Now, I have been called stubborn in the past, but Metro is just not a good desktop operating system. It is cute and is a fantastic second screen application on my dual screen home desktop to run twitter and the like in. But for getting work done, forget it. We do our production work on 26 inch single monitor machines and we are not going to buy second monitors for all of our systems to get around Windows 8’s major flaw. No one in our office will be upgrading and we are desperately hoping that upon final release there will be a way to make the “classic” interface the default.

We are not alone. Time after time as we talk to developers, no one is using or even considering Metro to do work. It’s the equivalent of iOS. Can you work on iOS? Sort of, but if you’re Microsoft, sort of is not the answer you want in the enterprise.

Windows claims you can go to the classic interface easily, and it is not that hard, but its an unnecessary extra step, unnecessary bloat, and for those of us who do productivity work daily, it just is not as easy in practice as that. Our production machines do not need, nor do we want 10 or 15 desktop apps running on the desktop.

Here is what Microsoft should do:

There is a reason that MacBooks do not run iOS. Metro should be brought out as Windows Tablet edition. Call it what you want, call it Windows Tablet, or call it Metro as we already do, it is a fantastic system for a tablet experience. Build the store, do everything the same except do not make it the primary desktop interface. What is the point of pissing off pretty much all of your customer base? You want to emulate what Apple did with the iPad, then that’s what you do, reinventing the wheel is senseless.

Put all of the existing improvements into Windows 8, there are some great tools like the ability to refresh the operating system, faster booting, the Windows store, and the live boot from a USB drive. These can all be left in as they currently exist, the only thing that has to change is that Windows 8 needs to have Metro stripped as the primary desktop and turned into an application or overlay on the desktop that is user accessible. It could be as simple as a taskbar button like explorer is today. It can be available, but should not be the primary entry point.

Nothing would really change for Microsoft except that they would have 2 clear operating systems, (which in all honesty they already do with the ARM and x86 versions) and the ability to run Metro applications across both the desktop and the tablet without alienating the customer base. It’s a win-win for customers and Microsoft. Windows 8 as it is currently designed will do nothing but create another situation like they had with XP/Vista where no one will upgrade and enterprise will be looking for a way out.

Here is the actual quote

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Into this world steps the perfect super villain in Kim Dotcom. The founder of Megaupload even looks like Kingpin. Dotcom is facing up to 50 years for piracy. Think about that though, 50 years for piracy. We give rapists and murderers less time than that.

This is the world in which we now live, now think about this, by posting this, we are going to be monitored by homeland security as well. Yes that’s right, Homeland Security has permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” This data is then shared with both private sector businesses such as the RIAA an MPAA and international third parties according to RT.

So by posting this link into our Facebook and Twitter feeds we are now on the Homeland Security list.

That’s the legal system here in the United States circa 2012.

This was possibly the best of what the internet has to offer on display as interests from all over the net came together to stop this madness. The fight is not won yet, but this battle definitely goes to us.

The public learned a lot more about the bills over the last few days, but you can bet that the MPAA and the RIAA are not done with legislation yet. We can all agree that piracy is a bad thing, but how you stop it is something that has to be looked at a lot closer. Here are the main problems I have with the approach these bills took.

1. It is no more the governments job to limit my access to web sites any more than they can tell me what to read. This is first and foremost a First Amendment issue.

2. It’s  a worthless law to begin with, blocking sites will not stop pirates, but drive them further underground. IP addresses will change hands and people who want to find pirated info can.

Here is an example from a simple whois lookup for Thepiratebay. That or you can just download Tor which the US State Department helps fund to aid foreign citizens under “repressive regimes” Kind of ironic don’t you think.

Thepiratebay.org Server Details
IP address: 194.71.107.15
Server Location: Germany
ISP: Resilans AB

3. We have laws already in place to combat these and they work pretty well, just ask Megaupload.

The last reason may be the most damning as you must only make laws that solve a problem that are as draconian as the problem itself.

Forget the free speech issues or prior restraint, these bills are the equivalent of trying to stop speeding by putting random brick walls in place on freeways. Would that work, Certainly it would, but the damage caused by the fix is greater than the problem.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 earlier this month. In this video, Walter Isaacson, author of the upcoming official Steve Jobs biography, talks about why Jobs refused life-saving surgery. Catch the entire interview with Walter Isaacson Sunday on 60 Minutes.

We have been saying for years that Google’s famous mantra of “Do No Evil” went out the door long ago when it started answering to shareholders. That is the job of a corporation, to make money for its stockholders so there is not necessarily anything wrong with that, but the PR mantra of “Do No Evil”  no longer applies.

It isn’t just the fact that they read your email to target advertising to you, but they are now starting to cop to some of the “evil” things they have been doing.

For a period of several years, Google allowed Canadian pharmacies to advertise their wares in the United States, despite laws prohibiting advertisements from non-U.S. pill-pushers. Google claimed it had no idea this was happening, and once it discovered the illegal ads, it put an end to the practice. However, in papers filed with the DOJ, the ad giant admits that it knew it was breaking the law all along, but pocketed the money just the same.

So they have been lying about this all along. Add to that the wi-fi spying practices, the persistent cookies for toolbar users even AFTER they opt out, collusion with typo squatters, supposed inability to stop copyright infringement on YouTube, and more.

Google started out doing no evil, but as of late, with it recent change in attitude toward Google labs, abandoning development of features for other platforms than it’s own, etc.. it has become as evil as Microsoft ever was. The world is just now starting to notice.

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We tried and have yet to figure out how to install IE or Firefox on a chrome book. Isn’t that what caused MS so much trouble a few years back? Every other OS has to allow competing browsers on their system. The browser is just the beginning of the problem though as there are many programs that will fit into this anticompetitive stance. Image viewers, music players and it goes on and on, without local storage if Chrome becomes a major player there are going to be major problems coming from the EU and the feds.

The pricing model may be the only thing that keeps the EU out for now as these are seriously overpriced netbooks. We are seeing full size laptops with better hardware at Wal-Mart for less money out of the box so that will keep adoption way down for a while, but if these netbooks were priced fairly at around 199.00 adoption would be huge and quite scary for many reasons.

We get the feeling that Google is not ready for full adoption and is aware of these issues or these would be subsidized at a much lower price. Time will tell how this plays out, but for the short term it doesn’t look good for Chrome to become a major player.

We’re big fans of Microsoft’s latest OS, but we’re bigger fans of making Windows better–so we’ve rounded up the best Windows 7 downloads. They’ll let you customize it in any way possible, give it features that Microsoft removed or neglected to include, and more. So get ready to download–you’re about to take Windows 7 to a new level

The Best Windows 7 Downloads

Charting the Big three (Microsoft, Google, Apple) in their perceived evil.