Should Palm have access to iTunes?

When the Palm Pre was launched it instantly became a competitor to the iPhone with its clever design and impressive software. It could even access your iTunes music library and transfer your favourite tracks to the device so that you can listen on the move.

Apple clearly didn't want a competitor using its iTunes software and it recently updated it so that it no longer worked with unauthorised non-Apple devices - the Palm Pre specifically. Palm has updated its software and users once again have access to iTunes on their mobile. It would not be surprising if Apple changed iTunes again and for Palm to respond with another update. An irritating side effect of this is that you will be nagged into updating iTunes with an 80Mb download or whatever it is these days every time Apple changes it. It's bad enough when it adds features for the iPhone when you don't even have one and you're bugged to update without this Palm vs Apple battle.

Apple is clearly annoyed that Palm is using its iTunes software. After all, Apple spent a lot of time and effort developing iTunes for iPod owners (PC and Mac). If iTunes was specifically created for owners of Apple iPods/iPhones and was bundled with it and it didn't work if you didn't have one, it would be an understandable position, but Apple makes iTunes available for free for anyone that wants it. You don't have to own any Apple device or computer.

If a program is free for everyone and anyone to use in whatever way they want, as iTunes is, you can't then complain if people use it in ways that you don't like. Apple can't make iTunes free for everyone except Palm Pre owners. Instead of trying to block Palm devices it should enhance the features for iPod/iPhone users so they have a better experience.

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Windows 7 features that didn't make it

Windows 7 has been undergoing beta testing and Microsoft has made it available for download so that anyone can try it. It is interesting to look at Microsoft's new operating system, but none of the features that are in it are guaranteed to be in the final version and apparently it can still change.

There was an interesting feature in a beta last year called PC Safeguard. It could be enabled for any of the standard user accounts that were set up in Windows 7 and it prevented the user from making permanent changes to the computer. It didn't stop them making changes and they could do anything they liked, but when they logged off or shut down, Windows 7 undid all their actions and put everything back exactly as it was. It's a great idea when you have kids that mess around with the wallpaper, colour schemes, icons and other stuff.

A feature of PC Safeguard was the ability to lock a hard disk drive and prevent it from being written to by a user. It could be very useful for preventing youngsters from deleting important files that you had saved, whether they were work documents or simply digital camera photos.

In the next beta that followed Microsoft renamed the feature and called it Guest Mode, but surely this would confuse people because there is a Guest account that anyone can use to log into Windows 7.

In the latest beta - the release candidate - the feature has gone. You used to be able to access PC Safeguard or Guest Mode or whatever it was called by going to the Control Panel and opening User Accounts. Click Manage another account and then click the account. Click the Set up PC Safeguard or Guest Mode link and then select the option to turn it on.

Will this feature make a comeback in the final version of Windows 7 that ships? Who knows? It's easier to hide the link in the User Accounts window than to remove all the code, so maybe it's still there and it's just hidden. And maybe a registry hack will turn it back on!

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Windows 7 UK pricing

An email offer arrived in my inbox this morning and it's worth sharing...

"You've been using Windows® 7 for a while now, and we hope you've been enjoying a simpler PC. Because you've been a loyal customer, we're offering you Windows 7 at a great introductory price* - save up to 38% with Windows 7 Home Premium E, only £49.99 ERP, or save up to 47% with Windows 7 Professional E at £99.99 ERP. To take advantage of this deal, pre-order your copy while supplies last.

* Discount based on estimated initial retail price offer at launch of Windows 7 Professional E at £189.99. The offer is available through participating retailers and actual prices may vary. Each retailer will tell you how to get your copy when Windows 7 is released."

Wasn't Windows 7 supposed to be cheap? Firstly, it needs to convince everyone that shunned Vista that Windows 7 is different and is worth upgrading to, and Apple is virtually giving away its next version of OS X ($29 in the US, probably £29 in the UK). The discounted prices look fine, but if you aren't lucky enough to get one of these offers in your inbox, Windows 7 looks expensive. Upgrade versions are often half the price of the full install disc, so you won't have to pay £189.99 for Win 7 Pro if that's all you need.

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Windows 7's XP Mode - can your CPU handle it?

Whenever a new operating system is launched it is packed with great new features and it is a step forward in terms of technology. However, it is also inevitable that some old software won't work with it. It might only be a handful of programs that have problems with the new OS, but if there is one that you rely on then it can prevent you from upgrading.

In an effort to get around the problem of incompatible software when Windows 7 launches Microsoft will include Windows XP with it. (It won't be in all versions, so don't expect to see it in the most basic one. It might even be a download rather than on the DVD too.) This will not be a standard version of XP and instead it will be a virtual machine. Windows Virtual PC enables you to run other operating systems on your PC in a similar way to running emulators of retro computers like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum. It doesn't affect your current operating system and you effectively run one inside the other. It sounds weird, but it works quite well.

The only snag is that Windows Virtual PC requires the processor to support hardware virtualisation. Some chips have it and some don't. Will you be able to run Windows XP in Windows 7? Here's how to find out.

Go and get the Intel Processor Identification Utility. Then go to the Intel Processor Spec Finder and select your processor. Suppose you have a Core 2 Quad. In the Supported Features list, select Intel Virtualisation Technology and then click the Filter On Selections button. The processors that are left are the ones that are OK. If your CPU isn't there then you can't run XP in 7, at least not using Windows Virtual PC.

If you have an AMD processor then go and download the AMD Virtualization Technology and Microsoft Hyper-V System Compatibility Check Utility.

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Internet Explorer is past its use-by date

Are you still using Internet Explorer to browse the web? If you are, you are in the majority, but Microsoft's market share is steadily shrinking because people are slowly drifting away from the browser that is bundled with Windows and are choosing an alternative like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Opera. Why?

One reason is the speed difference between IE and Chrome and Safari. If you have IE, go to one of the JavaScript speed tests like SunSpider and run the benchmark. IE8, which is faster than IE7, has a score of 8500ms, but if you try this with Safari you'll get a score of about 775ms. Chrome has a similar score to Safari. They aren't just slightly faster, they are increadibly fast and code that takes Internet Explorer several seconds to execute takes Safari and Chrome milliseconds. Don't take my word for it, run the test yourself.

There are other speed tests, but the results are the same - IE is dog slow. This is one reason why people are switching browsers. Unfortunately, the internet is very congested and the amount of traffic in the pipes and people on popular websites nullifies the effect of the enormous speed advantage of Safari and Chrome. With a dodgy internet connection, ISP throttling and overburdened web surver IE can almost keep up with Safari and Chrome. This means that people stick with IE even though it's so slow - they don't notice because the internet's slow anyway.

Another reason why you should switch from IE to another browser is that sometimes it just doesn't work. seriously, it cannot display some web pages. For example, go and check out Norton Utilitiesat the Symantec website. Internet Explorer 8 makes a complete mess of it and fails to display it. It's perfect in every other web browser. This page isn't a one-off and when you've had a few of these you'll probably think that there's something wrong with your PC, Windows, your internet connection, or the website. It's none of those, it's IE8 that just can't work with the latest web standards.

If you are still using IE, go and get Safari. Chrome is fast, but doesn't have as many features.)

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Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard for $29

At the recent developers converence Apple revealed that the next version of its OS X operating system will be released in September and it will cost $29. (No matter what the exchange rate, it'll probably be £29 here in the UK.) The reason for the September release is probably to beat Microsoft Windows 7 and it's hardly surprising, but why is it so cheap? It is normally more like $129.

Pricing it at $29 is very unusual for Apple, a company this is not known for selling cheap products, so what are the reasons behind it? Basically, it wants to move everyone from a 32-bit operating system to a 64-bit one on Intel hardware. By supporting only one hardware architechture - Intel - instead of two - Intel and PowerPC - in the long term it will save time, effort and money, which is important in the current economic climate.

Apple has rewritten and recompiled OS X and the built in applications like Safari and Mail for 64-bit Intel processors. This is because they can handle data more efficiently, which means better performance. Removing the support for older Macs with PowerPC architechture means that there is less code. The end result is that Snow Leopard is half the size and twice as fast as Leopard. This is briliant news for everyone using newer Intel Macs, but bad news for everyone else.

The reason why it is only $29 is two fold. First Apple wants to encourage as many users as possible to a 64-bit operating system, and second, it's taken so much time and effort to rewrite the OS that there's not much that is actually new. There won't be a huge number of new features, so charging full price probably isn't an option, despite the speed boost and space saving.

Next year you can expect to see rewritten and recompiled 64-bit editions of Apple software like iLife and iWork.

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Why Windows starts so slowly

How long does your PC take to boot up? Two minutes, three, longer? Why can't Microsoft make it start faster? Actually, it isn't Windows that is at fault because if you format the hard disk drive and install a fresh copy of Windows on it, it will boot up very quickly indeed. The problem isn't the operating system, it's the software that is installed afterwards that makes it so slow. (Microsoft may be partially to blame because Windows allows or even encourages programming practices that slow down the boot up.)

It's amazing how much gets installed into memory when you switch on and half of it won't be used. For example, I run iTunes once a week to update my iPod, yet an iTunes Helper, an Apple Mobile Device driver and an iPod Service is loaded every time Windows starts up. They run 24/7 even though iTunes is run once a week. Why can't these things be loaded when they are needed instead of slowing down the boot process and consuming memory and processing power?
iTunes is just one example and it isn't the worst by any means. Looking at what's loaded on my computer it is clear that Roxio is a particularly bad offender. The company makes some useful software, but does it have to be loaded all the time? Surely it doesn't need to be loaded unless it is being used?

If you have a Blackberry mobile phone and have installed the software to sync it with your PC you'll have a Media Manager supplied by Roxio. This runs RoxWatchTray9, RoxMediaDB9, Roxio Hard Drive Watcher 9, Roxio UPnP Renderer 9, and Roxio Upnp Server 9 every time you start Windows. It doesn't matter whether you want to plug in your Blackberry or not, it all gets run every time Windows starts. Why can't these things be run when you want to plug in your Blackberry? They don't need to be running 24/7.

I have Roxio Creator Ultimate on another PC for burning CDs and DVDs, a task I perform perhaps once a week or once every couple of weeks. To use this software though, the following files are loaded automatically with Windows every time it starts whether I need it or not: CPMonitor, RoxTrayWatch, Roxio Upnp Server 11, RoxLiveShare11, RoxWatch11, PxHelp20, Sahdla32, Saibla32, saibsvc, and SaibVda32.

That's 10 programs just from one software application I installed. Now this is OK if you have just one a application on your PC, but who has just one? We have many applications, so when you multiple this by the number of apps you have the number of files loaded on startup can be quite large. And you probably won't need most of it. Not today. Maybe next week or whenever you run the associated application next, but it still gets loaded. It consumes memory, time, and processing power. Why?

Software developers: Stop loading all this crap into Windows every time it starts! When a program is run it can load all the files it needs, but don't run stuff when it's not being used.

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