Now that I have my new laptop, I decided it was time to find a better virtual desktop manager. I had been using the creatively named Virtual Desktop Manager with mostly good experiences, but a few quirks. One of the more annoying ones is artifacts that occur sometimes, but are persistent, when switching from a desktop with Chrome to one without. After a few days of uptime, I would find ghostly outlines of Chrome windows on all my desktops, and sometimes even orphaned status messages of the variety you get in the bottom left of the browser window when you mouse over a link or are loading a page. Pretty annoying! The second quirk is a blank and non-responsive "Write (no subject)" window courtesy of Thunderbird when you compose an e-mail and switch desktops before sending it.
Anyway, all that has been resolved with the use of Dexpot, I heartily recommend it.
Showing posts with label Windows 7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows 7. Show all posts
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Two Finger Click and Scroll
One of the (many) things that Apple get right on their Macbooks is the touch pad, it is large and supports nice multi-touch gestures.
My new laptop, an Asus G73, features the nice large touch pad and supports multi-touch gestures, like pinch-zoom, but it misses the best two gestures - two-finger scroll and two-finger tap to right-click. Fortunately, there is a remedy to this deficiency: Two-Finger-Scroll. So now I get the Macbook quality touch pad experience with twice the cores, way better graphics and more than enough money left over for a fast ssd!
My new laptop, an Asus G73, features the nice large touch pad and supports multi-touch gestures, like pinch-zoom, but it misses the best two gestures - two-finger scroll and two-finger tap to right-click. Fortunately, there is a remedy to this deficiency: Two-Finger-Scroll. So now I get the Macbook quality touch pad experience with twice the cores, way better graphics and more than enough money left over for a fast ssd!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Windows 7 Shadow Copies
Since Windows Server 2003, Windows has had a feature called shadow copies. Basically, this allows you to get back to previous versions of existing or deleted files. The feature was later enhanced in Vista to make the "system restore" feature. Namely, the system takes snapshots of important system files your computer needs to boot by creating "restore points". At any point in the future you can revert to such a restore point. This can be because your system stop rebooting or you just noticed that game demo included SecuROM and is still installed even if the game demo no longer is.
The feature works has advertised however, there was no way in Vista to know how much disk space this feature was using or could use. Windows 7 includes new configuration options that control these settings.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Windows 7 Editions
One thing that Linux and MacOS X users enjoy over their Vista counterparts is that they don't have to worry about choosing an edition of their operating system or upgrading to the same operating system but to a different edition, e.g., from Home Premium to Ultimate works but Home Premium to Business doesn't.
The Windows SuperSite today has an article about the editions that are being removed. Also, each edition is a super-set of the previous one, so upgrading is much simpler since there aren't any distinct branches anymore in the editions.
That being said, I still think they are still too many versions. There should be only 3, Starter, Home and Professional with the starter edition being targeted at netbooks only.
The Windows SuperSite today has an article about the editions that are being removed. Also, each edition is a super-set of the previous one, so upgrading is much simpler since there aren't any distinct branches anymore in the editions.
That being said, I still think they are still too many versions. There should be only 3, Starter, Home and Professional with the starter edition being targeted at netbooks only.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Most Recently Used Files From the Start Menu
Instead of a global menu item that shows a pot pourri of recent documents for all applications, the Windows 7 menu is smarter on how it shows you recent documents.
Recent documents are displayed and bound next to any compliant application. Pictures are worth a thousand words here:
Recent documents are displayed and bound next to any compliant application. Pictures are worth a thousand words here:
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Windows 7 Hidden Features
Starting a small series of posts about new features in Windows 7 that don't have a lot of flash, hence are unlikely to be covered in the mainstream, but are still neat and interesting.
Finally, Windows can burn ISO images directly from its shell. It's about time Microsoft did this considering the APIs have been there since Windows XP. I'm excited about this since most vendors usually bundle some crapware in order to provide this feature to their customers. Hopefully, this will mean a cleaner hard drive on purchase.
Now, if Microsoft would just get around to finally supporting virtual desktops. The APIs have been in there since at least Windows NT 4.
Windows 7 has the ability to mount Virtual PC VDC disk images. You can see the mounted disks like any other drive in the "Computer" view. This would have come very handy a while ago, I have a collection of virtual machines from Windows 95 up to Vista. With Windows NT 4 and earlier, it was really hard to download updates and/or service packs since:
a) Out of the box, they either don't come with any browser or come with Internet Explorer version 1. If you try to use Internet Explorer version 1 on mainly any site, including Mozilla, it doesn't work, the browser errors out.
b) You can't use a shared folder because you can't install the guest additions until you've updated to the latest service packs/updates but you have no means to get them on there.
This feature would have made it easier to just put the latest updates on these deprecated operating systems and get to the point where I could just install the guest additions. Ultimately, I had to put all the updates on an FTP site and use the text based ftp command that comes with NT versions 4 and earlier. I was still looking for a solution for Windows 95 and this is what finally made it possible to update. My 95 disks are original Windows 95 floppy disks, so I didn't have the FTP command on this install either.
Finally, Windows can burn ISO images directly from its shell. It's about time Microsoft did this considering the APIs have been there since Windows XP. I'm excited about this since most vendors usually bundle some crapware in order to provide this feature to their customers. Hopefully, this will mean a cleaner hard drive on purchase.
Now, if Microsoft would just get around to finally supporting virtual desktops. The APIs have been in there since at least Windows NT 4.
Windows 7 has the ability to mount Virtual PC VDC disk images. You can see the mounted disks like any other drive in the "Computer" view. This would have come very handy a while ago, I have a collection of virtual machines from Windows 95 up to Vista. With Windows NT 4 and earlier, it was really hard to download updates and/or service packs since:
a) Out of the box, they either don't come with any browser or come with Internet Explorer version 1. If you try to use Internet Explorer version 1 on mainly any site, including Mozilla, it doesn't work, the browser errors out.
b) You can't use a shared folder because you can't install the guest additions until you've updated to the latest service packs/updates but you have no means to get them on there.
This feature would have made it easier to just put the latest updates on these deprecated operating systems and get to the point where I could just install the guest additions. Ultimately, I had to put all the updates on an FTP site and use the text based ftp command that comes with NT versions 4 and earlier. I was still looking for a solution for Windows 95 and this is what finally made it possible to update. My 95 disks are original Windows 95 floppy disks, so I didn't have the FTP command on this install either.
Windows 7 Codec Support
In addition to the codecs supported by previous versions, Windows 7 supports an impressive list of new codecs and media containers out of the box.
New containers:
New containers:
- MP4
- MOV
- 3GP
- AVCHD
- ADTS
- M4A
- WTV (new Windows Media based format for PVR based recordings)
New codecs:
- H.264
- MPEG4-SP
- DivX
- Xvid
- MJPEG
- DV
- AAC-LC (regular AAC)
- LPCM
- AAC-HE
You can get all these codecs and more with the K-Lite Codec Pack, however, this is the 32-bit version. The 64-bit version of K-Lite doesn't offer many codecs at all.
Now, if Microsoft can just add support for the Matroska file format, we'll be all set.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Windows 7 Beta
Still in the early stages of use but I have to say, an apology is needed here. I've been laughing at all the glorious reviews Windows 7 has been getting. Considering Windows 7 is just some spit and polish of Windows Vista, obviously if these people liked Windows 7, then they must have liked Windows Vista.
Well, having used 7 for a couple of days now, I have to admit, that this is some serious spit they used here.
What can I say other than "wow". It just shows that in this release, having nailed all the architectural underpinnings in Vista, Microsoft was free to concentrate on the user interface, be it the shell or the bundled applications. All I can say is that this is one serious calculator program.
So far, I only have 2 bad things to say about the system:
However, not that I want to finish on something negative, I can't help myself to take a shot at Windows Mobile. How is it possible that the same company that is producing something so good like Windows 7 is also producing, at the same time, something that is so mediocre, namely Windows Mobile?
Well, having used 7 for a couple of days now, I have to admit, that this is some serious spit they used here.
What can I say other than "wow". It just shows that in this release, having nailed all the architectural underpinnings in Vista, Microsoft was free to concentrate on the user interface, be it the shell or the bundled applications. All I can say is that this is one serious calculator program.
So far, I only have 2 bad things to say about the system:
- The return of the "My" prefix, so "my music", etc. Shoot the person in the head who thought bringing this back was a good idea already.
- UAC is toned down. I always felt UAC was a good thing. Vista got a lot of heat for pointing out bad programs to users. Seriously, how would Linux users have reacted to a program that needed constant write access to /user/bin? The levels are good since it should stop some people from disabling it completely. However, I think the highest level should be maintained as the default. I think if Windows Explorer wouldn't show you a dialog that an operation is going to need escalation, hence 2 escalation dialog warnings, and would just put the escalation shield icon directly in the menu item, this would solve the problem most users had with UAC to begin with.
However, not that I want to finish on something negative, I can't help myself to take a shot at Windows Mobile. How is it possible that the same company that is producing something so good like Windows 7 is also producing, at the same time, something that is so mediocre, namely Windows Mobile?
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