Winextra » Ed Bott

Black Screen of Death: Keep your shorts on

Steven — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:20:07 +0000

When the news of a system killing virus/trojan for Windows first hit just before the tech world took a holiday in light of the American Thanksgiving long weekend I was reluctant to comment on it. The whole uproar over what was being called The Black Screen of Death and reportedly affected all versions of Windows from XP onward just didn’t pass the sniff test in my opinion.

Not everyone in the tech blogosphere however felt the same way as it became the hot topic over the weekend with much condemnation being piled on Microsoft for not doing anything immediately to address and fix the problem.

Now just to give you the short story on this back on Friday November 27 some unknown security company called Prevx came out with a post on their company blog with the highly charged title Black Screen woes could affect millions on Windows 7, Vista and XP.

The back story here was that the company had discovered that Microsoft was releasing a security patch that when applied could result in catastrophic crashes on Windows PCs. Of course they had a fix for the problem that was now being broadcast far and wide by supposedly reputable tech blogs like PC World.

There was only one problem with this – it was all bullshit.

While my good friend Sean P. Aune over at StarterTech.com was one of the few tech bloggers who was questioning the whole story as it gained momentum it wasn’t until Ed Bott decided to do what no-one else was doing – he started checking the facts.

In his post he provides a pretty comprehensive listing of the major tech blog headlines and a timeline of events as the bullshit story unfolded that ended up with Prevx issuing a formal retraction.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, Prevx backs down completely from the story, publishing a formal retraction and apologizing to Microsoft. Another follow-up post the next day from Prevx CEO and CTO Mel Morris tries to deny any responsibility for the damage. He includes this hilarious bit of understatement: “Regrettably, it is clear that our original blog post has been taken out of context and may have caused an inconvenience for Microsoft.”

While Ed’s interest was more around the obvious bad reporting of the story I think this is yet another example of Microsoft always being painted as the villain even before anyone checks the facts. Oh and like Ed I am not linking to Prevx or their posts regarding this.

You’ll notice I didn’t link to any of the Prevx blog posts or IDG headlines in the account above. Here’s why: Doing so increases the rank of those pages on search engines and makes those inaccurate headlines and summaries even more likely to bubble to the top of a search for troubleshooting information on Windows.

The end result of this is that the so-called Black Screen of Death doesn’t exist; or at least not in a way that is the fault of Microsoft.

Black Screen of Death: Keep your shorts on is a post from: winextra
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The horror that is Windows 7 licensing

Steven — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:15:49 +0000

You ever read those EULA (End User Licensing Agreement) that comes with the software we use everyday?

Well I would imagine that like most people, myself included, we tend to click the Next button during install once the shakes from seeing all that legalize settles down. While there is some ongoing debate over just how legal those documents the one that comes with the different flavors of Windows can be the most daunting and obtuse of them all.

So any help we can get to try and make our way through understanding the nuances of the minefield known as the Windows 7 EULA and to this end Ed Bott has spend a lot of time trying to make the obtuse a little easier to follow along with.

I have been studying the topic of Windows licensing for many years. As I have discovered, Microsoft does not have all of this information organized in one convenient location. Much of it, in fact, is buried in long, dry license agreements and on sites that are available only to partners. I couldn’t find this information in one convenient place, so I decided to do the job myself. I gathered details from many public and private sources and summarized the various types of Windows 7 license agreements available to consumers and business customers.

In his post Ed also provides a graphic breaking down the various flavors of Windows 7 and what the various licenses allow you to do [click on image for bigger view].

So if you are the least ways curious as to what you are getting yourself into when you click on the “I have read ” button then drop by Ed’s post and have a read through. I am sure it won’t be time wasted.

The horror that is Windows 7 licensing is a post from: winextra
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It’s nice to see I’m not alone in Search being Windows 7 killer app

Steven — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:18:17 +0000

Back in February of this year I wrote over at my other blog, Shooting at Bubbles, that if Windows 7 had one killer feature it had to be its Search, primarily its Federated Search options

I also predict that once Windows 7 launches you are going to be hearing a lot about this feature called – Search Federated Providers. This feature quite simply brings the power of universal search to your desktop using Explorer.

I still stand by that statement and it’s nice to see that other folks feel the same way – even just about the regular Search. As Ed Bott writes today in a post with a screencast about Search Builder

If Windows 7 has a killer feature, it’s search.

Here is his screencast about using Search and Search Builder

Thanks for agreeing with me Ed

It’s nice to see I’m not alone in Search being Windows 7 killer app is a post from: winextra
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