Windows Seven is the next major operating system from Microsoft, set to be released in October. I feel it has one primary job: Do damage control for Vista. While the problems with Vista were way exaggerated–much of the blame deserved to go to hardware manufacturers, not Microsoft–the operating system was nevertheless bloated and for most felt slower than the venerable XP. Plagued by hardware incompatibility problems and sluggish performance, Vista gave Microsoft quite the bad rep. I was a beta tester for Vista, and as I saw the Windows team advance with the software, I could tell that it was rushed to release. It was cool and fancy and shiny, but unfinished. Which is sad, because Vista was actually written from scratch and introduced a lot of great new technologies.

Read more by clicking the link below!

Scientific American is ruining my childhood.

All my childhood, I was told to drink 8 cups of water a day to be healthy. I like water, so to be super-spiffy, I drink about 16 a day. Now Sci-Am is telling me I don’t need to =[. It seems kind of obvious, but your body absorbs water from drinks and other foods quite readily. Well, at least this will save me some bathroom breaks!

Read more here.

Windows 7 RC: Upgrade from Vista plz.

Windows Seven is the next major operating system from Microsoft, set to be released in October. I feel it has one primary job: Do damage control for Vista. While the problems with Vista were way exaggerated–much of the blame deserved to go to hardware manufacturers, not Microsoft–the operating system was nevertheless bloated and for most felt slower than the venerable XP. Plagued by hardware incompatibility problems and sluggish performance, Vista gave Microsoft quite the bad rep. I was a beta tester for Vista, and as I saw the Windows team advance with the software, I could tell that it was rushed to release. It was cool and fancy and shiny, but unfinished. Which is sad, because Vista was actually written from scratch and introduced a lot of great new technologies.

Read more by clicking the link below!

Windows 7 really is just like, super Vista, in a good way. It takes the core technologies in Vista, polishes and trims them, and then adds on top of it a great new and improved user-interface. First there are the performance improvements thanks to trimming down the code, a significantly lower memory footprint, and optimizations in the usage of the your graphics card and processor. My cheap old laptop simply runs much quicker under Windows 7 than it did in Vista(and I had a highly optimized vista installation, mind you). I had actually run Ubuntu Linux on my laptop instead of Vista because it ran quicker, until the first pre-beta of Windows 7 came out last October. It also promises to increase battery life by at least 11% over Vista, which in my testing has been true. Although in raw benchmarks Seven may not hold a huge advantage over Vista, it just feels way snappier, which ultimately is what matters. I’m not alone in this feeling either, and the performance improvements are especially palpable on older hardware.

My computer with more than 40 apps open (and paging file disabled) with barely a noticeable slowdown. I couldn’t do this in Vista.

Performance improvements aside, W7 makes the the greatest changes to the User interface since Windows 95 was introduced, and they are good ones. The most obvious change is the new taskbar (often referred to by tech blogs as the “superbar”), which includes oversized icons, and tons of new functionality. At first glance the large icons may seem to be emulating the Mac Dock, but they are really two different beasts entirely. You can now “pin” applications to the taskbar, and rearrange them if you wish. When a pinned program opens, that program is highlighted in the taskbar. If you have multiple windows for an application open, then they will all be grouped under that program’s respective icon, and you will be shown a thumbnail preview of each. Now this is the cool thing, if you hover over one of the thumbnails, all other windows will become transparent except for the selected one, making it extremely easy to locate and manage windows. It takes a few minutes getting used to, but now I can’t live without this functionality. Plus it looks mad cool, yo.

Aero Peek allows you to hover over the taskbar thumbnails and turn all other windows transparent with a glass effect, allowing you to easily find what you’re looking for.

Another new taskbar(and start menu) feature is the “jumplist”, which when you right-click or drag up from an icon will present you with a menu of commonly used functions for a program, or recently opened items with that program. You can also pin your own items to open with a program via jumplists. While many programs don’t support this feature yet, it’s sure to become commonplace once Windows 7 is officially released.

Jumplists give you quick access to commonly used features of a program.

Finally, there is Aero Peek Desktop Preview, which is as simple as pointing your mouse to the glass bar on the rightmost part of the taskbar. Hover over it and in a second all windows will turn to glass, allowing you to preview your desktop and its attached gadgets(which are now thankfully not constrained to the sidebar by default).

Desktop Preview with Aero Peek. Shinyyy.

But wait, there’s more! A new feature called Aero Snap allows you to drag a windows into different parts of the screen to easily change the window size. For example, drag a window to the left or right edge of the screen, and watch as a pretty effect previews how the window will resize to fit half the screen. This is extremely useful for reading/editing two documents side by side. You can also drag a window to the top of the screen to maximize, or drag the top or bottom edges of a window to only maximize vertically. The latter feature comes in handy if you want to read a website or write a paper while still being able to keep an eye on your IM contacts. You can also shake a window to minimize all others.

Drag to the sides to fill up half the screen…

To the top to maximize…

Or drag the top/bottom edges of a window to only maximize vertically, so you can keep an eye on other windows(great for viewing webpages too)

Windows Seven is set to be released on October 22 of this year, but you can catch the release candidate for free at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx It will be fully functional until March of next year(when it will begin to shut down every two hours). By then you can get the final release of the operating system from someone or somewhere, so you’ll be fine. Let me know if you need any help installing!

EDIT: Two other cool thingies I forgot. Notice how most of my desktop backgrounds are different? Windows 7 lets you set your wallpaper to be a slideshow, which is extremely useful for indecisive folk like myself. Also, it includes alot of weird really trippy backgrounds O.o

Digital TV only matters if you use an antenna

I’ve had a lot of family ask me about this, so I thought I might as well still post this here. Digital TV only affects you if you use an antenna. This does not mean you need to buy an HDTV, it just means you need a converter. But if you have Cable, Satellite, or FiOS, or really any kind of subscription TV service, you need not worry. These signals have been digital for a long time already. The transition is simply replacing a 6-decade old analog technology, and helping the US catch up to other countries. For those of you who still use an antenna, Digital TV will probably drastically increase your picture and sound quality. 

Rick Roll: Literal Edition

Getting Rick-Rolled can be funny, or it can be extremely annoying. Either way, if you’ve never been Rick Rolled literally, this will probably fall under the former:

Internet Comments Make me Cringe.

This video summarizes the modern internet better than pretty much anything, ever, in the history of foreverness. And it’s pretty darn funny:

Palm’s Back: I want a Pre.

Wow, I’m such a hypocrite =[. I just wrote a blog post about wanting less glossy tech around, and now I say I want one of the glossiest pieces of technology ever. Oh well, this is an exception!

For those of you not familiar with the Pre (pronounced “pree”), it’s a new phone from Palm that just launched on Sprint last weekend. Retailing at $199 after a rebate(mail-in rebate at the Sprint Store, instant rebate at Best Buy and Radioshack), its pretty much the most perfectest consumer phone I can think of.

This phone will make or break Palm, which had been in dire economic conditions and is only now beginning to recuperate. The maker of those old Palm Pilots and chubby Treo phones, Palm found itself in an increasingly dangerous situation with the advent of more modern devices like the iPhone and the increasing popularity of Blackberrys. Palm hardware had been running on its decade old PalmOS, and its age was truly starting to show.

Then, when everyone thought Palm was as good as dead, they drop a huge bombshell during the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Here they are with new, innovative hardware including a multi-touch high resolution screen, a dedicated touch “gesture” area below the screen, a full qwerty keyboard, a 3 megapixel camera with flash (which takes great pictures btw), and a small feels-great-in hand form factor.

More important than the hardware though, was the new webOS software. It’s essentially an operating system that runs on a linux core, but is primarily built upon using the same technology and language that is used to create web pages (see it? webOS, web pages? gaahahaha). Furthermore, the operating system has one thing no one else can claim: true multi-tasking. Using its “Activity Card” system, the Pre lets you have several programs open at once, allowing you to look up information on a webpage, write it down in a memo, and then copy that information over to a friend in a text message, all in a seamless process. It also is able to maintain communication with a contact via a variety of different sources: if you are talking with someone on AIM and they sign off, it will automatically send you next message to their celphone or email. Furthermore, it can sync your contacts and calendars from a variety of sources including Facebook and Gmail, and is full with tons of other goodies. One I like in particular is the ability to place a reminder for a contact, so that whenever you are next communicating with that person, a note will pop up reminding you of whatever it is you wanted to tell that contact.

Below I’ve embedded David Pogue’s 3 minute review of the Pre. What’s great about this phone is that all of the negatives he’s mentioned have already been fixed or are in the process of fixing. Video recording has pretty much been assured by Palm to be coming, the App store is going to be humongous in a few months time (and remember, the iPhone didn’t even have an app store for a longgg time), the battery life problems have pretty much already been remedied, and the ringer volume(which isn’t really that low) is a simple fix. That, and its already been hacked for custom apps and features. It’s basically the iPhone, but better.

Finally, Palm has one more ace up its sleeve: WebOS isn’t going to be stuck on one model like it is with the iPhone. There have already been 2 other leaked phone models with different features, prices, and looks.

P.S. Palm, I just wrote a glowing review of your phone without even owning one, having only tried one out in a store. I am a poor college kid. I can has cheezburger free Pre? =P

Uber-Glossy Tech: Enough already?

So I’m thinking about what to write my first blog post about, and then I look at my sisters iPod Touch, and all the fingerprints covering it. It makes me think, “haven’t we had enough glossy tech already?”

I don’t work for a design firm or anything, and I like shiny as much as the next guy, but I think the tech market has become saturated with highly/completely glossy gadgets. The iTouch isn’t actually so bad since the backing is metal, but the ceaseless influx of ultra glossy tech is starting to get boring. It’s kind of like the new beige of tech. Also, glossy stuff are the worst fingerprint magnets:

Eww.

Now of course, it’s up to you to keep your gadgets clean, but it gets annoying whipping out your fancy little polishing cloth every ten seconds to wipe your devices clean and shiny. So I ask manufacturers, can you please go in a new design direction? Glossy looks great when clean, but the fact of the matter is that most of the time it isn’t. Things can look good without being completely glossy, you know?

Ohhh, Ahhh

Doesn’t that look nice? And the only glossy part is the glass screen, which is for protection against scratches and more vivid colors. The brushed metal and screws yield a pretty-looking industrial design if you ask me.

This ends my first rant blog post.

First Time

Yooooo

Wazzap.

I felt like starting a blog, so, here it is. I don’t know what I’ll talk about here, probably a bunch of different stuffies relating to tech, science, and global news. Yay.

I’m obsessed with the color blue, by the way.