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Windows 7: Mojave My Ass
Microsoft has introduced a number of UI changes in Windows 7 that will be unwelcome to veteran Windows XP users.... Continued »
January 6th, 2009
Windows 7 Should be a Fixta Free For All
Okay, never mind that I’m a dinosaur with an affinity for 1990’s era User Interfaces – I think even my best critics will very likely agree with me that Windows 7, for all of its performance improvements and bling, is essentially one big service deluxe pack for Windows Vista. It’s the Windows Vista that customers were promised when they bought “Vista Capable” PC’s 3 years ago, and despite the rest of us dinosaurs that are set in our ways about the way we like to work, it’s the Windows Vista that even Micosoft’s most ardent supporters hoped that would finally replace Windows XP. Windows 7 is the Vista that we were guaranteed would work properly, the first time around.
Taking a page from the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, Windows 7 and it’s accompanying sales propaganda is the Microsoft corporate mantra equivalent of “Wait ’till next year” that everyone is hoping may actually result in that all-elusive pennant win — the end-user and corporate acceptance that Windows Vista was never able to achieve.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
January 5th, 2009
At $99, Roku rulez with incredible future potential
Roku is a couch potato’s delight, but there’s so much unrealized potential.
A couple of weeks ago I inquired with the folks over at Roku about their low-cost, $99, on-demand streaming content player, and asked if they could send me over an evaluation unit.
Man, am I in love with this thing.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
January 4th, 2009
The bell tolls for your magnetic media
Don’t wait to try to retrieve the data and content from your magnetic media. Chances are, some of it may already be unrecoverable and highly degraded. Act now.
This weekend, I put out a 411 to my circle of Internet colleagues for anyone who still possessed original licensed copies of 1990-era Windows applications and Operating Systems — the reasons for which will be apparent to you over the next few weeks. As it turned out, some friends of mine still had some of these dinosaurs lying around, collecting dust on their shelves and pushed into the recesses of their filing cabinets.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
January 2nd, 2009
Do you use the “Windows” Key?
In round two of Perlow gets a Bott Beating, I am educated by our esteemed Windows expert that you don’t need a “Run” function in the Windows Vista or Windows 7 Start Menu because “The Windows Key” combined with “R” is the same function. Wow, I didn’t know that. Really.
I have to admit here, this is probably not something that is unique to actual computer experts who have been using PC’s prior to 1981. I’m sure plenty of people have no idea what the Windows Key does.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
January 1st, 2009
Windows 7: Mojave My Ass
I’ve been playing with the Windows 7 Build 7000 (Beta 1) for several days now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that like Vista, it’s not a major improvement over what most users are currently experiencing with Windows XP, and is at best only a slight improvement over Vista SP1. In a number of cases, I think they’ve gone even further down the user rejection hole.
While I agree with fellow columnist Adrian Kingsley-Hughes that the Beta 1 release is relatively stable, and they’ve done a number of things to improve performance (although on more powerful systems these changes are less noticeable) and have alleviated some issues which have caused much frustration with Vista (such as the default UAC behavior) I find that Microsoft has introduced a number of changes that will frustrate many users.
Also See: Windows XP to Windows 7 User Interface Transition Gallery
I find it difficult to believe that Windows 7 was created to be easier to use than Vista — if anything, they’ve introduced a number of UI changes that make the system much harder to navigate, particularly if you’ve never used Vista and are going direct to Windows 7 from Windows XP, which is the path that many users will experience.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
December 30th, 2008
Look ‘Ma! A Drive-In Theatre for Ants!
Here’s some neat Star Trekky-tech that you’ll be able to get your hands on shortly — Texas Instruments‘ DLP Pico Projector Development Kit. The kit includes a Zippo lighter-sized 7.5 lumen projector unit, combined with a BeagleBoard embedded Linux developer platform. Have a look at this cool video demo put together by one of the early developers.
Why would you need a projector this small? I’m not sure, but I bet the best applications haven’t been conceived for it yet, although I suspect this might be one of the first uses. “Under the desk entertainment” re-defined. Heh.
Also See: TI Pico DLP Developer Kit Photo Gallery
Snickering juvenile humor aside, the technology really is quite impressive. The tiny projector is capable of HVGA resolution (640×240 – good enough to display a near-Standard Definition quality movie) so I suspect that the first intended application is ad-hoc projection for field use, such as in the military. Two of these tiny units stacked on top of each other could effectively project 640×480 at true VGA, with the appropriate software and hardware to stitch the two images together.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
December 30th, 2008
Sail through Airport Security with the Skooba Checkthrough
During last week’s Christmas break, my wife and I spent a vacation in the Bahamas, drinking Bahama Mamas and Kaliks, eating conch salad and relaxing on gorgeous white sand beaches overlooking pure blue water while everyone else was freezing back home in New York. I know, you hate me already. But here’s another reason to hate me — I didn’t have to pull my laptop out of the bag when I went through airport security.
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December 26th, 2008
Before you hit SEND…
It’s the holidays, and you’re pissed off. But do you really want to send an email like this? Think again.
Do you sometimes send emails you regret having sent? Or read emails from people who you thought should have thought twice before clicking that “Send” button?
Many of us have been using email for years — some of us for over two decades. But has anyone ever actually “taught” us how to write emails properly?
In the coming year, where many workers will be a keystroke away from unemployment, we should all seriously consider reading SEND: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe. Shipley was a former speech writer for the Clinton administration and is Op-Ed editor of the New York Times. Schwalbe, a new media professional who operates the recently launched Cookstr.com recipe web site, was formerly Editor In Chief of Hyperion Books, a prominent publishing house. Between the two of them, they’ve amassed a wealth of knowledge and wisdom on how and what one should email, and the pitfalls of sending emails improperly.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
December 18th, 2008
Tough Love with openSUSE 11.1
openSUSE 11.1 is packed full of features, but a lack of QA and user acceptance testing in this release may cause Linux newbies to seek out other distributions, such as Ubuntu Ibex.
I wanted to love openSUSE 11.1. I really did.
Over the years, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the SUSE distribution. During its life as SUSE Linux Professional, it was an incredibly polished commercial distribution with a huge amount of built-in software. In many ways, it was the ultimate Linux for those of us who swore by it for its stability and ease of use. When it migrated to an Open Source community project, I had a lot of hope that it would become immensely popular and take its place as the #1 free end-user Linux distribution with a stable support cycle.
Also See: openSUSE 11.1 Gallery
But this was not to happen — Canonical’s Ubuntu, who got extremely organized and banded together thousands of developers, managed to get their act together first, and the rest is history. openSUSE became relegated to the power users and developers, for people who wanted the “Cadillac” or the “Mercedes” with all the latest, deluxe, cutting edge features, but didn’t necessarily want to be babied or have everything handed to them.
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December 17th, 2008
How to ruin a perfectly good Sunday with Windows Vista
The HP J4580 Multi-Function Inkjet Printer, Scanner and Fax. The $99.00 multifunction device that was the icing on the cake that ruined my Sunday.
I always know when my weekend is going to be ruined. It usually starts like this:
Wife: Jason?
Me: Yeah?
Wife: Mom just called, we need to go to their house on Sunday, she’s having computer issues. She can’t print, or log on to dad’s laptop downstairs.
Me: Oh @#$%.
Some perspective is required — about a year ago, I got my mother-in-law a new Lenovo ThinkPad. It was pre-loaded with Vista Home, and I have been steadily maintaining it with patches, Service Pack 1 and everything needed to keep it healthy. So I was surprised that suddenly, things had started to go south.
Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
Jason Perlow (click to email) is a technologist with over two decades of experience integrating large heterogeneous multi-vendor computing environments in Fortune 500 companies. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Recent Entries
- Windows 7 Should be a Fixta Free For All
- At $99, Roku rulez with incredible future potential
- The bell tolls for your magnetic media
- Do you use the “Windows” Key?
- Windows 7: Mojave My Ass
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