Apple Store visit

Something I don’t do very often is saying something good about apple even when I am a proud owner of an eight gig iPod touch. I’ve always know that iPods are not made for a life time so wasn’t my first one which a friend bought me in America and worked at least for two months absolutely correctly. But in the last month it froze every ten minutes and it was really unstable so I gone into a apple store with its worldwide warranty surprisingly they had not even checked the bill. And already on the next day I could pick up my new and shiny touch.

But I’ve tried out the new touchpad on the macbooks and it is not as innovative as I thought it will be and I’ve also heard some bad things about it, but the biggest question however is: why does a touchpad need to be a button at the same time? I mean every touchpad can be used as a left click by just simply touching it once!

Windows week

7 days with Windows se7en

Day 5: I’m using now Windows 7 since quiet a long time and yesterday I saw my first Windows 7 blue screen caused by Windows Media Player, first time in 13days (that’s ok for a pre beta version). Today I want to show you something called aero snaps. Aero snaps is that thing which can arrange windows with the help of a drag and drop or keyboard shortcuts. The action happens when you are dragging a window to one of the two sides of your screen it places it on to that side of the screen so that it is using the half screen or you can drag it to the top of the screen and it will maximize. Now while writing this post I’ve heard from the shake option to, when I grab a window and shake it than everything else is minimizing on the screen. You can make the same thing happen if you’ve got windows 7 and press windows key and up/right/left keys. Windows key and down arrow will minimize it.

Windows 7 superbar filetransfer

Sorry for the blinking on the side it’s caused by my screen capture software

and the uploaded video is cut together from two different tasks

Windows week

7 days with Windows se7en

Day 4: On the fourth day I want to show you the changes in the UI and the new folder tree. Yesterday when I’ve unlocked the superbar it made lots of other dramatic change too but let me begin at the very first thing. Yes, we’ve got a boot logo and it’s a really nice one, after a few seconds the same flashy windows logo invites us to the logon screen where a blue wallpaper with a shine falling down from the top of the screen welcomes and asks for the necessary password, all buttons, text boxes and user icons are arranged the same way like seen in vista. The desktop, UI, skins, start menu, and the already introduced new taskbar are wonderful and provide an easy way of use like never seen before. When you will sit down in front of a Windows 7 Desktop in about one or two years the first thing you will notice is the new taskbar but I’ve dug through it myself last time so let my skip it today. Number two you will notice is the miss of the sidebar but Microsoft hasn’t drop their Gadgets it is just integrated into the desktop now, just right click and above Personalize you can find the Gadgets menu. The Gadgets are the same like in Vista with some updates; all Gadgets can be expanded or used in the same small size in which there would appear in the sidebar, Gadgets like Weather shows weather forecast when offline. The start menu has a new ability when you stop with the cursor on an application the right side of the start menu changes into a list of previously opened files with the given software or tasks like resuming a playlist. In Vista when you clicked your username on top of the menu it opened up you Personal Folder now it is opening a new virtual folder called Libraries in it are five other virtual folders that reunites the users and the public Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Videos. In Vista the Folder tree grow all out of the desktop but now you can see on the left side of every explorer window a few trees Favorites, Libraries, Homegroup, Computer and Network.  The rest of the explorer window hasn’t changed a lot the search box is resizable, from the taskbar the icons disappeared and we became a new View. The hole appearance and skins are great it is not exactly like in its previous version but quiet similar just a bit lighter, just a bit better.

new superbar

Windows week

7 days with Windows se7en

Day 3: A Surprise every day that’s awesome. I finally succeed in activating the superbar and now I know why it is called superbar. The first thing I thought when I saw it on the PDC live stream was OMG, I thought that there won’t be any text on the taskbar anymore, I thought that it will look bad a fat. But it’s amazing it is grouping the task and coloring them just like IE8 is doing it with the tabs. You can pin the applications to the new taskbar to it will be like the good old quick launch but these icons expands and become the task of the given app. It is also possible to reorganize the order of those tabs just by drag and drop them. A cool taskbar is only a cool taskbar with a cool look which is provided by the UI of Windows Vista and Windows 7 the thumbnails already seen in Vista slides slowly with the cursor that is sounded with the color of the task on the bar a bit like if it were guided by a flash light. On the right side of every task is a arrow by pressing it a menu pops up from which you can control the media player, open up the History of IE or open other often used files. Microsoft has done a great job with the superbar.

Windows week

Day 2: I can’t say anything really bad on the second day except that itunes can’t handle my ipod touch (which crashes every 10 minutes anyway) but maybe that’s only a problem in the 64bit version and my download manager (Orbit! Great!) can’t handle the new subfolder system but that will be made by its developers. I’ve found some new old online games like Internet Backgammon but I couldn’t start the game because no one wanted to play with me, it is hard to find some win7 backgammon players! The explorer Window is lightly redesigned, all icons of the taskbar disappeared (hmmm…) and the sidebar in the left of the windows looks nice it’s cleaned up but I think it looks very, very similar to that in the leopard finder window.

link to full image gallery of Windows 7 screenshots

Windows week

7 days with Windows se7en

Day 1: I’ve installed Windows 7 Build 6801 today morning, it took about an hour to get a wonderful Desktop, the colors on the screen are just jumping out and beautiful the rest of it is quiet similar to a Vista Desktop. I’ve awaited the new taskbar seen on PDC but I haven’t found it yet maybe it have to be activated or is only used on touch screen PCs? I haven’t restarted the Computer yet so I can’t tell you anything about boot and shutdown times. But when I was installing something it was fast as hell.
The first big surprise I already noticed at the installation was that it recognized my 200GB hard drive connected via a RAID Control Card. Second even bigger surprise when I downloaded the newest South Park and it had the AVI Codecs preinstalled. From my big movie collection only the .rm and .mkv are not supported, yet. Oh and the new Media Player is huge too it’s absolutely cleared up there are absolutely no buttons in the new Now Playing Mod however I miss the transparent look of version 11. The system is stable sometimes I’ve got problems with IE8 Beta. But I have seen vista six month before lunch and it was horrible (not horrible as a mac mini back in IBM times).

budurl

Budurl is a cool online app, “shirk it. Spread it, watch in Grow” is their motto. It is an online app like tinyurl but it is way better and easier to use.

What is budurl and tinyurl? Budurl is an online service that can make from long web links a simple and short one. For example when I want to show someone this mice:
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=088 => http://budurl.com/uwyb

How can I make a budurl? Budurl is the simplest of these kinds of services you just simply have to bookmark this page and when you want to use that service you just have to open the page from your bookmarks and it automatically generates a short link for the previously visited website.

And there is more, you can also sign up to make your own aliases for example http://budurl.com/win7 and with a registration you can also track the popularity of you budurl and edit it.

Microsofts new add