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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,

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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.

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“Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd”*

“Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. *Do the little things [in life] that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.”–reputed to be the last words of St David–Dewi Sant— patron saint of Wales (the only Celtic patron saint native to the land of which he is considered patron), said to have died at age 100 on March 1, anno domini 589.

See the (surprisingly) decent short bio at Wikipedia for more on this remarkable man, and wear a leek or daffodil in his honor today if you will. (A day of bread and water–and “herbs” if you like–wouldn’t be out of line, either, in honor of the monastic rule he established for his order. :-))

Tomorrow, St Non’s Day–another Celtic saint, also Welsh, and St David’s mother.

Update: this short hymn I wrote several years ago, hymn tune DEWI SANT, in honor of the early missionary work of St David and his fellows. Just click on it for a larger view:

DEWISANT-1.jpg

(For fun, take this short quiz at the BBC website. You already know how I scored, right? ;-))

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Honk!

Found this at Woody’s Place but thought it needed a lil punching up, so… the original (punched up with color in The One’s logo) and an alternate text version:

honk-mort-emb

honk-mor_5

While you’re at Woody’s Place, check out the Glenn Beck video in the post.

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Gun Control

I guess I ought to watch Boston Legal…

This brings a smile to my face EVERY time I watch it! Over and over and over…

h.t. Chaos Manor View

As long as I’m making folks spew their coffee at their keyboards/screens,

The man who would’ve SMASHED The Obamassiah at the polls. FLAT. OUT. SMASHED.

Sadly, YouTube has removed this gem of a public service spot… Oh, sigh. Did I download it while it was available? Too lazy to search for it right now, “I got inertia, oh yeah, it’s so easy… I got inertia…” (from an obscure 70s song).

BUT! Here’s the video, currently available, although with Spanish “over-titling”–

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Oh, FUN!

How in the world did it take me this long to find Free-Scores.com and its “radio” streaming feature? Just too cool for words. While most streaming services seem to focus on popular crap, I’m able to define a broad or narrow range of what I deem “classical” and have it stream randomly or as my own designed playlist. Whiloe I’ve found a number of other “internet radio stations,” some of which are close to my needs/desires (see my right sidebar for a decent station in Australia), this one offers some unique advantages for my uses–particularly free downloads of the SCORES! (The inclusion, on the download page for a score, of historical/biographical info is a nice plus, as well.)

I like. Ever since Dr Karl Haas died a few years ago, even classical radio stations, for the most part, have been–save for re-runs of Haas’ program–mostly either just stale Romantic-period only or that with a mix of modern crap thrown in. *sigh* Of course, I enjoyed Haas’ program almost as much for his musicological commentary as for the wide array of music he featured, but yeh, it was definitely the selctions of really good music well-performed that had me coming back to his program for years.

Nothing like his commentary survives in any of the prissy, inbred platter-spinners’ patter today that I can find, so just finding another source with a wide array of good performances of excellent music is a real nice find.

Of course, if you wanted to explore more limited genres, I suppose Free-Scores might do that for you as well, but since the actual SCORES are available, that knocks out a lot of crap. Nice to download a score, then play the piece along with reading it. Sometimes nuances are more obvious that way, and it frequently gives me ideas of how I’d change a performance were I directing/playing. And for those who want it, the default “human performances” can be altered to be computer-only or human/computer “performances”–and sometimes even I prefer to hear a piece as a well-wrought midi file, espeically when just reading along for analysis).

Just fun!

Seriously recommended for anyone who appreciates a wide range of classical music, and even for those who do not but are open to learning something new.

Seriously delightful!

Continue reading “Oh, FUN!“

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Quote for Today

Ann Coulter, while throwing some jabs at the hysterical “historical” this, that and t’other comments about the Obamassiah’s reign, asks why other “historic” events aren’t on everyone’s tongue:

But as long as the nation is obsessed with historic milestones, is no one going to remark on what a great country it is where a mentally retarded woman can become speaker of the house?

*heh*

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Hmmm, Could Me$$y$oft Be Onto Something?

I’m slowly becoming more used to the way Win7 goes about things, including the “holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, silences, impalpabilities, insipidities, and the like” that still plague the Windows family of OSes. I do find that Ubuntu more than adequately fills those lacks, however, while maintaining its own lacks quite well, thankyouverymuch. *heh*

Yeh. No OS that satisfies me. Yet.

Running virtual machines in a Win7 host is easier than dual booting, though. Barely. If I could run Win7 in a VM hosted on Ubuntu 8.10, I’d be happier, but I’ve had no luck with that, yet. Still, the things that it is easier to do in Win7 are generally in the realms where I’ve bitched about Ubuntu (and Linux distros in general) being frustrating: media apps, particularly midi related. Sure, one can get midi working in Linux fairly easily, even if it does require a bunch of jumping through hoops initially and much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth to keep it working. In all Windows past v.3.1, midi Just Works. Notsomuch Linux, yet.

But then, Me$$y$oft has to throw a spanner in the works with DRM crap. *feh* Up theirs and the horse they rode in on. I will NOT use WMP to play media files. Heck, playing media files in a properly-configured Linux client on a Win7 host is a more pleasant experience than using WMP. And *feh*2 on using the crappy built-in media burning offered by M$. But at least simple (and free) solutions abound for that issue. Still, the OOTB experience attempting to burn CDs/DVDs in Windows is execreble, while in Ubuntu, it’s virtually transparent.

Still, warts and all, I’m growing to very nearly like Win7, and that’s going some, since I’ve not thought very highly of any M$ OS since Windows 2000 (well, except for a taste of Windows Home Server in a trial and another sip of Server 2003–each of which seemed to be pretty good at what they do, just not worth the $$ for me).

YMMV, but Win7 looks like it could be a solid hit for M$–maybe a two-bagger that M$ can stretch to a three-bagger with intelligent marketing.

Ah, but there’s the rub.

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Greed, Lies and Bluster: No “Hope and Change”

After perusing Bobby Jindal’s after SOU address, I went back and tried studying the Obamassiah’s peroration for genuine content. Hasn’t anyone told him he’s living in the White House now? Why’s he still giving a stump speech, trying to win the election? Oh. Right. That’s ALL he knows how to do: lie, bluster and appeal to greed in order to win elections. Actually DOING ANYTHING MEANINGFUL while in office is a concept that he’s so far not had to tackle. I suppose one could argue that bullying for something–anything!–to be done now, without thought or reflection, about the economy and then turning the idea over to his political cronies to stuff with pork and political patronage does constitute doing something, but something useful, something meaningful? I think not.

Once again, as far as actually serving in the office he’s been elected to, the Obamassiah is simply phoning in his part, rehashing his fav teleprompter-fed sound bytes.

Again, why is it that anyone thinks this guy’s an orator? Oh, yeh. Because he’s (sorta, kinda-almost) black (cafe-au-lait with a twist) and gets the affirmative action bye? I suppose one could always join with the optimistic young boy who, shoveling through a load of horse manure on Christmas Day, enthusiastically proclaimed, “With all this horse shit, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

But with the Obamassiah’s record of non-accomplishment so far, I’m not willing to shovel too much more horse shit to find a pony buried (probably smothered, dead) at the bottom of the pile.

Red State has some useful links on the SOU bloviation. And the comments are worth reading as well. In fact, I’ll just steal one of the best:

E Pluribus Unum commented,

“For those unwilling to sacrifice an hour of their lives, I found a condensed version that I think captures the spirit entirely”

So, what’s the condensed version he posted?

*heh*

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An American Hope

Go and read Bobby Jindal’s response to The Obamassiah’s most recent pack of lies, hand waving and subtle deceptions (known in other circles as a “State of the Union Address”). Here’s a sample:

To strengthen our economy, we must promote confidence in America by ensuring ours is the most ethical and transparent system in the world. In my home state, there used to be saying: At any given time, half of Louisiana was said to be half under water, and the other half is under indictment. No one says that anymore. Last year, we passed some of the strongest ethics laws in the nation and today, Louisiana has turned her back on the corruption of the past. We need to bring transparency to Washington, D.C., so we can rid our Capitol of corruption and ensure we never see the passage of another trillion dollar spending bill that Congress has not even read and the American people haven’t even seen.[emphasis added]

I said in 2004 that Jindal was a strong future presidential candidate. After his performance since then–both in Congress and as Louisiana’s governor–I’d be perfectly happy to see a 2012 presidential slate that included two highly effective governors: Jindal and Palin, and though I’d prefer Jindal at the top of the ticket, I would be happy with Palin there, as long as someone of Jindal’s character were backstopping her.

Continue reading “An American Hope”