9. May 2009 by Terry.

So….the RC of Win 7 came out a few days ago…and aside from having some really annoying wireless issues (fuck MS for not letting me use Unsigned drivers in the X64 edition) I’m thoroughly enjoying the software.   The interface is pretty wicked, almost good enough for me to not install objectdock, but we’ll see after a couple weeks if i change my mind or not.   I really don’t have many issues at all with the OS, its pretty rock solid so far, not to mention faster on my new tower than Vista is/was.  

While I’ve never really been a fan of MS Media Center, I have to say that it is pretty slick and fluid in Win 7.   Not enough to replace Media Portal in the HTPC but still, maybe enough for me to install new setups with for customers.   I’ll add more later.

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11. January 2009 by Terry.

So…there is all this hoopla over the windows 7 beta.   I personally was let down in a big way by vista.   I loved the look and the new graphic side of the interface, but the menu layouts and just the shear amount of changes they made all at once are seriously messing things up.   I used the vista beta when it was out and it left a positive impression on me…it was freakin sweet looking.   The new transparent window scape and things like that were awesome.   And XP is such an awesome OS in a lot of ways that Vista should of been just as good.   Well….I got my hands on a copy of Vista Business through my student network and yeah…it was cool once I got everything up and running.   The issue was…I sat there having to look for different drivers to work for my wireless card…which is a really common chipset by RaLink.   After about an hour of searching I finally found an xp driver that worked.   Now…to someone that knows what there doing that wasn’t much of a problem, but someone who doesn’t…..that would piss me off.   Think about it, just bought this brand new system and you get it home and for some reason the wireless wont work…so you go to the website of the manufacturer and look for the driver, only the maker of the tower hasn’t updated their drivers for vista yet, or if they have they’re “Experimental”.

Bugs and Incompatability galore.   The other big thing that literally has me telling people to stay away from Vista entirely is the hardware requirements.   When I installed Vista Business 32-bit on my tower I was running a modest system.   An old 939 board, athlon x2 4200, 2gb of ddr ram, and a cheap geforce 6600 pci-x card.   The system was stable, but man did it LAG.   I thought about that and looked at the minimum requirements and was like WTF?   I know how to optomize a windows system, but I was sufficiently above the requirements, did a clean install, but was sitting there like why is this so clunky?

So………when I heard that MS was going to release Windows 7 Fairly quickly after the Vista Fiasco, I wasn’t all that surprised.   Here is what I’m Surprised with though…..its good………its not great…….but its good.

So the new Desktop isn’t a HUGE step like going from XP to Vista was, but its a good step in the right direction.   The main changes are obviously that the taskbar has added some additions such as quick previews and the like.

The new Preview option borrows slightly from Mac OSX and other docks that are commonly found, such as my personal favorite Object Dock.

Something else that’s fairly cool is the new “hot lists”.   For example, they’ve added in the start menu now a quick access list to the most recent files you’ve created, used, etc. for each recently accessed program.   So if you like me used paint to prtscrn some screenshots really quick, it will present you with a quick access on the start menu for the paint program.    The same with Word, Outlook, etc.   This might not seem like much, but its a welcome addition.

Something else that’s new, is a little context menu in of all programs, PAINT.    Not everyone understands the differences between image file formats.   MS smartly recognizes this and added a context menu to the save as command, offering the most common image types and there most common uses.   For example, for the jpg format, the menu says that its meant for e-mail, web use, and uploading to photo sites.   Gif says its mainly a web format, BMP for higher quality, etc.   This is just a cool menu I found that shows that MS isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel here, there going down to small details, which is something they didn’t do enough of in VISTA.

This post is a work in progress, as I test more and get more screen shots I’ll post them along with the rest of my impressions.

UPDATE: January 28, 2009

So I’ve been using the Win 7 beta for a while now, learning its advantages and shortcomings and I’ve come to a few more conclusions.   First off, it runs MUCH better on a low end system than Vista does.   For example, my test system is a ~4 year old Dell, P4 3.0ghz, 1gb of ddr3200.   I’m running it off an 80 gig 7200 rpm ide drive that’s about 3 years old.   Vista runs slow as a dog on this system when I tested it a while ago.   Win 7 however runs amazingly well.   In fact, the aero interface in Vista was darn near unusable in this setup, however the Win 7 beta runs the interface quite well.   Oh, and btw, this setup is running on an ANCIENT Nvidia geforce FX5200 AGP.

Sure, the tower may be fairly low powered compared to what I’m used to using.   But, I’m very much a techie who finds a use for  my old stuff.   For example, my very nice Nmedia HTPC case thats hooked up to my very nice Sanyo LCD 46″, is housing an old AMD board, a Sempron 2400 SOCKET A, 512mb of ddr2700, and a 40gb IDE for windows, and a 320gb SATA drive for media.   Can anyone use that system for their needs anymore?   Probably not, but just for running Media Portal it works extremely well at viewing my dvd rip collection on my lcd through a Geforce 6200 AGP with a dvi to HDMI adapter cable.   So what do I have in that system money wise?……maybe 100 bucks now days besides the case?

Just goes to show you that old hardware still has many uses to someone who can find a use.   I kept that in mind as I used Win 7 over the last couple weeks.   I can honestly say that one of its BIGGEST pro’s is that its much more lenient on  the hardware side.   Especially in a recession, its harder than many people think to get someone to upgrade there software, let alone put out another 500 or more for a new tower or laptop.

Another Pro is the adjustment of the UAC that i HATED in Vista, into something thats just bearable.   To me it works like an intelligent software firewall.   For example, it asks if you want to change the time and date when attempting to.   Now in Vista, it would ask……every…..time……Granted how often does someone change the time on there system but still, its the point.   You could remedy this by turning the UAC off…..completely off.   There was no middle ground.   At least in 7 they’ve set up the permissions so that the UAC only asks once for common tasks.

Now I do have some cons.

While I consider myself a power user, why did it take me more than 5 minutes to find the device manager?   I applauded MS for trying to make the control panel more user friendly in Vista, but you can’t go from one way of doing things for almost 10 years, change it for one release, and then completely change it again.    Menu driven interfaces are great for everyday users, however I still do believe that there should be an option to return the control panel back to an xp-era style.   To me at least it would make for an easier transission.   And i STILL couldn’t get my very common rt2500 chipset wireless card to work.   Swapped out for a marvell chipset and BAM, works like a charm.   Odd, as my rt2500 after a little finageling with the drivers worked fine in VISTA.

Now this really isn’t a con, as much as it is a suggestion; A request if you will.

As a power user, I’m used to using the administrative tools options to stop and start services on startup.   However, more times than not, I find myself using the same tried and true method of hitting up run, and msconfig.   I use this menu after building systems to stop certain software from starting, such as MSN Messenger, Lexmark one touch printer utilities, Java Update Scheduler, etc.   Anything that generally takes up system memory and doesn’t really do ….anything until you interact with it.    It really is amazing how many bs programs are running in the background on every system I work on.   It would be nice if there was some sort of a program or menu that an everyday user can use to do the same thing a more advanced user has done for god knows how long in msconfig.   A simple menu with the program name, and what it does would be fine.   Hell if you want you can even throw in a level of requirements, say 3 levels, needed at startup, not needed, or unsure.   Not saying that any system services should be included, but do I really need Google Earth to update everytime I start my damn system.

Okay, that is all for now.

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