disadvantage for the legendary publication to be locking up so much content, particularly opinion pieces by well-known writers. "By cutting stars like Tom Friedman and Frank Rich off from the rest of the Internet," Peter Kafka of the Silicon Alley Insider commented in July, "the Times has diminished its (and their) influence--and helped create room for upstarts like The Huffington Post to step in."

Currently, TimesSelect subscribers pay $7.95 per month, or $49.95 per year, for access to op-ed columnists, archives dating back to 1851, extra multimedia features, and occasional access to the Sunday paper's articles before they are made available for free or in print.

Every morning reporters from across the country file into work at their local office of the Wall Street Journal and begin the task of tracking leads, writing copy, and sorting through the plethora of press releases that came in the night before. This morning was a different story. According to a recent post on Poynter, the news staff at the Journal took part in a sick-out in protest over recent contract disputes and the threat of Dow Jones being sold to the highest bidder.

It's unclear whether the strike will have any impact at the journal, and it seems that the action is largely symbolic. According to the release, the news staff will be coming in to work this afternoon. In other words, the reporters will be working twice as hard today to get a full day's work in half the time, and the impact on the strike will be almost non-existent. While I understand the reporter's commitment to the Journal's reputation and their subscriber's needs, I still feel that the sick out would've been more effective if tomorrow's paper simply didn't show up at homes across America as a result of today's strike.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp. and owner of the tabloids The Sun in England and the New York Post, is promising to retain the journalistic integrity of The Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones if he succeeds in acquiring them for $5 billion.

In a letter sent over the weekend to members of the Bancroft family that owns the company, Murdoch asked to meet with the family and company officials. He assured them that he is "first and foremost" a "newspaper man." "I have also always respected the independence and integrity of the news organizations with which I am associated," he wrote. Murdoch promised to establish an independent, autonomous editorial board, appoint a member of the Bancroft family to the board of News Corp., expand Dow Jones editorial in India and China, put more money into The Wall Street Journal's Washington, D.C., bureau, and invest in the newspaper's headquarters "to ensure it remains a state-of-the-art facility."

News Corp. made an unsolicited offer to acquire Dow Jones about two weeks ago. So far, Dow Jones and the Bancroft family aren't jumping at the opportunity.