Day: March 2, 2009

Posted on

More on my Win7 experience

After 8-9 months’ daily use of Ubuntu 8.X as my main OS and a few weeks using Win7 beta as an alternate OS, I find some things about Windows 7 to be better than I expected from my exposure to both Vista and XP, Microsoft’s two most recent desktop OSes prior to the Win7 beta (that I’m using about 50% of the time now)… and some areas where Ubuntu still waxes ’em all. No perfect OS. *sigh*

UAC: not really that much more intrusive than Ubuntu’s method of insuring the user really does want to make system changes or install apps. A tad, but not by much.

Drivers: the only real failures of the Win7 beta to load appropriate drivers have been loading a WinXP driver for a printer so WinXp users on the network can print to the printer connected to this machine and an inadequate driver for the Hauppauge TV card–oh, a driver loaded, but it didn’t enable all the card’s features. The first problem was easily solved by installing the printer driver on any XP machine that needed access and the second by installing the Hauppauge Vista driver from the card’s maker. No biggies at all, at all.

I do NOT like Win7’s media center software, but acceptable substitutes (Hauppauge’s own media software or GBPVR) are perfectly fine by me. They Just Work, without being irritating. Mostly, it’s M$’s insistence that I’m a crook (all the DRM crap) that’s irritating, and I’m not in a mood to be forgiving about that. Won’t be, either. I really, really do NOT miss all the DRM crap when I’m running Ubuntu…

I’ve gotten used to the toolbar straightjacket. Don’t like it much, but I can use the limited, clunky M$ toolbar. Takes more clicks than being able to easily set up multiple independent toolbars, but I can work with the parent/child toolbars. (Win98, 2K, XP, and Ubuntu etc., all have the advantage here, IMO)

Getting rid of the default “category” display in Control Panel really helps. As good as earlier Windows Control Panels–better in some ways–and better than Ubuntu management GUIs.

Network management sucks dead bunnies through a straw, but I can (temporarily) work with Win7’s inability to play well with other OSes on the network. At least, now that I have printer sharing working (though not properly, still working) I can live with it for now. I don’t like the difficulties sharing files with computers using other OSes. Perhaps M$ will work through those issues between now and the RC.

I’ve had some issues attempting to remove external drives from a Win7 session. That bothers me, since I oftentimes need to switch between different external hard drives (six USB ports are just not enough for all the USB peripherals, so I guess the “solution” is just to add more ports, eh? *sigh*).

I’ve only had one experience with OS instability using this beta, and it was my fault. Really. I tried doing something I knew probably wouldn’t work, even though Win7 warned me not to, and the OS blew up, failed, fried, died, *kablooie!* (“Where was the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!” Oh, there it was… ) Had to reinstall. My fault and I knew it. IOW, this OS is pretty fault-tolerant. *heh*

Push-Shove: between Ubuntu and Win7 beta, it’s about a dead heat on installing and using VMWare Server and different VMs. Some things easier in one or the other OS, some things harder or more complicated. Maybe Ubuntu by a frog’s hair… but maybe not. Just… different. For example, VMWare Tools are a hair easier to set up when in a client OS hosted on a Win7 box, but on Ubuntu, if a client makes setting up VMWare Tools messy, Open-VMtools is an easily-installed option. Different strokes.

Changing desktop backgrounds is needlessly complicated in Win7 as opposed to Ubuntu or even XP for that matter, but working around the limitations of the interface is a trivial and only slightly irksome exercise.

One weird thing: sometimes my wireless mouse/keyboard combo start acting hinky in Win7–keyboard drops letters I have too typed *heh* and mouse begins skipping, acting as though I either have or have not CLICKed a button I have not or have CLICKed, etc. Reboot in Ubuntu: no problems. Reboot into Win7: problems return until I re-register the wireless devices with the transceiver. Weird, and it has to be a Win7 issue, since the session in between two misbehaving Win7 sessions is a native Ubuntu session where the devices do NOT misbehave. Irritating, but takes less than 10 seconds to correct–for a couple of days–each time it happens. Maybe Logitech has a solution.

Still, this is a usable OS. “Better than Vista” isn’t necessarily damning with faint praise. 🙂

All-in-all,

Posted on

CPAC Weekend

OK, I’ll confess. Rush Limbaugh gives me a rash. But as shallow and pompous (yes, pompous, Rush) and irritating as I find him to be, he does find an acorn every now and then. If you’re interested at all in the occasional acorn, the CNN videos (posted as ten segments) are here. Yeh, that’s another thing. Long-winded (over an hour and twenty minutes!) blowhard. Oh. Well. And heck, when he attributed words that are central to the opening statement of the Declaration of Independence to the Preamble of the Constitution, he darned near lost me with his (typically) subliterate proclamation. Blowhard.

The Android Known as Romney (not my fav politician for many reasons–among them my concern over how and when and where his battery pack is recharged) apparently “won” the “straw poll”… by showing up. Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin and Ron Paul made respectable showings in the meaningless poll by NOT showing up. Heck, I enjoyed The Angry Chipmunk’s speech from last year rather more than Limbaugh’s peripatetic peroration this year. And Paul’s opening comments last year were more on point, and, for that matter, prophetic. (“If we continue to do what we’re doing, we’re going to have a financial crisis.”) This year, his speech: better than Rush, still an irritating chipmunk voice (yeh, yeh, I know that’s a minor quibble, except for the fact that his voice actually causes me pain–that piercing, whining tone exacerbates my tinnitus--*arrgghhh!*). His words read far, far better than they sound.

But there were some genuine high points at CPAC or me, such as this typical Newt Gingrich speech, coming in with bushels of acorns at about half the length of Rush’s bloated yak where the acorns are hard to notice amid all the bloviation.

Go to American Solutions for more information on positive steps YOU can take to avert flushing your children’s future down the toilet. The Twelve Step program suggested there isn’t as strong as simply passing The FairTax, but it’s certainly better than anything else proposed in the last quarter century.

THIS is an open trackbacks post. Link to THIS post and track back. 🙂

If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.

Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis