Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY


	Posts tagged with "microsoft"

Windows 7: Not too shabby
posted by Marc on August 13, 2009 @ 1:32AM

About a week ago, I decided to give Windows 7 a shot by installed it on my iMac. Microsoft has the Release Candidate available for free here. So here's a rundown of what I think so far:

Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista

Consider Vista non-existent, or Windows Me 2.0. Vista is completely and utterly useless with the release of Windows 7. Everything is better about it. I'll explain in more details in the next sections, but essentially Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.

Windows 7 vs. Windows XP

This is a tougher call. I've been using Windows XP since the day it came out and Windows 7 reminds me a lot of the days when XP first came out. A brand new interface, very different from it's predecessor, maybe slower in some areas, but a lot faster in others. Either way, XP is on its way out whether you like it or not, but the good news is Windows 7 seems like with a service pack or two, it'll be much better than XP. To be fair, I'm only using a Release Candidate, so the final release may be even better.

User Interface

This is the biggest change for people moving from Windows XP. The graphics are all glossy and transparent, things animate cleanly and the operating system just gets a feeling of "next generation." For anyone familiar with Vista, it looks very similar, there's some minor differences with graphics, but overall it'll seem like the same user interface, only faster. The huge UI difference is the taskbar.

Windows Taskbar

This is a big change to how you'll use the operating system. Take a peak:

So take note, those icons without names are a combination of the Quick Launch toolbar and currently running applications. Every running application will only have one icon in the taskbar now, similar to the Mac OS X dock. When you hover over the icon, you can see the windows associated with that application (with live updates to the window contents). Some other things to note is the hovered icon in the image shows what looks like little separators on the side of the icon. That's to let you know it has multiple windows opened.

Some other neat features to this are built-in progress bars, so if you're downloading files or copying files from one directory to another, the background of the icon in the taskbar will show you the total progress of your operations. Another cool feature is right clicking on the icon will bring up a context sensitive menu full of options you can do with the application. For example, right clicking on Internet Explorer lets you go directly to your homepage, or go to a favorite of your choice. Right clicking on that second icon (which is Windows Explorer) gives you quick links to your most accessed folders and files as well as your My Documents folder.

This by far takes the longest to get used to, but things feel very natural as you're doing them and you certainly feel like Windows is finally helping you get things done a little quicker and easier.

Performance

Compared to XP, Windows 7 still isn't quite there with performance, but give it time. It doesn't feel slow, but supposedly Windows XP is getting higher scores on benchmarks. Granted, the benchmarks are usually written and tuned for released operating systems, so it may be biased at the moment. There's no comparison to Vista though, it blows the doors off Vista. For all you people who rebuild computers all the time (read: GJ and Geoff), you'll be happy to know Windows 7 installs much faster and finds drivers better than XP and Vista.

Gaming

Don't know, but Windows 7 supposedly has greatly increased the capabilities of backward compatbility support, even more so than Windows Vista and XP. So GJ, you may be able to run your DOSBOX games even easier on Windows 7.

Conclusion

Get it when it comes out. Sure Windows XP works fine, but I don't see why I wouldn't use Windows 7 from now on.

12 comments | Tags: microsoft, technology, computers

Marc said 2 minutes later

I forgot to mention, but User Account Control (UAC), which was introduced in Windows Vista, has been greatly scaled back in terms of being annoying. You used to see it trying to do basic operating system operations. Now it pretty much only shows up when copying files to system folders or installing a new program.

And finally, MS Paint has been updated. It's a huge update too, you can accomplish a lot of the basic functionality you can get out of Photoshop and GIMP, although I don't think there's any Layers, but it certainly gives you much more control of things you can do with it.
GJ said about 5 hours later

Thanks for the excellent write up...of course, the problem is, since XP64 is doing pretty much everything I need now, I'm not shelling out a hundred dollars or more for a shiny new interface--at least, not until they drop support for XP, which is still a ways out.

Does it handle memory and multi-core processors any differently than XP64? I'd be most interested in that--XP64 is a vast improvement over vanilla XP in that aspect, but I've found that a certain hardware suppliers are pretty much ignoring XP64 in terms of driver support (Hewlett Packard, I'm looking at you, mofo!).
Geoff said about 7 hours later

the fact that XP64 didn't support iTunes, is just plain insane. For that and that reason alone, I uninstalled it. No way I can design and listen to music through, god forbid, Windows Media Player.
Marc said about 10 hours later

In terms of memory and multi-core, I believe they've made both of those significantly better. So no more 3GB limitations on memory like you saw in XP. This time around Microsoft has really focused on making sure driver suppliers are ready for Windows 7. From what I've read and seen from my own experience installing this on an iMac, most of the drivers are there out of the box. I only had to reinstall a new audio driver, but that was it. My bluetooth keyboard and mouse worked during the install process, which has never happened and was much appreciated!

The XP64 iTunes support is Apple's fault. I'm not sure why they are so far behind on supporting that, but I agree, it's ridiculous. And don't look to Windows 7 for a much improved Windows Media Player, it still sucks.
GJ said about 10 hours later

The 3GB thing was fixed in xp64, btw.
Geoff said about 14 hours later

and Vista...I'm running 8 gigs.
GJ said about 19 hours later

8 Gigs is far more than most folks need. 2GB is all you need if you surf the web with lots of tabs open. Play games, you could get by with 2GB just fine. Run heavy apps? Might need 4GB. Rendering? Ok, now 8GB makes sense. App server? Keep going. :)
Marc said 1 day later

Yea, I knew Vista had the removal of the limit, but you're one of the few who uses it. :) Plus you can't really say 8GB since Vista probably wastes about 2G constantly.
Geoff said 1 day later

if not more.
Geoff said 6 days later

Hey Marc, how is the demo version of Windows 7? Should I wait for the final release? Is it fairly stable?
Marc said 6 days later

Demo version seems pretty stable, but I'd wait, it's only a month and a half until release I believe. The big reason to wait: There's no magic switch you can throw to convert to the final release. The only way out of the Windows 7 RC to final is to do a full reformat.
Geoff said 6 days later

gotcha...thanks!

Yes?
posted by Marc on January 26, 2009 @ 10:08AM

Now I remember why I switched to Mac. Let me paint you a picture: Imagine you are copying a file from a shared drive on your company network to your Desktop from My Computer. Here's your prompt:

Let's first examine why it says Internet Explorer when I'm in My Computer...nah, ignore that. What is the correct answer? Hint: The computer really doesn't know what you're doing.

4 comments | Tags: microsoft, computers

Microsoft Surface Technology
posted by Geoff on June 21, 2007 @ 11:38AM

3 comments | Tags: microsoft, technology

Apple's Safari Now Available on Windows
posted by Marc on June 11, 2007 @ 2:54PM

I know there's only two lucky members of this family to be running Mac OS X, but now you too can join the Apple family and realize what it's like to use excellent software.

Today, Apple announced they will be releasing Apple's Safari web browser for Windows. In fact, you can go grab yourself a copy at http://www.apple.com/safari.

So you're saying to yourself, why? Well it's twice as fast as Internet Explorer 7 to start. But ok, you're on the geek wave and already use Mozilla Firefox. Good for you, now get a real browser. Safari for Windows (Which is in beta right now) is 1.6 times faster than Firefox. That's still impressive.

I'm writing this post right now in Safari for Windows, I suggest you go get yourself a copy.

10 comments | Tags: apple, browser, microsoft

GJ said 3 minutes later

So, what are the tradeoffs? Anybody who uses Mozilla will tell you that not EVERY site supports it--I expect to see more of the same with Safari. Any other blemishes?

I'm also interested in memory usage--how does it compare? IE is a hog, but even Firefox can get bloaty at times.
Geoff said 34 minutes later

If a website cannot support FireFox and/or Safari, then you shouldn't be viewing it. Obviously it was designed by idiots, for idiots.

-Your fellow website genius
Marc said 34 minutes later

Safari and Firefox appear to be sharing similar memory footprints. I have three tabs open in both. The three tabs are Pandora playing a radio station, a small HTML local page, and the Baumblog. Safari appears to use a bit more memory (100mb vs 80mb).

The one thing Apple software tends to do is use memory very efficiently. Often times applications try to keep memory usage down, which is good when there's a lot of applications in need of it. Apple's software will give up memory if it's low on the system, but when there is plenty of memory, it will use as much as possible. This is good, because memory is WAY faster than swapping on the hard drive. (Please note, as I'm typing this in Safari, the memory usage has peaked at 100mb, Firefox for some reason has decided to use 10mb more and I don't have it in the foregroud).

You'll still need to keep IE7 around since some people like to make their websites IE only, or god forbid, require ActiveX. In terms of websites that Safari supports, it's very much the same as Firefox. When I'm on my Mac, everything works but the IE7 only sites, where even Firefox won't help me out.

Keep in mind, this is a public beta, just released literally 30 minutes ago. It's going to have quirks here and there, so any silly issues will be worked out in the next couple months, but just give the browser a try. You can put it down until it's officially released, but try it now and see how fast and nice it is.
GJ said about 1 hour later

Dude, I use Opera. :) Default browser on the Wii.
GJ said about 5 hours later

Safari doesn't work with Yahoo Mail Beta.
Marc said about 6 hours later

Nope, but Yahoo Mail beta is probably the second worst web application written in the history of time. Second only to MySpace. It is the slowest AJAX mail client I've seen so far, especially since they integrated the chat system into it now. Use Gmail :)
Kristen said 1 day later

I have to say, Gmail sucks Marc. It may have a lot of space, but you can't create folders, and when you write back and forth with someone it doesn't come in as a new email, it goes into the same email link. that makes it so easy to miss a response! If you try to put a message into the saved file, and delete it from your regular inbox, it erases both. That's crap.
We use Gmail with our company, and we all hate it. I don't think it's user friendly. The only thing I like about it is the star feature. I wish we had picked something else. I hope they update it.
Marc said 1 day later

Do you know about Labels Kristen? Labels are the exact same thing as a folder, except they act more like the tags feature on this blog. You can associate an e-mail with multiple labels. So for instance, your company could assign a label of "New Orders" and "Orders" to a brand new order that came in through the website. Then you could log into Gmail and click on the New Orders label and see which orders are new and in progress. Once that order has shipped, you could then delete the label New Orders on that e-mail and bam, it's out of the "New Orders" queue. That's pretty neat.

Once you have tagged/labeled things the way you like in your Inbox, you should "Archive" them. That hides them from the inbox but makes them visible from the Labels associated with it.

As for missing responses, you shouldn't have that problem. When a new message comes in, it stays with its "conversation", which is basically just the history of e-mails going back and forth. But it is also bold, so you should be able to see new e-mails. Also, if you want, check out Gmail Notifier. That will install an application on your computer that will popup a notification whenever new e-mails come in.

If you want, I can write up a blog post about using GMail in detail and some of its power. I agree, some of the terms are new and not quite obvious (Google isn't the best at usability, they're all about minimalist approach while keeping a high degree of functionality), but once you get the hang of it, you'll be begging for some of these features in other applications.

Also, in case you still hate it, GMail offers pop access, which means virtually any other e-mail reader could be used to read your e-mail sent to GMail. That way you don't have to change your e-mail address and you can use whatever e-mail client you want.
Marc said 1 day later

And if you still hate GMail AND your mail client doesn't offer pop access (I don't think Yahoo does or Hotmail...not sure, both suck), you can setup GMail to forward your e-mail to another e-mail address.
GJ said 1 day later

A Gmail walkthrough might be cool. I don't use it much today, but I think that's more because no spambots have discovered it yet. A demo of the features might not only convince several of us to cut over to it (for crying out loud, I still use mail.com which really, really SUX!), but it will probably land the blog yet another Google Alert.

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