Dave reports in from the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference.

When Steve Sinofsky took the stage on Tuesday at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference, the senior vice president was willing to confess some past sins with Vista. His presentation was the first public demonstration of the new Windows 7 user interface, and showed how Microsoft intends to change Windows 7 to fix the problems that exist in Vista, and indeed in earlier versions of Windows.

Back in February, Steve Hogan made the case for getting a multi-core system. Rob Cheng's experience shows that dual-core systems aren't always faster though. It's possible for a multi-core system to outperform a single-core system, but you're not likely to see a desktop operating system or many applications that can take advantage of it. There are good reasons for that problem, and they aren't going away any time soon.

Friends, it's great to be here at the retirement party for Windows XP. As you all know, he'll be leaving his full-time job at Microsoft as of the end of June. Just like Bill Gates, it won't be an abrupt break with the company. You'll see XP wandering the halls for a few years to come. Keep your guard up; when you least expect it you'll be hit by an XP practical joke. Just last week I noticed he tried to hide file extensions for known file types.

It seems like every time Microsoft releases a new version of Windows, they feel compelled to drastically change the user interface. For an experienced user, this is like rearranging the furniture in a room and turning off the lights to see how many times you can stumble and stub your toes.

The word "performance" usually means CPU, memory, disk, or video performance to most people. That's usually what I mean by it too. But after several months of experience with one particular notebook, I've found a component that has destroyed performance more than any other: the keyboard.

When PC Pitstop did a bloatware survey last year, we had several notebook PCs that we couldn't return. I took one of them, the Toshiba Satellite A135, to use as a Windows Vista test system. Initially, I tried leaving all the preinstalled crapware on the system to see how it would perform. After a few weeks of that, I couldn't stand it anymore. At least the crapware situation can be fixed, though, unlike the keyboard.

I hate this keyboard.

Take a look

–Dave Methvin, Chief Techology Officer, PC Pitstop

In this month's Pit Blog, Rob weighed in with his concerns about Vista's restore points. I have a bone to pick with Microsoft about this as well, from a slightly different perspective.

We interrupt this blog…

Hi, I'm Dave Methvin, Chief Technology Officer at PC Pitstop. Our CEO, Rob Cheng, is recovering from an accident; we all wish him well on a quick recovery. I'll be filling in on the Pit Blog until he's back up to speed.

Back in his June entry, Rob mentioned the outrageously high resource requirements for Microsoft's successor to Windows XP, named Vista. At the time, Microsoft was recommending 1GB of system memory and 256MB of dedicated video memory. Not long after that, though, the information at Microsoft's Vista site changed again.

–Dave Methvin, Chief Techology Officer, PC Pitstop

The recent lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General against Direct Revenue provides an incredible amount of information about the sleazy activities of spyware and adware companies. In the past, we've pointed out that these companies were making lots of money from their invasive installations. We saw a glimpse of how much money was at stake when Claria filed to go public in 2004. In that filing, they revealed that they made about $100 million in 2003. However, that high-profile bid to go public was at the height of Claria's power and profit; they quietly aborted the attempt in the fall of 2004 and just recently announced that they are getting out.

–Dave Methvin, Chief Techology Officer, PC Pitstop

On February 8 and 9, I had the opportunity to participate in the Anti-Spyware Coalition Public Workshop. The event brought together representatives from the software industry and government, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Center for Democracy and Technology. In the past year the FTC has filed suit against several of the worst spyware offenders including Enternet Media, and the CDT recently filed an FTC complaint against 180Solutions for its practices. The Anti-Spyware Coalition has been working to craft clear definitions of acceptable software installation behavior.

In March 2005, Sony's BMG music division began shipping music CDs that included a particularly strong form of digital rights management (DRM) software called XCP. These CDs play normally in a standard CD player, but when inserted into a PC they will attempt to install the DRM software onto the PC. The software limits the number of copies you can make and prevents transfer of the music to some music players such as the Apple iPod.