Windows 2 Apples

I’m going to jump on the Microsoft bashing bandwagon today.

My beef with Microsoft is not that it has not delivered excellent products, but rather it has delivered excellent products that would in fact give Windows much of the “WOW” promised when Vista was introduced. Sadly Microsoft hasn’t taken the initiative to promote them. Many of these applications and services are hiding in plain sight. Microsoft offers an exceptional collection of free tools and services under the Windows Live Moniker. Included are Live Writer, Live Photo Gallery, and Live Mail. Live writer is an exceptionally intuitive and easy to use blog editor. Live writer makes it easy to setup, edit and maintain blogs hosted by Google, Microsoft and other hosting services using popular blogging software such as WordPress. To my knowledge Apple provides no equivalent application. If you are using Windows and maintaining or creating blogs Live Writer is a must-have application and free as a down load from Microsoft.

There are of course many photo management applications shipped with both the Apple and Microsoft operating systems as well as a dizzying selection offered by third party vendors. After considerable experimentation with Apple iPhoto and Windows photo gallery I have no problem in recommending Windows Live Gallery.

Not only is the program attractive and intuitive it is also noticeably more efficient in organizing and displaying photographs. The Apple iPhoto application has always been a great frustration to me. All of the other Microsoft and third party applications I’ve tried simply seem to consume time and drive space. Windows Live Gallery is surprisingly fast and nimble. After using Live Gallery I can’t imagine using any other Windows application to manage my photos. Live Gallery is free for the asking from Microsoft.

I have used many e-mail clients over the years including Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail. Apple mail is nice in that it is intuitive, easy to configure and provides for spell checking as you type. Spell checking is missing in the e-mail client shipped with Windows Vista but is happily imbedded in the Live Mail client. The Live Mail interface is intuitive, easy to configure and uncluttered … something that Mac users would appreciate and it is now my e-mail client of choice when working in Windows.

To top things off, one of the crown jewels hidden and un-activated on I suspect a majority of Vista Home Premium and Ultimate installations is Windows Media Center. We have three systems running Media Center, a Sony Media XP tower, a low end Acer Aspire Home Premium Vista Laptop and an HP 9040 Quad Core Tower running Vista Home Premium. For years now I have been using the Windows Media Center software to access cable television via the built-in tuners on both my Sony and HP computers. Occasionally, I would record videos and export them to various external players such as my Creative Labs Zen but had never really experimented with the many other available features. Approximately six months ago, I tested the beta Internet television and I was disappointed in the limited media offered.

Recently, I decided to take another look and was absolutely amazed at the amount of streaming media content available free from the Internet via Windows Media Center software. I had opted not to activate the Windows Media Center on my laptop because it didn’t have a tuner and I couldn’t imagine using the software to simply play MP3s and watch the occasional DVD.

Once the software was activated, I was pleasantly surprised to see the beta Internet television worked as well or better on my inexpensive Acer laptop as it does on my quad core HP tower. Because the content is streamed from the Internet there’s no need for cable or satellite television services to access it. I believe I even uncontrollably uttered “WOW” as I watched concerts by John Mayer, Jack Johnson and Cheryl Crow. As of today there are 23 music concerts available as streamed videos. It doesn’t stop with music concerts.

There are 10 programs from the Food Network, 10 programs from House And Garden TV, as well as programs from other sources such as Fine Living, travel channel, sports, news, geek and tech oriented programs, viral videos, as well as programming from the Biography, History, and Arts &Entertainment channels. I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. Not only is the amount and selection of content impressive the user interface is superb … equal or superior to anything produced by Apple. If your computer is so equipped you can also use an external remote control to interact with the software. I have controls for both my tower computers but no control is available for the Acer laptop. However, I have been viewing much of the content using the a wirelessly tethered Acer laptop connected to our 50 inch Hitachi rear screen projection TV as well as a smaller LCD television and I am very impressed by the quality of the picture on both sets.

I’m using the S-Video output of my laptop configuring it to display the image on the external television rather than both the laptop display and external device. When I use this configuration there are a few small hiccups in the beginning as the stream begins to synchronize but after that I’m able to view without any interruption. The Windows Home Media center software is truly a WOW experience! Apple simply does not provide any equivalent free service for off the shelf Macintosh computers. Apple iTunes allows for the purchase of content which can be streamed to an Apple TV or free audio and video podcasts but there is no equivalent for the kind of viewing experience available to Windows users having access to high speed Internet and the Windows Media Center software.

If Microsoft truly wants improve its image they simply need to promote the many exceptional tools and free services available to only Windows users. It is ironic that many of the free Microsoft applications and services focus on converting your computer into an entertainment center and encouraging creativity. This of course is contrary to the claim Apple is so fond of making in its advertisements. The reality is Apple is far from providing the exceptional integration of both business and entertainment that Microsoft has been able to achieve.

Get with that Microsoft. You already have the services and killer applications to put the WOW into Windows just let your customer know there are there!

Created using M-Audio Interface and Microphone, Vista Speech to Text Software and MixCraft 4.

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