The unbearable misery of upgrading to Windows 8.1

There are some events that we humans know from experience will be painful: Childbirth, passing a kidney stone, or getting a colonoscopy without anesthesia. After last weekend, I can now add, without hesitation, upgrading Microsoft Windows. I've been doing Windows upgrades since Windows 3, and it's always been relatively straightforward: You either do a straight upgrade that includes everything, or you do a clean install of the new version, restore your files and reinstall your applications.

Things got muddled with Windows 7. I, like many people and companies, decided to skip the abomination against nature that was Windows Vista and stay with Windows XP. That turned out to be the right decision, but when Microsoft introduced Windows 7, even though it really wanted XP users to upgrade, it prohibited direct upgrades from XP. That meant that XP users could move files, folders and some settings over to Windows 7, but they had no choice other than reinstall all of their applications. In my case, I had a huge number of applications that had accumulated over the years that I was running XP. So, I nursed my old system along until last winter, until it was just too slow to be useful any more, and then transferred what I could to a newer PC running Windows 8 and reinstalled my apps.

Then came Windows 8.1, specifically the Windows 8.1 Preview, which I installed when it was released. I hoped that Windows 8.1 would solve some of the worst problems with Windows 8, starting (no pun intended) with the Windows Start menu. Although the Preview never fixed the Start menu issue, it did resolve some of Windows 8's other aggravating design flaws. However, when it came time to upgrade to the final release of Windows 8.1, the Preview turned out to be much more trouble than it was worth.

Here's a step-by-step summary of the update:

1. Bought a new Toshiba Satellite laptop with a current-generation Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM to replace my old Samsung first-generation i3 laptop.
2. Installed the Windows 8.1 Preview on the new machine to make it simple to transfer everything from my old machine to the new one.
3. Learned that Windows 8.1 Preview cannot be updated to the final release version of 8.1 without having to reinstall all the applications, so I put everything on hold for almost a month until the final version of Windows 8.1 was released.
4. Last weekend, installed the final Windows 8.1 on my new machine from the Windows App Store.
5. Found that I couldn't install the final version on that machine without a serial number, and it would cost more than $100 to get one, so I figured out how to roll the new machine back to Windows 8. That also reinstalled all the crapware I had removed from the machine, but at least it allowed me to install Windows 8.1 for free.
6. Purchased a to-remain-nameless PC transfer program and installed the program on both machines. The software required that I uninstall all Norton software from both PCs, so I got all of the Norton software off my old machine, and all the preinstalled Norton crapware off the new one except for one anti-theft program that failed to uninstall.
7. Ran the PC transfer program, which failed instantly with a cryptic error indicating that the registry on my old machine was corrupt.
8. Sent diagnostic file from old machine to vendor of PC transfer software, and received reply saying that I had to send diagnostic files from BOTH machines, even though there was no way to do so from the old machine using the vendor's program, and oh by the way, I still had some Norton software on the new machine, and I had to remove ALL OF IT.
9. Manually removed every remaining Norton-related file I could find on the new machine and tried the transfer again. It again failed instantly with the same cryptic error.
10. Checked the registry on the old machine and downloaded software to send a diagnostic log from that PC to the transfer software vendor. Sent diagnostic logs from both machines. Received a reply the next day from the same tech support engineer that was word-for-word identical to the previous one, except that he highlighted the note that I HAD TO UNINSTALL ALL THE NORTON SOFTWARE.
11. Reinstalled Norton on the old machine so that I had some protection on the Internet, then purchased and downloaded a copy of Laplink PCMover Professional. Installed PCMover Professional on both machines. Threw the unnamed transfer software into the garbage.
12. PCMover's documentation was much less cryptic than that from the unnamed transfer software, but it required me to disable a fair amount of software (Internet security, backup, defragmenter, scheduled tasks, etc.). Disabled everything relevant I found on both systems and started the transfer.
13. The transfer took about six hours, but it worked. All but a handful of programs from my old machine transferred over, and PCMover was very clear about what it could and couldn't transfer.
14. Once I started working on the new machine, I found out that not everything that transferred worked as expected. For example, Google Chrome worked fine on the new machine, but it couldn't update. The solution was to remove all my Google applications, wait an hour, and then reinstall them, which fixed the problem.

Step 5 started last Friday evening; it took me to Monday night to get through Step 14. So, what are the lessons to be learned from this experience?

1. Never install a Windows Preview or Beta version on your primary PC. Even if you're a developer, load it on a PC that you can afford to wipe when the Gold Master or Final Release is available.
2. Use Laplink to do the system transfer when you're not doing an in-place upgrade, and avoid transfer software from companies you've never heard about before, even if they have good reviews. You don't know if those reviews were paid for.

3D at CES: Better solutions, but more confusion?

Consumers interested in buying 3D HDTVs have had to contend with the limitations of existing sets: They require expensive (typically $100 (U.S.) or more), powered, "active-shutter" glasses that are incompatible from vendor to vendor--for example, Sony's 3D glasses won't work with Samsung's 3D HDTVs, and vice versa. (One company, Xpand, has developed "universal" 3D glasses that work with a variety of manufacturers' sets.) At this week's CES, a number of companies have announced new approaches that might make active-shutter glasses obsolete.

The first innovation is passive 3D glasses. They require no power, and depending on the vendor, will cost between $10 and $20 each. Vizio was the first out of the gate with passive glasses. The company claims that it will work with virtually any modern passive 3D glasses, including the ones given out at movie theaters. The biggest limitation of the Vizio approach is that it results in "half-resolution" 3D images, because the images for both eyes are displayed simultaneously in the same frame. That means that a 1920 x 1080 image becomes 960 x 540.

Next, LG Electronics announced its Cinema 3D technology, which it claims has been certified to be flicker-free by two commercial standards organizations, Intertek and TUV. There's no word yet on whether the LG technology provides a full- or half-resolution image.

Samsung has teamed with RealD, the largest supplier of 3D technology to movie theaters, to offer a 3D system that uses the same passive glasses as theaters. The active switching layer is in the LCD display, not the glasses, and changes the polarization of the light coming through the LCD from the backlight. This enables the system to display a full-resolution image. In 2D mode, the polarization switching system is disabled. Although Samsung is displaying the system at CES, it hasn't announced any ship dates, while both the Vizio and LG Electronics systems should begin shipping in Q1 2011.

Finally, Toshiba is displaying 3D HDTVs that require no glasses whatsoever. The Toshiba system uses passive filters to split the image for each eye, and results in a half-resolution image. In addition, viewing position and angle are critical in order to get the maximum 3D effect. Toshiba plans to ship 3D HDTVs of 40 inches and larger, and is showing 56 and 65 inch prototypes at CES. Bloomberg Business Week reports that the company plans to start shipping sets in April.

This new collection of 3D technologies opens up a number of questions:

• We know the cost of the passive 3D glasses, but how much will the 3D HDTVs cost? So far, the price of only one of the new sets has been released. How will the prices compare with existing sets that use active 3D glasses?
• Will the performance of the sets vary depending on the type of passive glasses used? Vizio, for one, claims that its new sets can use passive glasses from just about anyone, including the ones given away at the movies. Samsung and RealD, on the other hand, claim that their system will only work with glasses from RealD.
• Will consumers be satisfied with "half-resolution" systems? In a crowded Best Buy, Walmart or Costco, where they're most likely to see the sets, will they even be able to tell the difference?
• How will consumers choose between all these different approaches, or will they wait until manufacturers settle on a standard approach?

HD DVD and Blu-Ray Continue to Struggle

According to this article from Reuters, Toshiba has cut its calendar year 2007 forecast for HD DVD player sales in the U.S. by 44 percent, from 1.8 million players to one million,even though some Toshiba players are selling for as little as $249. (They had forecast worldwide sales of three million players by March 2008; clearly they won't make that number.) The Blu-Ray team hasn't announced comparable sales numbers, but we do know that Sony is well behind in sales of the Playstation 3; to date, they've sold 1.3 million in the U.S., one million in Europe and Australia combined and 911,000 in Japan. They claim to have shipped 5.5 million units, which means that approximately 1.8 million units are sitting around in stores and warehouses.

As for disc sales, the biggest seller (depending on which figures you believe) is either Sony's "Casino Royale" or Warner Brothers' "The Departed," both with around 100,000 units. Now, sales of 100,000 units aren't bad, but in DVD terms it's comparable to a relatively successful independent film release--nothing like what a major studio release should expect to sell.