Microsoft is Dead. Long Live Microsoft.

Last night I saw an article pop up on Digg titled: Vista sales propel Microsoft’s profits to almost $5 BILLION.  It states that “Microsoft Corp. posted a 65 percent rise in quarterly profit Thursday, topping Wall Street estimates thanks to better than expected demand for its new Windows Vista operating system.”

What?  This can’t be true.  Some guy on the Internet just announced that Microsoft Is Dead.  Then some more people got together, declared victory for Apple (Apple’s role in Microsoft’s downfall), and pissed on Microsoft’s grave (gotta love Slashdot).

The blogosphere loves bombastic, NY Post worthy headlines about Microsoft’s demise; especially where Apple fanboys hangout.  The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is flawed, but fine.  Microsoft isn’t going anywhere.

Here’s a prediction on the future of the home PC/OS.  Apple and Microsoft will both have a stake in it, and a large number of Mac buyers will kick in a few extra bucks to run Parallels/Fusion/Boot Camp/etc..  People will do this because they still want to run their Windows apps as seamlessly as possible while playing with their Apple toys.

Advertisement

Installing IE7 brings about many emotions.

So I just bit the bullet and installed IE7.  I had mixed feelings about it.  First was that there was no reason to upgrade other than tabbed browsing.   I gained a few pixels of screen space, but so what.  IE7 is pretty, but no prettier than Firefox or Safari.  Also, IE6 served me well for the last 6 or so years.  I don’t feel like I needed to upgrade.  I upgraded because we are upgrading at work now that we finished testing, and I had the time.

Time for bed…

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

I found a MS tool the other day that saved me lots of time.  One of my users needed iTunes upgraded (there is a legitimate business need).  Something went wrong in the iTunes program and it would not uninstall.  The problem appeared to be with Quicktime.  I could not get iTunes uninstalled or reinstalled.  I found a posting on the internet that mentioned the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility from Microsoft.  Here is the Microsoft description:

SUMMARY

Microsoft has updated the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. With the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility, you can remove a program’s Windows Installer configuration information. You may want to remove the Windows Installer configuration information for your program if you experience installation (Setup) problems. For example, you may have to remove a program’s Windows Installer configuration information if you have installation problems when you try to add (or remove) a component of your program that was not included when you first installed your program.

The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility does not perform the following functions:

•	Remove Windows Installer
•	Remove files of any programs that are installed by Windows Installer, such as Microsoft Office 2003

The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility does perform the following functions:

•	Provides a dialog box in which you can select one or more programs that were installed by Windows InstallerTo do this, select the programs that you want in the Installed Products list in the Windows Installer CleanUp dialog box. After you make this selection, the utility removes only the Windows Installer configuration information that is related to those programs.
•	Removes the files and registry settings that make up the Windows Installer configuration information for programs that you select

If you use this utility to remove the Windows Installer configuration information for your program and you plan to reinstall the program, you should reinstall the program in the same folder where you originally installed it. This prevents duplication of files on your hard disk or disks.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

This tool was extremely useful for me.