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Windows 7: First 24 Hours with Peter

Peter — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:37:06 GMT

This is by no means a full review of Windows 7. I was beta testing for a while, and now I have my hands on the RTM (release to manufacturing). Naturally, I find a few more bugs in the release. They'll all be submitted soon via MS Connect.

First off, my install went smoothly. The hardware is around 1.5 years old with a new graphics card and hard drive. On first boot, my HomeGroup was found from my laptop running build 7100. Very impressive.

My raid array was found with no issues. I actually felt that I did not need to install any drivers to boost obvious performance. But being the nerd I am, I naturally hit the graphics driver first from Nvidia.

My only issues with tools like Nvidia's control panel are that Microsoft should be stepping up to the plate and integrating these kind of tools. It will be much easier for debugging when people are running raw drivers and no extra tools. I bet support staff would love that also. Bravo Nvidia for giving me an easy way to check my HDCP link!

Here is the kicker. I installed the Nvidia driver and it didn't require a reboot!?!?!?!??!! That shocked me something fierce.

Nothing really new here in the Performance control panel. Just higher numbers are possible.

Since Windows XP, I have always moved my personal documents to a separate HDD. It makes OS reinstalls a piece of cake. Things get a little more interesting by having setup. But I have all my data in a folder structure I've had in place for a while, so no biggie there for me.

MMmmm. Media Center.The main reason for this install. Nice marketing info there MS.... We continue...

I naturally go for the custom setup.

I'm not going to bore you with too many aimless screen shots. Here I am entering TV setup
For those familiar with TVPack and it's issues, you will love this. It is automatically installing PlayReady for you.

My CableCards are found (2x). Nothing new

Guide setup. Nothing new.

Display setup offers nothing new: just the same old confusion. If I select TV, I will fall victim to the interface "underzooming" to prepare for the overscan that doesn't exist on my TV. I can go on for a while on this topic.

Here is the new guide. Nothing too new. Nice options for "right clicking" and being able to change channel info. This was first introduced in Vista's TV Pack

This is the new "Start" screen. It is organized a little better. Movies is something I plan on playing with more. I think there is a lot of wasted space on the today screen. I wouldn't mind seeing some things moved around. If I scroll all the way up to the top, I can only see one item. Huge space waste. Take a hint from the new home screen on Windows Mobile 6.5.

I tried searching for showings, but whoops! No guide to search from? But I just looked at the guide. Was it not downloaded all the way? I went down to the Media Center tray icon to see what info is available. Under TV Pack (and possibly non-TV Pack), I could see what percentage of the guide was downloaded.

At this point, since I couldn't do anything useful, I shut down. The next day I turned it on, came back a while later, and the search worked. I'd love to see some more robust error messages here with some user options to intervene.

Here I am setting up my series to record. Unfortunately, the search offers nothing new except in the program data.
But in the screenshot listed above, there is a neat little window that explains what tv show I searched for. Ohh... look at that. Why are there HD and non-HD versions listed? This is due to my cable company having duplicate channels. I will later have to go through and delete these duplicate analog stations.

I would really appreciate a built in tool, possibly automatic when the guide is getting setup, to automatically swap and delete channels. Example: I want my channel 2 to be HD

Also, this screen's 'tabs' at the top are confusing. The screenshot above shows the default view. If I didn't see those arrows hiding in the corner, I would have never known that there was additional information available.

I had to fish around in the menus to find the options for series recording. A step back there. But the same options when I found them.

Bug: Here comes a bug. I wanted to search for "Law & Order". Searching for "Law" gets me where I need, but I decided to type "&" to refine my search results.

Boom, no results. I would qualify this as a bug. Without understanding how they're searching, I'll throw out a guess that & is jacking with their search parameters.

I decided to play with Internet TV again. After this step, I had multiple Internet TVs listed on the Start page. One listed as beta, one not.

Sweet Arrested Development! Wait.... I'm searching for series, but why am I getting individual seasons? I'd like to see all Arrested Development seasons listed under a single show name.

As I was getting ready to lay down and watch an episode of Arrested Development, I was met with "Acts". Not quite sure what I'm expected to do with them. They're all out of order anyway! I left, and have not returned yet to TV Series

What I really did enjoy was the Viral videos! This is such a great way to waste time. I did this until I fell asleep.

Bug: Every time I put in a USB flash drive or SD card, Windows pop up always shows up behind other windows. Rather annoying. Don't pop anything up if I can't use it. I'd rather go hunt through "computer" if I have to click extra times.

IE8- Someone needs to put their foot down and redo the version system. Here is my recommendation
IE6= IE6
IE6.1= IE7
IE6.2= IE8

So, IE6.2 is a good upgrade from 6.1. It adds a few new features, but overall gives me nothing too new. Read more on what my thoughts are on IE8 .

Bug: Every time I restore or maximize Media Center, my cursor gets centered on the screen. This is rather annoying when my cursor goes flying across the screen and I have to hunt it down again.

Conclusion:
Very exciting. I love the new desktop experience. I skipped over many things like this because they've been covered in great detail by others

When I began writing this blog post, I wasn't expecting to finish with 3 bugs and a few annoying rants about issues. But unfortunately, that's how I roll.

This was written to specifically lay out my first RTM impressions, more to come soon!

Peter

Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta 1 Released!!

Peter — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:44:57 GMT

Seriously, it's not a leak! They actually released it.

They fixed some major bugs that were killing me. For example, if you didn't use the on-screen keyboard, but used the an on-board keyboard, they text box would lose focus in a few places.

Go download it. Go fight of some apple fanboys. :-D (I just pissed off half of my friends) ((and no jokes about me having 2 friends or something))

Edit: OMFG, it destroys your notification settings. I understand it's beta, but I seriously got screwed a few times. I get all of my emergency call outs via sms...... I can no longer in good conscience recommend this. Looking forward to future releases.

Edit2: Problem has been corrected, doesn't destroy notifications.

Netflix profiles are now staying?

Peter — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:37:30 GMT

I recently brought up that Netflix was killing off profiles. Well, now they're doubling back on that. So since you're going to keep them around, how about you allow the second profile to use "Watch It Now"? I understand I can create 10 profiles and give it to my friends so they can use my unlimited, but I feel that can be programmed around. Just my humble opinion.

Dear Peter,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Edit: Oh ALSO! Please figure out a way for us to delete profiles. I can help you drum up the SQL command if you really need me to.

Opera Mobile 9.5

Peter — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:55:10 GMT

Opera Mobile 9.5 has been something many have been looking forward to for a long time!! It generates full websites and does NOT need the mobile version that many sites provide. Some betas popped up on ~~XDA recently~~ 1409 build. It performs EXTREMELY well for a beta on my Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) running WM 6.1. I highly recommend it to anyone using Windows Mobile!

Set this browser to be your default via the registry. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\:DEFBROWSER. I just changed :MSPIE to "/windows/operal.exe". You should be able to go back to MSIE, but why would you? I found that reg key from the 1409 link. Thanks ycavan

Edit: Modified pic to show actual screenshot of application. Pic taken with Remote Zoom-in

Edit2: Also like to bleed my memory and not release it, just FYI

Edit3: 1409 build added. much more stable, rapes ram less. Also added regi option for def browser. Why wasn't this in the app?

Getfirefox.com gets hammered as people look for FF3 - Servers die in process

Peter — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:20:51 GMT

I eventually got through and Firefox 3 wasn't even on the site at the appropriate time (maybe they took it down to limit downloads? nothing listed on their ~~blog~~ status). The site keeps going down. Hope they bring it up soon, they were putting a lot of marketing into the whole world record download within 24 hours.
As a partial defense to Mozilla, they did mention that you cannot use the self update as it won't count towards their record keeping. But it probably still shouldn't crash, eh.

Update: Finally got it downloading @ 2:00 PM CST (12:00 PDT). 2 hours late, but at least they still have 22 hours to go. Good luck!

Firefox 3

Peter — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:19:10 GMT

As Sam pointed out, hell has frozen over. I've practically changed over to Firefox and impatiently waiting for version 3 to come out tomorrow. I am one of the many who pledged to download tomorrow.
Compared to IE7, it supports my CSS much better. Which can be a problem. I make a site look perfect in FF, but looks horrible when many others pull it up in IE. No need to rant, but that's the way of the world. When developing, you must make it cross-browser. But this is also where the FF plugin for IE come in. I can easily change between browers within an IE tab to test a page. Also works well for site that require IE (OWA).
Another plugin is Ad-Block. I feel a bit guilty taking away ad content from sites, but most of the time I only do it for sites with HORRIBLE advertising. Example: Facebook. Advertisement are based on your personal status in your profile. I am listed as single, so they throw up singles ads. Makes sense right? Why is it that the majority of the ads sporting gay men? And yes, I know I opened myself up for jokes. Facebook is making a judgement, but they only looked as far as me being single. They didn't go the rest of the way to see what sex I listed as "interested in". *click* ads gone.
The plugin management, and autoupdate for each plugin is fantastic. I don't have to go back to the addon page to seek an update, it pops up and notifies me. Hooray. To be fair, FF3 RC3 has been a memory behemoth. I use it heavily @ work, and most of the time I cannot leave it running over night. It will typically crash once a day. Perhaps tomorrow will show improvement. Is that decent enough of a reason, Sam.