Robert L. Blum, MD, PhD




Sphere of Interest

WebBrain: AI
neurosci psych

Stanford Brain Lecture Notes

The RX Project:
Robotic Discovery

CV Biblio (1985)


Index of Essays

Psychology &
Neuroscience brain-icon

Computer Science,
Robotics, and AI

Health & Biotech

Earth Wisdom: Universe

Be Saved by Bob!!!
(And Other Balms )

Optimal Nutrition:
Are Fats Killers
or Saviors?


Consciousness Video:
Who, What, When?

Stan Dehaene's
Consciousness & Brain

Near Death Experiences: In the Desert With Pim Van Lommel

Fine-Tuned for Life?

Neuron Videos Say
Forget Realistic AI

EUV 2014 - Future of Moore's Law

BAM: Brain Activity Map of Spikes

Beating Jeopardy!
What is Watson?
AI Overlord or Tool?

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

KEPLER Seeks Earth-like Worlds

STEVE PINKER in the Amazon: photos

Billion Year Plan:
AI Formulation

AI Awakens

CONSCIOUSNESS as Global Resonance

SEAN's Accident

Coronary Artery
CT Scan: Yes!

Book Review: TRANSCEND

Book Review:
Create a Mind

Does Drug X


Total Recall:
Everything, Always

Ralph Triumphs:
Elbot Cheers

Scientists &
Evangelicals Unite

Thomas Berry,
Geologian: Obituary

Calorie Restriction
Works in Monkeys!

TheBrain &
WebBrain: Review


Is Microsoft Broken?

My Struggles with Windows 7

            That's a more genteel title than what I felt over the first few weeks
after I got my new computer in 2011, as I suffered through an upgrade
from Windows XP to Win7. My de-fanged title bows to my several friends
who work for Microsoft (old stock traders like me refer to it as MSFT. )
I also pulled punches, because I greatly appreciate the philanthropic work of
Bill Gates and Paul Allen - but they're not at the helm anymore.)


Microsoft Store
The beautiful Microsoft Store at Stanford Shopping Center

Here's what prompted this story.  Every four years (two ticks and
two tocks of the Intel clock
that tracks Moore's Law), I buy a
new desktop tower. For the past 15 years  these have all been
Intel machines running Windows. I jumped ship from
Apple Macintosh after the 1984 to 1996 epoch when
it looked like Apple was being thrust (by MSFT) into bankrupcy.
(I had owned $100,000 in Apple stock in January 1984 when
the Mac was introduced, which I sold a month later when
to my great surprise it did not skyrocket immediately.
I had previously been wowed by demos of Xerox PARC's Altos
and Dorados from which the Mac was cloned.

For the past ten years I've used Windows XP on several
computers of various types.  I and the rest of the world
got comfortable with it.  So, we weren't about to change when
the bloated miscarriage VISTA arrived, and we just prayed that
the Redmond wonks would get it right when Win7 finally arrived.


Right Side of the Store is Empty
But here the store has no customers

Win7 is a big improvement over VISTA, as many others
have remarked, and I am beginning to enjoy its features
and its improvements over WinXP. Win7 is far more stable than
WinXP and the interface is good. I especially like the new Taskbar.

MSFT is always on its safest most "innovative" ground when
it just copies whatever has worked for Apple.  The crowning example,
of course, was their "emulation" of the Mac OS in the
1990s that led to the notorious "look and feel" trial, which almost resulted
in Apple's demise. Substituting lawyers for engineers works for a while.

(Addendum: June 2012: MSFT just announced its new Surface tablet.
That night TV comic Conan O'Brien quipped: "Yeah, Surface -
that's a great name - a nice flat surface to set your iPad on.")
(I wish MSFT luck with Surface. Competition benefits consumers.)

Win7 is a big improvement over VISTA, but that still
does not let MSFT off the hook. I had to endure plenty of
frustration before stooping to write this story.

I had considered writing to friends at MSFT to find out
what's troubling the company. But then I decided to
just do a search. It came as no great surprise that
the internet is overflowing on that topic. For example,
this well-documented article appeared in Fortune in 2011:
Microsoft's office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
The exit interviews of MSFT employees are especially telling.

And, another Fortune article from 2011 that focused on

CEO Steve Ballmer: The problem with Microsoft...
(I hesitate to blame a company's misfortunes on the judgment
of one CEO - there are usually other systemic and

competitive landscape issues (and this also applies
to HP, which I take to task below. Besides, that last article accuses
Steve Ballmer of devoting too much time to Windows and Office.))

As I struggled with each impediment, I wondered "are they listening
to their customers?"  I had always imagined that MSFT must have
battalions of engineers observing users sitting down for the first time
setting up a computer running  their latest operating system. 
Somehow that information must occasionally get lost.
(Even Bill Gates, himself, gets frustrated by "Windows Usability going
backwards" as Bill himself states in this priceless 2003 email

Through the years I've learned the drill.  When setting up
the new computer with a new OS, it's essential to have the
old computer connected to the internet. That way you can be
guided by the experiences of thousands of others who have
struggled with the same issues.  These are typically online
forums comprised of users, some of whom are quite expert.
Notable by their rarity in my experience are actual MSFT developers.
Why aren't they providing the answers, rather than depending
on customers? (If a computer science PhD (me)  can't solve
these problems, what hope does a beginnner have?)
(For any problem I encountered, there are scores of others
who have had the same problem. I just don't understand
why these problems weren't nipped, pre-release by MSFT,
or at least, why they're not addressed definitively and
apologetically post-facto.)


Microsoft Store Left Side is Empty
Wait! There is one customer at the very back.

Here are two examples of problems I had that are still unresolved.

1) After working 16 hours a day for a week to get my system
set up, I had several files that could not be erased and
an important program that would not run. I hated the thought
of continuing to build the system on a corrupted base.
Therefore, i tried to  do a system restore from my
manufacturer-supplied  restore disks.  The restore disk worked,
but after I entered my product key for Win7,  somehow the
system would not accept my brand new login name and password
that I had just entered a few screens back.  Hours on the phone
with my computer manufacturer were insufficient to solve that problem.

2)  Today (21st day of the struggle), just "for fun," I tried to use
the repair disc/ restore system option that is now built into
Win7 to back up my existing, now working system. More hours
of struggle -  I was never able to restore my system from
a system image written to a USB drive. Even though the drive
is visible in the BIOS, the Win7 Repair Disc cannot see it.
This MSFT-sponsored forum is typical: lots of confused users
but no experts and no answers.

Those two problems were the most vexing, but there were
perhaps a dozen other design issues that
I won't drag you through.

For both of the above problems, my solution -
one I've used for years - has been simply to
CLONE my entire hard drive onto other hard drives
that I keep in various bank vaults. (Some of my friends are
head freezers - it's the same trick applied to your bio brain.)

(I use Acronis True Image for cloning (a free version is available
for Western Digital (WDC)  drives).) I only use the WDC drives
for back up - all my working drives are SSDs (solid state drives):
two Samsungs and an Intel SSD.  Rotating drives are for museums.
Then, I use these hard drives as check points which I can retreat to,
if I encounter system problems.   This method saved me from both
the problems above. (But, some users who can't afford
all those hard drives might just be tempted to use
Time Machine on their Macs - it works.)


Apple Store Outside
This photo and the one below are of the Apple Store at Stanford Shopping Center.
It is immediately adjacent to the Microsoft Store.
I took these photos
at the same time as the ones above. I believe Larry Page's explanation to
Charlie Rose of Apple's success: "You just turn it on, and it works!"

Don't get me started on Windows Live Mail or Office 2010.
Windows Live Mail: this is the newish version of Outlook Express.
I've tried to stay away from the bloatware Outlook.
(I use THEBRAIN to keep track of everything I need to know.)
In both Live Mail and Office 2010 essential commands are
too often tucked away in hard-to-find submenus, obscured by
clouds of minutiae.  Bad for users but great for HCI courses
in "how NOT to design user interfaces."

An old habit of mine, left over from my stock trading days,
is flipping on CNBC when the market is open.
The securities analysts and traders, of course,
abound with theories about why MSFT is stuck in neutral.
The Fortune article above has the ring of truth.
Whether it's a government or a corporation,
if management is defective or if there are system issues,
it affects everybody.

(An even more egregious example in my community is
Hewlett Packard, once the darling of Wall Street, now a
staggering, headless zombie – Bill and Dave deserve better.)

I just saw Larry Page (Google co-founder and CEO) do
a first time interview with Charlie Rose.
Charlie (who is a great Apple fan) asked him about
the explosive popularity of the iPad.
(The iPad has little appeal to me - its screen is too small
and besides, real computers have keyboards.
I use six monitors in my office.) Larry said
"you just turn it on and it works!" Boom - the explanation.
Millions of people just want to surf the internet and
read their email without having to contend with
"error message 37" or "requires administrator status" or
"password not recognized" or "MBR corrupted," ad nauseum.
That's why MSFT stock has been stuck in neutral despite
their monopolistic history and billions of dollars in
inertial revenue from corporate IT budgets.
Meanwhile, Apple stock has gone through the roof.

There can be no more telling evidence than
the photographs in this article. I took these photos
simultaneously at Stanford Shopping Center. 
A wall separates the Microsoft Store from the Apple Store.
It makes it easy to do a quick popularity survey.
The Microsoft Store is deserted. The Apple Store is
overflowing with customers.


Apple Store Inside
The Apple Store is constantly filled with customers. Don't they know that
Apple computers cost a lot more money? Why don't they just go next door?

(The Kinect display at the MSFT store is cool, but
I credit Kinect to developer Johnny Chung Lee - now at Google.)

Another telling anecdote: I buy my WDC hard drives
and SSDs from Amazon.   When I ordered one last week and
it didn't ship immediately I called customer service.
Amazon customer service comes on live within five seconds!
(That's 911  speed.) Then, a very intelligent, helpful agent
located in Washington tackles your problem, and continues
day-after-day to stay on top of it until it's resolved.
My simple message to MSFT is to please listen to your customers:
make yourselves available on the net and fix users' complaints.
The gap between Amazon and its Redmond neighbor is
as wide as Puget Sound. And somewhere in Heaven,
Steve Jobs is smiling.

Addendum (July 2012): Kurt Eichenwald (a Contributing Editor) has published
an article in the August 2012 issue of Vanity Fair on Microsoft's Downfall.
This July 2012 piece summarizes the article
. I also recommend
Charlie Rose's video interview of Kurt. Eichenwald on Microsoft.


Addendum (September 2012): Lest you think I'm just bashing the "Evil Empire,"
I did just buy a new Sony VAIO T Series Ultrabook at the Microsoft Store
pictured above. I was quite tempted to buy a MacBook Air next door,
but I dreaded network incompatilities with my many Windows machines. Also,
the Sony alone, among 3 lb. ultrabooks, had ports for ethernet, VGA, and HDMI.
It was also 500 bucks cheaper than an AIR.

Addendum (May 2013): Unfortunately for consumers and investors,
MSFT continues to stumble. See this recent article on Windows 8.
(If you use Windows XP, I heartily recommend an upgrade to Win7,
but certainly not to Win8. Also, buy an extra SSD ,
so you can back up your entire system. Then, you can easily restore it
after it crashes - it will.)