Will Apple come to rescue my productivity?

I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1720 about 11-12 months ago.  It has been a perfectly awesome laptop until about 2-3 months ago.  The specs on the machine are decent, 2+ghz proc, dual core, 4 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, Decent Video, etc.

Lately though the machine has done two things that really concerns me.  The blue screen of death, something that I haven’t seen from regular computer operation on any of the last 4 machines I’ve purchased (Fujitsu Laptop, Custom Built PC, Dell Laptop, and a no-name cheap machine).  All of these machines have been TOP NOTCH without a single blue screen of death on any of these machines.  The Inspiron 1720 though has given me blue screens for a number of scenarios. 

Mind you, one thing the other machines did not have in common with the Inspiron is Vista.  Vista differentiates this machine in a massive way and I’ve seriously started considering going back to XP for the third time.  I’m not sure if it is all Vista issues, but hardware that worked find with XP now causes blue screens with Vista.  Programs that I’ve installed have also caused all sorts of issues with some actually causing blue screens also.  Overall, the only thing I can trace this increase of blue screens to is Vista.

The hardware itself in the Inspiron 1720 could also be to blame.  I’ve run diagnostics at the BIOS level and from the recovery partition on every piece of hardware the machine has.  Nothing comes back as a problem.  I did the long tests and the short tests, I did one or two at a time and reviewed each of the results thoroughly.  I’ve always liked Dell so I’m still giving them the benifit of the doubt.  Dell has also always backed up their hardware and products in a very solid way, even when I have to speak with India, so that I can continue working on a day to day basis.

So I’m back to square one with Vista.  What is the problem here?  What changed so drastically that I get this level of BSODs.  Since Windows ME this OS has by far been the most unstable mess I’ve had to deal with.  I’ve really become discouraged, and with the encouragement from the trend toward MACs that I’ve seen lately I’m wondering, and becoming strongly encouraged, to take the leap.

If I do, and the transition works, Apple will have gained another user for another solid 4-8 years.  There are fears I have about making the leap, namely games and certain productivity software that Apple doesn’t have, but those are starting to seem minor in comparison about the ability to continue working with Vista.

The ads Apple puts out are absolutely retarded, albeit entertaining in a weird way, they are however starting to seem more and more relevant.

I was talking with a co-worker recently.  He had stumbled onto Scott Hanselman’s Blog.  We started talking about the major blogs that could/should/probably be read on a regular basis and what information they provide.  I came up with a top 5 blogs that I read and did a really short write up of each. If you’re looking for some blogs to read (of course read mine too) definitely check these guys out, they’ve got some really great content.

#1 Scott Guthrie – ScottGu’s Blog

The leader of the pack, for .NETters and such is ScottGu’s Blog.  Scott Guthrie handles tons of development related material.  If you want to keep up with the latest and greatest of the .NET world from a person in the Microsoft Beast itself, this is the blog to read.

Some of his latest entries that I like in particular have been;  Unit Testing with Silverlight, Tip/Trick: Creating and Using Silverlight and WPF User Controls, and his regular posting of good links that cover .NET material (like this entry) are very helpful.

#2 Scott Hanselman – Scott Hanselman’s ComputerZen.com

Scott Hanselman comes in with tons of useful entries too.  He does tend to stray from the core topics sometimes (it is HIS blog, so I’m not deriding him for that) and approach the personal side of his life.  This however just adds context to many of his other entries and his life as a software grognard.

Some of his recent entries that I’ve really dug include; The Weekly Source Code 27 – Suck Less Libraries of his numerous weekly source code entries (be warned, clicking on this link will render a MASSIVE freaking page, which may or may not trash your browser), and of course one of my favorite topics is often brought up during his discussing ASP.NET MVC.

#3 Phil Haack – You’ve been haacked and you like it

Phil’s blog, I think I’ve actually read more than the above two, but I’ve listed it 3rd for no real reason except that I think some might find his topics a bit more hard core than the above two.

Phil’s focus is heavily on the ASP.NET MVC, with entries of late; Using Routing With WebForms and the Updated Entry, and covers a lot of unit test topics such as Unit Testing Routes, Tell Me Your Unit Testing Pains, and Comparing Moq to Rhino Mocks.

#4 Nikhil Kothari – nikhilk.net

Nikhil has one of the best about pages of all the blogs I read.  But of course that isn’t all that relevant to the topics.  Nikhil focuses heavily on ASP.NET related topics, rightfully so since he works for Microsoft on some of those products.  He often has great write ups on Silverlight, and ASP.NET centric .NET topics.  He’s also has “Developing ASP.NET Server Controls and Components” to his name.

Some of the latest entries that are good reads include; AutoComplete for Silverlight Text Boxes, AJAX vs. Silverlight, and he works and writes entries regularly on the Facebook.NET Project.

#5 Matt Berseth – A .NET Developer’s Blog

Matt Berseth, whom I don’t particularly know much about, has an excellent blog that has all types of bits about ASP.NET design work, controls, etc.  Out of all the blogs I read, he definitely has the best visual presentation of material.  With screen shots, and color scheme for the blog that has real POP, his work really stands out.

The entries I’ve dug recently are;  ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar Control, Export GridView to Excel, Building a VS 2008 Styled Grid with the GridView Control, Five AjaxControlToolkit Tab Themes created from DynamicDrive.com, AjaxControlToolkit TabContainer Theme Gallery, and generally his entire tab control library is awesome.

The new project is going to require multiple OS, Browser, and Office versions support.  This is just a list of my ideal platforms to test for.  In other words, “What I find acceptable to build modern platform tools to”.

• OS – OS-X, Linux, Windows Vista, and Windows XP (In order of growing priority, with the later two possibly swapping spaces in the next year or two)
• Browsers – FireFox, Opera, Safari, IE (I’m not even touching the absurdity of IE6 though)
• Office 2003, Office 2007.  Anything earlier would be tested for only base functionality of new application development.  I would hinge no decisions based on pre-2003 compatibility.

With this new project (of the dozens I seem to always be part of) I have the liberty of utilizing these exact environments.  What I’ll end up with though is even easier to test with. 

After a few initial discussions I’ve narrowed the testing versions for the various tools, OSs, and Browsers down.  The finalist list of OS, Browser, and Office environments so far (always under the prospective of abridgement);

• OS – Windows XP, and Windows Vista (I would actually like to add in OS-X to the fray)
• Browsers – FireFox, IE, and just because I use it so much, I’ll test things in Opera.
• Office 2003 & 2007

The hardest part of the testing will be dealing with the differing code base between Office 2003 & 2007.  One has ribbons, one has menus.  One uses a particular DLL, the other has a different one.  Bridging that gap so that installations and deployments go smoothly will be one of the difficult challenges in the coming days with this project.

With all that rambling and writing, I’m off to build some VMs.

I had my imagination stumble into a scenario recently based on Jeremy Miller’s blog entry “My Game Plan for Starting a Project from Scratch“.  Imagine a development project where you get to start everything from scratch.  Imagine you can setup everything properly from the test servers to the virtual environment to the development platform to the continuous integration server to the methodology process.  What would you do?  What would you use?

These are the questions that come to mind for each “part” of the development effort.

For Process;

• What development process would you use?  Waterfall or Agile?  PMMI or Six Sigma?  A Newly Advanced Magic Wand Approach?
• How long would you want your iterations? 
• How many people would be ideal for your team?

For Tools;

• What would your continuous integration server be?
• What would your source control be?
• What would the task management software package be?
• What would the bug tracking software package be?
• What unit testing framework or frameworks be?
• What other code smithing, generation, refactoring, or other software tool needs be?

Standards;

• What code coverage would one aim for?  For the database?  For the UI?
• What UI standards would one use?  Microsoft?  Custom?  Big Bird UI?
• Would extensive Design Patterns be brought to the forefront of design?
• Would you do design 80% up front and 20% during development or approach in a more agile manner and save most of the decisions until the problem is approached?

What other ideas, thoughts, or notions would you come up with to make sure the effort runs smoothly?  Throw me your thoughts, I’m curious what other ideas there are out there.