Ballmer’s latest fiasco is to claim that Open Source projects violate “over 235 patents,” and to then threaten lawsuits for any company using Linux or other open source software. Turns out, Steve was quoting a study produced by the Open Source Risk Management Group. However, the author of the study has claimed that Microsoft has it all wrong — the study’s conclusions were that those were only “potential” infringements, and that not a single one of those patents had ever been held up in court. In addition, not all of those patents were even held by Microsoft!

Further, Microsoft has refused to specify which patents they are even referring to, or specifically where they think the infringement has occurred. Starting to sound familiar? *Cough*, SCO, *cough*, *cough*. It should. Microsoft quietly provided $86 million to support SCO in it’s legal battle against Linux, under which they have not won a single count in 3 years. It seems that Steve Ballmer has decided to come out and play in the open, now that his proxy SCO has nearly completely self-destructed. Oh, and if this sounds like a hypocritical claim on Microsoft’s part, that’s only because they had to pay out $1.53 BILLION last week for violating Lucent patents.

Microsoft’s goal, like SCO’s, is to provide FUD — Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about their competitors. Unfortunately, this tactic tends to work against them. Its surprising that they haven’t learned this lesson from what happened to SCO — since they began their lawsuit tactics, SCO’s market share has dropped exponentially. Like SCO, however, Microsoft is finding itself in a position where its competitors are out pacing it. Apple is growing far quicker than Microsoft, and is able to deliver bother hardware and software products at profit. Linux is advancing quickly, and the press is starting to tout it as a “Vista alternate.” It doesn’t help that Vista has virtually no new features for users, unless you count being more expensive. It appears that Steve Ballmer has lead Microsoft down the path of other companies which can’t deal with change: SCO, RAMBUS, the RIAA, the MPAA. All these companies probably know that customers will not purchase their product just because they threaten to beat them with a stick. But they don’t know what else to do (hint: build *good* products, and you won’t have this problem. Microsoft knew how to do this at some point).

It seems as if ever since Bill Gates left the helm, Microsoft hasn’t been able to steer itself in the right direction. Take a look at Steve Ballmer, the guy he left in charge, and draw your own conclusions why:

• Steve Ballmer — high on himself and screaming like an idiot. Video.
• Steve Ballmer — issuing death threats. Article.
• Steve Ballmer — brainwashes his kids. Article.
• Steve Ballmer — stuttering? Video.
• Steve Ballmer — cheap car salesman. Video.
• Steve Ballmer — out of touch with reality. Video.

The next time I visit at their house, I’ll take a look and see what the problem is with Windows, and if they’re actually using Linux or not.

As it turns out, this particular computer happened to be slow and old to start with, although it is definitely fast enough that it should be able to do the basics of web browsing, word processing, and playing mp3′s without any problems. In reality, it would literally take around 15 minutes to completely boot up, and then another 5-10 minutes from when you click on Internet Explorer to when it actually comes up (along with about 3 billion popups). I’m not exaggerating, and I didn’t believe it either until I took a look and timed it.

My first idea was to simply install Linux on their computer, and switch them over. Unfortunately, I ran into some problems with that: Ubuntu didn’t seem to have the right drivers for their PC. I could have worked around this by booting to a prompt instead of X Windows and installing it that way, if it weren’t for another issue. Being as their computer was fairly ancient, it only had 128 MB or RAM. Here’s a tip: running off a Live CD with only 128 MB of RAM is a bad idea! Every thing you do takes it forever, and it wasn’t really practical to spend 6-8 hours just to install Linux.

I had thought the story would end there. However, I recently was able to help them get their hands on a slightly used E-Machine. While not top of the line, this 512mb Celeron was 3-4 times better than what they had before. Before they used it, I set it up as a dual-boot machine.

They have an install of Windows XP Home Edition, with all the free protection money can buy; AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, Microsoft Windows Defender, Firefox is the default browser, and Windows Firewall is activated. This is about as good as you can get with Windows, without spending extra money. And let’s face it: you really shouldn’t have to spend lots of money on “protection” just to be able to use your [already very expensive] computer.

They also have an install of Ubuntu Linux 6.10. I installed Automatix2, which will set it up with everything from DVD players to file sharing. All of Ubuntu’s nifty software is present too, like Firefox and OpenOffice. I also set up Ubuntu to auto-login, and changed the /etc/sudoers file so that it doesn’t ask them for a password for admin stuff. While lowering physical security a bit, this makes the end-user experience similar to what they would expect from Windows XP Home. Basically, the Linux install can do everything that the Windows one can, and about as hassle-free. Readers unfamiliar with linux would also be interested to know that this Linux install is completely free. You can download everything you need from the links in this article.

While I’m a huge fan of Linux myself, I hadn’t thought it was really ready for the average person until recently. Ubuntu Linux 5.04 was the one that changes my mind, and 5.10 is an even better release. Still, I don’t realistically expect them to use it …. at first. Human nature includes a certain resistance to change, and as long as their Windows installation remains usable, I don’t think they’ll do anything differently. However, it is reasonable to assume at this point that whatever it is they are doing that gets their computer infected with spyware will happen again. And when it does, they’ll have the option of either booting into a defunct Windows session, or a functional Linux one.

Now, here is the real meat of this experiment:

1. How long can a Windows machine, configured relatively securely and with full antivirus software last when connected to the Internet (there is no router or firewall, their computer goes right to the cable modem)?
2. Once that happens, and they try out Linux because it won’t be spyware-encumbered, will they be able to use it, or even switch to it as their preferred OS?

This is a fairly good experimental setup. There are plenty of people out there looking for answers to both of these questions (myself included). Can you really survive without paying for an anti-virus or spyware software? If you don’t have a Linksys router, or other firewall type of device to protect you? Can average people use Linux? Would they choose to use it? Is it viable to set it up for people who’s computers constantly get infected?

I’ll be checking in with my friends every now and then. I’ll post follow ups every few weeks to track the experiment.

Microsoft calls their new program “XNA” (which doesn’t stand for anything). Using Microsoft’s C Sharp programming language, developers can write games that will run on either Windows or the XBox 360. Once written, anyone who purchases the XNA developer package from their 360 (about $100 / year) can then upload those games to their 360.

This program is great for independent developers – from small game studios to individual college students. The XNA environment is actually pretty well thought out. Aside from the cross-platform nature of the environment, they also provide what they call a “content pipeline,” which makes it much easier for developers to get 3d models and artwork into their projects.

The community nature of XNA is also a very welcome change for Microsoft. Already, many user-created tutorials and message boards are popping up on the Internet. If this is any indication, there will be a healthy community of amateur game developers for XNA. Microsoft has also indicated that they will talk with the better game developers for publishing their projects on Xbox Live.

The XNA program is also good for game-players. Where else can you get unlimited games for $100 / year, or less than the cost of 2 regular Xbox 360 games. There already about half a dozen games available.

Keep in mind that there are some items for which a large number of similar products is okay. A perfect example is in USB flash storage. There are dozens of products available, and they’re all basically the same — about the same size, the same range of storage, roughly the same speed, and even the same price, give or take. Just about the only thing you can really choose with a USB flash drive today is the color. This sort of market is generally known as a “commodity.” If you think about it, you can buy [and sell] USB flash storage about as easily as you can buy and sell just about anything. The individual products are completely interchangeable (and undifferentiated).

Then there are near-commodity products. These are items which are commodities, but don’t necessarily have to be. The only thing preventing one product from “breaking out” of the pack is a lack of innovation. Look at USB hard drives. They’re nearly identical, except for capacity. One brand is as good as another. But what if one company decided to put a headphone jack on theirs, and let you listen to any MP3′s you had stored without needing a computer? What if one came with bluetooth support, or wi-fi? For an extra $30 or so, that would be a pretty cool product, and I’d be likely to buy it instead of a “plain” one. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be many companies who make USB hard drives with any imagination. I’m not sure what their executive management meetings are like — probably something along the lines of “Hey, these things seem to sell well, let’s sell some.”

There will always be commodity items, and near-commodity items, and that’s a good thing. Its what drives prices down. But let’s talk about the breakaway hits. Like, say, the Apple iPod. The iPod is really good for a bunch of reasons. It plays your existing music and movies. It provides a store where you can buy movies, music, and tv shows easily. You don’t feel like the iTunes store is trying to trick you or deceive you in any way — if you buy something there, you can watch/listen to it on your devices. The iPod itself is nice — good quality, small, and light.

There are certainly a lot of other personal music players out there, but the iPod sells better than its competitors because it is a better product — it was the definition of innovation when it was first released, and it continued to add new features as it went along (like video). Now, along comes Microsoft looking to compete with the iPod. So, they decide to develop a product now known as the Zune. Up until its launch, Steve Balmer has touted the Zune as an iPod-killer. In other words, “better than an iPod.” In fact, Matt Jubelirer , the Microsoft project lead for Zune development, talked at length about how innovative the Zune was. Microsoft spend millions upon millions of dollars in advertizing, got retail stores to feature it, and raved about their online store, and how the face of personal music players will be changed forever.

Then the Zune was released. Without making any judgments on how good the Zune is or whether you should get one, it only had one feature that was new: wi-fi support. OK, that sounds innovative. I can imagine lots of cool things I might be able to do with my music player over wifi! Yet, the only thing you can actually do is share a “preview” of your music files to people in the area, which expires after 3 days or 3 plays. And, even though the Zune sports this single, although crippled innovation, there are a multitude of things which it doesn’t do, many of which even “me too” music players can: It won’t play your existing music, even if you bought it from Microsoft (!). It won’t let you subscribe to podcasts. It attaches DRM to your existing music. It’s bigger and heavier than most compareable music players. They have an online store which is difficult and confusing to use, with DRM rules which are not straightforward, and leave the user with the clear impression that they do not control the items they buy.

The strange part? After the Zune was released, Microsoft’s tune suddenly changed. Instead of touting how revolutionary and outstanding their new product was, Bill Gates was calling it a “modest competitor” to the iPod. So, did management really have no idea that their product wasn’t really anything special? Most probably, of course they did, but they were hoping that if they pushed it hard enough, they would be able to sell anyway. And probably, it did sell better than it would have if they didn’t push it so hard. However, the thing that really starts hurting the manufacturer is that the next time they release a product (like, Zune 2.0), no one is going to pay attention to their marketing, even if it really can do what it advertises.

Even though Microsoft seems to be aware of the problem, at least in theory, it hasn’t stopped them from releasing a long line of unremarkable products (any version of office or Windows, or the MSN search site, for example). So, why do things like this happen? Why do companies release “me too” products, when they themselves want to bring innovation as much (or probably more) than consumers want them to?

The real answer, of course, is complicated. Internal politics (Manager A wants Wi-Fi, but Manager B doesn’t. The compromise — Wi-fi goes in, but is limitted in scope). Counter-intuitive interests from business partners (Warner Music/RIAA, anyone?). Adversity to taking risks (“what if they don’t like it?”). Senior management who doesn’t understand the product or the target audience (cough, Steve Balmer).

The reality is that there are all some of the ungainly aspects of how big companies work — including at the “innovative” companies like Apple and Nintendo. The successful ones, however, are able to move past these issues, and focus on the one thing that differentiates them from their competition: What is it that the consumers want?

Although I am a huge Linux fan myself, I hadn’t thought it was really ready for the average person until recently. So, here’s the experiment: install Ubuntu Linux 6.10 on their computer as a dual-boot solution, and see how it goes. My friends are a perfect test case: they know how to use a computer but aren’t programmers or system admins. I think that Linux will work just fine for them, and solve all their spyware and “slow computer” problems.

If you’ve never tried Linux, or haven’t in a while, now is a good time to. I recommend Ubuntu specifically — It’s great for both beginners and experienced Linux users. It has very cool eye-candy (if you computer is new enough), a simple user interface, and a helpful user community. You can find videos of the installation online if you’re worried about what to expect. Also, a big benefit is that you can run Linux withough even installing it, or alternatively, you can install it so that when your computer boots you can choose whether to go into Windows or Linux (which is how I’ll set it up for my friends).

Today, Linux can do just about everything Windows can … the question is whether it can do it simply enough to not cause trouble for the average Windows user. That’s what I’ll find out after this weekend.

Their solution: “exercise extreme caution when opening unsolicited attachments from both known and unknown sources.”

To be fair, the problem isn’t with enterprise file replication itself, but with the reporting tools that tell you how its doing. However in a product which companies pay $1,500 for, this is a fairly idiotic bug. And while there is a patch which fixes the problem, you’ll have to reboot your high-end file servers to install it — entirely defeating the purpose of having high-end file servers.

Of course, how did they find a problem in November that only happens in December?

As my co-worker said, “This is one of the dumbest bugs I ever heard of.” While this is a doozy even for Microsoft, it does play right into the common belief that Microsoft doesn’t have a handle on quality control. Most likely, this problem originates from a developer using “<" instead of "<=." The big problem with this is that Microsoft goes around claiming that they have a great code review process -- obviously not.

How can we be expected to trust Microsoft’s security and encryption services (not to mention providing credit card information to their Passport web site) when their developers don’t even know how many months there are in the year? This is especially troubling as with Windows Vista coming out soon … an entire new (read: untested) codebase. While some may be heartened that Microsoft seems to put the same level of quality control in their enterprise products as they do in their consumer products, it may actually be a detriment.

Score another point for Open Source.

The phone would work totally fine as a phone, and I could even browse the web on it, but it refused to sync (“Waiting for Network Connection” — liar). The only way to get it to sync again was to reboot the phone. The worst part was that the only way to know that it was no longer syncing was to go into the activesync application on the phone and check the status. Needless to say, this isn’t something you normally do, so essentially, your mail might just not work for, say, the whole weekend and you might not even know it.

I tried many different ways to solve this problem: Setting static DNS entries for my mail server, setting every possible combination of network settings, reflashing the phone’s firmware, upgrading the phone’s firmware. Nothing worked.

So, I’m back to my Blackberry for now. I know all the cliches with Microsoft products, but hey, they’re cliches for a reason. When the phone worked, it was very cool. But I can’t use a product that only works 70% of the time, and doesn’t even tell me when it’s not.

Personally, I don’t really use most of the smartphone features. For example, the calandar and “tasks” are completely useless to me. I’m very much a pen-and-paper notetaker. However, two useful things to me are the address book and “push” email. For reference, my previous phone was a Blackberry 7100, which is one of the smaller Blackberry’s.

First off, there are two reasons I was looking for a new phone. First, while the Blackberry was small for a smartphone, it was still too big to comfortably fit in my jeans pockets. Part of my jobs requires that I be in touch at any given time, so this was a major pain. While I do need to receive emails in realtime, I very rarely have to respond to them immediately. Therefore, a QWERTY keyboard isn’t neccessary, and even becomes a liability since it makes the device bigger.
Second: I get really bored at the gym while working out. I wanted a phone that could double as an ipod-like device. While the newer Blackberry’s support this, mine didn’t. I was also somewhat concerned that the new Blackberry would support the codecs I wanted to use. Because I use a Mac Mini as my HTPC, most of my video’s are MP4 encoded with Mpeg4 baseline compression and aac audio. More on this below.

Since no US carrier had a phone (at the time) which met my requirements, I looked at purchasing one directly from a manufacturer. It basically came down to two main model lines: the IMate SP5(m), or the Imate SmartFlip. All these phones are also sold by different companies under different names. For example, the SmartFlip is now the Cingular 3125. The Smartflip is the same size and shape of the Motorola RAZR. Unfortunately, the SmartFlip has a shorter battery life, uses “microSD” instead of “miniSD,” and doesn’t have a standard USB plug. For those reasons, I chose the SP5m, which has roughly the same volume, but in a different shape.

Form Factor

The stats are deceiving! Despite what it may say on paper (or even in side-by-side photos), this phone is *way* smaller than even the smallest Blackberry. It comes with a bulky (and geeky) belt-holster, which I’ve never used, as the phone easily fits in a pocket. It is pretty solid and well-built, and weighs a bit more than the Blackberry did. This makes it very comfortable to hold and use.

Syncing

There are definately some differences between how the Blackberry syncs and how the Windows Smartphone syncs. I am using this for work, where we support both the Exchange Enterprise software for Blackberry and for Windows Smartphone. The main difference is that for Blackberry, it Just Worked once you set it up. For Windows Smart Phone, it is very much a visible process. I’ve only had the phone for a few days so far, but I’ve already noticed that it will go for 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there without syncing for no apparent reason (activesync tells you how long its been since it last synced), and an error in activesync saying that it had trouble conencting to the server. A manual sync (or waiting a bit) will fix it.

Please note that I had to upgrade the firmware on my phone to get Push Email working — the version that shipped with it did not.
One of the nice things about the way Microsoft Push email works is that you don’t need to do anything special from your carrier. For example, Cingular (other carriers do similar things) will try to sell you a $45/month unlimitted Blackberry package, which you need for Blackberry. They will also try to sell “push” plans, including premiums for “Direct Push.” You probably don’t need that. There’s a good thread here which explains in more detail. However, you definately need an unlimited plan of some sort — Push Mail (ironically) requires a lot of bandwidth.

There are 3 other issues I’ve run into related to syncing.

First, it will only notify your of new messages in your inbox. Even though it can be set to sync subfolders, it will not include new messages there in the “new email” count. You can get around this by making your exchange “rules and alerts” run in Outlook instead of on the server, and closing outlook when you aren’y using it. This way, you will get all messages sent to your phone, and when you log in to the computer, it will still sort them into the correct subfolders.

Second, it cannot sync contact subfolders. This may be a problem for some people using 3rd party syncing software like Plaxo.

The third thing has to do with the network connections settings dialog. There are a bunch of categories, like “Internet,” “Work,” and “WAP.” For each one, you can choose how you want to connect to it. For example, for Internet, I can choose “Cingular WAP Connection,” if tethered then “Pass-Through Connection,” or “automatic.” Wow, automatic sounds great. You would think that automatic means that it would use the pass-through connection if available, or else fall back to the Cingular WAP. In fact, NEVER choose automatic for any of the options. Apparently in Redmond, Wa “automatic” means “don’t work.” In fact, when any setting was set to “automatic,” that type of connectivity just plain didn’t work, despite what form of communications was actually available.

Multimedia

I mentioned earlier that I use some non-Microsoft video formats. Although the phone comes with Windows Media Player, it is somewhat limitted in which codecs it supports. Obviously, Microsoft-ish ones. The first thing I did was install TCPMP (now called core), an open-source video player. This has plugins which allow it to play almost any format (the AAC audio plugin is here). While music seems to play fine, video is another story.
First off, don’t expect to play every ipod-formatted video on this phone. Since it doesn’t have iTunes copy-protection, you are limitted to free video in podcasts, or video which you encode yourself. However, it’s not really fast enough to decode h.264 with aac audio, at any kind of resolution. This is unfortunately because of the amount of ipod-formatted video out there. However, all is not lost. If you re-encode the video into mpeg4 format at around 400k/s, it will run perfectly smoothly. Additionally, this phone has one of the most beautiful displays I’ve ever seen on a mobile device, including the G5 Video Ipods (haven’t seen the G5.5 ones yet).

TCPMP is about to release a commercial product called “Core Player,” which supposedly will be 15% more efficient at rendering video. If this is the case, it might be enough to play ipod-formatted videos. Personally, I prefer not to pay for things like that (which should be free). Which brings us to our next topic.

Software

There just isn’t that much free software available for Window Mobile Smartphone 5. Even though it has a lot of theoretical compatibility, it’s really, really hard to find stuff. Let’s run through it:

My SP5m came with a JVM and an applet manager, so that it can play J2me midlets. First off, I couldn’t find any free midlets which were newer than 2004. There really just aren’t any. Have opensource developers and students completely abandoned mobile Java? The few that I did find (most of them from 2002/2003) would not load on the phone. It complained about “invalid jar file,” which could not have been the case for all 10+ midlets that I tried from different sources. I was able to confirm that teh JVM worked in general because I was able to load one midlet — Google Mobile Maps. Maybe I would have more luck if I was willing to pay for apps. After my experience, though, I would not want to chance paying for an app and having it not work.

Then there are the Pocket PC apps. Most of these don’t work because the SmartPhone doesn’t have a touchscreen. I wish that they would install anyway, and you could use the joystick as a mouse or something, but thes apps generate an error when they try to install, and you can’t even try to run them. Unfortunately, most Windows Mobile software is for PPC, and not SmartPhone.

Finally, there is a whole class of software which was written for Windows Smartphone, but only for Smartphone 2002 or 2003, and does not support Smartphone 5. Bummer. This software will either not install at all, or will install but will then crash your phone (or do other bad things).

Having said that, there is a small amount of good, free software for Smartphone. Primarily, there is an SSH/Telnet client (which makes more sense when use it with a BlueTooth keyboard), and a handful of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and NeoGeo emulators. If anyone else knows anything good, let me know

Overall Impressions

So, does this phone meet my goals? For what I stated above, something to sync my mail and contacts, and to watch video on while I work out, yes, it works great. If I was expecting more, something more like a full-fledged PDA, I would probably not be thrilled, mainly because it does not run most Pocket PC software (including Word and Excel). The calandar functionality seems to be pretty good, however, even though I don’t use it.

Also, while it does hav a few quirks compared to the Blackberry related to syncing, it does seem to work reasonably well once you work around them. Also, despite the dearth of software I was able to find, it still has much more available than the Blackberry does. As it’s a relative new platform, and is only just now starting to get some products in the US, I expect there to be more [free] software available over time than for the less consumer-oriented-Blackberry. The game emulators give me a virtually unlimited library of games to play, so I don’t really miss having native ones.

Overall, the I-Mate SP5m is small, fits in my pocket, and has a great display. Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone lets me sync my email with Push Mail, play any nintendo or super nintendo game I want, and play music and video.

The phone does freeze up and/or crash from time to time (“Stupid Windows”), which the Blackberry never did. However, it seems to only happen right after installing a new app, or changing very basic settings, like how to connect to GPRS. After a reboot, it seemed to be fine, and it never just “randomly” crashed. While I don’t consider crashing to be OK or even acceptable, I can live with it as long as it doesn’t get any worse, or cause me to lose any data (hasn’t so far). Because of what I was doing when it did crash, I don’t expect it to happen again. I also suspect the regular user who buys a phone directly from their carrier (already set up) will never see these problems.
Overall, I would rate this pretty close to my ideal phone.

[later] Be sure to read my follow up article.