I’ve seen this bug in Vista for at least 3 months. I wouldn’t be surprised if this had lower priority than a new boot screen. To our disadvantage, it doesn’t obstruct functionality, so no one will proactively fix it. But, it’s always reproducible, visible and annoying. There’s plenty more where this came from. Believe it or not, because of Gartner, Apple, Microsoft’s shareholders, Microsoft’s directors, OEMs, you and me, this won’t be fixed.

Why? Because we all want Vista to be finalized, pressed, packaged, shipped, stocked and sold tomorrow.

No more posters, Apple.

Edit: Apparently I’m the only person seeing having this bug. But this still applies plenty of other small bugs. I’m not the only person seeing this.

Reflections don’t reflect the image. Or maybe this is a sign of Aero Diamond, with internally reflected reflections. From an image just posted on Microsoft.com.

Just kidding. 😉

Everyone has gone leak-happy in the last few days, so I’m here just to clean up some mess. We’ve awed at wallpapers. We’ve heard sounds. We’ve dribbled at packaging. We’ve peeked at new icons. My life is complete, after this rant.

Paul Thurrott
I was both surprised and disappointed when Paul Thurrott leaked the new brand icons last week. Part of the disappointment came from the lack of enthusiasm and back-story behind the icons when they were originally showcased just as a banner-ad on the WinSuperSite. There was no ‘bang’ to the story when infact it was a fairly significant milestone for the user-experience group. There should have been at least a breakdown of the design process and the choices the design team has made for these icons to give a better impression of what they represent.

The other part of the disappointment came from the lack of care when it comes to showcasing something so visually ‘fragile’. I’ve always uploaded graphics and videos at the highest possible quality (at the despair of my host) because I believe when you are showcasing to the world an upcoming product, you should give care to how you are demonstrating it. Not only does it respect the designer’s efforts, but also thousands of people might judge the product on what you show them.

So to put everything I’ve said into context, I’d like to show you this comparison. Note I’m using PNG lossless compression, so I have not manipulated the images in any way.

It’s an utter disgrace. I won’t publish all the other icons since you can get them from literally everywhere, but I recommend you all to leave your final judgment until you’ve experienced Vista yourself, and not from screenshots.

Outstanding rumors

• Rumor: There will be a new animated 32-bit bootscreen.
  Fact: It’ll be the same scrolling green bars you’ve seen in RC1/RC2. This is due to technical limitations with many graphics cards. The “/noguiboot” method remains for OEMs and hackers to customize.
• Rumor: There will be a 5.1 surround Vista startup sound.
  Fact: It’s a nice sound, but its not surround.
• Rumor: The “Add gadgets” screen will be glass-less.
  Fact: Sadly, still glassy with unreadable text.
• Rumor: Vista needs more than 10GB of hard disk space.
  Fact: Definitely less than 8GB without debug code.
• Rumor: Aero Diamond?
  Fact: No.

Anyone want to start leaking Windows Vienna? 🙂

I think I have the answer to the question of life. “Which browser is the best?” The people have asked for a truly unbiased and objective review. And I’m here to serve them one.

After extensive testing in my specially design laboratory, performing statistical analysis with supercomputers and extremely white-haired scientists, and plotting mind-blowing 3D pie charts with multi-sampled anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, I have concluded the best browser in the world is,

The browser you’re using without Javascript on some operating system I can’t detect

Congratulations on your superiority using the best web browser existing today.

Everyone’s a winner in life, but in this competition, 520 people will lose. 5 lucky people prevailed. Who will it be? Find out after the paragraph break.

Welcome back. Over a week ago, I announced the giveaway for 5 copies of the official Windows Vista Preview magazine published by Future generously donated by Paul Douglas. Over that week, I’ve experienced highs and lows, lefts and rights, pushes and pulls, and pretty much every directional verb I can think of. I’m surprised so many people share my passion for reading in the bathroom.

In other news, my good friend Frank Arrigo was admitted to hospital, and subsequently released. Paul Thurrott leaked some Vista icons with JPEG compression so rough, I couldn’t even see pixels. James Senior even started a competitions war with me.

But the day you’ve been all agonizing for is here. Enough of my verbal diarrhea. Here are the 5 lucky people who will be reading something worth reading in the near future:

• Jason Jorgensen
• Ben Noble
• E. Cameryn Holstick
• Lachlan Grant (Disqualified for providing inaccessible email)
• Jason He
• Joe Furniss

Any disputes or theories of collusion can be directed to [email protected], on which an imaginary person called Sarah will handle all of your complaints.

Have a great day. And if you’ve won, you are already having a great day. Life doesn’t suck, does it?

Inspired by Mary Jo Foley. If you’re confused about whether or not to ‘get’ Windows Vista once it is released, then here are 17 firm arguments for you to ‘find’ Vista and install it as soon as possible.

1. Fonts dialog – Your favourite dialog box from Windows 3.1 has been carefully preserved down to the last pixel. You’ll never feel too lonely knowing you’re sitting along with many of your 15 year old legacy friends.
2. Removal of “My” prefix for document folders – Your documents, pictures and music are now public domain.
3. Flip 3D – See how your TPS reports look from a different angle. (This is clearly the pivotal feature easily gaining extremely rapid business adoption worldwide.)
4. ReadyBoost – Putting your too many freebie USB drives to good use.
5. Transactional NTFS – A power failure will not corrupt your bittorent downloads.
6. BitLocker – Prevent unauthorized viewing of your YouTube videos if your laptop is ever stolen.
7. Priority I/O – You can defragment, download from bittorent, watch Lost, run Norton anti-performance 2007, process some SQL queries all at the same time.
8. SideShow – Turn your $3000 laptop into a bling-bling boombox.
9. Improved networking stack – Out-ping all your XP n00b friends. Frag & pwn harder in CS.
10. Speech recognition – Write letters to your aunt about criminals without touching the keyboard.
11. DirectX 10 – Crysis, nuff said.
12. DRM – You can’t listen to downloaded MP3s anymore. Only kidding.
13. Parental controls – Restrict your parent’s usage on the computer.
14. User Account Control – Makes you feel like you’re in control of the computer.
15. Sidebar – Check the weather without looking out the window.
16. Search – Allows you to find things on your computer, if you ever happen to lose them.
17. Aero – It’s translucent. What more do you want.