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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

ANYONE WANT TO LEARN A NEW MICROSOFT VISTA INSTALLATION TRICK?

Yes, no kidding, it really exists. Old MS has found a way, once again, to open up its software to software wannabes, who can surreptitiously make MS software popular by spreading the news about unplanned but inbuilt glitches that enable everyone to use the programs easily.

Meanwhile, guess who smiles to the bank with millions raked in from the computer code 'glitches'. Well, hey, whatever! Here's the latest MS related how-to:

[ How to install a Vista upgrade on any PC

Unadvertised sale: Buy an upgrade, get a stand-alone version

By Thomas C Greene in Dublin


Published Monday 12th February 2007 15:02 GMT

Microsoft is running an unadvertised sale on Windows Vista. For the price of an upgrade edition requiring an existing copy of Windows, anyone can have a stand-alone version of Vista that will run on any PC. Indeed, the upgrade editions are full versions, simply waiting to be told to install themselves regardless of what OS is currently on the system, if any. The trick is all in how you interact with the setup program.

Microsoft MVP Marc Liron was kind enough to explain the procedure in this recent article, and we merely set about duplicating his results. Which we did, with an upgrade version of Vista Home Premium, and found that Liron's instructions worked like a charm.

In short, all you need to do is delay entering your product key and delay validating your copy of Vista online until the setup is complete. For some reason, Microsoft has decided to allow users to install first and deal with the paperwork later. Simple in theory, although the details of exactly how to do this are a bit lengthy, and we strongly recommend following Liron's step-by-step instructions linked above. But, in a nutshell, all you are doing is avoiding the traps that MS has set up to cancel the installation if an authorised version of Windows isn't already present. If you dodge those traps, you can install a stand-alone version of Vista, using an upgrade package, on any machine, and later enter your product key and validate your copy normally.

We took a PC with a valid copy of Windows XP, and nuked the XP image (always a satisfying experience for a Linux user). Then we booted from the Vista upgrade DVD, and, following Liron's instructions, got ourselves a fully operable and properly validated copy of Vista in about an hour's time, without a single misstep (again, we've confirmed this with the Home Premium upgrade only, but we have no reason to believe that the trick would not work with other editions).

So, for those of you still using Windows 98 or the ludicrous ME, or Linux, Vista just got a good deal cheaper. Would this technique also work on an Intel-powered Mac? I have no idea, but I'd guess that if you know how to re-partition your disks, and so long as there's nothing truly weird in the EFI, it ought to work. And the rEFIt Project might be able to offer assistance to anyone willing to experiment (I don't do Macs, so I'm not a candidate).

No doubt readers are wondering why Microsoft designed the Vista upgrades to be so easily installed as a free-standing OS. I'd like to answer this question, but I have nothing more than a clue. But it's an interesting clue.

I had a Windows XP Professional image on one of my computers. Now, the Vista Update Advisor recommended that I upgrade to Vista Business, but I didn't wish to. I went to the shop, looked about, and decided on the Home Premium upgrade. According to the package, Home Premium can be used on the following Windows OS's: "Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, or Windows Vista." That's a quote.

However, when I attempted to install the upgrade normally, it failed. It was not compatible with XP Professional - I assume because Vista Home Premium includes Media Centre, and can therefore be used as an update only for XP Media Centre edition. But note that the package failed to distinguish among XP editions. It did distinguish between 2000 editions, but it said flatly that I needed either the 2000 edition specified, or XP or Vista.

Nevertheless, when I attempted to upgrade my XP image, I was notified that it was impossible, and that my only options were to quit, or to do a clean install of Vista Home Premium, which would wipe out my XP image and all of my data with it.

Of course, I had to open the package to discover Microsoft's blunder. And that would make the software very difficult to return for exchange. So the idea of quitting was not terribly attractive. Neither was wiping my disk.

The Upgrade Advisor did recommend the Vista Business edition, but as I reported previously, the Upgrade Advisor is a joke. It couldn't detect half of my hardware, so I was hardly inclined to trust its software recommendations. And it never gave me the impression that I would experience an upgrade failure if I ignored its advice.

Microsoft has made a colossal mess of Vista upgrades with five separate editions that are each tied to specific previous editions of Windows, and very little in the way of guidance, except for a dysfunctional Upgrade Advisor. Few other companies would wager a product launch on a lame gimmick like that.

So when you think about it, the sensible thing would be to anticipate endless complaints from consumers stuck with the "wrong" update edition, and to try to placate them with the promise that if they would just part with all of their data, their installation problems can be solved.

It's a cheap thing to do, but it is in line with the company's overall attitude toward consumers. Hence the necessity of making every upgrade edition a stand-alone version, and the inevitable consequence that some bright empiricist will figure out how to force it to behave like one. ®

windows vista microsoft ms upgrade ]


SOURCE: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/12/cheap_vista_for_everyone/page2.html

Posted by Okonkwo O. Awa at 9:34:00 PM

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Greenville, Rhode Island bakery owned by the Cavanagh family, which uses the plant to produce church communion bread from just water and bread. That business is known to produce about 850 million sacramental wafers annually and to supply 80% of the Holy Communion bread used in American, Australian, Canadian, and British churches. The only middlemen in the supply chain are nuns living in convents! Now they want to expand to West Africa with their Christian sacramental ware for Pentecostal, Catholic, 'New Wave', and Orthodox church offerings. I make reference to the so-called New Wave churches - my term for those churches that broke away from the orthodoxy of the Protestant fold, just as the latter roke off from the Catholic church by virtue of the exploits of Martin Luther centuries ago. Many new-wave and other church goers in the generally undeveloped West African subregion of Africa pay more to religious organizations in monthly tithes and offerings than they do to their government in personal income and value added taxes. Now, that last fact is quite interesting because it is an admission that a bakery in Rhode Island has seen a huge market in the center of Black Africa for small white perfectly laminated and non-crumbly holy wheat bread, reportedly costing "less than a penny" apiece, for the use of both the bible-reading and the bible-believing religious organizations. However, the picture from the Cavanagh's factory floor speaks volumes, in my own opinion, about the need for the company to watch its business ethics and to treat all customers equally irrespective of location, creed, or other discriminatory demographic information or criteria. So, I just hope and pray that the wafers falling off the conveyor belt and by the way side are not destined for West Africa and that the actual wafers delivered will be wheat bread and water, and not just glutamate-free bread and 'pure' water, if you get my point, even if so requested by some shady, greedy, and unethical businessmen over in West Africa. Posted by Okonkwo O. Awa on Sunday, December 28, 2008.

In the summer of 2007, Pope Benedict XVI (BXVI) encouraged The Church to reach out to young people using new technologies, as he himself learned to send out cellphone text messages to the faithful. So in obedience, a tech savvy evangelizing Catholic priest got some help from a Web designer in order to write all the daily books of prayers into a low-cost computer software application downloadable onto the iPhone. Rev. Paolo Padrini's iTunes prayer book was officially approved by The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications in December 2008. Of course, all proceeds from the electronic prayer book venture will go to charity. Speaking of charitable behavior, The Holy See has seen it fit after 400 years to honor Galileo Galilei in 2009 as the "patron" of the non-mutual exclusivity of the faith versus reason dichotomy. That is very appropriate in this age of new technology, even though The Church still smarts from its error of judgment in calling the famous astronomer a heretic after he publicly embarrassed The Church by reporting that his scientific observations in Astronomy with his unique telescope had led him inexorably to believe that the Earth actually revolved around the sun, in direct opposition to the teaching of The Church at the time that Planet Earth was the center of the universe. In seeking to paint the Church in a new light of worldly knowledge by distancing itself from a past of imbibing pure dogma, The Vatican may have ventured to cross the final frontier and boundary between Science and Christianity by acknowledging recently that there could be life on planets other than the Earth! Posted by O. O. Awa on Wednesday, December 24, 2008.
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