Again, I apologize for my absence of late.  A wonderful week-long vacation in Southern California which provided my body much needed outdoor time left me renewed and ready to code.

Just before leaving, I began the switch in my company from Dell hardware to Apple hardware.  This was a decision I really labored over.  All of my pro's and con's could be distilled into the following list:

• (Con) I really don't know UNIX, and maintaining a hetrogenous set of OSes in my network scares me more than a little
  
• (Pro) The MacBook Pro is the fastest laptop running Vista on the market
• (Con) Entourage is no substitute for Outlook, which is my Killer App
• (Pro) I can not only develop Windows-based apps, but Mac and iPhone apps too
• (Con) I'm an old dog
• (Pro) I like learning new tricks

So there you have it, it's tied.  Well, actually not so much; to conserve cash, I like to lease my computers.  Sure, it may cost a bit more in the long run, but in the short term I don't have to lay out $1-2k per seat, but rather ~$70 per month per seat.  So when I started looking into Apple's corporate financing, I was confused.  Although I eventually got it worked out, Apple's online information proved to be out of date and just plain wrong.  (Specifically?  Don't click on the link to fill out a lease application online.)  Hmmm... not a good way to start out a B2B relationship.

My other fear is Apple's pure lack of on-site support.  I'm coming from years of owning Dell hardware, and say what you will about their offshore call center, every time I've really needed assistance, Dell's been there and provided me top-notch service.  Apple on the other hand makes me go to them.  Again, not a great model for B2B and only passable for consumers.

Why switch?  Simply this: the iPhone.  No, no, I don't have one, but it's arguable that the iPhone is the greatest tech consumer appliance in the marketplace.  If Apple gets Exhcange integration right, it really could be The Killer Device for all corporate types, and that's impressive.  So, if I ever dream of even touching a line of code for the iPhone, a Windows-only box simply won't do.  In short, Apple hardware provides me flexibility that a Windows-only box can't.

So this is the start of the Grand Experiment.

Dear NVIDIA,

I own and work primarily on a Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop, which is equipped with your GeForce Go 7800 display adapter.  I am running Vista SP1 and am patched with the latest NVIDIA video driver available from Dell.  At work, where this issue occurs, I attach and run a second external Dell 21" LCD monitor.

If I lock my computer and the computer goes into screen saver mode, I can most certainly guarantee the following error after logging in to the computer:

 

Please fix this bug.  Please consider that you last officially released a driver to Dell over 16 months ago today, before Vista was publicly available let alone Vista SP1.  Please also note that the public is under the assumption that your company's products are the cause of nearly 30% of the unhandled crashes in Vista.  You could earn yourself some public good will if you acknowledge the err of your ways.

If I can sum it up, please stop sucking.

Sincerely,
Matt

P.S. I'm not the only one having these issues:
SteveX Compiled
Repair Your PC Now
NVIDIA Forums

There's much rumbling going on in the internets this morning due to the story about the MacBook Air being the computer to be compromised (hacked) during the PWN2OWN contest being held at the CanSecWest conference this week. 

The rules were fairly simple; the first to hack a machine would win the hacked computer and $20,000 if done via a network, $10,000 if done via the internet (via a browser), or $5,000 if accomplished via an installed program.  The interesting sub-topic of this is that Vista's IE7 was not the first of the three machines being bombarded.  The third computer is running Ubuntu.

I expect Vista's IE7 to fall soon, but the fact that Safari was the first, and possibly the easiest gateway to gain access has caused much gnashing of teeth and redirection of the facts of the case.  In my reading, Apple lost this round; plain and simple.  Have no fear, Vista will get it's share sooner or later.

What's interesting is the reaction from the pro-Apple crowd.  The fanboys are not used to this kind of disappointment:

"...but has anyone even bothered to try the other two computers... [or] are the two other computers Dells and nobody wants them?"

"Big deal."

"...if the same interest and effort are put to exploit Vista... that would have already happened."

"Let's face it: if the prize is the laptop you hack then everyone would be trying to hack the Mac: who the [expletive] wants the shame of walking away with a Dell under their arm?"

Everyone needs to calm down and recognize what happened today:  Holding all other things equal, modern operating systems are pretty secure (borne out by the fact that nobody took home the $20,000 prize) and on any day you can be hacked if you're not careful, regardless of your computer and operating system.  In short, be careful on the internet.  There are people who pay money to gain ownership of computers, and yours can be owned unless you take care, patch often, and keep anti-virus programs up to date.

More reading:

• http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/28/macbook-air-compromised-in-2-minutes-for-10000
• http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/0126221
• http://security.itworld.com/5013/mac-hacked-first-in-contest-080327/page_1.html

I installed Vista SP1 last night and the install was unremarkable, which is a good thing.  I did not have any issues with any of my development tasks today, and the OS seemed to simply get out of my way.  That's exactly what it should do.  Now that I know SP1 is baked in without issue my next task will be to perform an annual spring cleaning and rebuild this machine.  However...

As has been discussed ad nauseam, many bits of functionality were discussed long ago when Microsoft was hatching Vista.  Some came to fruition, some were abandoned early, and some just disappeared into the ether.  One item that seemed to live into the release of Vista was the idea of "offline updating" or slipstreaming Service Packs into existing disk images (a.k.a. ISOs).  The idea is that when a service pack comes along, you simply unpack it, and copy all of the files into the UPDATE folder in the ISO.  Boom.  Done.  Err... not so fast.  Seems that Microsoft had "ran into some unexpected issues with the servicing stack" for SP1 so no soup for you, system admins; well, unless you consider getting a new ISO from Microsoft a solution.

___________________________________________________________________

I'll admit that the following may not be an SP1 related note, but I only noticed it post install.

At some point along the line, Microsoft changed their warning windows to a layout that looks suspiciously like another application that strikes fear in my heart.  I can't be the only person to notice this?

In a recent post, I was complaining about an odd issue with Windows Defender hammering my hard drive.  Well, today I found myself diving into Process Monitor again, looking for the reason my HDD once again was being taxed to the limit.

In the logs, I found two oddities:

1. iPoint and iType, two applications used for added functionality for Microsoft's Wireless Desktop devices, were constantly creating a file, querying a directory, then closing a file over and over again.  I haven't been able to find any information about this online yet, but I'm going to keep looking.  I may have to open a ticket with Microsoft about this one.
   
   
2. The real cause of my HDD spooling issues was something called SearchIndexer.exe.  This, in the UI and Vista marketing material, is also known as Windows Search.  It's basically supposed to index highly user impacted directories allowing for quick search results.  It's also supposed to go to sleep when processing demand is high.
   
   Well, apparently the last bit of that hasn't worked out so well, as there are quite a few people looking for answers to permanently shut down SearchIndexer.exe.  In my case, it wasn't consuming so much CPU drain, as my task manager barely showed it at more than 2% of total CPU use, but my HDD was just getting beaten, causing all I/O tasks to get queued up.  That brought my computer to a near stand-still.  E.g. shutting down the 7 apps I had open (Office, FireFox, VisualStudio, iTunes, SQL Management Studio, and LiveWriter) and shutting down Vista took nearly 10 minutes.  I'd like that 10 minutes back.

In searching for a resolution, I came across a good post at Office Watch which describes what they claim is a potential/the issue with Windows Search.  What's especially nasty is that if Windows Search goes bad on you, it's very difficult to shut it down, as it has hooks in Windows and Office products.  This means that you can shut it down, but when you sneeze in the direction of Outlook, it'll go off to the races once again.

I for one never use the search functionality in Windows.  Visual Studio?  Sure, you betcha.  But I just haven't found a need for it yet.  I'm not sure if that's an indictment of my use of the OS, or maybe a simpler point like I always keep the documents I use where I expect them.  Regardless, if you don't think you'll be using Search anytime soon, you can go into Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services, and find Windows Search (you can sort via Name).  Right click on it, and select Properties.  Change Startup type to "Disabled" and stop the service by pressing "Stop."

Sweet relief.

Continue reading at Office Watch for other suggestions on how to get Search working normally again.