Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

My Windows 7 Experience

I installed Winodws 7 on my work computer yesterday. It is the latest Operating System from Microsoft after Vista. I was using Vista since long and had felt it was much better than XP. The initial release had many issues but the service pack that followed (SP1) fixed most of them. But still there were many areas for improvement in Vista, especially on the performance side.

win7

Windows 7 has successfully addressed many such pain areas in Vista and it performs better. Apart from the multi-touch support, there aren't many new visible features, as the Win 7 team has focused more on performance and compatibility issues.

It installed quickly and booted fast. The Enterprise edition (there are many editions to choose from) took only around 9 GB of my hard disk space after installation. The changing desktop background images are nice. The changes in taskbar look and behavior will not be missed. ‘Show desktop’ is now at the right most corner and has a new ‘peek’ feature. The quick launch bar is missing and taskbar takes up that role as well. Here you will have to do ‘Pin to Taskbar’ on applications in start menu to make them stick to task bar as quick launch icons. Then you wonder how to launch another instance of an application as the quick launch icon turns to a minimized application during launch. Well, learn a new short cut (Shift + Click) to do this. There are many such new features that is supposed to make our lives better. :)

I installed all my work applications and favorite tools and configured them to my liking. All of them worked without any issues. The touch feature in Windows 7 require a supporting hardware. We have one big HP Touch Smart system here where the touch features work nicely.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Multi-Touch Windows 7 Application

See this video of Multi-Touch Windows 7 Application developed by IdentityMine.



Read more about it here.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Windows Media Player 11 And Codecs

Windows Media Player 11 that comes loaded with Windows Vista is certainly great… lot more features and interesting look and feel… but wait a minute… Does that mean I don’t have to use Winamp any more… not exactly… again its based on our personal comfort feeling… I have been very comfortable with Winamp… I thought the new version of WMP will make sure that I do not require any third party tools to play my media files… But soon I realized I needed my Winamp back to quickly load and play my MP3s with better quality.


Then it was about video files… I have a huge collection of my favorite movies in my external hard disk. It was of all kinds of file types starting from dat to rmvb, avi and mp4. Most of them didn’t work in WMP. Some played just the audio track. After spending a good time on googling for suitable codecs to make it work the way I wanted, I ended up downloading DIVX and FFDSHOW. That did the trick. Now my WMP plays all kinds of video files. It just need some breathing time in the beginning to change to proper codecs. Then there was REAL ALTERNATIVE to play all RealMedia files without the need of installing the actual Real player with nagging registration forms.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Modifying Windows Gadgets

One of the things I like to be on my desktop all the time is my ‘To Do List’. It keeps on increasing, and hence having a look at the list everyday is necessary to remind me that I still need to do those things.

Windows Vista comes with a cute and tiny Notes gadget with a sticky note kind of look. But it was too small for me and I wondered why they never had settings to decide its size.



I tried downloading some similar gadgets, but none was satisfying. They either lacked features or were too clumsy. After reading a white paper on gadgets, I found it was very easy to make a gadget of our own. But it was easier to modify an existing one with the features we wanted. :)


I took a copy of the Notes gadget source files from C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\Notes.Gadget and placed it in C:\Users\Sameer\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\LongNotes.Gadget folder. Edited the settings.html file to add a text box for height and modified the javascript files to change the height of notes according to the settings. It was that easy and I had the ‘Long Notes’ I wanted.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

My Windows Vista Experience

As Microsoft promised, Vista really made me say Wow! Everything looked pretty and clear. It was easy to find and manage things. The glass like Aero looks were impressive. Flip 3D feature wass interesting.


Already Windows is known for working slowly and I hated loading it with more utility software… But those Windows XP days, it was necessary… Windows Search was the slowest and hence I ended up using Google Desktop Search. For picture management, there was Picasa. Another utility I loved from Google was their side bar with useful gadgets.

Now it looks like Microsoft has integrated all these utilities as Windows features. Search box is everywhere and it works instantly. Windows Sidebar looks stunning with lots of gadgets available for download. Windows Photo Gallery works exactly like Picasa and gives more control on folders and displays more information about pictures.



Speech Recognition is well integrated and I managed to open a notepad file and write some sentences without touching the key board or mouse. But I had a tough time making the computer understand what I really meant (thanks to my accent!). It kept on wondering ‘What the heck you are talking?’


And the Vista Security feature of popping up a window with ‘Cancel or Allow’ question whenever I try to run something, makes me laugh again and again… after watching that Apple Mac’s new ad.





So what is the sad part of it? Well… with a Core 2 Duo Processor and 2 GB RAM, I expected my laptop to perform with supersonic speed. But it is not. Sometimes it takes really a good amount of time to get things loaded. Other than that, everything looks great. I will write more as I explore more features.

Monday, February 13, 2006

My Windows Malayalam Experience

When Microsoft released Windows XP Language Interface Pack for Malayalam recently, I downloaded thinking that it would just help me localize application in Malayalam Language. I didn't bother to read much about it, before I installed it on my home computer. It asked for re-booting and I was taken back by seeing the Malayalam login screen. There were more surprises after logging in. The 'Start' button was named 'Aarambham' and all the default windows applications were in Malayalam.

I had seen forwarded emails and SMSs where in those imaginative people had visualized how a Windows XP Malayalam version named 'Janalukal XP' will have menus like 'Rakshikkoo...' (Save), 'Ellarem Rakshikkoo...' (Save All), Vettoo (Cut) and Ottikkoo (Paste) and Kuppathotti (Recycle bin). It was really funny and I had laughed a lot discussing these things with friends and creating more such equivalent words in Malayalam.

Now I was really amused to see the original Windows Malayalam items. All the default
applications were in Malayalam and the menu was having commands like 'Samrakshikkuka'
(Save), 'Ithaayi Samrakshikkuka' (Save All), ‘Murikkuka’ (Cut) and 'Ottikkuka’ (Paste). Recycle bin was called 'Punarupayogathotti'! After having fun for a while, I slowly realized how bad I am in my own mother tongue. The words like 'Prathisthapikkuka' (Replace) Chaithanyam (Refresh) confused me a lot, and the only way I could manage to do things in, was by remembering the icons and the usual places of items/commands in the English version. Who could ever imagine menu named ‘Paryaveshanam’ will open up our usual windows explorer and you need to click on 'Gunaviseshathakal' to see the properties of any files!


After an hour of real fun (Pity us… reading words in our own language is now like reading a joke, when we compare them with their English equivalents which we are used to since years), I tried all the shortcuts using 'L' to change the language back to English. Nothing worked! Then my aim was to locate Control Panel for some settings. Nothing worked!! At last I found the Language Pack listed in 'Nilavil Samsthapikkappetta Programukal' (Add/Remove Programs window) and managed to uninstall it to get my familiar interface back!

I don’t think any computer literate Malayali would love to have a Malayalm version of operating system to do his or her day to day works. Post your comments on this.