November 13th, 2009

Windows 7's first 100 days: So how were yours?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:35 am

Categories: Discussion, Downloads, Next-generation technology, Productivity, University, Windows 7, e-Learning

Tags: Memory Usage, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

It has been 100 days since the release-to-manufacturing copy of Windows 7 was available for download on MSDN and TechNet. I’ll put this very simply: I have never used an operating system which works so well, is as stable as it is, is aesthetically pleasing, and is a pleasure to use still even after three and a bit months.

There is nothing within Windows 7 which is particularly aimed at students or me specifically. The whole kit and kaboodle focuses on making it an all-inclusive “experience”, but after using it for so long now the experience fades into the background, like a sickly cough in a lecture theatre.

At the end of the day, all you want to do is check your emails or whop out a quick essay. You don’t particularly care about the experience and most of the time you don’t notice the surroundings. Even with Windows 7, this hasn’t changed.

Besides my computer going well and truly kaput, the way I noticed my positive experience so far is through the lack of negative experiences. I’m lucky in that I took advantage of pre-release builds and have seen Windows 7 grow from a small, insignificant Vista rip-off, into a mature, upstanding member of the technology community.

There is only one nit-picky thing that I still struggle to shrug off. The memory usage is far better than Vista but has a long way to go until it reaches levels that XP coped with. Even with a base level of applications open: Outlook 2007, Messenger, Skype and DisplayFusion to maximise my taskbar space, but it still looks like it uses more than it should. On a 4GB RAM system (in 32-bit mode, so only 3.5GB is really recognised), I’m still using 1.10GB on a dual screen system.

I understand why, as I have two screens and the Aero theme takes up quite a lot of memory usage, and doubled it naturally doubles (ish) the memory usage. But I like to keep my memory usage down as much as possible; at least that way I don’t hear my tower whirring away and going nuts.

The feedback I have had from other people, friends and colleagues, may seem somewhat cliched. But all have had a positive attitude towards it when mentioning it in passing. “Oh, Zack, by the way, Windows 7; I like”, for example. Seeing it running on my friend’s computer in a 24-inch crystal clear LCD screen combined with his justified semi-smugness about being one of the few, even still, to have the operating system on his computer, being another.

All in all, I’m extremely happy with everything as it is and how it works, what it does and when it does it. But what I say isn’t too important. How were your first 100 days?

More Windows 7 coverage:

November 10th, 2009

Size zero devices: How thin is too thin?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:42 pm

Categories: Hardware, Mobile computing, Next-generation technology, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Phone, Device, Laptop Computer, Notebooks, Telecom & Utilities, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Zack Whittaker

I don’t have the thinnest laptop in the world. If anything it’s quite chunky and quite sturdy, with the exception of the 180° rotating screen, but even then it’s a hearty bit of kit. My BlackBerry is wide and deep in size, fitting my hand quite nicely and the keys are big enough to tap away on quite comfortably.

But I only really noticed this today in comparison with other devices. The fashion at the moment seems to be “the thinner, the better”, as if we would starve our technology in vain effort to slim them down. It’s like this crazed fashion stint we have at the moment is focusing on “size zero technology”.

Why?!

Take the Motorola Razr. The phone is incredibly thin which seemed to be the “killer feature”, besides the simplicity yet expandability of the features within the operating software. The name, stemming from the phone having a similar look to a cutthroat razor. Thin, stylish and incredibly popular with over 100 million being sold.

But for some, strange reason, if I was to be given one, the first thing I would do is stress test it: I’d flip open the phone and push the screen back and see how far I could stress it before it snaps. Perhaps it’s a standard “want” to do; if something seems flimsy or so thin it could break easily, I’d be tempted to give it a go.

Ultra-thin devices like these do seem to be a trend that is spiraling forward and sees no sign of subsiding. But if you were to look at other progressions in technology:

• Mobile phones started out huge, then got smaller, then got slightly bigger and thicker - where they seem to have stayed.
• Televisions started out with small screens but huge in design, then the screens matched the size of the design, and now the bigger they are the better they are.
• Laptops were initially small but chunky, and now they’re thinner and wider.

Maybe through time, the “size zero” phase will wear off. There may be a time where consumers (and therefore manufacturers) will realise that devices need to fit quite a bit of stuff in there. With the MacBook Air, it lacked FireWire and an optical disk drive because they would have thickened out the laptop too much.

I’ve never seen anyone with a MacBook Air. Perhaps those considering buying one realised the importance of an internal optical drive.

My personal opinion? I’d say try and make devices proportionate, but don’t aim for a specific thin design. Fit everything else you can in there first, and then figure out if you can slim it down a bit.

I don’t like my partners to be stick thin. I like a bit of chunk on them, along with the vast majority of English men. Just as technology should be; you know,  something that you can actually feel in your pocket, excuse the innuendo.

So, how thin is too thin? Do you prefer skinny or chunky? Strange question, perhaps, but I hope it’s at least in context.

November 9th, 2009

Paperless students? Never going to happen

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 1:22 pm

Categories: Discussion, Environment, Gratuitous rant, Hardware, Mobile computing, Productivity, Skills development, University, e-Learning

Tags: Student, Netbook, Computer, Productivity, Netbooks, Nettops & MIDs, Hardware, Zack Whittaker

We live in an age where technology is rife. We cannot escape from mobile phones, computers, netbooks, projectors, e-readers and the rest of it. But students simply couldn’t go paperless. The chances are it’ll never happen, or at least if it does, when I am long gone, dead and buried.

The argument for going paperless is stronger than ever, with learners wanting less paper and more technology, and teachers wanting less paper to manage and deal with.

But this is schoolchildren we are talking about, not university students. Students in higher education relish using paper; allowing them to spread their thoughts across multiple pages and across multiple work surfaces.

The incentives are there; every time I print something off at university, because I need to use my university username and password to print, it records when I do so. But every print-out leaves me with a pop-up guilt trip reminding me of how much of a tree I’m destroying in the process.

Forget computer science students because they are a minority at most institutions. Of course they will be using their netbooks, Androids, smartphones and iPhones to tap away at during a programming lecture. But the rest of the students on campus are more than happy with scraps of paper, Post-it notes and lined paper with scribbles on. The rest of the campus doesn’t engage with technology on an everyday basis so they are not missing out in the first place.

For this, when writing up the notes later into electronic format, we can have a sense of satisfaction about screwing up the paper and chucking it away.

How would you write notes onto a PDF file? Yes, you could use a touchscreen computer, but handwriting recognition isn’t an exact science yet and a pad of paper and a Biro pen are far cheaper.

Taking books out of the library aren’t always possible. Sure, we could grab our Kindle and download the book but why should we when we are spending thousands of our respective currencies on library provisions? Some books are only available for an hour at a time, so instead of scanning them into a computer for later analysis, photocopying is a more sensible solution. Those who remember will know that I have proven this one long ago.

In realistic terms, the only computers students want to use is the one computer that they are using to write their essays on. Besides that, technology has yet to really have a major impact on the main brunt of our degree courses - the discussion seminar - where all you need is your mind and your mouth.

Me? Personally? Many can testify to this. I would be far happier with a handful of notes, scribbles and scraps than a netbook. Would you rather go paperless?

November 9th, 2009

10 technological changes in 10 technological years

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:39 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Events, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Multimedia, Social networking, Uncategorized, Weird and wonderful

Tags: TV, Computer, Internet, Productivity, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Zack Whittaker

My goddaughter is now of an age where she can talk, understand, and learn pretty well. She’s six, so she’s pretty on the ball with things already. The things that she experiences and sees are so different to mine, and she’s only 16 years younger than me. Times change quickly, I know, but it hit me like a wave of elderly welfare benefits disguised as a petrol tanker last night.

The differences between her generation and mine, even though separated by a few years, are stark and somewhat terrifying in hindsight.

1. There were nine planets in the solar system.

For years it was always nine planets and then one day, they decided it was either going to be eight, or about twenty. They chose eight. After seven years of primary education, the world I knew it was, well gone actually; they had just declassified it as a planet.

2. A BlackBerry was a fruit, and so was Apple.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if people heard either “blackberry” or “apple” and genuinely thought of the fruit. But I cannot seem to shake the association now built with my mobile device. People say, “have at least one of your five a day”, whilst I have my BlackBerry in my hand making a call. I’d say that counts, right?

3. To load up a program, you’d have to slam in a cassette tape and wait 20 minutes for it to load.

My first computer, a CPC-464. It was so heavy you could have used it as a concrete block in a mafioso novel. A ten year gap is a bit of an exaggeration but I knew people still word processing back then on green-screened computers. When the 5″ floppy disk came out, we saw that as a mini-revolution in itself.

4. You had to dial into the Internet.

You couldn’t just have the Internet flowing in and out of the computer like an out of control waterfall. No, you had to tell it to dial another computer and information would be sent to and fro through, what was essentially a computer-to-computer phone call. What’s even more weird is that it’s still available, even today.

5. A single gigabyte hard drive simply couldn’t be filled, through no will of trying.

My first computer bought for the family at Christmas 1996 (yes, it had Windows 95) had a 64MB memory and a single gigabyte of storage. My dad said, “we will never, ever fill that”.

6. Video tapes the size of Bibles would be the only way to record a television programme, and even then it’d only be able to record an hour and a half at best.

Even though I’m far too young to remember the Betamax vs. VHS war, I most certainly remember hoping to watch back an episode of The Simpsons which I’d recorded on the oldest VCR in the world, and it failing miserably with tape lodged and jammed in every bit. It was heartbreaking.

7. The only porn we could find was the shredded remains of a dirty magazine under a bush in the local park.

This generation of Internet kids has seen more porn than any other generation of children, ever. When I was a lad, one morning you’d be lucky enough to find a shred of it near where the local dirty old man sleeps in the evening. “Kids having kids… blame the parents”: no, blame the Internet.

8. There was only one computer in the house, and if there were more, only one would connect to the Internet at a time.

No such things as wireless back then. The only wireless you’d know of was the radio, and that would have been a main source of entertainment. It may sound like wartime England, 10 years ago wasn’t that far away. Windows XP hadn’t come out yet, I was still in a school uniform and the computers we used were running Windows NT.

9. There were no such things as flat screen televisions.

At least commercially, anyway. I come from a generation where our eyes are slightly closer together yet facing slightly the opposite way from being transfixed by a CRT television for all these years. And I laugh now at the “radiation warnings” from the sticker on the side of the box…

10. Twitter was called “text messaging” and the “tweet” only went to one other person.

Yes, a new phenomenon which many don’t realise that was basically text messaging. While sending a text is still far more popular than Twitter, the days where news would slowly seep its way through a friendship group (nowadays a “social network”), whereas now you can update literally anyone and everyone in the space of 160 characters.

A lot can happen in ten years.

November 4th, 2009

Best use for touch hardware yet? FarmVille

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:13 am

Categories: Hardware, Mobile computing, Multimedia, University fun, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Mouse, Multi-touch, FarmVille, Mice, Games, Hardware, Peripherals, Personal Technology, Zack Whittaker

Day in and day out here I write articles spanning all kinds of relatively boring topics to the untrained eye. Today, after my previous article analysing the business model (yawn) of online game phenomenon, FarmVille, I discovered a rather interesting twist to the gameplay.

FarmVille is grid based, similar to SImCity in the way that every item uses up a number of squares on the canvas you have. A chicken will take up one square, a plantation patch will take up 4×4 squares, and buildings take up far more.

Considering the game is so hefty on the computer’s resources through Flash consumption and CPU usage, even with scaling the graphics down a notch, even moving the mouse can be laggy, slow and sluggish.

But throw in the multi-touch capabilities of my laptop, I can simply tap away using multiple fingers at a time and plough, plant and harvest my entire canvas of crops in a fraction of the time simply by not using the mouse cursor.

Flash doesn’t support multi-touch just yet, but perhaps with the help of the iPhone popularity, it will soon be around the corner. But for gaming purposes, a single finger at a time is still far quicker than the mouse.

Is this the only practical use I have found for multi-touch computing? Perhaps so, yes.

November 3rd, 2009

Google Wave: Has potential, but let loose too soon

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:12 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Google, Multimedia, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Skills development, Social networking, University, Weird and wonderful, e-Learning

Tags: Google Inc., Google Wave, E-mail, Corporate Communications, Online Communications, Marketing, Zack Whittaker

Google Wave has annoyed me so far. Because I am set in my ways and stubborn enough to brandish anything new, exciting and radical to my everyday routine as “a giant waste of my time”, I saw Wave as more of a challenge than anything else.

At the moment the only real factor it has in its favour is the real-time collaborative space, and of course I see this as a positive from a students’ perspective in a university enterprise arena. But besides that, it has very little substance. Sure it has the avatars, the ability to change the colour of certain items here and there, and it’ll give you a contacts list. Besides that? Mostly unfinished features and no obvious end-game.

One of my favourite features so far is the “Sign out” button in the top right hand corner. This has been particularly useful when pulling out my own hair, trying to work out what the hell is going on, and becoming confused as to what is being said.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 31st, 2009

Web addresses to extend to non-English languages

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 8:46 am

Categories: Breaking news, Environment, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Web 2.0

Tags: Web, ICANN, Web Address, Channel Management, Domain Names, Marketing, Internet, Zack Whittaker

Since the very start of web addresses being introduced, only Latin-script (English) based web addresses would work. With the ever increasing number of web addresses in use, the regulatory body assigning domain name details has approved the use of non-English addresses.

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, have approved a number of internationalised domain names (IDN’s) which could be rolled out as soon as next year, the BBC report.

At the moment, only the standard 26-letter English alphabet from A-Z and including 0-9 can be used. This new process will allow in theory any language using any symbol to enter web addresses.

This move will see the next generation web for non-English speaking users, and in short, will make the Internet truly local to whoever may use the web.

From two weeks time, ICANN will begin accepting applications for IDN’s and will make the first ones available from mid-2010.

Starting with the most popular languages, according to the BBC article:

“It is likely the majority of early non-Latin net addresses to be approved will be in Chinese and Arabic script, followed by Russian.

Some countries, such as China and Thailand, have already introduced workarounds that allow computer users to enter web addresses in their own language. However, these were not internationally approved and do not work on all computers.”

This appears to be ICANN’s first major step since receiving autonomy from the US government last month. How web browsers will respond to this it is not so clear. However, with Firefox, by entering in a non-English set of characters, seems to convert it only to English when submitted.

Will this make the Internet more accessible? Have your say.

October 20th, 2009

One second: The time it takes to wipe three years of work

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:43 pm

Categories: Discussion, Gratuitous rant, Hardware, Multimedia, Offers, Productivity, University, e-Learning

Tags: Hard Drive, Disk, Machine, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows 7, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

It only takes a single second, some would argue a micro-second, to wipe an entire hard drive. Without the need for electromagnetic pulses or an industrial liquidiser, all it takes is a single spark of electricity to cause havoc with your entire electronic life.

How do I know? Because last night I hit the realisation that I lost everything in a blink of an eye. Here’s how, kids.

Two days ago, I was in my home office working on my degree work for the week. Just as I finish writing up a seminar, I stretch my legs, kicking out the all important power cable at the back of my machine. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, so I was annoyed at potentially losing what I had been working on but not particularly fussed. Read the rest of this entry »

October 19th, 2009

Windows 7 puts Vista into perspective: Only a 'failure' in retrospect

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:53 am

Categories: Discussion, Events, Microsoft, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Security, Skills development, Windows 7

Tags: Operating System, Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Corp., Computer, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

For my 400th post on ZDNet, this is one mass response in reply to a barrage of emails I have had to suffer over the course of the last couple of weeks.

It seems as though I, and the just-over ten thousand students on my university campus, are not the only ones complaining even still about the abomination that their respective university IT department, hand in hand with the devil itself, Microsoft, have bestowed upon us: forced through product lifecycle periods to upgrade our campus to “the latest and greatest”. Feel free to detect any element of sarcasm in the last sentence.

Only short two weeks ago, I had high hopes for the upgrade. I genuinely thought that a new lease of life could be drawn through the lungs of Microsoft’. I was not only wrong, but overly optimistic.

For those who have been reading since day one, I started with a touch of empathy towards the then-new operating system. Over time, and predominantly over the course of Windows 7’s beta cycles, I became more attached to the lack of resource hogging, sluggishness and a general freshness which could only be rivalled by that of a gentle breeze on a summer’s day in the countryside.

But I did start off with a very good point. Vista back in the day was perfectly fine. Only in comparison to a better benchmark of Windows 7 do we start slating the former operating system. Something that widely popular blogger, Long Zheng, mentioned earlier on this morning on Twitter was this:

To begin, I start with the question as mentioned in the title. From there I hypothesise the potential failure of Windows 7 and look into the few people we can blame for the potentially epic failure of Microsoft’s next operating system.

Who do we blame for Vista, and Windows 7’s potential failure? –>

October 12th, 2009

Cloud storage vs. flash storage: Security vs. simplicity

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:15 pm

Categories: Cloud computing, Government, Hardware, Productivity, Security, University

Tags: Security, Storage, USB Flash Drive, Robin Harris, Flash Memory, Zack Whittaker

A few weeks ago I bought a Kingston 2GB flash drive from my local music store. Only after I got back home that afternoon I wondered why I had actually bought it. I had no use for it (pot calling the kettle black) but still thought it could be useful in one of those moments where data transfer was needed and the network had failed hopelessly.

Robin Harris seems to think that optical media is as good as dead. As a non-read-only medium, I would agree with him. They are still mighty useful for distributing films and software, but flash drives seem to be taking over in some respects.

So in a vain effort to publicly and perhaps pointlessly sort out this conundrum for myself, I’ll weigh them up against each other.

A majority of the developed world has access to a broadband connection. In places such as schools, colleges and universities, the Internet connection is far faster than those commercially available. With integration now between Office and SkyDrive as well as other non-Microsoft combinations, saving a document to an online storage provider is as simple as saving it to your hard disk - and the file is available from anywhere, including mobiles.

Flash drives for me are my last ditch alternative. It’s my backup for when my Internet connection occasionally drops (feel free to detect the element of sarcasm in that). Then, I use it to transfer data from one place to another; more often than not a large movie from a friend’s computer to mine or vice versa. I also use it as an ultimate backup device - in the context of needing to give a presentation and having it there in my pocket just in case the network epically fails.

Then again, for those in student accommodation living in halls of residence, they will find that their Internet speeds are throttled to act as a quality-of-service moderator for other users. That said, most student digs are supplied with Ethernet ports, so the intranet speeds between computers in your block of flats are incredibly fast. To transfer things across the Ethernet network is near instant and much quicker than transferring to a flash drive and walking to the other room.

Flash drives also have the potential to become riddled with malware which not only self-replicate once they plug in to other machines but they exploit the nature of the device itself by installing auto-starting applications. Network administrators spend many of their waking hours clearing up the mess from devices which are infected with malware as I have previously written mentioned.

But because the cloud services are actually a bunch of servers sitting in a warehouse in Arizona and provided by organisations who can afford it, the need to protect themselves is greater than that to protect the user. So you can bet that the physical security and anti-malware features will be pretty substantive. You don’t get this on a flash drive.

However with flash drives, you have the feeling knowing that the data you hold dearly to your heart is in fact dearly in your pocket, protected and safe. It cannot be hacked into or manipulated when it is in there. You can be mugged, though. But even if you get rained on and your flash drive gets mashed in the weather, because of the solid-state goodness, the device is almost always salvageable. It’s not an excuse to drop it in the bath or down the toilet, though.

Ultimately, the cloud is a highly scalable and as secure as it can get, and the flash drive in my opinion is outdated and insecure - especially in corporate/government and university environments - but more practical than optical media. When it comes down to it, user preference always counts more than what I or any other journalist says. Personally, I prefer the cloud, but simply because it’s free.

Thoughts?