Windows Vista/Office 2007 Launch Confrence

So Microsoft has been traveling the country to tout the joys of their new products. Especially Vista and Office 2007. I was able to attend the developer section of the day. Four hours of why you should write programs that force people to upgrade to our new products. My review follows.

First of all and open letter to Microsoft that they will never read.

Dear MS,

Please, please, please stop using the letter "X" in everything. DirectX, Xbox, and XAML are enough. You are done. Just because Apple monopolized the letter "i" does not mean that you need to find your own letter. Frankly, I'm surprised the Zune was not spelled Xune. Thank you.

Mark W. Lee

Ok on to the products.

Vista:

The main thing that was pushed on Vista was the way it looked, and how easy it was to create product that looked good on it. You use a program in .NET 3.0 framework using the subsystem feature called WPF. It works very much like Adobe Flash, only more like an .NET program. Using standard design it sharpens the look while allowing the individual user to customize all programs that use this by changing settings on the OS rather than the individual program. Such as don't use special effects.

It looks like it makes things easier to create, and look better. Basically is just an addition to the .NET framework in order to make pretty things faster than normal. Basically it turns your programs in to Flash looking things. From what I have read WPF, however, is available for XP PS2. It seems that you can have all of the features including the rendering. There may be some features excluded.

At first I was interested in what the examples he was doing . He made web sites that looked like a windows application. Thats because they are. XAML is a IE on Windows only feature. So if you decide to use Opera or Mozilla or a Mac you will not find any benefit from these websites.

The back end also looked good except it does nothing new. It just looks better. They talk about P2P like it is something exciting and new. Just replace Peer with Node and you have the Internet at its roots. They are trying to create a framework that already exists.

Now a lot of people are saying that Vista is just copying Mac. I don't think thats as true as we think. Rather than having an operating system that looks good Vista is a framework that looks good. It helps you make pretty programs.

Security is still questionable. There are a lot of new features. Some good, some just don't seem right. There is something that really scared me though. A new way of payment. Its kinda like Paypal. Paypal is sort of like a credit card if you would. Except that they are a credit card for your credit card. Well Microsoft created something like that. Only on your computer. Just swipe your virtual card. Thats right no password, no key, no security. All I have to do is get your computer and I can buy anything. Thats what I call very dangerous. Of course it will never catch on bc it is naturally insecure and it is platform/OS/browser specific.

Verdict: It is pretty all the way through. It pretends to be secure in most places. It isn't new anywhere.

Office 2007

I like it. I like it alot. Ribbons. Tried and true design improved by long study of work habits. It might actually get me to switch from OpenOffice.org. I'll tell you why later.

It looks nice to program with. It looks good. It add quite a bit to documents. It just works. They have a new document format which is more fixable if something goes bad. It also helps to make it more secure, which is good. It is also fairly simple to add features that tie into your programs written in .NET. This is nice for development. I wonder how I can tie my python programs into it.

Verdict: Good and getting better.

Finally I also managed get get some goodies. When I signed in I was given a bag full of stuff, a Livestrong style Microsoft bracelet and a survey. In the bag was a T-shirt, a light up pen, some reading stuff, a notepad and a card. What then do I do? I fill out the survey and turn it in with the card and they give me a disk and a serial number. What is the serial number to? Microsoft Office 2007. Yeah thats right. A free copy of Office 2007. Now, that is cool.

As soon as I get my lappy back I will tell you how Office 2007 is.