I've blogged about how Microsoft has a wealth of spyware on your computer (Vista) for "piracy" reasons, but this is altogether far more sinister. Feel free to read the article itself, but this is bad, bad news. What they're going to do is scan the content of your files, e-mail, music, and system status alerts to profile you and target you with ads. Penny Arcade covered this concept in one of their comics titled "Advertising in the Future". That was last October. (For non-gamers, the comic describes a situation where two guys are playing a game, but see different in-game advertising based on the contents of their Internet browser history). Tags: Microsoft

A Slashdot user warns us not to use the “Try before you buy” deal based on his experience with the same deal and Office 2003. He said it changed all the file types to 2003 so when the trial was over, he wasn’t able to access any of his files. Usually, the program will warn you before updating the format, but it won’t warn you that anything you create from scratch during the trial will be locked into the newer program. And as you can read in the comments, most people agree that it’s ridiculous that Microsoft refuses to make the files backwards compatible. Tags: Microsoft

Let’s hear it for the winning team! Yeah! Tags: Microsoft

Oh wow! First they give him an award (the Most Valuable Professionals MVP award), and then they threaten lawsuits. Classic Microsoft.

Tags: Customer Abuse, Microsoft

This is an iteresting article about how Vista, with it's poor security, lack of compatibility, high price, and integrated features that users hate (like DRM and security alerts) might make people start to seriously wonder why they're still using Windows.

I don't personally buy the argument that Linux will be the system they run to because I haven't yet seen a version of Linux that could match the user friendliness of Windows (with the possible exception of SUSE). But I'm no Linux expert. We'll have to see.

And on that note, be sure to check out this link for an article comparing Ubuntu Linux VS MS Vista.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista

I had to laugh at this. It seems that Microsoft is offering a discount to anyone that downloaded a beta test of Vista. The article suggests it's because no one really wants Vista and why should they?

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista

From the "consider the source" department, Microsoft is tooting their own horn about how well Sender ID prevents spam. The part about this that kills me is that if Microsoft made one stupidly obvious change to Hotmail, I would almost never open spam e-mails.

All they need to do is let me see the actual address of the sender instead of just the name. That way I wouldn't confuse barbara@realsite.com with barbara@diywehhh.du.ru (which I do because Hotmail will only show you "Barbara" as the sender for both if that's the name they entered).

Right now, it is only this ridiculous flaw that causes me to open spam messages at all. Sometimes I can't tell if a message is real or not until I do.

Tags: Hotmail, Microsoft, Spam

While Dell originally switched wholesale to Vista (as did most vendors), due to high demand, they will be offering XP preinstalled again. Of course, if Microsoft refuses to license them to do so, I wonder how that will work out…

Tags: DELL, Microsoft, Windows XP

The Windows Updater is supposed to patch your system against critical flaws and exploits. To make things easier for normal users, there's an "Express Install" button where you don't have to review each update one at a time and can just trust Microsoft to install only the most security critical patches.

Enter the Windows Genuine Advantage notification tool. It tool doesn't protect you or do anything at all to help your system, it collects data about your computer and declares your copy of Windows legal or not. In millions of cases, it wrongly identifies systems as being "pirated" and nags users repeatedly about having an illegal copy and how to contact Microsoft for a legitimate one. Even worse, it locks you out of further security updates until you do.

To make sure that you don't miss WGA, they slipped it into IE7, Windows Defender, and Windows Media Player 11. But the worst of all was issuing it as a "critical update" on Windows updater. This way, anyone who clicked the "Express Install" button would get it by default without knowing better.

It's because of practices like this that geeks don't like Microsoft. They slipped a tool onto your machine that spies on your system and disables functionality. Sounds like a virus to me.

So why am I posting such old news now? First, I haven't talked about this before and it really ticks me off. Second, the WGA made PC World's 20 all time most annoying tech products (at number 9).

Tags: Customer Abuse, Microsoft, Scams - Ripoffs - Dirty Tricks, Windows Update

For it's incessant prompts to "allow or continue", it's terrible compatibility with older software, and for Aero not working on most machines even though Microsoft marketing always shows the Aero experience (which so many people don't actually get to see). PC World puts Vista as #8 on the top 20 most annoying tech products of all time.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista