October 2006 - Posts
I can't understand the fascination of most otherwise perfectly normal Windows users with the Defrag option in Windows. It's reviled as not being powerful enough, it's credited with all kinds of performance improvements and even suspected of concealing superpowers to fix all kinds of problems.
I don't understand why. I can't think of any other community of users who are so obsessed with how 'fragmented' their computer hard disks are. And the problem only seems to be coming to a boil once more with Windows Vista, where Microsoft have taken a few hard decisions in their redesign and update of this operating system background task.
No matter, like all good bloggers, I never saw a bandwaggon I couldn't jump on, so I'm actually going to make an effort to address some of the more common myths and questions around this part of the operating system.
Part 1 - how do you measure 'fragmentation'?
Obviously by asking your defragger of choice if it considers your hard disk to be fragmented or not. But what if you don't trust your defragger for some reason? Now most people would go and get a life, but for those of you who are in the grip of Windows disk fragmentation paranoia, this isn't enough. What you must do instead is purchase several commercial defraggers and use them to test each other.
Then you get very unhappy because you can't seem to get your disk defragged properly. You run one product and let it do what it wants and when it's finished you test it with another product, and that finds some fragments, and so you run this second program and test it with the first one and go around in circles until you give up and ask for help. Why?
All the different products have slightly different ideas about how to measure fragmentation, what the best way is to defrag a drive, what the optimal settings are to mitigate against easy fragmentation in the future, etc. Hence, what one product calls "defragmented" might not appear so when the disk is examined with another product.
This doesn't mean that one product is right and the other wrong. It's more like... well lets say you measure something with a ruler and tell me the measurement is "20" but not whether you're talking about inches or centimeters, or something else entirely.
Are you "wrong"? No. But can I actually use that number for anything useful? Again, No.
In other words, you can't reliably measure and compare fragmentation between two different products. They've both got different ideas of what exactly the problem is; different ideas of what to measure to diagnose the problem, and how to do it; what exactly should be done to cure it; and sometimes those ideas are in direct contradiction to each other.
The more cynical people in the audience (or those who use other operating systems and haven't contracted this paranoia) may be asking themselves just how much of a problem a fragmented hard disk is, and if maybe these products are a prime example of snake oil.
Frankly, I'm not sure that the products are snake oil, but some of the hysteria surrounding the way these utilities are sold to 'home user' types does make me wonder. In some special cases, workstation drive fragmentation can be a real issue that needs to be carefully addressed, and servers should have all aspects of drive health checked on a regular basis, but for most home users the built in tools provided by Windows will be more than enough to keep things running well.
As it has a good case of this problem.
Still, all credit to the Apple phone support engineers who handled my call. It felt like I was on hold forever waiting to speak to them but the two handling my call could not have been more plesant or more helpful.
This has got to be a mistake. (Why do I seem to say that a lot recently when reviewing an action taken by Microsoft?)
The Windows Vista team blog posted a note about the terms of the licence for Windows Vista the other day, and it contains one or two interesting things. Possibly the most interesting is one that was not highlighted in the Vista team blog, and when you read about this particular bit you'll probably understand why. The first two items I highlight were mentioned as noteworthy in their blog, and the last was not.
The Good
Increase of the 'warranty' period from 90 days to 1 year. Companies need to take responsibility for the quality of software produced, and this is a small start in the right direction.
The Bad
Failing a validation check (e.g. Activation and WGA) will result in certain parts of the OS being deactivated. I actually wouldn't be bothered about this, if it wasn't for the fact that one of the areas that will be deactivated is the anti-spyware components.
At a recent meeting I had with Websense, they noted that on a recent
survey of a 4500 user business organisation, over 20% of the computers
were infected with spyware, and spewed an excessive amount of traffic
onto the web continously over the monitoring period. Keep in mind that
this is a business network, so this 20% is in spite of the usual corporate protections that usually get put in (e.g. corporate AV, border firewalls, etc).
It's Microsoft's choice how they protect their products from piracy, and it's our choice if we decide their measures are too draconian and intrude too far into how legitimate users use their system, and shop elsewhere. But when they opt to switch off the spyware protection on a system, they are not impacting just the 'customer' with warez product but also the rest of the Internet, for such malware typically spews sewage onto the Internet just as fast as the net connection it's on will allow.
So I have to question any decision to weaken security when the biggest impact will be on other Internet users who are also Microsoft customers.
The very, very ugly.
The ugly was noticed by techweb and reported again by the Inquirer. This is the bit I'm struggling to believe.
Reviewing the terms of the Home Premium licence, section 15 is very interesting and unsettling ("Reassign to another device").
Software Other than Windows Anytime Upgrade. The first user of the software may
reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device
becomes the “licensed device.”
See the problem? "One Time". So what about those people who like to upgrade frequently? Or early adopters who buy Vista to go onto a machine they have now, and upgrade quickly to a new machine to take better advantage of what Vista can do, and hence might want to upgrade to new hardware again during the lifetime of Vista? Hardware enthusiast? Regualr upgrader? You're probably screwed mate.
Very ugly indeed. Personally, I can't believe the EU's antitrust comission is messing around debating irrelevancies like whether or not Windows should include a media player and can't find time to call foul over a fundemental abuse of the rights of customers like this. I guess this shows three things
- Microsoft really are out of control
- Politicians are totally useless
- You really do need to consider either a Mac or downloading a copy of Ubuntu.
And the hits just keep coming on the MVP for adware and his award.
Having read my letter of thanks from Microsoft and realised that I might be considered for award again in the future, I have today sent this letter to my former contact at Microsoft.
Open Letter to Microsoft
Many thanks for your note on the 1 Oct 06 telling me that I
was not going to be renewed in the MVP program this year. I certainly
appreciate that this is Microsoft's decision to make, and as such I have no
problem with that. It's been a great 8 years and I've enjoyed working with you and all the other leads.
I am concerned to note that my contributions to the
community are rated below those of someone who peddles spyware & adware to
your customers, as the author of Messenger Plus, known as Patchou, has been newly
awarded this year. You may or may not be aware that Messenger Plus has a long
history of installing spyware/adware alongside itself, exposing minors to adult
content, etc.
I'm unsure whether this is a horrible mistake on Microsoft's
part, or an interesting new direction for Microsoft and its trustworthy
computing initiative, but I am actually glad you chose not to renew me this
year as that has saved me the trouble of having to turn down the chance to be
held in the same regard as that person.
I would like to formally ask you to ensure that I am NOT considered
for any future MVP awards while this individual is part of the scheme. Please
don't take this the wrong way, but I'm doing this to help you. Having insulted
me once by implying my contribution to the community is worth less than that of a spyware
peddler, I want to save both of us some upset in the future if you ever found cause
to inform me that my contribution to the community has once again risen to a
level where you now consider me to be as useful as a spyware peddler.
I was thinking of getting around to updating the blog site, taking down the MVP logo and what have you, when suddenly I found a link in the newsgroups to a couple of very interesting articles on the sunbelt weblog and the weblog of MVP paperghost.
Words fail me.
I want to thank all the people at Microsoft and all the MVPs I've come to know over the 8 years that I've been a MVP for a great time, but I have to say that all of a sudden I'm actually glad I wasn't offered the award this time around, because I don't think my morals would allow me to accept if a spyware peddlar meets the standards these days. I can only assume that this is a horrific mistake or a sick joke.
I know that all the people at Microsoft and all the MVPs I've spoken to over the years have some of the highest standards of any group that I've ever associated with, which makes this latest thing a real kick in the teeth for the program and it's current members.
So long, MVP program, and thanks for all the fish.