Now here’s one story I failed to mention when I purchased this notebook. While I was given a choice on which OS to put, it was pretty much a no-brainer decision. I could get Linux for free (Duh! Like they will still charge me for FOSS). Or I could get XP Professional for an additional price. Or I could get Vista Home Basic for free together with my memory upgrade. I was dead sure I was getting an upgrade so I’m practically getting Vista Home Basic for free. Turns out, that XP Professional can probably kick Vista Home Basic’s lame ass any day. But who would want to pay extra, right?

But Microsoft still intends to bundle Vista together with the new PCs and that’s probably the best way for them to sell, in a marketeer’s perspective that is. But wouldn’t that heavily influencing the customer’s choice? Since there’s a notion that anything “bundled” is free, people would definitely bite into getting Vista-powered PCs.

It has been six months since Vista was launched globally. Microsoft says that they’ve already shipped out 60 million copies of the darned OS. And one of those 60 million would definitely be that bundle of CDs labeled Windows Vista Home Basic stored somewhere in my pile of installers.

Via Computerworld

Wow. Simplified? Entirely dumbed down and literally dumb! No features to choose which hard drives you’d want defragmented. No option to exclude files. And no progress bars! Yeah sure it says to use the command line “defrag.exe” to have more features but who’d want to look. At least XP’s interface kept me entertained with the progress bar!

What’s worse is that it lost me a good 1GB of storage in my OS partition! I mean totally WTF!!! I tried Disk Cleaner and even deleted the shadow files and restore points hoping that the good gig just went there. Alas, to no avail. Defragmenting mysteriously lost me 1GB of space!

Damn you, Windows Vista! If I only had enough money, I would really have gotten me a Mac!

I love LeBron James. The massive small forward with a point guard mentality. I just hope the Cavs make the playoffs this time and really show why he can be the next Mike. I envy him too. Set for life and not even 25. Well, he was set for life even before he played his 1st NBA game.

But this time, LeBron will be dishing out passes to our friend Bill. Jeepers! Who would Microsoft get next? Is this sheer desperation to sell Vista to the public. You don’t need Vista for NBA.com. And NBA games for the PC sucks (Yeah, it sucks EA Sports!). So why tap LeBron for a massive campaign? I’m dying to know who’s next.

I really don’t see the feasibility of shifting to Vista ASAP. Just look at XP, took as many years to get to SP2. Plus the devilish hardware requirement.

Now, Mike Elgan writes this article, Wait! Don’t buy Windows Vista! and cites the reasons why:

• Vista is incomplete – Yup, 1st service pack in the works within a year of its release.
• Vista is expensive – $399 for the Ultimate ed?
• Vista wants a new PC – That devilish hardware requirement.
• Vista is time-consuming – Endless configurations.
• Windows XP isn’t obsolete – You can still do a lot of things with XP, so why change it, right?
• Vista may be the best reason yet to buy a Mac – Whoah, strong words from this guy. But with everything done online, and Mac capable of running Microsoft, Mac is really a very feasible idea.

Great points raised there.

Bill’s apparently trying out too many measures to get Vista sales up. He’s not waiting for the market to come to him by moving the market himself. I just don’t know if LeBron’s the right person to do it. LeBron’s getting better but he still hasn’t got Michael Jordan’s appeal. Remember the Bulls’ championship plus Barcelona 92? If Jordan sold dirty underwear, I bet people would have bought them. But LeBron? Not even a conference championship in his resume. What’s Bill thinking?

Let’s see how James squares up to this. Will he rack up points for MS? Or people just do a quick crossover to Mac?

Here’s a quick experiment. View a page source (Ctrl + U in Firefox) of an online store like Amazon.com and you’ll find that table tags are still being used for design.

This is while the W3C recommends that tables should only be used to show tabular content. As the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines says:

Tables should be used to mark up truly tabular information (“data tables”). Content developers should avoid using them to lay out pages (“layout tables”). Tables for any use also present special problems to users of screen readers

Try this out with the many other large e-commerce sites. View their page sources and compare them side by side with the WCAG. You might find that the results wouldn’t be too encouraging for the disabled and the pro-accessibility initiatives as these sites are more or less inaccessible to them.

This leaves us to wonder why aren’t there any large-scale changes being made to redesign sites for accessibility. Do e-commerce sites really include disabled web users in their target market? No satisfied customer will ever file a lawsuit against a top-quality service provider.

Simple math says that 3.24 million disabled people in the UK access the Web. And yet Amazon.co.uk has the same design issues like the one cited above in Amazon.com. Is providing access to 3.24 million people a wise business decision or not?

Understandably, redesigning websites for accessibility will require resources and effort both in development and implementation. And redesigning doesn’t immediately guarantee sales. There is still the need for cheaper and readily available assistive technologies for the disabled. If the disabled public isn’t quite ready yet, then in terms of figures of sales vs. costs, a company’s immediate investment in accessibility will only be credited to social responsibility – something that apparently not all corporations are content to exhibit.

In business, numbers matter and no one wants to see a drop in profit. The profitability of web accessibility relies on numbers. It’s a gamble between 1) increasing sales to compensate for redesign expenses and 2) not investing on it at all to save on the costs. Business as per usual.

Many other people have taken sides on the issue pointing out that websites aren’t covered by ADA and the NFB will surely lose or that Target should lose to finally open the business sector’s eyes. The reality is: what’s legal isn’t always ethical, what’s ethical isn’t always profitable, and what’s profitable isn’t always legal – the classic conundrum of paper, rock, and scissors.

How everyone reacts will really test whether it is possible to balance business, the law, and humanity or not. But for now, we’ll just have wait until the NFB vs. Target case is slugged out in court and a decision is reached to find out.