Its been quite some time since I last posted here. Things are a lot different now. I am now working(as in full time) for the first time with a company that makes software. I have moved to a place where it rains a lot consistently and am quite enjoying it here. But that’s not what made me come and write here. The reason I am writing here today is because of a blog post that ramnath posted. I felt that it raised a valid point and I feel it too because daily I see myself going towards twitter to share the stuff that comes to my mind and not coming here to post it. There are quite a few reasons for that.
Twitter was designed keeping in mind the mobile phones and sms(that is the reason for 140 character limit). Blogs are for a completely different purpose: to share something that is more engaging and has more than a transient value.
Anyways, since this post is well over 140 characters, it gets posted here :).
After microsoft released the first Beta for Windows 7 last friday, I decided to try it out. First some introduction. I am primarily a Windows Vista user who tries to switch to Ubuntu every now and then but somehow never gets around doing it. I installed Windows 7 on a 3 year old laptop that Nilopa donated to me(just for some time). The specs of the laptop are:
- Intel Pentium M processor 1.73 GHz
- 512 MB Ram
- No graphics card.
Yes the hardware specifications are not exactly what Microsoft suggests and technically not supported by the release. But then I didn’t want to post the same stuff that has already been posted here, here and here. So, Here goes my take on it:
As you can guess from the hardware configuration, I ran Windows 7 without the Aero Interface. So what I reviewed would as “Windows 7 Basic”.
- None of the Fun Applications (as Apple refers to them) are shipped with the OS. Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger, calendar, Mail etc are shipped separately. This allows Microsoft to focus more on the OS and lesser on the frills as I generally call them.
- There is a “New” taskbar. In case you are wondering what is new in it, It looks a lot like the Apple Dock. You will basically see a bunch of icons for different applications in the taskbar. Active applications have a very subtle square around the icon while the rest just sit there. You can add new icons to the task bar by running an application once and then “pinning” it to the taskbar.
- There are several UI changes: As is usual with Microsoft releases, there are quite a many UI changes. What I am glad to report is that many of them are in the right direction. The wireless networking related functions can be accessed faster. The action center and system tray customization are good features to be included. Another commendable move is the removal of the ugly black sidebar. The control panel has been restructured while the search box in the start menu gives better results.
- And there are those not-so-good changes: There are many changes that leave the application behavior inconsistent. For example, The post-it gadget has been removed and instead a new application has been added that does the same work. The problem with the move is that applications do not behave the way gadgets do when you click on the “show desktop” icon on the taskbar (and this is really annoying). Some fundamental changes in icon behavior on the taskbar are not so welcome. For example clicking on an icon starts a new instance of the application but subsequent clicks just minimize or maximize the already running instance. This behavior is again similar to the way OS X behaves but not what Windows users would expect.
Here are some screenshots from my installation:
Various Applications in the new Version:
Paint, Wordpad and Calculator sport a sleeker UI
New TaskBar
In short:
Windows 7 is a release worthy of being called the next version of Windows. It adds a few new features to the OS and at the same time improves on the stability, usability and performance of existing features. Some features might take getting used to but they will be apprecited with time.
Hello there!
Have a blast on the New year! I am off for a two day trip. Will be changing the looks of this blog as soon as I come :)
avi
Ever since I was in my my third year at DAIICT I decided that I will start my own company some day. The stories of various people who have chosen similar paths and succeeded inspired me and motivated me to work towards my goal.Today I have completed my Masters and I am going to join Microsoft in a couple of months. I am really excited about the job but somewhere I feel that I did not do justice to myself and to my ambitions. I did not work hard enough…
I was thinking of various things that I might have done differently to be in a different position. I’ll list two of them here:
- I should have spent lesser time online reading news. I am hooked to Google Reader Full time. I follow more then 70 blogs through it and go through more than 400 blog posts/News items every day. This along with the number of times I just refresh the reader page amounts to a lot. I could have spent this time elsewhere with better returns.
- I should have stayed focused. I started a number of projects in the last one year. Many of them were to just learn something new and some were with the aim to create a new product. I hate to say this but I did not give enough time to the projects that had the potential to be something. May be I’ll start giving more time to each of the projects that I start. I’ll also try to reach a milestone in fixed time duration and worry about the last 10% of the features later on.
The two reasons mostly sum up my complaints with myself. So why did I writing them here?
So that I can come back in a year and see how much I have changed things and if I improved from what I am right now. :). Hopefully the title would then have to be corrected to “Why I can not be an entrepreneur for now. What did I do wrong?”
Happy New Year to everyone!
and the QuickPress feature is really cooool :)
