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Posts in windows 7
Solitare in Windows 7: Now With Hardware Acceleration
Apparently Solitare now requires hardware acceleration from the graphics card? Really, Microsoft?
The sad part is that it actually lags. It’s not just a stray dialog box, Solitare apparently actually needs hardware acceleration. I don’t know what to say.
By the way, go check out the Windows 7 RC.
Comparison of Windows 7 and Ubuntu 8.04 Artwork Style
Interestingly, Microsoft and most of the popular Linux distributions have taken a very different approach to Artwork. I don’t intend to state an opinion. Instead, this is simply to point out and compare the two styles. I am using Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows 7, since they each stand out as excellent in their own style. If you don’t like either one’s artwork, refrain from voicing your opinion and focus on the difference, not the art.
Ubuntu 8.04
Ubuntu 8.04, while not the current Ubuntu release, featured a wallpaper that was very artistic and impressive to most people. The yellow and red heron was complemented by the simple brown background. This color scheme was supported by Ubuntu’s “Human” theme. Whatever you think of the art, this created a very consistent theme that fits across the entire desktop.
What this theme does not do, however, is allow for any wallpaper to be substituted in. The brown theme is unique to Ubuntu and rarely fits with wallpapers or other elements that were not designed for it. This means that, unless you decide to replace everything, you are pretty much stuck with one look.
(Screenshot by Florian. Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 2.0.)
Windows 7
Windows 7, and most Windows versions, takes a very different approach. All of the theming is almost completely neutral. Clear with a slight tinge of black is just about as neutral as you can get. Plus, you can change the tint color to match any color scheme. Instead of having two wallpaper options like Ubuntu, Windows 7 has many, many choices, almost all of which are just nice photos.
This set up allows the user to pick almost any background and simply supports it with neutral theming around the windows. This means that, for the options the user is allowed to change (without special software), there are almost no restrictions.
(Screenshot by oO XP3ctr0 PhotosOo. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.)
Cutting Through the Windows 7 Hype
I don’t understand it. When it comes to Windows, everything either sucks or is the best thing in the world according to the press. There seems to be no intermediate point, despite the fact that that is where most Windows releases would fit. Recently, I have been getting very tired of anything with the words “Windows 7,” “killer,” and “linux,” no matter what order those appear in.
I am using the beta now in a virtual machine and, to be honest, there is not a lot of changes. Sure, Microsoft messed with the taskbar some (I don’t like it, but I’ll leave that to you to judge), made some networking improvements, fixed the messed-up UAC, and added a few more desktop effects (some useful, such as moving windows to the side of the screen to make them cover half the screen, and some annoying, like strange colors floating all around your taskbar in place of standard, subtle effects), but the truth is that only one feature from Windows 7 is likely to have a major effect (and of course PR): performance.
Performance in really important, but it is really just a bug fix. It’s pathetic that Vista had the poor performance that it did. Now they fixed it. Now we can move on.
The fundamental daily annoyances of using Windows have simply not changed. Here is what is still true:
- It still blue screens. (Yep, I can confirm that – I returned to the VM while it was booting up from a hard shutdown to see the end of a blue screen followed by a reboot).
- It still treats you like a baby and nags you about turning on automatic updates.
- It still is susceptible to malware.
- It still lacks any form of multiple desktops.
Windows 7 will probably be a good release as far as I am concerned, if only for the performance improvement. It just won’t be the ground breaking, new, and amazing release that some people say it will be. What do you think?