Windows 7 Beta: First Impression

Windows 7 has been carrying positive reports ever since the limited Beta was provided to a few niche Technology bloggers. While the individual opinions do differ on the details, all these bloggers agree that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.

It looks like Microsoft has finally got its act together. So when the Beta opened up for public download, I didn’t think twice before installing it on my laptop in dual boot mode so that I can get back to the XP installation anytime I want.

Installation:

Installation was a breeze. On my Core 2 Duo laptop with 1 GB RAM, it took about twenty minutes to install – with all the inputs required from the user taken in the first one minute. There are hardly three input screens. If you are installing it in dual boot mode, ensure you select the right partition here so that you don’t lose your existing setup. Then you simply sit back and relax. Windows 7 gets some brownie points here.

Look and Feel:

It resembles Vista in every possible way. In fact it feels like a lovely skin on the top of Vista. The task bar is a great surprise though and I love way the open windows are grouped in the task bar. When you hover your mouse on the task bar group, it shows all the open instances of that group. (See image below) Another set of brownie points into Windows 7 sack.

Here’s the best part of the UI redesign. After persisting with the same design for over a decade, Microsoft has finally revamped the UI of the following programs.

1. Calculator:

 

2. Paint:

However, notepad still remains the same. In fact, I wouldn’t want to add any frills to notepad because its USP is essentially its simplicity. So no complaints there. However, the GUI rework of Paint and Calculator is a nice gesture. They have the look and feel of a modern program now.

Usability/Options/Features:

When you install Windows 7 beta, you are given just the operating system. Yes, it is the “Ultimate” version of Windows 7 but still there is no office suite or internet tools such as an instant messenger or an email client. Another glaring omission is the Anti-virus software. When you boot into the system for the first time, the OS tells you that there is no anti virus software and provides you three options to choose from. None of these options are free. However you can download AVG anti virus software – the free version – from http://free.avg.com It works fine with Windows 7.

Here, let me take a small detour and talk a few lines about Windows Live. (You can download the latest version from Microsoft and it works fine on Vista too.)

The first thing you should be doing after installing the OS is to get the Windows Live suite of products installed. This provides you with a very useful set of applications such as the Live Writer for blogging, Live Photo Gallery, Live Mail and Messenger. I am typing this review in Live Writer. It can interact with any Blogger/WordPress/TypePad/LiveJournal based blogging platform.

Live Photo Gallery looks pretty much identical to what we have seen earlier. However one important addition is its ability to recognize the presence of human faces in a photo. When you open a photo in Live Photo Gallery, it identifies the faces in the photos and asks you to name them. Then you can search photos based on those names.

Getting back to Windows 7, working with network connections is now simpler than ever. Also there is a new option - “Adjust Commonly Used Mobility Settings”, which I found to be incredibly useful. It packs most of the adjustments we need to make – at one place.(Screenshot below)

The new Windows Media Center retains the same Vista interface with a couple of minor changes. For instance, you can now view the games installed on your PC from Media Center and play them. Solitaire has undergone a nice UI revamp and looks better now.

Windows Media Center of course runs on the top of Windows Media Player, which also has been tweaked a bit.

As you see, there is a preview option available for the songs. Also the interface is less cluttered and more user friendly.

Before I forget, let me talk about two new programs added to the standard repository of Windows. This blog post uses one of them quite extensively. It is called the Snipping Tool and it takes screenshots. You can take the entire screen or select a portion of it. This functionality, earlier provided in One Note 2007 – is pretty handy especially when you are writing reviews like this that require quite a few screenshots.

The other program is called “Sticky Notes”. It doesn’t need any explanation I guess. However it remains to be seen how many of us will actually use this when programs like EverNote are around.

There are hundreds of such minor tweaks and additions. The underlying principle governing these changes seems to be to provide an unmatched user experience.

The only issue that I have encountered so far is – Windows 7 failed to recognize the C drive of my XP partition. The other drives have been recognized and mounted automatically. The fix is simple though. You just have to fire up the Disk Management utility and assign a new drive letter to that volume.

The operating system, as said by Microsoft, works just fine on computers which do not have great specs. On my 1GB machine, the experience is very good. Sadly the same thing cannot be said about Vista.

Based on my first impression – a marathon run of about four hours on Windows 7, I give it a thumbs up – In fact two thumbs up. The beta is quite stable and is almost end user ready. Microsoft finally gets it right. I hope they ship this on time this year. It is expected to release during 2009 holiday season but already there are indicators that it might be delayed.

If you are still on XP and are contemplating a shift to Vista, hold on to XP for now. You may want to skip Vista altogether and go to Windows 7.

I will be talking about the individual features of Windows 7 in greater detail in the coming months. Hope you liked this teaser preview. Don’t forget to leave your comments.

Testing Live Writer Beta

I am just testing the new Windows Live Beta from a Windows 7 machine. This post will be removed immediately.

First Impressions on the Google Phone G1

Some of you are probably aware that I had ordered a G1 phone sometime back. The phone arrived in one piece in a large UPS box flummoxing my family members. When we opened the box however, we realized that 90% of the box was empty. The remaining 10% had the G1 – The Android Dev Phone.

Since I already have an iPhone 3G, the primary user of this phone would be my cousin. He didn’t have GPRS enabled on his Airtel SIM card and G1 wouldn’t boot until you supply your gmail id and log into it (Or you can create a new one.) Quite dumb I would say but it didn’t spoil the party because GPRS activation with Airtel took hardly 2 minutes. We were able to log into the phone to see our Email and Contacts already set up. It pulled the data from the Gmail server.

Before I forget…

1. Yes, you can forward messages.

2. Yes, you can send MMS.

3. Yes, there is Copy Paste.

All set for killing the iPhone? Read on… 

The surprising omission in G1 is the PC interface. The phone has no such interface. When we connect it to the PC, it shows up as a removable drive. How to install Applications? How to upgrade the firmware? Absolutely no clue out of the box. Yes, the phone has a lovely Google app preinstalled though and a search on Google solves most of these issues anyway. Maybe that is the idea!

My cousin had no clue how to transfer the contacts list from his MS Outlook to this phone. Finally he found a freeware application to upload those contacts to Gmail and then let G1 synch those contacts with the phone. Unconventional but it worked!

Following are my personal observations on the phone.

Touch Screen: If you are an iPhone user, you will instantly recognize the difference. It is not as responsive as the iPhone. You have to apply a little – a tad little – extra pressure and the response time is frustrating. You touch the screen and you wait for the phone to respond. If you are scrolling through a big list, you swipe your finger down and stare at the motionless screen. Then all of a sudden the scrolling starts.

Also the touch screen functionality is kind of limited compared to the iPhone. For instance, to zoom in or zoom out, with an iPhone you just have touch the screen with two fingers and spread them farther or nearer. The G1 has no such trick. It shows a Zoom In button and a Zoom Out button on the screen. You have to repeatedly touch those buttons to zoom.

Accelerometer: The phone boasts of an accelerometer but the native OS version that comes with the phone doesn’t support it. If I change the orientation of the phone, the display does not change. To get to the horizontal orientation, I have to slide open the keyboard. This is not a big issue because I am sure a firmware upgrade will fix it.

Keyboard: One of the pain points of an iPhone is that it has no physical keyboard and using an on-screen keyboard can get a little tricky. G1, on the other hand, has a nice keyboard that slides in and out smoothly. The layout is pretty much in line with the standard QWERTY computer keyboard. However, even if you want to type a single letter – you need to slide out the display and use the keyboard. There is no on-screen keyboard at all. This is a big problem because the sliding mechanism is prone to wear and tear. If you have to slide it out every time you type a message, I am not sure how long it will last. The build quality of the phone is excellent though. Again, a firmware upgrade can fix this issue by providing the on-screen keyboard as well.

Another pain area: There was no dictionary!

Camera: There is a 3.2 MP camera but the quality is so poor that my E61i with a 2MP camera outscores it completely. Also the camera has a dedicated button on the side of the phone unlike the iPhone where the “click” is also a touch. This button has to be pressed physically and most of the time it results in a shake. This can also be fixed by providing a touch interface.

Aesthetics: Contrary to the reports, I found the phone to be extremely pleasing on the eyes. It feels solid and the sliding mechanism is “cute” to quote my wife. I love dedicated Call and Call-End buttons. The track-ball is a nice addition. Battery life is not as good as the iPhone (which itself is quite poor!) but I expect a better performance when the next Android version rolls out.

Final Word: All these are my first impressions. The phone has a lot of promise and is let down only by the software that runs on it. I am sure, given “open” nature of the OS, the phone is bound to get better in no time and offer a great alternative to the iPhone. I am excited by this phone and I look forward to developing apps for it. All we need now is a proper Android Store and an easy interface to download apps from it – like the iPhone App Store.

Price: Including shipping and taxes: $571.

My rating: Thumbs Up. 3 out of 5. Not yet an iPhone killer though.

 

Creativity and Relativity

What is creative to me is not creative to you (and vice versa).

 

Well, what exactly is “Creativity”? Is it the ability to “create” something? If I write a sentence, I am creating a fresh instance of that sentence (doesn’t matter if I copied it from Wikipedia – it still is a fresh instance.) So the sentence thus created is a fine example of “Creativity”? I have my own reservations about it. However I do realize that Relativity plays an important role here. It all depends on the reference frame (and the frame of mind of the observer.) It is just not Physics. It is Psychology too. It is not sufficient to pinpoint the coordinates of the observer in the universe. You should also describe the mental makeup of the observer because this mental make decides how he or she or it is going to perceive what he or she or it is observing.

 

Maybe you are lost there. Let me take an example. Rama, apart from being a good boy, is our observer. Bheem Bhai is our second observer.

 

Rama is standing inside the company campus near the Smoker’s Gazebo (or whatever it is called). Bheem Bhai is standing right next to Rama. While there sure is a couple of dozens of inches of space between the two observers, we can probably assume with our fingers crossed that it is a fair statement albeit an approximation that both these observers are on the same observation platform. Thus any physical phenomenon occurring in the space in front of them should look the same to both. Right?

 

WRONG.

 

Rama has just been given a nice dressing down by his boss. Reason? Rama doesn’t agree with the Creative Framework that his boss has prepared. Rama is sure that his appraisal is going to be worse than expected. He is hence angry with every damn thing under the sun – over the sun – by the side of the sun – Java – MySQL (because all these are Sun products – at least now.)

 

Bheem Bhai is a remarkable young man. He talks only when it is absolutely necessary for him to talk. Most of the times he doesn’t even listen to what people around him say. The age old adage inside the campus goes thus. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction assuming we are not talking about Bheem Bhai.”

 

Why he is standing near the Gazebo today – is hardly a matter of debate – not because everyone knows the reason… but because everyone knows Bheem Bhai doesn’t need a reason for doing anything. He is pretty random. He hates Reason. (That’s what others say. He doesn’t say anything anyway.)

 

Enough of character development. In fact I am getting increasingly tempted to feature Bheem Bhai in my next unfinished story but for the time being let us move on to the “incident” that these two caricatures are going to observe.

 

You should make a mental note that the incident I am going to describe is exactly what it is… a description of the incident from my point of view. It may not be the actual incident because it is only my perception. To understand this perception of mine better, you need to – you guessed it! You need to understand me! So for the next five hundred words I must talk about myself – my childhood, my interests, my blood pressure levels.

 

Or you can do yourself a favor and bestow that esteemed title of “Absolute Observer” on me. I understand it is an “assumption” but maybe we can live with one.

 

The incident – A guy from facilities is carrying two large suitcases all the way from God knows where to a Tata Indica waiting on the road while the owner of the suitcases is smoking a cigarette (the whole area is a smoking zone, you see. If you don’t see, go back to my talk on – Absolutism of Relativity, the podcast of which is available on my blog.)

 

Let’s get back to Rama:

 

Rama’s view of the incident: The guy is smoking while the poor facilities fellow is fretting. This is the gap between the rich and the poor; the haves and the have-nots; the PMs and the SEs; the Delivery folks and the Facilities team; the Onsite traveler and the Offshore Reveler. World is indeed not fair. I see a gross social, economic, philosophical, materialistic, monumental, civic, geographical, Florida-ic injustice happening right in front of my eyes.

 

Now, Bheem Bhai’s view: There are two guys. One is smoking. The other is carrying two suitcases.

 

Depending on who you ask – assuming you have the ability to extract information from Bheem Bhai – you get two different observation reports of the same event.

 

That’s where the mental makeup or the personality of the observer assumes importance. When you define an observation desk or a reference frame next – ensure that you take care of the mental makeup of the reference frame too. Believe me, what you had for breakfast in the morning – dictates whether you find a particular post in Creative – creative or not!

 

Thus, The Special Theory of Creativity. Or is it the General Theory of Creativity?

 

And yeah! in case you are still searching for that podcast, here's a tip: Go get a life.

We Condemn!

Don't we? It is what we do - day in and day out - Condemn the dastardly attack on the spirit of X (Replace X with Mumbai/Hyderabad/Ahmedabad/Bangalore/Delhi/Guwahati/India). Our honorable home minister wastes no time in issuing a strong condemnation. We are experts of condemning. We are the best in this area. After every attack, we see a million such statements from every Tom, Dick and Harry. This apparently absolves them of the guilt, the responsibility and the blame.

You cannot blame me - See? I condemned it the moment it happened.

Condemn it damn it... The sooner you do it, the better it is for the media. They can show it as a "Breaking News" on their marquee. "So and So condemned the incident", "Expressed solidarity with the people of", "Pledged support", "weed out terrorism". If they don't have such breaking news, they will show live coverage of the strategic positions of our NSG commandos, the snipers who are trying to gun down the terrorists and the police strategy - Everything will be covered live and will be seen by everyone including those terrorists. Unless the Police ask them not to, the TV channels will not stop this coverage. After all, this is breaking news and TRP ratings are sure to fly off the roof.

So please condemn my deal politicians... Condemn as fast as you can. Make a mockery of our system.

Whoever is reading this - Take a deep breath and gather all your inner strength and say "I CONDEMN THESE ATTACKS. I DO. Now, what is the score of New Zealand?"