Fix Microsoft 01/2014

New mission

• MS is a software company at its roots - show it to the world and let hardware come in second.
• Time has shown MS struggles with keeping its own eco system viable. Instead, make great software for every popular platform to make sure users want and like to use MS products.
• Advertise cleverly if any at all. Let products speak for themselves.

Windows Phone

• Concentrate on making two Windows Phones only. One high-end and one for the mid-tier.
• Scrap nearly all existing Microsoft apps for iOS and Android and build them from the ground up, make them perform perfectly so people will love using MS apps no matter their choice of platform. 
• Cut the WP7/8 design for apps for other platforms - go native so users will know what to do immediately. Keep away from embedding ads in any way.

Windows

• Bring back the Start menu and people will be less confused.
• Let users choose between Metro and regular menu - always embed Metro as a touch layer available at any time on any device.
• Clear every single computer/phone/tablet for bloatware and trial software. Give users a vanilla experience like Android has done with Nexus devices.
• Disable sound by default when interacting with MS products.

Windows Tablets

• Focus on the Surface Pro and make it a little bit cheaper. Make one Surface with Windows RT (excluding possibility to use desktop mode).

Keep and continue current strategy

• Replace Steve Ballmer with a visionary CEO who truly realizes the current state of affairs.
• Office suite
• X-box
• C#/ASP
• SkyDrive

Keep but tread lightly and "do no evil"

• Hotmail / Outlook.com
• Cut corny stock images on frontpage and just welcome the user.
• While faster than Hotmail ever was it is still slower than other competitors.
• Security Essentials
• Lately research has shown that its protection is not good enough compared to other antivirus programs. This is a key chance to protect MS consumers so a great effort should be put into this to rebuild and maintain reputation.
• Bing
• Do not stuff it down users' throats. Make no ads for it, let the search results do the job.
• Skype
• Rebuild Skype for all platforms making it lighter, more stable and simpler.
• Office365
• Optimize for speed and compatibility across every major browser.
• Internet Explorer
• IE has improved a lot over the years. If this browser really has a right to live, make it available on other platforms so users have a choice. Do incremental updates faster like Firefox and Chrome.
• Never ever prompt new users to go through phishing and content filter settings at first start. Do whatever serves the user best. This should regard all products.
• Social
• Cut ad-like posts on Twitter and Facebook. Users don't want to follow ads. Post interesting messages to engage people and let their opinions be heard instead. This is also a possibility to give people a real inside look of MS as long as it is natural and coming directly from a knowing employee.

Throw away

• Windows RT desktop mode
• It is currently limited in software compatibility and for this reason risks frustrating users.
• Windows Media Player
• It smells like iTunes and doesn't get any better in time.
• Photo synth
• Focus, focus, focus.
• Money for apps
• This will increase the marketplace app count with everything but quality apps.

XBMC Ubuntu 12.10 sound over hdmi

I have XBMC installed on my htpc, a Shuttle XS35GT with desktop Ubuntu 12.10. XBMC is enabled in the Startup Applications list and launches fine on boot. However I had to exit and restart XBMC after boot to get the sound working, annoying and with no WAF at all, sadly.

It occurred to me that delaying the startup of XBMC itself was worth a shot, so off to google I went and found this tip.

Edit your startup applications so the xbmc entry contains the command

bash -c "sleep 10 && xbmc"

This postpones the launch for 10 seconds and fixed the problem for me. Might help someone else as well. :)

Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin - Wireless problem

Having installed the newest flavor of Ubuntu (12.04) I was hoping for a smooth experience, however I stumbled upon a few bumps in the road.

My laptop is an Asus U46SV with both a VGA and HDMI port. At work I always connect a full hd monitor to each port and use the two external monitors exclusively. This is totally messed up in pangolin. Adjusting the monitor settings have crashed Ubuntu several times to the point where I am now expecting some kind of fix from Canonical before trying again. Connecting one monitor seems to work OK but connecting two monitors freaks the system out.

My wireless netcard is an Atheros AR9285 and it worked pretty fine in 11.10, however the signal in 12.04 keeps dropping randomly, making browsing the web a pain. I tried removing the asus_wmi module with no effect, echoing something into a special ath9k config file, disabling the soft block through the rfkill command - everything failed.

Right now it seems that disabling power management from the net card, results in a somewhat better experience.

Check your iwconfig by typing in a console:

sudo iwconfig

My output was:

lo        no wireless extensions.
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"bea"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 00:1D:73:73:xx:xx  
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=16 dBm  
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=68/70  Signal level=-42 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:29   Missed beacon:0
eth0      no wireless extensions.

See the Power management line? Let's try to disable that:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off

This finally had the desired effect of making my web browsing tolerable again, although I guess the wifi will use a bit more power thus draining my battery faster. Oh well, here's to hoping for a fix eventually.