Windows 7 at the PDC

For now I do not have access to Windows 7 so I can only go on other peoples’ experiences and of course the live stream of the Microsoft PDC, but so far it looks amazing, take a look at some screenshots here at my favorite tech site, Neowin.

From a UI standpoint I am very excited about the possibilities that will be available.
From a web developer standpoint I’m eager to learn how it fits in with Windows Azure and the cloud computing vision.

I hope to do a review once it is available and look forward to other peoples’ reviews, expectations and experiences.

In other news I put Xubuntu on my laptop, I’m actually using it at the moment, It’s a great OS to run when you have an older PC, in this case 4 years old, my laptop maintenance guide will be up soon, I’ve been meaning to finish it but it’s one of those articles you can take forever to write if you wanted to.

I have decided to put up interesting facts, the first fact is that my review on D-Link SharePort on the DIR-655 has had the most views of any posts, you guys seem to like it so I will hopefully bring more of the same in future reviews.

Windows Vista SP2 release before Windows 7

Earlier this week Microsoft stated that Vista’s Service Pack 2 will be released before Windows 7. As Windows 7 will be released in the second half of that year it has caused many to be worried that Microsoft are rushing SP2.

I don’t believe this will be a problem and I certainly don’t believe Microsoft would be rushing this, to release a Service Pack within a year was common before Windows XP and has happened since, things have changed and Vista SP2 is not focused on the amount of features and deep fixes that have been needed in Service Packs in the past 6 years.

Windows XP SP1 had a reasonable time frame of just under a year, however it was fairly rushed and rightly so, but there were no issues caused by rushing the update. SP2 of XP took quite some time (2 years since SP1) and this was due to the radical changes in the OS that were proposed, new device drivers had to be made, this led to more and more testing and in the end it was a significant change, but with the amount of changes you would expect from 2 Service Packs, released in the same amount of time. Windows XP SP3 is again more of a roll up release that was not necessarily needed due to Windows Update, it was delayed because Windows Vista needed more resources at the time.

Windows Vista SP1 was like the Windows XP SP1 in a way, there were necessary changes that needed to be implemented and they were implemented fast, just over a year from the Retail release date and it was finished and ready, no rushing was needed.

Os Collection – Part 3 – MS-DOS 6

I figured I’d make less of a review and more of a guide this time around, MS-DOS is really only necessary to use when you are installing Windows on top, or if you need to use a boot disk.

This guide is very image heavy, so click below to open it, it may not be dialup friendly.

Continue reading Os Collection – Part 3 – MS-DOS 6

Ribbon UI in Windows 7 M3

It appears going by the 2 images that have so far been released showing Paint and WordPad that Microsoft have decided to extend the Ribbon UI used in the Microsoft Office Suite to the included applications in Windows 7.

It’s a small change, but it shows that with Windows 7 Microsoft are willing to try new things. The Ribbon is a fairly handy part of the Office UI, in the case of WordPad it will allow people who are familiar with Word use WordPad much quicker.

I don’t believe the use of Paint will be more productive necessarily, as previously in Paint there was only 1 layer to most of the functionality, however the upside is that this allows Paint to increase in features if necessary without having to have yet another UI change.

Overall I believe it’s a nice addition to the Windows UI, even if it only affects a few applications, I look forward to seeing more of Windows 7 Milestone 3

OS Collection – Part 1 – Windows 3.1

Recently I have taken to starting a little collection of PC Operating Systems, starting with Microsoft and IBM full retail boxed copies sourced from the wonderful world of eBay. I have started receiving these copies so I have decided to install them and do a review of the experiences of using them in modern times.

Windows 3.1

Released in 1992 Windows 3.1 was a minor update to Windows 3.0, mainly including Truetype font support and 32-bit Disk Access. It however has became the most popular pre-Windows 95 era Windows OS. I have only managed to get my hands on an OEM copy, so here are a few pics of what comes out of that package.

Continue reading OS Collection – Part 1 – Windows 3.1

Windows Vista Ultimate Extras

It seems many people are having problems with the Ultimate Extras that have been released by Microsoft in the past due to the low amount of Extras that were released and the time it takes for Microsoft to release them. Now it appears that everybody is at Microsoft’s throat again after the release of new extras that to many do not represent the kind of extras they were expecting when purchasing Windows Vista Ultimate.

New Sound Schemes

The sound schemes are quite similar to the original Vista sound schemes, after going through the sounds that were released I initially noticed that Pearl has way more sounds included than both the default sound scheme and Glass, why were these extra sounds left out of Glass? Personally I like Pearl and I am currently using it, however something tells me this is not the kind of thing most buyers of Vista Ultimate would actually use.

Dreamscene Content Pack 3

The Dreamscene Content Pack #3 however is a much needed boost of quality for the default Dreamscene content, even though there are only 3 in this pack their quality outperforms the previously released Dreamscenes both in content and actual picture quality, when paused there are no more pixilated images like you get when running vid8898 (the raining path) or vid8899 (the stream). I look forward to more content packs and wouldn’t mind it if some of the earlier ones were updated as well.

On the subject of Dreamscenes, as much as they are a "fancy feature" and don’t offer much in the way of directly improving productivity, I do feel that in a workplace they would probably do quite well in improving the overall working environment.

The most important point of all of this is that if you bought Windows Vista Ultimate for the extras then you bought it for the wrong reason and most likely did not need it in the first place. These are free extras that nobody paid for, it’s up to Microsoft when and if more get released.