Hello and welcome to the XanderGC Blog, currently going through some behind the scenes changes as well as a bit of O/S changing. Yes, it has been a long time since my last post and yes, I did manage to completely miss last week's Song of the Moment, which soon I will be able to explain and hopefully make up for. I mean I cannot promise anything, but I'm hopeful that my latest project will be all that I hope it can be. Enough of my *trademark rambling on with the show! *Please note: My rambling isn't actually trademarked.Life Without XPAlright, first of all I just want to say that even though nothing horrible has happened so far, that is to say that it won't,can't or shouldn't, but I very hastily decided the other day that I would completely get rid of my old Windows XP O/S and replace it with the Windows 7 Beta. Should I maybe have kept the old data and had the whole dual boot thing going for me? Perhaps, but sometimes we all need to take risks. Besides, XP wasn't exactly being my friend lately.Wait, It's Installed Already?The first thing I noticed when I installed Windows 7, was how amazingly quick and easy it was to set up. It asked a few minor questions, such as if it was a secondary install or a complete full install. Then it pretty much did it's thing while I waited. The wait wasn't very long at all, maybe between 15 and 20 minutes top. It is very user friendly, with the wording it uses to explain what it is doing, to the way it displays progress. Windows certainly has come a long way.Vista: Take 2It may come as no surprise to anyone, but Windows 7 has a very Vista-like appearance going for it, which isn't a bad thing at all. I personally liked the look of Vista, it was just the other parts of the O/S that I was turned off from, like the "Windows needs your permission to continue" pop-ups that always, always popped up, even for the most basic of operations. Sure, Windows 7 still has that feature but it isn't nearly as annoying as before it can even be tweaked or turned off completely. Nice touch. There are so many elements of the new interface that might seem like eye candy, but from my personal experience, they are much more than that. Take the "Thumbnail Previews" for example, I cannot believe how useful it is to hover over an icon on the new taskbar, see what windows I have open and select between them. It makes keeping the desktop much more clean and clear of cluttered windows, a very nice addition I must say. People are calling it "Vista done right" and I must agree with them, it has all the aesthetic polish of Vista, with none of the problems that seem to have crippled that O/S.Issues? Send FeedbackPersonally, I rather like the Send Feedback idea. I mean rather than wait for a crash to occur, which luckily I have only encountered one and it was completely my fault, you can just click the "Send Feedback" link on any of the windows taskpanes that are open. Some may find it annoying to have those links readily available on every single window and dialog box, so the "Send Feedback" link is also available on the taskbar near the system tray.CompatibilitySomething that seems to be a rather occurring problem is compatibility. I have run into quite a number of programs that I used to use with XP that either no longer work at all, are glitchy at best or just fail to even install. Which is alright, I understand that programs have a hard time recognizing a new O/S and need to be updated in order to be compatible, especially when it is an unreleased, beta O/S, but when official programs aren't working right, I find it harder to excuse. I know Windows Live Writer and Mail, aren't technically apart of the Windows 7 suite, but I downloaded them and they installed, but they either crash unexpectedly or just don't quite work the way I intend them to. Writer for example, crashes if I change my view from Edit to Preview or Source, I cannot import a picture from the web and updating my blog theme, causes it to hang. I know that not much can be done right now, but it is kinda disheartening to have to use Blogger's post editor, when I could use a program that worked so perfectly before, which to be honest, Blogger is seeming more ancient the more I use it.Life Without Walls...AlmostWindows 7 is a brilliant step up from Vista and it's an amazing step up from Windows XP, which I recently discovered came out in 2001, how crazy is that? I have to admit that my experience with 7 has been a mostly positive one. Drivers were found automatically so that all my old hardware seems to be working with the new O/S, Certain programs that I use all the time work flawlessly; [Firefox, Paint.net, Avast, The Sims 2 EP's and SP's.] While some programs didn't fair too well at all, Daemon Tools, Windows Live Writer and Mail and a couple of other programs that I tried out but cannot remember right now. It's sleek looking, low end requirements, I mean hello, I only am running a 3ghz processor with 1 GB of ram and I don't see any lag at all, the new interface takes a bit to get used to, but in a short amount of time you will wonder how you ever got along without all the new additions such as Live Previews, Aero Shake, Libraries and Compatibility wizard. Life without walls? Not quite, but pretty damn close.Learn More: Windows 7
