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Windows 7: Tested in depth – Crave at CNET UK

Deserved or not, Microsoft had dug itself a cold, deep, dark hole with Windows Vista. Users demanding that Redmond extend the life of Windows XP wasn’t exactly something they could be proud of, either. Bombarded by complaints and negative press even after the first service pack was released, the bar had been set high for Vista’s successor: Windows 7.

Luckily for Microsoft, Windows 7 is more than just spin. It’s stable, smooth and highly polished, introducing new graphical features, a new taskbar that can compete handily with the Mac OS X dock, and device management and security enhancements that make it both easier to use and safer. Importantly, it won’t require the hardware upgrades that Vista demanded, partially because the hardware has caught up, and partially because Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Windows 7 accessible to as many people as possible.

It’s important to note that the public testing process for Windows 7 involved one limited-availability beta and one release candidate, and constituted what some have called the largest shareware trial period ever. As buggy and irritating as Vista was, Windows 7 isn’t. Instead, it’s the successor to Windows XP that Microsoft wishes Vista had been, and finally places it on competitive footing with other major operating systems such as OS X and Linux.

Microsoft is offering six versions of Windows 7: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, OEM and Enterprise. The three versions that Redmond will be promoting most heavily are Home Premium, Professional and Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, although Starter will also be available to consumers.

Windows 7 will support both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The bare minimum requirements for the 32-bit include a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of available hard-disk space and a DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver. 64-bit systems will require at least a 1GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 20GB of free space on your hard drive and a DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver. A touchscreen monitor is required to take advantage of the native touch features. Do note that some users have claimed to have limited success running the Windows 7 beta with less than 1GB of RAM, but that’s not recommended.
Installation

Microsoft is offering several paths to install Windows 7. People can buy a new computer with the operating system already installed, upgrade from Windows XP or Vista, or do a clean install on a computer the user already owns. The clean installation took us about 30 minutes, but that will vary depending on your computer.

The upgrade procedure is different depending on whether you’re running Windows XP or Windows Vista. Vista users merely need to back up their data before choosing the Upgrade option from the install disc. Both XP Home and XP Pro users will have to back up their data, then choose Custom from the install disc. Custom will have the same effect as a clean install, although it’ll save your old data in a folder called Windows.old. Once you choose Custom, you’ll need to select the partition of your hard drive that contains Windows XP, and then follow the instructions to enter your product key and allow the computer to reboot as needed.

If you’re not sure if your current computer can run Windows 7, you can download and run the Microsoft Security Essentials from Microsoft.

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Windows 7: Tested in depth

I’m a huge fan of ultra portables! They are small, light and just powerful enough to do what you need to get done. Sure I run Windows (in VMware), but for me the Mac OS better fits my lifestyle, but if you are looking for an ultra portable you are going to have to look beyond Cupertino.

So, when I got the Dell mini 9 all I wanted to do was put Leopard on it. With a little bit of tinkering and some help from a good blogging buddy Kevin Tofel I was able to painlessly install 10.5.4 on the little guy.

Kevin advised me that the chipset and processor of the Dell mini is so similar to the MSI Wind that a special slipstreamed version of 10.5 customized for the MSI Wind would be perfect (and painless) to get the little guy up and running.

The steps to Leopard-ize the mini are actually quite simple and easy to follow. After you download the slipstreamed ISO and burn the 3.2GB ISO to a DVD you boot up the Dell mini off a external DVD drive (Press 0 (Zero) at the BIOS screen) and installed Leopard as usual.

Once you complete the install all components except the wireless, ethernet, and sound worked. After some searching on the Dell forums I found two files that enabled the disabled Broadcom wireless adaptor and audio chipset, which you can find here.

Unzip the archive from the previous step and open Terminal in Leopard on the Dell mini. Type in sudo and drag the bcm43xx_enabler.sh icon to the Terminal window. Press the Enter key, type in your admin password on the keyboard and follow the instructions. (For those who don’t like to read – basically press Enter four times and restart).

When that is done, restart the computer and run the ALC268_Installer1 application (That was included in the archive) to enable sound chipset on the mini.

After you restart again and you have a fully functioning Mac OS enabled Dell mini 9.

UPDATE: I have had success updating to 10.5.5. Just use software update to download the update and reapply the patches. Proceed with caution on the update, milage may vary.

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Run Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) on a Dell Mini 9

LAS VEGAS — If there was one overarching theme from the Consumer Electronics Show here last week, it was that absolutely every device in our lives is becoming a computer connected to the Internet.
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Isaac Brekken/Associated Press

“TV is interactive TV these days. You will use the same TV and the same remote control, but have completely different functionality,” said Jong Woo Park, President of Samsung’s digital media business.
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Times Topics: Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
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Laura Rauch/European Pressphoto Agency

“You ought to expect that to be more and more unified – three screens: TV, phone, PC – one cloud-based experience,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft.

The sleek little Palm Pre phone promises to make it easy to call your friends by looking up their numbers on Facebook.

A new version of the Ford F150 pickup truck will let contractors check service manuals by browsing the Web from an in-dash computer.

New televisions from LG, Samsung and others will let viewers watch movies from Netflix and other Internet sites.

In two years, 90 percent of all Sony products will connect to the Internet, Howard Stringer, the chief executive of Sony, predicted.

These developments can be seen as more of the electronics industry’s constant quest for something new to tantalize gadget lovers.

But there is a darker side, too, for the companies that make the devices. If the most exciting thing about your phone or truck or TV is the Web sites you go to and the software applications you download, then the device itself is less important.

That is what happened to the computer industry, with its relentless price pressure and indistinguishable products. It is hardly an attractive business model, even for consumer electronics companies already accustomed to low profit margins.

“We are commoditizing new technology,” said William Wang, the chief executive of Vizio, which has become the country’s third-largest seller of televisions after Samsung and Sony. Now that flat-screen high-definition televisions have become commonplace, he said, “the technology shifts are not that dramatic.”

Other, more established brands beg to differ, of course. Their screens are thinner and their pictures are brighter, they advertise. So consumers will inevitably be drawn to them, they argue. And they are working on what they hope will be another technology on view at the show, one that makes mere high-definition sets seem passé: Three-dimensional televisions.

But the more established brands know the battleground is shifting. Increasingly what will differentiate one TV from another is the software it runs and the Internet services it connects to.

Even Nokia, which sells more cellphones than its three nearest competitors, says that much of its future success will come from selling services, ranging from music to maps, that operate on the phones.

Another approach is to try to embed computer chips with Internet connections, all of which keep getting cheaper and smaller, into ever more unusual devices. Sony introduced an Internet-connected alarm clock that will wake you up with your favorite music videos and traffic forecasts for your commute.

Asustek, the giant Taiwanese electronics company, has developed a touch-screen computer that hangs on a wall. It also has built a PC into a keyboard that lets users surf the Net on their TVs . In the future, according to Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek, everything in your house, even your bedroom mirror, will be a computer display.

So even as electronics makers struggle with the extremely sluggish economy and the relentless competition, they can look forward to finding ever more shapes and sizes in which to embed their gadgets.

Here are some edited excerpts from interviews with top executives who attended the electronics show. More of these interviews, along with other articles about the electronics show, can be found at nytimes.com/ personaltech.

Services via Devices

“For a long time, our business was defined as cellphones. Hardware is not enough. We need to have a wider array of services and content. This is a major change for us.”

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia

“In the next five years, we are not only going to provide hardware, but content through our devices, in an easy, more convenient way. TV is no longer just TV. TV is interactive TV these days. You will use the same TV and the same remote control, but have completely different functionality.”

Jong Woo Park, the president of Samsung’s digital media business

“You ought to expect that to be more and more unified — three screens: TV, phone, PC — one cloud-based experience. Live, essentially projecting through consistently, and appropriately, to the three screens.”

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft

The Evolving Television

“Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. One view is that the Web, a browser like Firefox, Chrome or I.E., will be right on the television in the next couple years. Another view is, no, a PC-based Web is just too complex. The second one is the phase that we’re in now.”

Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix

“Three-D television. That’s really a major, major revolution coming into consumer electronics. That’s one area where we are placing our bets”.

Woo Hyun Paik, chief technical officer and a president of LG Electronics

“Over five years, the big concept that changes for a consumer is, ‘Gosh, do I have to track whether I have my content on my PC, on my phone, on my TV and how do I move it around?’ ”

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices business

New Computer Shapes

“A fraction of what we sell, a much bigger percentage of it, will be lower-priced client form factor. It may have all the functionality of a PC, but maybe it’s smaller. Maybe it is just an LCD display with PC functionality in the back, that is sitting on a desk or hanging on a wall.”

Dirk Meyer, the chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices

“To make the whole digital home possible, in the eventual state, every wall becomes a display. The mirror should become a screen. You already watch the mirror.”

Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek

Coping With Recession

“Customers are spending less, but they are still buying. They are putting off vacations, so they can buy TVs and stay at home. Last year, customers bought $900 and $1,000 laptops. This year they are buying $500, $600, $700 laptops. They are not buying cars, so they’ve got to buy something.”

Gilbert Fiorentino, chief Executive of the Technology Products Group at Systemax, parent company of CompUSA and TigerDirect.

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To Connect to the Internet, Just Turn on Your TV

LOS ANGELES–The differences between Vista and Windows 7 are subtle–sometimes so subtle that they can go unnoticed.

This point was exacerbated by the fact that the build that developers were given a chance to take home last week doesn’t have the new taskbar that represents the most visual difference between Windows 7 and today’s Vista desktop.

Microsoft went to the trouble of shifting all the computer kiosks at the Professional Developers Conference over to Windows 7 on Tuesday. But because the version lacked some of the key visual features, some attendees didn’t even notice they were running the newer Windows.

But Microsoft felt that keeping the user interface features out of the developer build was critical to keeping the features a surprise at the conference. The company’s earlier M1, M2, and M3 builds all leaked out, said Chaitanya Sareen, a program manager in the Windows unit.

As the conference was winding down on Thursday, Sareen and another program manager–Rebecca Deutsch–offered an in-depth look at the changes Microsoft made to the desktop as well as the rationale for them. To get the best understanding of the changes, check out the two embedded videos (apologies for the lack of tripod).

The new taskbar is, in many ways, more akin to Mac OS X’s dock than it is to what most Windows users have seen at the bottom of their screens for years.

With Vista and all its recent predecessors, there are a host of different icons at the bottom of the screen, with one group representing favorite items, another representing open program windows and a third representing notifications and items that launch at start-up.

Window 7 aims to do away with most of that redundancy in favor of one collection of large icons that live at the bottom of the screen. The icons represent applications chosen by the user and live there whether an application is running or not.

The large icons serve several purposes. The icon can, of course, be used simply to switch to or launch an application. It is also home to what is known as a “jumplist,” sort of like a mini start menu for each program that can contain a series of actions, a link to recent documents, or even a series of controls that let a user take an action without switching to the program itself.

“This is the one button to rule them all,” Sareen said. A left click opens the windows while a right click or the swipe of a finger on a touch-sensitive machine brings up the jumplist.

When a program is open, the icon also allows a user to preview that application’s open windows. Clicking on a thumbnail naturally brings that window to the front. Hovering over the preview, though, temporarily previews that window as if it were in front, but doesn’t actually complete the change–a feature Microsoft is calling “Aero Peek.”

The idea came as the company tried to solve a riddle: what was the perfect size for a thumbnail window? For things like graphical Web pages or a pair of photos, a small representation might do the trick. But when one is trying to, say, flip between two similar Word documents or e-mails, it gets harder.

“The perfect size of the thumbnail is the actual size of the window,” Sareen said. And that’s how Aero Peek was born.

The goal with that feature and others, Sareen said, is to find ways to remove some of the things that make computing harder, what he calls “paper cuts.” They aren’t bugs, so much as things that are needlessly complicated or nonintuitive.

“We kind of went on a war against paper cuts,” he said.

The company is also trying to reduce all of those annoying notifications that pop up along the right hand side of the computer. Developers can still write code that makes them appear, Deutsch said, but with each one that pops up, users have the option of disabling all such warnings from that program. The idea is to use social engineering to convince developers to bother the user far less often.

Click here for more news on Windows 7.

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Inside Windows 7?s new desktop

Asus may be pushing the Eee PC 1002HA as the new and improved Eee PC 1000H. The new model is thinner, lighter, and better looking than its predecessor. But after having spent a few months with an Asus Eee PC 1000H I can say there are some reasons you might want to choose it over the 1002HA.

I’ve been using an Eee PC 1000H as my primary netbook for over three months and I’ve already posted a number of articles about the netbook, but it just occured to me that I never put together a complete review of the netbook. So here we go.

The Asus Eee PC 1000H is one of the largest, heaviest netbooks available today, weighing in at 3.2 pounds. Like the MSI Wind U100, Lenovo IdeaPad S10, and HP Mini 1000, this netbook has a 10.2 inch display. But because of the way the netbook is designed, it seems to dwarf those netbooks in size. But there are a few things that make the 1000H stand out, including decent build quality, long battery life, and excellent software implementation.

The model I’m reviewing has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB 5400rpm hard drive, and a 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display. It shipped with Windows XP, although it’s occasionally been guilty of sharing its hard drive space with alternate operating systems in a dual boot environment.

Design

The Asus Eee PC 1000H measures 10.5? x 7.5? x 1.5? and weighs more than three pounds, making it one of the largest, heaviest netbooks around. It’s half an inch thicker than the HP Mini 1000, for example, and weighs nearly a pound more.  But it’s still a heck of a lot smaller and lighter than most full size laptops. And unlike the HP Mini 1000, the Eee PC 1000H has 3 USB ports, a full sized VGA output, and a 6 cell, 6600mAh battery.

The computer is made of plastic, but it has a nice solid feel to it. And unlike the MSI Wind U100, which has a lid that wobbles a bit if you push it, the Eee PC 1000H has a nice sturdy hinge. While some netbooks feature hinges that let the lid slide down below the back of the computer, the Eee PC 1000H features a basic hinge that pushes the screen high up over the keyboard. While this migth be slightly more ergonomic, it creates the illusion that the Eee PC 1000H is much larger than similar machines like the MSI Wind U100.

Left: Asus Eee PC 1000H / Right: MSI WInd U100

The Eee PC 1000H also ships with a 6-cell battery, which adds a bit of height to the computer.

If you can get over the bulky size and relatively heavy weight of the Asus Eee PC 1000H, there’s a lot to like about the build quality. The keys are nice and responsive, and there are four user customizable buttons above the keyboard that you can use to quickly launch programs, toggle the screen on and off, or adjust the computer’s CPU speed.

While the netbook does get warm after you’ve been using it for a while, the fan does a pretty good job of keeping the machine cool. I don’t think you could roast marshmallows on the Eee PC 1000H the way you could with the HP 2133 Mini-Note.

Display

The Asus Eee PC 1000H has a 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel matte display. While it’s not really designed for outdoor use, this netbook stands up to direct sunlight better than a mini-laptop with a shiny, glossy display like the HP Mini 1000. You can adjust the screen brightness by hittin the Fn+F5 and Fn+F6 keys.

I find that the screen is a bit hard to read at the lowest brightness setting, but if you set the brightness to 50% or so, you should have no problem reading text or watching videos.

Asus includes a Windows utility that lets you adjust the screen resolution to 800 x 600 pixels if you need a 4:3 aspect ratio. You can also choose a 1024 x 768 pixel resolution, but since the display is only capable of showing 1024 x 600 pixels, you will either have to scroll your mouse up and down to see the top and bottom of your screen or use LCD compression to squash a few extra virtual pixels on the screen.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Asus Eee PC 1000H has one of the best netbook touchpads around. While the Asus Eee PC 701 had a tiny touchpad and a single button which rocked to the right or left, the Eee PC 1000H has a nice wide touchpad with distinct left and right buttons. The touchpad also supports multi-touch gestures. For example instead of scrolling up and down on a web page by moving your finger over the right part of the touchpad as you would with many notebooks, you can scroll up and down on the Eee PC 1000H by placing two fingers anywhere on the touchpad and moving them up and down.

Asus did make some comrpomises with the keyboard. Most individual keys aren’t as wide as the keys on the HP Mini 1000. And some buttons, including the Ctrl and Shift keys on the right side of the keyboard are smaller than you would expect them to be.

One complaint many people have about Asus Eee PC keyboards is the placement of the right-side shift key. Since it’s placed to the right of the PgUp key, it’s difficult for many users to press and hold the right shift key while hitting another button on the keyboard. I find that I typically use the left shift key more than the one on the right side so this doesn’t bother me very much. But if you’re a big fan of the right shift key, this may not be the netbook for you. I know it’s a dealbreaker for some people.

I personally like the keyboard and find the Eee PC 1000H easier to type on than the MSI Wind U100 or HP Mini 1000. But that may be due to the fact that I’ve been using this computer for three months and I’ve grown used to it. Your results may vary.

Battery

The 6600mAh battery that ships with the Asus Eee PC 1000H is good for about 3 to 5 hours, depending on what you’re doing with the computer. If you plan to watch videos for three hours straight, your battery won’t last much longer than that. But for web surfing and other basic tasks, I regularly get around 4.5 to 5 hours of battery life.

Asus Eee PC 1000H battery life in Power Saving Mode

The computer uses a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU which can easily be underclocked or overclocked to boost performance or battery life. Asus preloads the netbook with its Super Hybrid Engine software, which basically lets you toggle between Power Saving, High Performance, and Super High Performance Mode. Power Saving Mode underclocks the CPU to run at 1.2GHz, while the netbook runs at 1.7GHz when you turn on Super High Performance.

If you’re watching HD video, that extra bit of CPU power can come in handy. But for day to day use, the Eee PC 1000H runs plenty fast in Power Saving Mode. I usually leave hte Auto Mode feature enabled, which automatically intiates High Performance Mode when the computer is running on AC power. When it’s running on battery power, the Super Hybrid Engine will automatically underclock the CPU.

Software

Aside from the Super Hybrid Engine, Asus includes a utility called EeePC Tray Utility which lets you adjust the display resolution (as I mentioned above) and toggle the WLAN, Blue Tooth, and Camera off and on.

Asus also preloads InterVideo WinDVD, which is kind of funny since there’s no optical disc drive. Still, if you have a USB DVD drive, it’s nice to have some software capable of decoding the video. You also get a copy of StarOffice 8, which is the application that OpenOffice.org is based on. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database applications.

Performance

I wouldn’t recommend editing a two hour movie or playing Call of Duty 4 on the Asus Eee PC 1000H. But if you really wanted to, and didn’t mind the machine getting bogged down, you probably could do both of those things. The Intel Atom CPU isn’t exactly a speed demon, but I’ve had no problems opening several browser tabs simultaneously while listening to music and editing images in Irfanview.

Looking back over my notes, it looks like I never timed the bootup and shutdown times when I first got the computer. But after using it for three months, loading a bunch of applications, and installing the GRUB bootloader for choosing between Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP, I can go from zero to a fully usable Windows desktop in about 70 seconds. I’m petty sure that figure would be closer to 45 seconds on a brand spanking new system. It takes about 20 seconds to shutdown Windows.

Verdict

If you’re looking for the smallest or lightest netbook with a 10 inch screen, this isn’t it. You might want to consider the HP Mini 1000. If you’re looking for the netbook with the best battery life, you’ll probably be better off with a Samsung NC10 or an MSI Wind U100. But if you’re looking for a netbook with decent build quality, a nice keyboard, excellent touchpad, good battery life, and reasonable performance, the Eee PC 1000H could be your machine.

This netbook typically sells for between $450 and $500, which means it costs almost as much as the Eee PC 1002HA which is smaller, lighter, and has an attractive brushed metal finish. But the Eee PC 1000H has a higher capacity battery that could provide an extra hour or two of run time.

There are at least half a dozen netbooks available today with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 10.2 inch display and a large hard drive. But the Eee PC 1000H was one of the first to hit the streets. And to be honest, I haven’t seen much in the models that have followed that have tempted me to sell my Eee PC 1000H and buy a new netbook. We’ll see if that changes once computer makers begin showing off their next generation netbooks at CES in January.

Blast from the past

Just for old time’s sake, here’s a look at the unboxing video I posted on August 22nd, when the Eee PC 1000H first came to live with me:

And for some size comparisons, check out this series of photos I took of the Asus Eee PC 1000H next to an HP Mini 1000:

And an HP 2133 Mini-Note:

You can read more about the Asus Eee PC 1000H in the Liliputing Product Database.

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Asus Eee PC 1000H review

November 13, 2008 Dell has just introduced an integrated disk-to-disk (D2D) based backup and recovery solution called the Dell PowerVault DL2000 that helps customers simplify data protection processes while slashing backup times by up to 52 percent and restore times by up to 77 percent compared to tape. An integrated hardware and software platform that can be set up in less than 30 minutes, the DL2000 automates and simplifies the setup and management of disk-to-disk backup allowing customers to optimize resources through a tiered storage strategy. The solution comes with a choice of CommVault or Symantec Backup Exec software pre-installed and verified. The turnkey solution is designed to provide automated storage setup and centralized management to ease all aspects of backup, recovery and de-duplication. Advanced add-on features, such as archive and replication capabilities, can be integrated seamlessly to scale and increase functionality as business demands dictate.

Program Agenda

All times are in Eastern Standard Time. 11:00am – Doors Open 11:05am – 11:50am – Dell/CommVault Presentation

11:50am – 12:00pm – Live Q&A Chat 12:00pm – 12:45pm – Dell/Symantec Presentation

12:45pm – 12:55pm – Live Q&A Chat 1:00pm – Doors Close THEN my eye caught this :

PC Requirements:

To interact with the online show requires a Windows PC with Internet Explorer 6.0 minimum or Firefox 1.5 or higher. Mac with Firefox 1.5 or higher is also supported. Access to the internet using high speed access (Cable, DSL, Network) is highly recommended for the overall show and is required for all Education Sessions and Presentations. Pop-up blockers must also be disabled. On entering the show, a system check is run which will identify PC requirements that need to be addressed to interact with the online show. more here Ed Note : I have long been an advocate of saving, time, space, cost and increasing convenience via straight to PC / Desktop information ( data, content ) and advertisement delivery, its heartening to see DELL go for it in such a big way ( the chances of a mess up on a product demo are always cause for sleepless nights to say the very least ) , I hope that the Virtual Trade Show is a hit and companies start to buy into the idea that you can have a BETTER and MORE PRODUCTIVE TradeShow this way You can Sign Up for the Virtual Trade Show here.

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Dell Simplifies Disk-Based Backup and Recovery with an Integrated Data Protection Solution