Tag Archives: Microsoft

Windows 7 First Impressions

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Just managed to pull up Windows 7 RC1 from microsoft website. I immediately managed to installed it to my laptop ( I had to kill my Fedora 10 install in favour of Windows 7 :( , But I do have a copy of turnkey linux installed in my Vista under virtual box :) ). I have kept my vista Intact. Coming from Vista, here are my initial impressions (Approx 4 hours of usage). BTW, I have a Vaio CR35G/R  ( Core2 Duo T8100 2.10 Ghz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Intel 965 Mother Board, ATI Radeon X2300 Card with 128MB on board).Windows 7 desktop

  • Installation was pretty fast. I have my copy running in about 35 minutes (Including 2 restarts and my retarded slow DVD drive).
  • The new windows 7 taskbar…err… superbar is pretty good, but it will take some time for me to get used to. Plus I don’t like the amount real estate it takes up on the screen (it can be reduced though).
  • Windows 7 art work is very very good. Kudos to Microsoft for coming up with fresh art work. Not quite in the apple league, but getting there, fast.
  • Unlike Vista, Windows 7 does not thrash Hard disk ( Vista has the nasty habit of keeping your hard disk busy for no apparent reason).
  • Bootup, Hibernate – resume, Standby – resume times are a lot faster than Vista.
  • Laptop feels a lot more snappier with Windows 7 than with Vista.
  • The new Windows media player (Windows Media Player 12)  is a lot more polished and a lot better than Vista’s. However, I was not able to get ffdshow running with it though.
  • Changing wallpaper desktop themes are pretty cool. Windows 7 supports wallpaper cycling.
  • Reduced foot print. Windows 7 at bootup takes up about 30% of RAM as compared ~50% on Vista.
  • Builtin monitor colour calibration tool ( I don’t thing Vista had one).
  • I dont know why, but since yesterday night till today morning, I have received at least some 4 updates to my Windows 7. Cant you guys club em and do ONE BIG update? (Pretty annoying, but I guess since this is a RC, they will be fixing up a lot small stuff. I hope they have a better policy for updation cycle in the final release).

All in all Microsoft seems to have go it right this time around. I will seriously consider purchasing this once it comes out. ( And no, Microsoft is not paying me to say this :p, though if they sponsor me a desktop with Nvidia GTX 250 or ATI HD 4750, I can say how well Windows 7 will do on gaming front. ;)   ).

If you have anything to add (Good/bad/ugly things about windows 7), feel free to post em in the comments section.

Vista Native vs Windows 7 in Virtualbox

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Just out of curiosity I ran Windows assessment of Windows 7 running in virtualbox (with VT-x enabled) and Vista. Here is a screen shot of the comparison.

Vista Native vs 7 on Virtualbox 

What was amazing is the Hard disk Score, Virtualbox HDD is faster than the native disk !! Processor score is not too shabby, but I expected more with VT-x turned on. So how much does VT-x have influence on the Virtualbox performance? I tried to do the same score with VT-x turned “OFF”.

To my surprise, I got the same score! Perhaps, the windows assessment tool does not run any ring-0 code ( as far as I know, VT-x helps better management of ring-0 code).

Anyhow I’m posting the screen shot of the windows 7 on virtualbox with VT-x turned off.

Seven_virtualbox_without vt-x

If Anybody has a better idea as to why VT-x failed to change the scores in windows 7 assessment, please feel free to comment :)

Microsoft Surface Spoof

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I was browsing through wordpress blogs and I came across a post that posted this youtube video. I liked the comment on the part where he is routing to go somewhere on surface.

Due credit goes to :
http://burnsar.wordpress.com/2007/06/23/microsoft-surface-video-spoof/
 ( I saw this video there first :)   )