Win 7 & Shoddy Indian Tech Journalism

I am appalled at the state of Indian tech journalists. Two major technology news sources have made such horrific blunders when it comes to reporting on Windows 7 in the past week itself leaving a ? on their competence. The two sources are Tech2.com & a reputed newspaper daily – The Hindustan Times. It seems that the Indian journos aren’t in-sync with the rest of the world, they still feel that the whole world is still bashing Microsoft & Windows. Here is an excerpt of the article on Tech2.com by reporter Shayne Rana a couple of days back, when the RC was released:

Windows 7 RC1 Glitch to Cause PC Shutdown Every 2 Hours

Reports are in that there seems to be a slight glitch in the system. Apparently from the first of March 2010, the system will cause your PC to shut down, after every two hours.

Apparently, the author chose to use Gizmodo as reference. Now, if the author would’ve shown a little bit of responsibility & decided to read the article on Giz or even bothered to click on the 2 links given by Giz, he would’ve known that it’s not a ‘glitch’ but something incorporated by Microsoft knowingly & even openly stated on the Win 7 download page:

Remember expiration dates: Please plan ahead for the Beta and RC expiration dates. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to rebuild your test machine using a valid version of Windows before the software expires. Windows will notify you that the expiration process is beginning and two weeks later your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. The Beta expires on August 1, 2009, and bi-hourly shutdowns will begin July 1, 2009. The RC will expire June 1, 2010, and the bi-hourly shutdowns will begin on March 1, 2010. In both cases, you’ll need to rebuild your test PC to replace the OS and reinstall all your programs and data

The headline was later edited, but google cache still has the author’s ‘glitch’.

Update: Fellow blogger friend @vasudevg has an image of the tweet by Tech2 on the article. Thanks,

The second is a lot more hilarious & utterly irresponsible reporting by some Steve Alexander published in Hindustan Times’ supplement (Mumbai edition, HT Cafe) which deals with lifestyle & technology among other things. Here is an excerpt from his article:

Should you download Windows 7?

Vista’s problems have included frequent crashes, software incompatibilities, slow operations and a needlessly confusing menu system. Experts who have seen Windows 7 say it resembles Windows XP, which would be …

Here is the screen shot from their epaper:

You can read the paper from here. The article is in the Mumbai edition, in HT Cafe pg 16.

WOW! This has to be the shittiest piece on Windows to have ever been written! Even the Register.co.uk when bashing Windows knows what their writing! Here, the author chooses to quote some experts even though Win 7 has been publicly available for quite a long time now. He could’ve used it, framed an opinion & then said whatever he wanted to. Instead he quotes “experts who have seen”. You could’ve seen some screen shots yourself you idiot! They’re available all over the internet! And resembling Windows XP? Seriously? Which part? Or were your experts referring to XPM?

As far as Vista’s needlessly confusing menu system goes, I’ll cut the author some slack ‘coz it’s subjective. But then again I wonder whether he has tried Vista or that opinion is of experts who have seen Vista.

PS: The HT website tried my patience, it’s slower than a snail! Hindustan Times, you’re a #FAIL!