Windows 2 Apples

In this episode I offer feedback on Windows 7, Microsoft Media Center, Ubuntu 9.1, Windows Live and Apple Mail, Netflix and the NetGear Power Line Ethernet adapter.

Since posting episode 39, I have had time to break in and evaluate the release version of Windows 7 now running on our vintage Sony Pentium 4 liquid cooled Media Center PC. I’m impressed by the enhanced performance and improvements made to Microsoft Media Center. This Pentium 4 PC is connected to our entertainment center and is used almost exclusively to provide access to streaming media and Internet based entertainment sites.

The Sony started life with XP Media Center edition and is still equipped with its original 1 GB of ram and 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor. When I shifted the unit to the den and connected it to our flat screen television I installed the first public beta release of Windows 7 and was encouraged by the improved performance. Later I upgraded to the release candidate or RC distribution and was disappointed by a noticeable degradation in performance. Not only was the system considerably less snappy but also refused to acknowledge and install drivers for my Belkin USB WiFi adapter. I ended up purchasing and installing a NetGear WPN 111 wireless USB adapter which was immediately recognized.

Even with the enhanced throughput of the new WiFi adapter, Windows 7 RC Beta performance was so disappointing I considered installing Ubuntu Linux. As I waited for delivery of the commercial release, I had time to ponder the argument of at least one longtime tech pundit loudly proclaiming Microsoft was sure to screw things up by adding last minute features and accompanying overhead to the release version. Fortunately, he was dead wrong and Microsoft actually followed through with a leaner and faster commercial release. Windows 7 feels faster than the first beta I tested and much faster than the original XP OS.

I further enhanced performance by replacing the WiFi interface with a NetGear 85 Mbps Powerline  Network Adapter Kit. For those of you not familiar with this device, it consists of matched power line conditioning modules designed to allow high speed transmission of digital signals through existing house wiring. The small cigarette package size transmitter is plugged into a wall socket and hard wired to your DSL or cable modem / router and an equivalent receiver unit plugged into to a remote wall socket. The computer mated to the receiver using the included standard a standard Ethernet cable. Quite frankly, I was dubious of claims that it could actually work as well as NetGear promised but after reading a handful of positive reviews I decided to give it a try.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works and works exceptionally well, totally eliminating the need for WiFi. For less than $90.00 I’ve been able to essentially hardwire my remote media center PC to my high speed cable connection. So far it has worked without a single hiccup and I recommend it for those contemplating the expense and hassle of running cables from their router to remote devices.

After installing the Netgear power line adapter, I spent more time experimenting with the Windows 7 incarnation of Media Center and was intrigued when I noticed the tight integration with Netflix. In the past I had use Netflix to order DVDs and, as others have found, after the novelty wore off, weeks would go by before I would watch a freshly delivered DVD. It was as if I felt compelled to request DVDs and then schedule time to watch them. Finally, I discontinued the service choosing to rent the occasional DVD at our local Hollywood video store. Netflix now offers the option to stream much of its content eliminating the need for physical media altogether. I decided to test this option using my newly revamped Media Center PC and have been blown away by the almost seamless streaming of content.

I don’t know what differentiates the technologies used by Netflix from say YouTube but whatever they’re doing they’re doing it right. I have tested many other streaming services and none of them match the quality experience offered by Netflix.

Microsoft has greatly expanded Media Center internet TV content. You can now view advertising supported video from a handful of providers including but not limited to MSNBC, CBS, and PBS. Media center also allows you to view a collection of popular video podcasts and to listen to your Zune downloads if you’re using the Zune marketplace software.

As in the past, the Microsoft media center software is both a source of chest beating pride in Microsoft’s commitment to home entertainment PC innovation and a profound source of angst over their lack of advertising promoting Windows 7 as the premier operating system for media center computer systems. I truly don’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t make at least some token effort to highlight the media center software and access to content which it offers so seamlessly. I only hope Microsoft pushes forward and adds more content to the Media Center line up. What a shame it would be to see Microsoft drop the ball on this one.

Microsoft and Apple have been busy bees, both respectively pushing out impressive updates for Vista, Win 7 and OS 10. Our Acer Vista laptop was still processing service pack 2 for Vista long after I finished 40 minute install of the commercial release of Windows 7 on the Sony tower. I don’t know if there’s a relationship to these updates or simply my own superstitions but it seems that I am having more issues with programs crashing when running Vista on my HP tower and Leopard on my shiny white Mac. Strangely, both Microsoft Live mail and Apple mail applications give me the most grief.

I’ve also experienced more crashes when running Safari on my Apple and Microsoft Word 2007 on my HP. I see crashes more often when working with my Vista machine but I believe that’s easily explained by the fact that I spend more time now working in Windows rather than OS X. In Vista’s favor, I can always use the task manager to close and restart Live Mail without re-booting but not so when Apple Mail crashes. I can force quit and restart Apple mail till the cows come home with no effect and must always re-boot my Mac to get Apple mail up and running again.

Just in case I have the occasional Linux user listening to this podcast, I can also claim a greater frequency of crashes when running Firefox under the newly installed Ubuntu 9.10. I don’t understand why the sudden increase in application failures has appeared across all three platforms but it’s been impressive enough to catch my attention.

Since I’ve mentioned Ubuntu and Linux, I’ll also share with those who have been annoyed by the Vista User Access Control (UAC) pop ups and frequent upgrades that every time I turn on my Linux machine I am greeted with at least four hefty upgrades all of which require that I enter the complete password to my account before they install. Linux is no free ride if you’re looking for an operating system free of frequent security updates or pesky User Access Control schemes.

Dictated using free Vista Microsoft Speech to Text. Recorded using MixCraft 4 and M-Audio USB interface.  Text edited using Microsoft Word 7 running on HP Pavilion Elite Vista PC.

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In a previous podcast, I admitted to shifting most of our video projects to the Mac so that we could use iMovie 09 video cropping to produce videos with the look and feel of recordings made with two or three cameras rather than one. When I realized I was becoming dependent upon my Mac, I began anew to look for Windows based video editors with a similar feature.

I have tried many Windows based editors over the years and finally settled on using Pinnacle Studio 12. Pinnacle is far from an ideal or even truly acceptable solution. It seems to take forever to produce output once edited and regardless of output settings the final product is almost always inferior to that produced on our Macintosh. Happily, I have discovered PowerDirector version 8 published by CyberLink. A major enhancement offered by version 8 over previous releases is the ability to crop videos much as I do when using iMovie 09.

PowerDirector 8 has the added advantage of a true multi-track timeline and intuitive user interface interface. A common trait shared by most PC-based video editors are interfaces that look like they were designed by geeks with no interest in aesthetics. PowerDirector screens and Windows appear as rich, glossy black displays with large buttons and responsive controls. As Apple users know, aesthetics are important. CyberLink has produced an application demonstrating Windows applications can be gorgeous as well as utilitarian.

The reason I downloaded the software and began experimenting with it was because of the crop mode available when accessing what CyberLink refers to as Power Tools. As in iMovie 09, I can crop an area of the screen to zoom in and gradually pan from one area to another. The Apple software uses the Ken Burns effect to smoothly segue from focal point to focal point. PowerDirector uses a more flexible but less intuitive trajectory assignment and keyframe referencing scheme to shift focus from one part of the screen to another. Although offering greater flexibility it requires a considerably more involved learning curve.

An immediately noticeable advantage is how quickly finished productions are rendered. I suspect, if I had been photographed as I watched the first time it produced a video my mouth would have been noticeably open. Not only does the application render the finished video much faster than my iMovie on the Mac and my other Windows video editors but the quality and resolution is excellent.

Other features that make Director stand out from the crowd are: the ability to enhance and upscale video resolution using process they call TrueTheater, a particle effects designer application which makes it possible to modify and create custom special effects. If you feel magnanimous, you can easily share your custom special effects and menus with other users through the CyberLink on-site social network. PowerDirector allows sophisticated edits using up to nine picture in picture (PiP) tracks. Dual monitor support is built-in as is optimization for Intel Core i7 technologies which purportedly enables wickedly fast rendering. Additionally, you have access to thousands of free additional effects created by CyberLlink and other users, turnkey uploading of your finished projects to Facebook or YouTube in HD quality and with the Ultimate version, the ability to produce and burn HD videos to Blu-Ray discs.

Although the provided menu and titling templates are less impressive than those bundled with iMovie 09, PowerDirector 8 supports a more granular approach to modifying and creating custom effects. And keep in mind the almost overwhelming and growing selection of free effects and add-ons produced by other PowerDirector users.

The Deluxe version sells for $70. The Ultimate version with Blu-Ray support can be had for $100 US. You can download and test drive a free limited version. Both iMovie 09 and powerDirector ship with built-in help screens and online tutorial videos. Unfortunately, as is often the case with Windows applications, PowerDirector online video tutorials are poorly organized and not even close to the quality of those offered by Apple. Apple sets the bar for on-line multimedia documentation. I admit, it does sting a bit more when video tutorials designed to support a video editing application feel so amateurish. For once, it would be nice to see a Windows application offering tutorials at least as well designed and executed as those provided by Apple.

Even though iMovie 09 is touted as being particularly well designed for those wanting to quickly splice together videos clips, I actually found PowerDirector far better suited to completing short video projects. It was a chore to create a simple DVD compilation of one of my favorite video podcasts, Old Jews Telling Jokes, using iMovie 09 and a relative piece of cake using PowerDirector 8. If I go back to using iMovie 09, it would be to complete fairly long and complex projects. Using the clunky concept of events as opposed to traditional folders to organize and categorize assets still feels uncomfortable and then there is the inevitable re-learning if I’ve not used the application recently. The use of traditional folders and timelines by PowerDirector 8 make it so much easier to import and organize video clips, photos and music and stitch them together as a finished project.

As you might expect, all is not wine and roses. PowerDirector has a tendency to crash. The saving grace is … I was almost always able to recover interrupted work with minimal loss. I wouldn’t say that it crashes anywhere near as much as did the record holder of crashing … MacSpeech Dictate 1.3 but enough for me to make myself save my work every fifteen minutes or so. I hope this observation doesn’t keep listeners from trying PowerDirector 8 if they feel it meets their needs. The last project I edited was completed without a single crash and I am very pleased with the finished product. Thanks to PowerDirector 8, video edit projects have been shifted back to our Vista PC.

If you visit the MindFitnessFoundation.org website you can view examples of videos edited using both iMovie 09 and cyber link PowerDirector 8. Episodes four and five were produced using iMovie 09 and episode six using PowerDirector 8.

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The last few weeks have been jammed with news and announcements about both Apple and Microsoft. Apple released an update to its OS, began shipping new and improved iPods, pushed out release 9 of iTunes, and enjoyed an impressive jump in stock price.

Microsoft along with Amazon, voiced concerns over Google’s plan to scan and distribute books in electronic form, began an aggressive to push its revamped MSN, a.k.a., Live search engine now renamed Bing, continued with improved advertising campaigns promoting Windows based PCS as a cost effective alternative to Macs, released a hand full of advertisements hyping the new Zune HD, delivered the Zune HD on schedule, pushed out version 4 of Zune Market place software (now supporting browser streamed music) , all the while continuing to show lack luster stock gains.

Of all this news, perhaps the continued steady rise in Apple stock is the most telling. The stock price certainly reflects the continued dominance of Apple in US smart phone and portable media player markets, as well as its ability to wow consumers and produce innovative, quality products, while Microsoft struggles to find itself and lick self-inflected wounds. Perhaps, the best way to contrast Apple and Microsoft cultures is to watch presentations by Jobs and Ballmer. The difference will smack you between the eyes and you will experience a gut level appreciation of why Apple steams ahead and Microsoft seems to be slogging though a Louisiana swamp.

Microsoft appears to be stuck in a never-ending struggle to find itself. Live search has become Bing and Zune now seems to be Microsoft’s branding for all things fun and entertaining. Call me jaded if you wish, but I simply cannot believe Microsoft when they profess to have seen the light and now have a plan to “make it so.” I would not be surprised to see Microsoft re-brand Zune before the battery in my second generation Zune 80 dies nor would I be surprised to see the Zune Market place go the way of Plays 4 Sure and Encarta.

I am wondering, if my perception of Microsoft being unable to focus and simply stay the course is one of the reasons Apple is doing so damn well!

All this said, I am looking forward to the official release of Windows 7 and have been drooling over the grow crop of well executed All in One PCs. The Lenovo IdeaCentre PCs are beautifully packaged, competitively priced and getting good reviews. When I started this podcast, I confessed to a fascination with and lusting for the “All In One” form factor and I now see I am not alone. Today, the question is not when can I get my hands on an All in One equal to the Mac in performance and quality, but which one would I choose.

Snow Leopard demonstrated the charmed life Apple fan boys and girls live. As one would expect when releasing an OS with major changes in its underpinnings, some pain will follow. In the case of Snow Leopard, many applications broke or misfired. Software vendors, including Apple, were unprepared for all the compatibility issues that arose and the lost time in retooling and updating. The miseries continue, but you will see little in the press nor will many Apple fans be willing to concede any similarity between problems traceable to Apple OS releases and the issues experienced by Windows users when shifting to Vista.

Factor in the exponentially higher number of Windows applications, hardware configurations and a reasonable person should be able to credit Microsoft with a job well done and see Apple is not the always the personification of perfection foisted upon us by the Apple propaganda machine and besotted media. But for fear of losing one’s life, I don’t recommend you hold your breath for this realization to surface or be widely acknowledged by the “news media.”

Recently, I had another near death experience with my main work horse Vista machine and stroked my beard a long time as I looked at the seemingly frozen HP boot screen and pondered an office with two Macs … one running the Mac OS and the other Windows 7 in boot camp. Fortunately, the anticipation of my PCs death was greatly exaggerated and it is now running as smooth as silk. Turns out, the 5 – 6 minute delay in booting was traced to the OS’s repeated attempts to revive the USB card reader in my sleeping HP Photo Smart printer.

I spent at least 12 hours trouble shooting and running my ever-faithful SpinRite disk maintenance and recovery software before I simply unplugged the HP and released my PC from its painful struggle find the unresponsive USB port. This is the kind of frustration that leads everyone one to curse the day they allowed a computer to occupy desk space. And, this is the kind of problem most often seen in Windows machines. Apple seems to have always done a better job of implementing USB and FireWire technologies.

All was not wasted. I learned two important lessons:

Always Google or, if you prefer, Bing the symptoms before pulling hairs and second, assume the fix to be simple rather than complex. Perhaps I should add a third corollary, if possible take a break before diving into fix. Cool heads will prevail and retain more hair.

I am sure you have noticed this podcast is not hosted by Sam but rather by Alex … the voice behind the amazing Apple text to speech technology shipped with Leopard. The Apple implementation is truly a groundbreaking advance in this arena and leaves me hopeful Apple will apply the same resources to producing a quality Speech to Text product for Apple users.

I often wonder why there seems to be so little interest in developing speech to text technologies beyond those designed to provide assistance to persons with disabilities. If you price the cost of professional voice over talent, you will quickly see an opportunity to develop text to speech technologies at least on par with the many amazing visual animation products found in the consumer market. Please drop me a line addressed to hello@inetsunch.com if you have leads on this kind of software or show comments and suggestions in general.

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Skype to the rescue!

For the first time I had the opportunity to recommend a longtime Windows user shift to an Apple. My friend had been using Windows computers for many, many years primarily because Windows was required to work with the various specialized interfaces he was marketing. When I quizzed him about his needs he said he primarily needed his computer to safely surf the Internet as he researched, for writing and occasionally recording audio podcasts.

Given his history of problems with Trojans and viruses and limited requirements, I suggested it was time he considered shifting to the Apple platform. He decided to drive to an Apple store approximately an hour and a half away from him to make his purchase. A few days later when he called to ask for help in setting up his e-mail client and for instructions on how to shut down his Apple I was dismayed to find that after making the hour and a half drive to the Apple store plunking down cash for a shiny new iMac and extended one year support contract that the store personnel did nothing, absolutely nothing to help him shift from Windows to apples.

They didn’t even show him how to start or correctly shut down his machine. He had been simply pressing the power button to turn the machine off. They’d told him that he would have to bring his Macintosh back to the store so that they could install iWorks as promised in their advertising or to receive any hands-on support from their “geniuses”. For several days he endured something close to a nightmare as he tried to use Apple Mail. I’m sure he spent at least five hours on the phone with Apple tech support and three with me before we had his accounts working correctly with Apple Mail. I can’t help but feel that 45 minutes of tutoring in the store the day he purchased his machine could have saved Apple at least four hours of telephone support.

As I was working with him to configure his Apple Mail client the top-tier IT support from Apple called 45 minutes later than the scheduled appointment time. I had almost completed the configuration by that time using Skype to voice and cut-and-paste account settings. I have been a long time user and fan of Skype and realize that this was the first application he should install if we were going to work out the kinks of shifting him from Windows 2 Apples.

When he described the Skype screens, I realize the version he was using was different from what was displayed on both my PC and Mac. I went to the Skype website and discovered a new update was available that had not been automatically flagged when I launched Skype on either platforms. I downloaded and installed the latest version of Skype on both systems and was very pleasantly surprised to find Skype now allows you to share your desktop during a Skype conversation. This proved to be extremely helpful as I helped my friend not only configure his Mac Mail client but to take a few moments to give him a short tour of the Apple Leopard user interface and way of doing things.

Skype does not allow remote control but being able to see what he was pointing to and clicking on proved invaluable. One of the major problems when trying to provide online tech support is communicating efficiently about what one is or should be doing. I was impressed with the responsiveness of Skype desktop display and the excellent integration with voice, video, text and file transfer.

I assume that when my friend worked with Apple online tech support they would use the remote desktop option to assist him but they said they were not allowed to take control of customers machines because of legal issues. This is certainly not been his experience when working with tech support issues on his Windows machines. Several times in the recent past he has received online support in which remote-access played a pivotal part.

The last time I talked to him he was feeling much more comfortable with his Mac and his decision to make the switch. He enjoys the operating system and hardware but has less warm and fuzzy feelings towards Apple sales staff and support. Apple sales let my friend down and could have saved their online tech support hours of frustration for both themselves and my friend if the store personnel had simply taken 30-45 minutes to review a few of the obvious differences between working with Macs versus PCs.

Thumbs down for Apple store staff and thumbs up for Skype!

Dictated using MacSpeech Dictate, recorded using MixCraft 4 and hosted using Podbean.

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Episode 36 Safari and IE8 Issues and Notes on Using iMovie 09

Here I am finding myself exclaiming “wow” one more time. This time because Safari has become sluggish and prone to crashing on both my Apple and Vista machines. I am not alone. A growing number of bloggers are making similar observations. The public release of Safari 4.0 appears to be less stable and more sluggish than the beta release. As one pundit noted, Safari is confirmation that “it does not always work”.

To be fair to Apple, I have noticed an improvement in performance and fewer crashes after downloading several large updates on my Mac and Vista tower computers. However, it has been the cause of several catastrophic crashes on my net-book requiring I completely reboot to recover. I still find myself using Safari particularly when I am working on my Mac. I like the convex favorites wall, finding it much easier to locate frequently used sites than on any other browser other than Opera.

When working on my Vista machine, I tend to use Explorer 8 but have noticed one very disturbing quirk. When I am accessing sites that incorporate drop lists, IE 8 and only IE 8 will not expand the width of the items list allowing me to view the full text of the items in the list. This is particularly disorienting when I am reviewing statistics for this podcast hosted by Podbean. Podbean has a handy built-in podcast stats feature enabling me to review the numbers on all podcasts posted or a single selected podcast.

For example: If I want to see how many have downloaded or subscribed to Windows 2 Apple’s episode 33, I select that episode from a drop dow list but only see Windows 2 Apples with the actual number of the episode truncated. I have lost count of the number of times I have forgotten this limitation and inadvertently tried to access my statistics while using IE 8 only to have to shut it down and start Firefox or Safari.

I suspect this quirk is traceable to Microsoft’s effort to make the software strictly compliant with CSS standards, however, it has proved to be a major annoyance and has almost shifted me away from using IE 8. If you’re asking why I continue to use it when I have so many other browsers to choose from, its because I also use a product called Link Scanner now shipped with the free as well as paid versions of AVG antivirus software. I use the paid “professional” version to scan links before clicking on them. Supposedly, the software is able to determine whether or not a scanned site is associated with a nasty payload or malware. Unfortunately, the Link Scanner plugin appears only to be compatible with Windows Internet Explore browsers.

I suspect that those listening to this podcast are aware Microsoft will be releasing Windows 7 in October of this year. We have ordered one copy for our Sony Tower Entertainment PC at the introductory price of $49.95. I as do many other bloggers and podcasters feel that the significantly higher official prices for Windows 7 upgrades will dampen interest and unnecessarily restrict sales. The suggested list of $99.95 for the home premium upgrade is particularly unfortunate in todays economic climate. I would much prefer to see Microsoft offer upgrades at lower price points and recover costs through volume. I am convinced Microsoft would profit monetarily and add to the momentum of recent upticks in positive consumer ratings if the retail price of the Windows 7 Home premium upgrade was kept at the special intro price of $49.95 and the Ultimate upgrade $119.95. Microsoft may end up squandering much of the goodwill it seems to have garnered in recent reviews by adhering to the higher pricing structure.

One of the reasons I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to leopard was so that I could take advantage of iLife09 and in particular the revamped iMovie 09. I have experimented with iMovie 08 and as many including rabid Apple enthusiasts felt that it was unnecessarily limited in features and particularly unintuitive for a Apple product. Initially, we relied on the free Windows Movie Maker to produce short clips and video podcasts and Pinnacle Studio 12 for more demanding projects.

I have experimented with many movie editing applications including Adobe Premier Elements, and Corel Video Studio. Although, Pinnacle Studio 12 remains the preferred editor on our main Vista machine, it is far from our concept of an easy to use and efficient application. It offers many features and options to those seeking to produce relatively complex video projects but it is sluggish and the video quality often is inferior to that we can produce using Mac-based iMovie editors. I’m still perplexed as to why the output quality can be so different even when we are using compression options to supposedly identical to those used on our Apple.

We recently put iMovie 09 through its paces when editing the video episode of an Infinite Potential’s Video podcast produced for the Mindfitness Foundation. Many have commented that iMovie 08 and iMovie 09 feel strangely unintuitive. It always seems to take an inordinate amount of time to relearn the software if not used frequently. That is usually the case for me and I suspect it has to do with the fact that Apple still does not offer the anticipated timeline edit option taken for granted on other video editing applications including the venerable iMovie HD.

Once I get past the refresh iMovie 09 learning curve, I am usually able to quickly produce relatively short videos. The Mindfitness project proved to be far more demanding than previous projects but we chose to use iMovie 09 because of the enhanced resolution we are accustomed to getting when editing on our Mac, and because iMovie 09 simulates pan and zoom with a much more efficient video cropping option. The ability to crop and use the point-to-point smooth Ken Burns effect to gradually shift focus from one subject to another is much more intuitive and precise when trying to simulate a two camera effect using footage shot with one camera focused on two or more people.

I continue to miss the timeline but the more I use iMovie 09 the more enamored I am with it. We are gradually shifting the majority of our video editing over to the Mac. A future Windows2Apples podcast will focus on a more detailed review of Movie 09 features. If you are interested in viewing the final edited show you may find it on the MindfitnessFoundation.org website under the video podcast tab.

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