A week ago, my phone's data storage maxed out, and I needed to unload my photos and videos to clear up space.
Actually, scratch that - my photos and videos were already backed up via OneDrive, but somewhere along the line, the app lost the ability to automatically delete media that's already been uploaded. I wanted to make sure I had everything backed up before deleting it all from my phone, so I had to find a solution to compare the phone's storage to my OneDrive copy. I have a Samsung Galaxy S10e, and it lets you plug a USB cable in and browse the files just like an external hard drive.
After some research, I settled on software called Beyond Compare. The interface was easy enough to figure out, and it quickly churned through all of my media. It also let me use all the features in the demo, without buying. After an hour or two of working through my pictures I was done! Beyond Compare aligns duplicate (or similar) files by name, so it was simple to find the discrepancies. I was able to clear up over 30GB of data!
I purchased a copy of Beyond Compare after I finished, since I felt like the tool may be handy in the future and I appreciated what it'd done for me.
Yesterday, my wife had a similar issue, but with slightly different circumstances. She needed to upgrade her phone, which was also about out of space, and wanted to make sure everything was backed up before swapping over to the new device. I've got her on OneDrive as well, so the backup has been happening, but she has an iPhone and weirdly, the files on the phone were not named the same as the files backed up in the cloud.
I loaded up Beyond Compare, thinking I might solve the problem as easily as my own, but I forgot that without the file names being the same there was no practical way for the software to show duplicates side-by-side.
I spent the next hour creating a PowerShell script that would go through all the images from the phone and rename them to match the files on OneDrive, which appeared to be just the date the photo was taken in this format: "YearMonthDay_HourMinuteSecond_iOS.jpg". Once I got the script working however, I realized two things: first, the hours were off by 8 - an easy fix - and second, that the "date taken" property in Windows Explorer did not include seconds, so I couldn't recreate the file names exactly as they were on OneDrive. So Beyond Compare would, sadly, be useless here.
After spending a bit more time looking at other duplicate file checkers, I tried out dupeGuru. It took a long time to analyze all the photos from the phone and the OneDrive backup - about an hour to get through 18,000 photos. Once that was done, however, it was pretty easy to sort out which files we wanted to keep and which were duplicates.
In addition to the 3,000 duplicates it found between the phone and the OneDrive storage, it also found 2,000 duplicates within OneDrive - a happy surprise! It took me a few hours to go through everything, but it wasn't too difficult - just a little tedious (and with a few random hiccups, probably because OneDrive didn't like the software trying to delete hundreds of items at once).
We still have to get all the media she has in her iMessages out somehow, but that shouldn't be too hard.
In the meantime, I'm wondering why Windows (or OneDrive) doesn't have built-in tools for this sort of thing. We're almost all digital hoarders in some capacity, with the inevitable duplicate file here and there, and Windows has tools for comparing and hashing files included in the Command Prompt/PowerShell. It seems like an easy, obvious thing to have.
I have to admit: I'm curious about Windows 8. This probably doesn't come as that big of a surprise, since Windows has been my primary OS since my family first got a computer about two decades ago, but I still consider it significant, seeing as Win 8 is looking to be such a departure from previous incarnations of the software.
I'm not particularly excited about the metro interface, since I've been using it on my phone for a long time now. I'm actually more interested to see what kind of tablet devices manufacturers will come up with for it, and how they will factor into the flow of all the other devices we already use.
I'm still of mind that a tablet is a pretty pointless addition to a lineup which already includes a desktop computer, a laptop, and a smart phone. But I think that if it becomes possible to use a tablet as tablets are used today, but also dock it to a workstation to use a laptop/desktop type machine, it makes much more sense than a tablet-only device, like an iPad. Especially for someone looking to replace an aging laptop, but who hasn't yet bought into the whole tablet thing.
That's not necessarily my situation; I'm still pretty happy with the continued performance of my years-old laptop. But I have to admit that a Win 8 tablet might be enticing, if it turns out to be as versatile as it seems it could.
So I'm finally getting a new phone, and taking the plunge and getting a smart phone, no less. I'm replacing my old LG Chocolate with an HTC Trophy, which as I am typing this, is currently riding shotgun with some anonymous FedEx driver, getting ready for glorious times ahead with Marty.
In case you're not up on your phones, the HTC Trophy is a Windows Phone 7 phone. I tried out the iPhone 4, and though I like my iPod Touch, I just can't get that far in with Apple at this point, and it annoys me that everyone has them. I also tried a handful of Android phones, and while I liked some of the features they offered, it all seemed a little janky. I think I'm just kind of tired of thumbing through pages of tiny icons.
Finally, I tried out Windows Phone 7, and frankly, I like it. It's different, but not pointlessly so. It's got a sharp look, and it's all simply coherent and snappy. Also, since I had an upgrade coming from Verizon, and since they were doing some kind of online promotion, I got the new phone for only $50. This is my golden parachute for if it doesn't work out, but I have high hopes for it and don't expect that to happen.
But before you get all huffy and start hammering out a comment on why I should have gotten Phone X instead, let's share a moment reflecting on the things I won't be missing about my old LG Chocolate. If we can't love the same thing, let's hate the same thing, alright?
The navigation wheel.
Visually, the shiny navigation wheel on the face of the Chocolate is actually interesting. It makes the phone look like it will be fun to use and lends it a foreign air of functionality. You don't know what the wheel does or how it would feel to use it, but you suspect that it makes things easy, and that there might be many hidden uses to that wheel that your mind couldn't possibly have imagined. The wheel even gives the phone a retro-iPod look.
Sadly, the wheel is not awesome. Not even remotely. Instead of being a touch-based input, like the iPod of old that it pays homage to, or even the other four buttons on the face of the phone, this wheel is exactly that: a wheel. It's a piece of shiny plastic that your thumb has to actually rotate to work, and it's not easy to find the right place between way-too-sensitive and turning-the-wheel-around-three-times-to-get-the-menu-to-move-ahead-one-item.
When the phone is unlocked but no menus are invoked, the wheel also has the added benefit of opening the useless calendar widget. This widget does nothing but show the current date and time, which you could have already seen on the home screen behind it, and it runs poorly to boot. So poorly, in fact, that if you accidentally leave the widget open for long enough for the phone to lock again, it stops actually telling the time, freezes up, and then the phone actually takes a minute or two to close it later when you realize what happened. As you might imagine, this is loads of fun when you're trying to make a call quickly or you just want to see what time it is.
The awful spell-checking
Or more precisely, the spell-checking dictionary auto-add feature, which is impossible to access. Though there aren't that many words that aren't in the dictionary by default, occasionally you have to enter your own words in the LG Chocolate 2, which isn't all that painful an experience; you just put the phone in a different text entry mode, type the word, and then continue your text. When you do this, the phone adds your new word to its internal dictionary. So far so good. Later on, when you use the word again, it's easy to use because the phone will help you fill it in automatically.
Unfortunately, the auto-add feature isn't particularly smart, so there are many instances where you don't want it to add something, because you're not going to type it all the time, but it goes ahead and does it anyway. Further, it remembers capital letters and treats periods and commas as part of words, so if you are using a word for the first time at the beginning or end of a sentence, the dictionary entry for that word will always be that way.
There also doesn't seem to be a weighting system for how often you use words, so for example (and this is the one I hate the absolute most), one time I pressed the buttons 9, 6, 8, 1 to type out the number "968y" with a comma at the end. Now, every time I type the word "you", (also 9, 6, 8) and then add a period to the end (1), the Chocolate 2 replaces my perfectly ended sentence with "986,". Nevermind the fact that I've typed 9, 6, 8, 1 hundreds of times now, and only once have I ever wanted it to be "968,". It suggests this to me every time. And so far as I can tell, there's no official way for going in and deleting the entry from the phone's internal dictionary.
If LG added this feature to the phone to make me want to throw it as far as I possibly can every time it happens, then let me be the first to say that they did a fine job of it. A damn fine job.
The missing 4 key
I think this one was probably a sign that my time with my LG Chocolate 2 was drawing to a rapid close, but a few months ago I was furiously texting, and I felt something odd happen beneath my left thumb. The hitherto solid, mostly immovable, and always reliable 4 key finally decided it was time to abandon ship, severed its bonds with the glowing rubbery button below, and ungracefully fell to the floor below. Since then, it's been weird typing words that use the letters g, h, or i.
I don't blame 4 for finally giving up. I don't really even text that often, but I probably would have fell off the Chocolate 2 long ago, if I were 4. I'm proud of him for sticking around as long as he did.
Non-sending text messages
Over the course of the last half year or so, my Chocolate 2 has become increasingly unwilling to send out my text messages, sometimes making me cancel the text and try to send it two or three times before it works.
It's an annoying problem, and it's made worse by the fact that one often doesn't watch his phone after pressing the Send button to make sure the text actually gets sent - it's assumed that it is, the phone is locked and put away, and the Text Messenger goes on his merry way. Quite often I respond very quickly to texts, only to find out an hour or so later that my efforts at fast text turnaround were in vain; the message did not actually go through, and the person expecting a response is now pissed off, and/or wondering what happened to me. If I want to snub someone by not responding to their text, I'd rather do it on my terms, than have my phone decide for me when such snubbing is appropriate. Especially since my phone does not seem to be good at making these kinds of decisions.
I'm hoping this isn't a problem with Verizon itself, but nobody else I know who has Verizon has this problem, so... there you go. I think this problem might actually stem from my dropping the phone a few times during its years of service, but hey, then it's a design/engineering problem. Still not my fault. Things that are my fault wouldn't fit well in this list of faults anyway, now would they?
Crap OS
Maybe it's called Qualcomm BREW, or maybe it doesn't even have a name. Regardless, I'm calling it Crap OS because it's a crappy operating system. From the aforementioned calendar widget issue to the many times where I haven't been able to delete messages from the phone (because the inbox got too full... that makes sense, right?), I've experienced a lot of annoyances with this OS.
About the only thing I like about Crap OS is that it's generally simple, and since Verizon seems to have it on all of their non-smart phones, it makes it easy to pick up and use virtually any of those phones, once you know your way around. My phone also had a few themes to change the feel of the OS, and they actually worked pretty well too, I will say. Still, I don't think I'm going to be lamenting the upgrade any time soon.
Let me close this list by saying that, despite my ranting here, I actually don't hate the LG Chocolate. It has many flaws, like just about any phone. But it served me well.
Anyway, that's the long and short of it. A new phone is on the way, and I'm pretty excited about it. I'll report back here (and elsewhere, I'm sure) when I get it. Anyone else out there have an HTC Trophy?
Though I would normally shun someone who would buy an operating system on launch day, a week ago I bought, downloaded, and installed the newest version of Microsoft's OS, Windows 7. It's nice to have a modern OS on my recently assembled machine, and though the transition from XP was a bit jarring in some respects, any unexpected problems have been minimal so far. Overall, I'm glad I made the switch.
Of course, I went into this only after reading a lot about the upcoming OS and playing around with the beta version for a while. Despite its many criticisms, Vista represented a big leap forward in terms of the underlying systems of Windows, and a lot of growing pains for the platform were felt upon its release. Most of the issues that plagued Vista in its early days have been resolved however, and this makes for a far more comfortable Windows 7 experience.
Here's a quick run-down of how the (mostly painless) upgrade process went for me, from my old rig turning into a massive paper weight to the re-birth of Windows on my new machine.
If you completed the homework assignment, you've already read about my old computer breaking down, and my quest for parts to rebuild a new one. Gold star for you. If not, you can read about it here - there's no use in going into that much detail about it again.
Once the new computer was built, I put a minimal number of games on it, but held off on installing a massive amount of other software. My reasoning for this was twofold - first, I would save myself a great deal of time backing up data for the Windows 7 install, which was only a month away, as well, I would be avoiding any licensing problems that would arise from too many installations of protected software. This happened anyway, but I'll get into that later.
After a month of having only two major games on my computer, World of Warcraft, Windows 7 launch day finally came. I failed to find a copy of Win 7 Professional in stores (Best Buy only had upgrade copies, and Office Max/Office Depot had nothing but Vista), so when I got home from work I jumped onto Microsoft's online store and bought a digital copy directly. Since Win 7 Pro comes with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, I was given the option to download either. I chose the 64-bit version and started the 2.3Gb download. It took about two and a half hours to finish.
I burned the ISO file to a DVD and dropped the stuff I wanted to save onto one of the other hard drives in the machine, and then I restarted the computer and began the install.
Having so recently done an XP install, I am happy to report that Windows 7's install process is much more streamlined, and possibly even faster (I didn't time it, but it seemed to take about 20-25 minutes). Win 7's disk partitioning and pre-install setup is now done in a much more modern environment, with mouse support and a slick GUI. It asks only a minimal number of questions, and lets you set up the details later on once the install is finished. I was impressed by the speed and simplicity of the whole thing, especially compared to the old XP installer. Ars Technica actually has a great 15-page review of Windows 7 up, including a good portion on the new installer.
Once 7 installed, the system restarted one last time, and before long I was staring at a shiny new OS, all ready for my antics and exploits. Not too much had to be tweaked for the system to be the way I like it, either. UAC is relaxed in Win 7, so the interruptions aren't as annoying. The OS also seemed to find drivers for just about everything in the system, save for the GPU. That was really the only piece of system software I've had to install so far.
The only trouble I've really had with Windows 7 so far rests on the software side of things. On the first install of my Adobe software, something happened (I think I left the system waiting for the next disc for too long at some point) and the installation failed. All the programs seemed to install fine, but their licensing software was broken, so I had to re-install them. Then I had to call up the Adobe licensing support line because I'd already used my allotted two installs and wasn't able to de-activate my old computer's software before it died.
Aside from that, and a couple of times where a program crashed or froze, I've had no problems. Some of these issues may stem from the fact that I am running mostly 32-bit applications/games on a 64-bit OS, so I've expected a few hiccups.
Overall, however, things have been great. I'm finally able to use more than 4gb of RAM (I've got 6gb of RAM in triple channel mode now), and most everything seems to run solid. The improvements to the taskbar have taken me a lot less time to adjust to than I thought they would, and I actually feel like the new features, like Aero Peek, have helped me be more productive with my machine.
I'll probably have more to report as my collection of games and software trickles onto the new computer, and I start using it for other multimedia purposes - but for now you can consider me impressed.
And of course, glad that I don't feel like a sap for being a day one adopter.
I got my new computer parts earlier this week, and after an hour or two of assembly, it gracefully sprang to life. And on the first try, no less. I'm proud of myself, because it's been a while since I've built a computer entirely from scratch.
Here's how the final build turned out:
Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz Quad-Core CPU
Corsair XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Diamond Radeon HD 4890 1GB (PCE-E 2.0 16x) GPU
Asus P6T Deluxe V2 Motherboard
Western Digital Caviar Green 500Gb SATA HDD
HP 24X Multiformat DVD Writer SATA
Cooler Master Silent Pro 600W Modular Power Supply
Antec Solo Black/Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
The only parts I didn't buy were two existing HDD's that I threw in at the end, for good measure (another 500Gb and my old 74Gb Raptor, both SATA). I was planning on adding the sound card from my old computer, but it won't fit well without blocking off the fan from the GPU, so I'm just going to roll with the onboard sound for now. Lastly, I'm currently only using two of the RAM sticks, because I'm running 32-bit XP, and I'm waiting for Windows 7 to release for the move to 64-bit.
The build went quite well and was fairly easy this time around. The power supply fit the case nicely and was easy to install. This was my first modular power supply, so the lack of cords (at least, initially) was a welcome addition to my computer-building experience.
The most difficult part of the whole build was easing the board into the box, as it was a snug fit. Antec makes great cases though, and there was plenty of holes for mounting the board properly.
The only other real problem I had with this build was just making sure I was grounded at all times - my current apartment has carpeting everywhere except for the kitchen and the bathroom, and neither of those places is a good place to build a computer. So, my hands were in contact with the case at all times, and no electronics were harmed in the production of this computer.
Anyway, back to the build... Antec also makes great sliding mounts for hard drives, so installing the drives was easy. Those had to go behind a separate door behind the front panel, so while they took a little more trouble to get in and out of the case than I would normally like, I don't do a lot of drive swapping, so it doesn't bother me much. Getting the DVD drive to install flush with the front of the case took some fiddling but wasn't difficult either.
To my relief, the GPU fit the space very nicely. The new Radeon HD 4890 is actually a tiny bit smaller than my old GeForce 8800 GTS. The only other large difference I noticed between the make of the two cards is that the circuit board of the Radeon seemed a tiny bit thinner, and more susceptible to bending, than the old GeForce.
Installing the CPU is always a harrowing experience for me. I'm always afraid I'm going to bend the connectors by placing the CPU in the slot the wrong way. Or that I'm going to accidentally rub off the thermal paste on the bottom of the fan (almost happened this time). Or that I'm not going to press hard enough on the fan mounts, and the fan will fall off later. Or that I'm going to press too hard on the fan mounts and crack the motherboard. Or... alright, I'll stop. It went smoothly. That's probably all I should have said about that to begin with.
RAM was similarly easy. Just pop it in the correct slots and snap it into place.
Once I got done putting all the parts in the box, I plugged in all the necessary cords and pressed the power button - which to my delight, worked. I hadn't closed the case yet though- I've built enough computers to know not to bother doing that until I know everything is working. I installed Windows XP. Installed some games. No problems. So far, I haven't even been hit by the notorious lockups I've heard about so many people getting from running 32-bit Win XP with more than 3Gb RAM.
Overall, this was a pretty straightforward computer build. I didn't have to consult manuals too often, and all the parts fit together well. Nothing got broken, nothing got fried. And now I've got a new computer that eats games for breakfast. Yayuh!
And I'm almost ashamed to admit it. My various Win XP installs have been virus free for about 7 years now, but now the streak has finally been broken. The strange thing is, I'm still not entirely sure how, or where, my computer got infected.
I've looked back on the events that have led up to this unfortunate incident, and I have pieced together what I think has happened, which I present to you below.
Two nights ago, I was browsing the net with Google's Chrome. I had a few tabs open, and I was bouncing back and forth between them. In one of them I was working on downloading a file from a file-sharing site, kind of like RapidShare, but not quite as official (if you can call RapidShare "official" by any stretch). I had jumped through all the rings, skipping two ads and waiting 60 seconds for the download link to appear. Once the link was ready, I began downloading (it was a RAR file).
About 5 minutes later, while the RAR file was still downloading, I noticed that I had left the tab open with the file share site on it. With no reason to keep it open, I switched to it to close it, but as soon as I selected it, Chrome became unresponsive. Not wanting to cancel my downloading file, I let the program sit, hoping that whatever was slowing down that page would resolve itself. After a minute or two, the tab finally showed up, but the whole browser was acting slow and slightly unresponsive, so I closed out that tab and a few others that I wasn't using anymore.
I turned away from the computer for a second to look at something, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the screen change. I looked back at the display, and it took me a moment to realize that Chrome wasn't on the screen anymore - not in a window or on the taskbar. So I opened it back up, and began trying to restore the tabs I had open. About 30 seconds into this, all of my tabs (even those that had already loaded and stopped), switched to show the Chrome error page. A minute later Chrome disappeared from my screen again with no warning or error message. Opening the program again resulted in a similar outcome.
By this time, it had gotten pretty late, so I attributed this to Chrome's beta status, turned off the computer, and went to sleep.The next day I got home from work and fired up the computer again. I browsed around the web a little, got up to go eat dinner with my girlfriend, and later came back to the computer to play some games. I noticed that FireFox (my default browser) had opened a window in the background - an ad for some idiotic anti-virus program. I assumed I had overlooked it from using FireFox earlier in the evening, and closed it. A minute later it was back, and this time I was sure that I hadn't initiated it's arrival.
My troubles with Chrome the night before came back to me, and instantly, I suspected something might be wrong.A quick look through the computer's running processes yielded nothing. Everything that was supposed to be running was. I checked the startup folder in the Start Menu; still nothing.
Finally, I opened up msconfig to check and see if anything had been added to my list of boot items. Sure enough, there were four oddly named dll's there that I did not recognize. I unchecked their boxes so they wouldn't be run when my computer started, and immediately went hunting for information on the problem.
I found out that my computer was infected with a few pieces of malware, all of the same origin, and all of which had a nasty habit of renaming themselves and latching onto legitimate processes to run. I wasn't entirely sure if their only function was to show me anti-virus ads however, so I figured the best course of action would be to remove the infection and then re-install Windows, just to be safe.
I tried to start up AdAware, but after waiting a few seconds, a cryptic error message appeared on the screen about a server error, and the program refused to load. So, I looked up NOD32, an anti-virus program which I've heard about on "The Tech Guy" radio show, installed it, and ran it. 10 minutes later, after I'd watched the program cycle through all the known areas of the infection, the program reported that it had found nothing. Lame.
A quick Google search returned a few more promising pieces of software; upon further investigation, I decided to try out a program called Anti-Malware by Malware Bytes. This program zipped through my drive and found about 14 infected files and registry entries. I quarantined and deleted all of these, restarted, and ran the program again. The second search turned up nothing. I checked msconfig and my processes list for similar results. I made a mental note that I should purchase the full version of Anti-Malware when this was all over with, as a token of my thanks.
With that, the pre-re-install process began: check, backup, delete, and restore. I checked the software on my computer to make sure I had all the install files I needed and read up on how to properly save my email and saved games. I copied everything from my main hard drive to the (much larger) second hard drive. I uninstalled everything that pointed to files on the second drive, and then rebooted with my trusty Windows XP disc in the tray.
About 30 minutes later I found myself staring blankly at the rolling green hills of the default Windows XP wallpaper. I turned off the machine and went to sleep.
Now it's time for me to get all my programs, games, and files back in their rightful places – just what I wanted to do this weekend.
I spent part of my weekend fiddling around with the Windows 7 Beta, and though it took a little getting used to, I'm largely impressed with the quality of the product so far.
Saturday morning, I got up around 10:30 AM, realized I had nothing better to do, and so decided I'd try to download the Windows 7 Beta a second time, having failed to get into the initial batch the day before. I was pleased to find out that the limit of 2.5 million downloads had been removed, so I loaded up Firefox, navigated to the Windows 7 website, found the link, went through the registration process, clicked the download link – and nothing. I clicked a few more times just to make sure, and then loaded up Internet Explorer to cover all the bases.
After re-registering and receiving a second (and different, oddly enough) CD Key, I was directed to the download page again. I clicked the button, and instantly understood why Firefox had failed to initiate the download; a warning about installing an ActiveX control popped up at the top of IE.
At this point, I believe I must have sighed audibly. I think it's great that Microsoft is making strides to correct the problems they've had over the years. They've been slowly but surely coming around to accepting web standards with Internet Explorer, and they've been taking cues from other companies like Google to make more user-friendly and fun websites and software. Kudos to them for that. But after all these small steps toward progress, this was a large leap backward. For everything Microsoft is trying to do to fix their image, it seems completely counter-intuitive to not only force users to use their much-maligned browser, but then impose an ActiveX control on them as well. I almost have to wonder if Microsoft is just willfully ignorant of its many criticisms that have rang out over the years. In any case, I pressed on with the download, only slightly deterred.
Windows 7 Beta is currently being distributed as a DVD image, which you can burn and then use just like an ordinary Windows install disc. The download clocks in at 2.4Gb, so once the installation of the ActiveX download manager was finished, I was looking at a 3-hour download, and thus, 3 hours of waiting. I flicked my monitor into its secondary input mode, fired up my Xbox, and spent some time vanquishing foes in Prince of Persia and traversing the wastelands of Fallout 3. Surprisingly, I was even able to download/stream an episode of Venture Bros. (go Team Venture!) over my Xbox during the download. It was a good time.
In between my game-playing and video-watching, I also got my older computer ready for the beta. The Windows 7 Beta expires on August 1, 2009, so I didn't want to overwrite my XP install on my primary computer and then be forced to buy Windows 7 later in the year. I also don't think it's a great idea to use a beta version of an OS for your regular computing. I backed up my data and cleaned up the older machine.
After the download finished, I burned it to disc and popped it into my old computer. A window appeared, asking me if I wanted to install, and I accepted. Installation of the Windows 7 Beta was quick and painless, and though the machine restarted a few times during the process (this is supposed to happen, apparently), there was no weirdness whatsoever. The initial part of the install has the new OS extracting and unpacking files, and this takes quite a bit of time, so I went out to return a video to Blockbuster and grab myself a late lunch. When I returned, Windows 7 was just about done installing, and had a few questions for me to finish the setup. Once completed, Windows 7 fired up for the first time on my older machine.
I always tend to have a slight feeling of "Now what?" every time I get done installing a new OS, and there was no exception for Windows 7. I spent a few moments gathering my bearings, and then went about checking out all the OS's newest features the media has been talking about over the last few months.
New Taskbar
The revised taskbar in Windows 7 isn't quite as alien as other sites have made it seem – put simply, it's the same taskbar you're used to, but a little bit taller, and a little bit abbreviated. The default settings do away with text descriptions in the taskbar, and instead use only icons for Start Button, quick-launch, and running apps. In previous versions of Windows, you've had the option to group similar windows into groups, and Windows 7 takes this a step further - not only does it group windows of the same flavor into one icon, but upon hovering the mouse over this icon, it allows you to view all the grouped windows as thumbnails. You can hover over these to show a full screen preview, and click to restore the window.
Notification icons are also present in their usual place, for security, networking, etc. The system clock retains its position in the lower right corner, but is now next to a special button which will preview the desktop when you hover the mouse over it, and minimize all windows when clicked (the same way the Show Desktop button in Win XP works).
Though I felt that the new taskbar was more visually attractive than previous iterations, I was happy to see that grouping can be disabled and text labels are still available. I might be able to make the jump to the fully new taskbar eventually, but for now I think I'll make it look like my old XP taskbar, just for the sake of familiarity.
Start Menu
The Start Menu is very similar to the new style menu that made its first appearance in Windows XP – a design I'm not entirely sold on yet, but which is growing on me. With Windows 7, recently accessed programs appear in the main list, a button to access all programs is placed below that, and commonly accessed locations, like My Computer, folders for photos and documents, and Control Panel are all accessible from a list on the right column. The menu also expands to show more options for certain items on the list, which is a cool addition for quickly navigating to more specialized areas of the OS. Like the Taskbar, the Start Menu will take some getting used to for users of older versions of Windows, or who have refused to adapt to the newer versions of it (like me). Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience with it, and didn't find it to be too counter-intuitive.
Look 'n Feel
There's no doubt that Windows 7 is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessors in terms of eye candy. The glassy look of Vista's Aero theme is applied liberally throughout. Windows cast shadows, buttons glow, and shines of light move dynamically across the surface of windows as you move and size them around the screen. Icons are high resolution and look nice and sharp. A handful of themes are available for customizing the OS, and the colors of Aero can be changed to just about any color you want. I was also happy to see that multiple wallpapers can be set up to automatically change out now and then, and that windows animate as you open, close, minimize, and maximize them.
Overall, Windows 7 is a visual feast; so much so that at times I found myself surprised I was even using Windows. For users of Vista, it may not be a huge step up, but for me, an avid XP user, it was a very new experience, and I came off liking most of the changes. There were a few trifling issues here and there, but I've never used an OS that I haven't found graphical faults with, and this is beta software, so I won't complain much. Windows 7 is much better looking than other versions of Windows, and in my opinion is graphically superior to Mac OS X in some areas. We'll leave it at that.
Software Updates
Since I've not used Windows Vista for more than a few seconds, I don't know how extensive some of the updates to Windows 7 are, however I do believe that the updated versions of the calculator, MSPaint, and other built-in tools are new to 7. Calculator has been given extra 'programmer' and 'statistics' modes, and Paint has received a complete redesign, including a new ribbon-based GUI, like MS Office. I've not used either extensively yet, but the new features are always welcome.
Technical Issues
I've installed Windows 7 on the same computer twice now, once on top of a previous install of Windows XP, and once (after a botched attempt at installing Mac OS X on the same hardware) as a fresh install, and both instances were easy and trouble-free. I've used the OS for a few hours now, and so far I've had only two problems.
The first, which was slightly expected, was that the installation disc didn't contain drivers for some of my hardware. After all the driver problems Vista had, I expected something far worse, but it seems that Microsoft has ironed out most of the kinks this time around. Unfortunately for me, the drivers I was missing were for my motherboard's built-in networking and sound.
The sound drivers weren't all that important, because I have an ancient Soundblaster 16 installed (which strangely, did have drivers). The networking drivers however, were sorely missed, and even after fiddling with drivers downloaded and burned to disc from my primary computer, I could not get the Windows 7 machine connected to my network without installing a newer Ethernet card (a $10 purchase from Fry's). After installing the new card, the machine connected practically on booting up, and within moments I was online – at which point Windows 7 proceeded to download and install the correct drivers for my onboard networking and audio!
The only other issue I've had was one where Internet Explorer began to hang when I tried to open it. I've been submitting all the errors I find to Microsoft, however, so hopefully things will be even more smoothed out by the time they decide to launch Windows 7.
In the coming weeks I hope to try out some games and other applications on Windows 7, to test performance and compatibility. I'll report back on that as I do it.
Altogether, I came away from my initial Windows 7 experience impressed. Sure, there are things that I'm not entirely thrilled about, but I think that even at this early stage, the pros far outweigh the cons. I'll definitely be interested to see what the coming months bring to Microsoft's new OS, and I hope that each change is for the better. If you decide to take part in the beta, be sure to submit bug reports and suggestions as you test things; it'll ensure that we all have a better experience with WIndows 7 in the future!
By the way, I'll post some screenshots of my system when I get home from work!
