Category: Windows 7

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I Do These Stupid Things…

…so you don’t have to. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.

Calibrating the Clear Type tuning on a Windows system with an LCD screen that’s displaying text just fine? Stupid. So, what did I do? You guessed it. The Clear Type calibration tool uses a series of displayed text images for the user to subjectively choose between in order to tune the Clear Type display. What I got recently out of playing with that was a lesson in “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

At 100% in my browser (pick any of four), here’s an example of what “tuning” Clear Type using the M$ utility resulted in:

Ugly, eh? Makes me want to poke my eyes out. At 120% or higher magnification, the effect disappears, though. Still, now I have to reverse the “tuning” or automatically CTRL+Scrollwheel to a different magnification when such artifacts appear. *sigh* Just a warning to Windows users, once again: if it ain’t broke…

Fortunately, I can always browse just as well in another OS in a VM. 🙂

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FWIW–not suchabigdeal

Folks over at the Win7 Forums are making a big deal out of the Windows Experience Index. My Win7 Pro box that’s cobbled together from a base of a 3-year-old HP Media Center PC is a kinda low-middle-of-the-road PC. Not so much a powerhouse (although by changing out the memory and primary hard drive, it could be a lot hotter), but Good Enough for most purposes, including running several VMs on top of the host Win7 OS.

FWIW,

I don’t know what the deal is with the Aero score. 1GB of discrete video RAM on the nVidia vidcard; Aero never bobbles or hesitates; smooth as silk. Something arcane I don’t care about. Son&Heir’s monster Asus gaming notebook scores higher on gaming, memory and hard drive marks but about the same on Aero scoring, so I’m not at all sure that the Aero score matters at all to my own experience.

Especially since I do much of my computing in Linux Mint in a VM. *heh*

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A Useful Tip for Advanced Win7 Users

If there actually be such critters. 😉

Create a new folder on your desktop. Rename the folder anything you want, followed by

.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

(Yes, the period begins the text to copy-paste in the file name, just like a hidden file or folder in Linux.)

It’s that part I’ve included above in the blockquoted section that’s important, because it creates a folder that’s chock full of user controls that are not otherwise easily accessible via the GUI. Sure, some–even most–of them can be accessed via various buried dialog boxes, but quick and easy access to 15 “Action Center” applets/controls, 10 Admin tools, management for all attached devices and much, much more all in one location is pretty neat.

Warning: some of these tools and applets can get the naive user in trouble, so don’t come crying to me if you fit the bill and go ahead and play in this sandbox. But if you have a good idea what you’re doing and make fairly frequent Restore Points, back up your system regularly, nothing in this collection will toast your Win7 install.

And it’s just too handy for words to have it all in one place. Especially in a Windows box. Very nice.

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Minor Gripe With Win7 Disappears

The chief appeal of Windows 7 for me has been the much-improved Windows Media Center. In fact, WMC is what convinced me to finally bid farewell to all my travails attempting to make an HTPC work right in Linux.*

But.

The proprietary “wtv” format WMC uses to record television shows has been the one and only gripe I’ve had. Every now and then, I’ve made desultory searches for a way to deal with the issue of burning off DVDs from WMC, since doing it “the Microsoft way” results–at best–in archive copies that are good for that alone, copies that cannot be played in an ordinary DVD player.

Now, that’d be OK if I had also gotten off my lazy butt and finally built a media server and connected it to TVs that we want to view the files from, but I’ve not, and my schedule looks to become hectic in the coming months, so something to convert the files would be nice.

Here it is. Simple really. Win7 already has a built-in .wtv-to-.dvr-ms file conversion facility. From there, it was a simple thing to find a free (yeh, I am a tightwad) utility to convert the file to something usable on an ordinary DVD player.

Bob’s your uncle.

Of course, later on, with file storage on the NAS I’ll build when I get a round toit (I lost mine somewhere and need a new one) and a media server the files can be accessed through, this will become less of an issue, but for now, DVD-Rs are cheap and easy to burn.

Finally.

It’d still be nice if M$ didn’t cause this kind of thing with its proprietary file formats, but the workaround is actually simple enough, and WMC is still far, far easier to implement and use, and more “complete” than any other approach I’ve found.

*Don’t get me wrong. I still use Linux Mint for a primary work platform (and other OSes for other uses), just running in a Virtualbox VM on a Win7 host. It’s just easier that way to have the advantages of Linux and still use WMC to record those shows we do want to watch, but in “time-shifted” mode–in better-than-hulu quality.

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M$ Virtual PC, XP Mode

Well, I’ve used VMWare’s virtualization with Windows 7 hosting Ubuntu (and had earlier used it in Ubuntu with VMs for another version of Ubuntu, Windows XP, Windows 98, PCBSD and several other Linux distros). Did NOT like the way the newest VMWare VMs worked with Win7. At all.

I have Linux Mint installed in a Virtualbox VM hosted by Win7. Works great. Love it–and the way Virtualbox integrates well and does full screen nicely.

I have tried to like M$’s Windows 7 XP Mode running under M$ Virtual PC. Really, I have tried to like it–and there are some things to like. Full integration with ALL the hardware on the host machine, right “out of the box” with no need for additions or extensions. OK, that’s nice. But XP Mode will NOT run full screen and still allow access to the Win7 host (and that’s just plain stupid–requires three CLICKs to get back to a Win7 app running behind the fullscreen mode WinXP or over to another VM running in Virtualbox–dumb, really dumb, M$); customizing the GUI is either a PITA or not enabled. IOW, it’s a subset of WinXP running in “crippled mode” for those times when one simply cannot get an essential older app to run in compatibility mode, or when one wants a basic interface to serve as a visual aid in phone support or some such.

But WinXP mode using M$’s Virtual PC is nothing near as complete as a real WinXP running as a guest under VMWare’s offerings or under Virtualbox (and yes, I did try that as well, hosted in Ubuntu, though at the time I could only install a 32-bit version using Virtualbox). Still, I suppose it does have a limited usefulness, although it’s certainly not reason enough for most folks to spend the extra money to upgrade to Win7 Pro (or Ultimate). Win7 Home Premium is certainly Good Enough for those folks who simply MUST use Windows–and I suppose I fall into that category now that I’ve become enamored with Windows Media Center in its now mature iteration in Win7. (Still, I’m very glad to be able to do most things in Linux Mint, hosted in a VM in Win7 :-))

Speaking of different versions of Win7, what features do Pro and Ultimate have that’re so appealing that one might upgrade to one of those versions (for more $$ of course) instead of Home Premium? “…let me ‘splain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up.”

Windows 7 Pro has only three features not found in Windows 7 Home Premium:

  1. XP Mode
  2. Domain support
  3. Backup to a networked drive

XP Mode? You already have my take.

Most folks on a home network do NOT need support for joining a domain. Businesses? Quite likely (which it is why it’s called Windows 7 Professional), but not necessarily in the cases of many small businesses.

The last was my reason for “going pro” when I purchased my upgrade. Well, that and the fact that I could purchase it for the same price as Home Premium, but that’s another story. Most folks won’t even need the ability to do backups to a networked drive built into the OS. Windows 7–all versions, IIRC–has a very capable backup program that can do backups–even disk mirroring–to various media. The Pro version just adds native ability to back up to networked drives. If a home user wants to do that, more than likely their best bet is to purchase an NAS (Network Attached Storage) device which will more than likely have networked backup ability built into the device.

Geeks preferring to build their own NAS might appreciate the native ability in Win7 Pro to do networked backups.

As for Win7 Ultimate, all it adds to the Pro version is Bitlocker encryption (and freebie solutions to do everything Bitlocker does and more abound) and support for an additional 35 languages. Most folks will need neither of those. Heck, I won’t even use Spanish any more, because of the Mexican government’s active support for outlaw invasion and subversion of the US. Yep. I’m boycotting a language because of misbehavior by the Mexican kleptocratic kakistocracy. *heh*

N.B. I do like the “java” background (pic above) that’s been around since at least Win2K. When I want to rest my eyes a bit, I can just let ’em “defocus” while looking at the background and my icons and mouse pointer appear to “float” on top of a background that seems to be about 2′ behind them. Nice optical illusion. 🙂

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Clean As the Driven Snow

I’ve grown to appreciate the new Win7 toolbar enough that when I have Windows “on top”. Aside: Linux Mint runs in a VM, now, so I no longer have to dual boot with Ubuntu, save in those rare instances when I attach an old peripheral and need hardware compatibility. Eh? Linux for hardware compatibility?!? Yes, like today when I discovered I’d misfiled the power supply to our nice scanner and had to plug in an “old” Canoscan LIDE 20. Apparently, Canon isn’t all that interested in making an older, $50 (retail, if you can even find it retail anymore) scanner compatible w/Win7. Yeh, Canon offers a driver it says works, but Canon lies. *heh* Anywho–Ubuntu is much better at having drivers for some older hardware, I’ve found, than Win7.

But back on point. Clean desktop.

Win7Desktop-December-09

Yes, I edited my location out of the weather widget. Anyone with two active brain cells can locate me, if they’ve read here long, but no sense giving trolls an easier time of it.

The point is simply that, since the Win7 toolbar is more useful than in previous iterations, and the “Start Orb” includes some very nice ease of use functionality, although I do have a bunch of icons on my desktop, I can hide ’em and not really miss out on getting things rolling whenever I need to.

Very nice.

Ubuntu (and Mint and most other Linux distros, as well as desktop BSD distros) includes other kinds of usability tweaks and features that allow me to keep clean a desktop when I run it, too–just differently.

No clutter. Quite a contrast to my RW desktop. *heh*

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I Hope They Don’t Think They Can Dance…

…but I appreciate the joi de vivre

Best part, IMO, is where the shopper (looks to be in his over-weight, outa condition late 40s second glance, mid-fifties, but all these kids look about the same to me *heh*) joins in and looks better “on the floor” than the store employees. *heh* As I said, I appreciate the spirit, but a little over the top for my own shopping taste.

h.t. to Josh on FB

Note the post where this video originated. A guy who claims to have been “hardcore Mac” for the past five years,

“I was absolutely floored by this experience, Microsoft has made a bold move to capture new market share. I ordered a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate edition…”

Well, I like Windows 7 well enough to have transitioned my own Wonder Woman to it (she’s “hard core’ Windows ;-)) and to have freely recommended it to folks who’ve had their gripes with Vista, but it’s not the bees’ knees. *heh* Still, nice to see some folks enjoying their work.

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Who Needs the “Right” Way?

Apparently I don’t. *heh* Sharing folders between my Linux Mint VM and the Windows 7 it was running on wasn’t really all that straightforward and I “needed” (OK, wanted) access to some files while in Mint–and to “drop some files off” in appropriate places from Mint to Win7. So, rather than sit down and just make file sharing between the physical computer and the virtual one work “right” I just used the Opera Unite feature I’d already enabled on the Opera 10.10 beta I was running on the Win 7 “side”.

Yeh, yeh, that meant I had to download and install the same Unite-enabled beta for Linux, too. Big deal. A few seconds’ download and install. Seriously. Mind you, this is really only so I can designate shared folders on the virtual machine as well.

And there I was: able to log onto folders I’d already shared using Opera Unite on the Windows 7 physical computer and drop in files I’d downloaded on the Linux “side” as well as access some media files and a pdf I wanted to read on the Linux side.

Nice. Now, if I just pack up the Opera Unite (XXXX computer, whatever :-)) url and password onto a flash drive, I can easily and securely access files on my physical machine (and even the VM, if I keep it “on”) when I’m out and away. Yes, I can do a similar thing using Logmein, but this is easier, more lightweight and just plain more elegant. Fun.

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Change Desktop Background in Windows 7 Starter Edition

Microsoft has clearly stated that changing the desktop wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition, the version that comes preinstalled on most new netbooks now, is NOT ALLOWED. I confirmed this by checking multiple sources (including Microsoft) and by checking it in person when Lovely Daughter brought me her new netbook complaining she couldn’t change the wallpaper.

It’s true, although why Me$$y$oft would do something like that that’s sure to irritate thousands of users is beyond me.

OK, so solution? Can’t just rename the file that’s used for the background and substitute one of your own. Nope. M$ has embedded a security hash in the theme dll to prevent that. So…

Stardock’s My Colors to the rescue. Seriously. Stardock’s Windows Blinds has been a powerful app for folks who want a LOT more control of the GUI than M$ seems to want folks to have, and it provides that power with a well thought out GUI of its own. My Colors is just a small subset of Window Blinds, but it does manage to give folks with Win7 Starter Edition a way to change their desktop background.

Just download and install one of the four FREE themes at the link and then run the app. It’ll change your entire Windows theme. You’ll then be able to select a background of your own choosing from within the app.

Voilà! Simple, effective and free. Lovely Daughter was able to change her background. Dad was once again the tech hero of the family. And M$ got a big fat raspberry. 🙂

BTW, HP is also offering a BUNCH of My Colors themes with some of its netbooks. Apparently all the HP Mini-110 models can download and use this.

BTW, in case anyone’s wondering, I’ve not installed Ubuntu 9.10 yet, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, I discovered after some reading that most of the bugs I was displeased with in the alphas and betas are still present. *sigh* That and an apparent 90% problem rate with upgrades. Oops. Bad Ubuntu! Bad!

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Win7 Upgrade Hack

OK, so it’s not so much a hack as a simple workaround. Paul Thurrot explains, here, how to do a clean install of Win7 on an empty hard drive using Win7 upgrade media. Now, for some that sounds like a license to “steal” a full install (~$220 for Win7 Premium) for an upgrade (~$120) price. Not cool, folks. As Microsoft’s Eric Ligman points out,

“For those of you without an existing Windows license to upgrade from, you should be aware that an upgrade license by itself is not a license to install and run Windows on your computer…

“In order to upgrade, you need to have a qualifying license to upgrade from. Regardless of what any hack says, a Windows 7 upgrade is an upgrade.”

Note the “For those of you without an existing Windows license to upgrade from… ” Now, many of us do have existing qualifying Windows licenses to upgrade from (Win2K through Vista, for the most part). They might be on “retired” (and unused) hardware–an old PC or hard drive–but if it’s indeed unused and NOT GOING TO BE USED AGAIN, then that installation ought to morally, and probably legally, qualify for an “upgrade” installation, even if it is on new hardware.

Now, of course there are the restrictions placed on OEM installations that do not allow reinstalling the OEM Windows OS on new hardware. But still… I do have non-OEM media/licenses that’s for qualifying Windows versions not installed on ANY computer. So, I may well take Thurrot’s workarounds and do at least one Win7 clean install from upgrade media. After all, that’s $100 difference in price, and I would be “upgrading” an existing (unused) license… Of course, that would leave me one fewer licenses to use for Windows VMs, but that’s not such a biggie.

Oh! Bright point: the “gold” release of Ubuntu 9.10 is… now. 🙂

Buh-bye!

Update after the jump:

Continue reading “Win7 Upgrade Hack”