DKMcCUE » Page 16

Windows 7: further impressions

Windows Comments Off

May 252009

I decided to dig a little further into Windows 7, and found some little goodies that would have been terrific to have at my last job.

The first is the Snipping tool. This tool will take a screen shot of your computer. Now, most of you know that pressing Print Screen on your keyboard does the same thing. What the Snipping Tool does is allow you to capture just a portion of the screen, rather than the whole thing.

This would have come in handy during my last job when I was trying to gather screen shots of the website I was part of to create a users manual. To get just small portions of the website, I had to capture everything and then crop out those things I didn’t need or want in the picture. This new tool would have saved me hours worth of cropping to get the almost 300 screen shots I needed for the manual.

The second item I discovered is called Sticky Notes. This gives you an electronic Post-It note that sits on your desktop until you delete it. This would have saved a lot of trees during my last job, as every night before I went home I created a series of post-its detailing what needed to be done the next day and stuck them to my screen so that I wouldn’t forget anything overnight.

If I had had this nifty little program, I could have just put them all on my desktop and had them there as soon as I booted up my computer the next morning, and just deleted them as I finished the task.

And for those of you who point out that Outlook has that already, let me just explain that we did not use Outlook (much to my sorrow) at my last job, we used Lotus Notes (and a really old version of it) that did not have that functionality.

As I had stated in my previous post, I am using a very old laptop to test Windows 7. So old, in fact, that my Windows Experience rating is a mere 1.0. This is due to the video card, and as long as I do not try to play any games on this computer, Windows 7 is running for the most part just fine.

I am also running a Pentium 4 and have only 1.25 gigs of RAM, so with that in mind, I am thinking that even the lowly $300-$400 net-books should be able to run Windows 7 just fine, provided they have enough RAM installed.

Would I recommend Windows 7? Oh Hell Yeah!!

This is quite possibly the best version of Windows I have ever used, and I have used them all at one point or another.

Now, if I could just keep it from locking up every time I try to read the SD card from my camera…

God Help Us! Twitter on TV!

Rants, Television Comments Off

May 252009

Article Here!

It seems that the people who brought us the most over-hyped, annoying, personally invasive social network in the world today is now wanting to show up on our television screens.

7 million people use Twitter to announce what they are doing in 140 characters or less. It will be these same 7 million who watch the show, I am sure.

For those of us who have more important things to do than announce to the world that we are sitting on the pot with a bad case of diarrhea probably care less about a Twitter TV show than we do about Twitter itself.

What is worse than the idea that Twitter might actually get it’s own show is the thought of yet another “entertainment” vehicle involving that hideous Ashton Kutcher creature invading our lives even further.

With that said, yes I do have a Twitter account. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I found it to be the worst online experience I have ever had. I think I managed to get as many as 5 posts onto it.

But then I came to my senses. Why should I limit myself to 140 characters when I am trying to tell something? Especially when there are no limits to what I can write on my own website, or in one of any dozen free online websites that allow people to really say what they want to say?

And until the rest of the 7 million users finally realize that Twitter is nothing more than a cheesy and annoying way to say you feel like crap or are taking a crap, the rest of the world will have to suffer not only Twitter but also this new TV show they want to develop.

But there is a silver lining to this dark cloud: We will all get to go to heaven, because Twitter is about to make life on earth a living hell!

Windows 7: Impressions

Windows Comments Off

May 222009

I downloaded the Windows 7 release candidate and loaded it up on my 6 year old laptop, just to see if it would work. My plan was that if it didn’t work I would either reload the Windows Vista Ultimate that seemed to work okay, or just replace Windows all together with Ubuntu Linux.

Installation was very quick. Right around 20 minutes after inserting the disc, I had Windows 7 up and running on this very old laptop (which is what I am using to write this post as I am not home with my desktop.)

After playing around with it for a few days, I have some general opinions about it; a few pros and cons.

PROS:

Windows 7 boots up to the login screen in less than 30 seconds. This is much faster than any other operating system I have ever worked on.
The system, for the most part, runs well with just a Pentium 4 and 1 gig of RAM.
The whole system is very Vista-like (which I love) yet very different at the same time.
It is very intuitive to work with. While Vista had a bit of a learning curve attached to using it, 7 just seems to be logical in it’s placement of information, buttons, etc. Now, this could be because I am used to working with Vista, so it’s easier for me, but it just feels like a very cohesive, intelligent and logical system.

CONS:

While 7 does run well, I have yet to get it to recognize that there is actually a sound card in this computer, so I have no sound what-so-ever. It won’t even load a generic driver just to give me beeps or anything.
It took me several tries to get the proper driver for the video card. I still cannot play even Solitaire on this computer because 7 tells me it doesn’t support the card. So I cannot play movies or games on this system. This is probably due to the age of the computer more than anything, but come on, I can’t play Solitaire?
As stated earlier, it takes less than 30 seconds to load to the login screen, but it takes a further 2 minutes once you log in for the system to finally settle down enough to open a program and start using it.
For some reason, every time I try to use an SD card in the media slot, it completely locks-up the computer, something that never happened with XP or Vista. So far, this is the only thing that has caused any kind of lock ups or freezes on the computer. And each time, I have to hard crash it in order to get it up and running again. Hopefully this will not be an issue when 7 is released retail.

This last item can be a pro or a con depending on who the individual person is: The funky, psychedelic comic-like backgrounds!

Was someone on drugs when these were approved? Some of them are so out there and have so much in them that I was getting headaches. I use a simple waterfall background now.

Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10, I would give Windows 7 a solid 7, especially as I am operating it on a very old computer.

Final Grades!

School Comments Off

May 202009

Wow, I was so excited about my final grades that I completely forgot to post them here! LOL!

At midterm, I had 4 A’s and 2 B’s. Then came the final exams, which I didn’t feel I had done so well on.

I guess I did better than I thought, because my final grades for my first semester in college ended up being ALL A’s!!

This means I have a 4.0 grade average and will be on the Dean’s List!

Now, if I can just do the same thing for the next 7 or 8 semesters I need to take, I will be doing great! :-)

That was weird!

Misc Comments Off

May 202009

Technorati Tags: Misc,weirdness

Just got the electricity back on after a small power outage here in town.

Having a power outage in itself is not exactly weird, but it was the way it happen that was weird.

My computer is open, with a fan blowing on it because it gets so hot that I need the extra fan to keep it cool. Well, this fan suddenly sped up then stopped. I thought maybe it had died, but then the podcast I was listening to on my computer stopped. Then the lamp behind me went out, then the computer shutdown, then the monitor shut down, and finally the fluorescent lamp on my desk slowly faded out.

It took about 15 seconds for everything to shut down/go out. It wasn’t like a typical power outage where everything just goes down. This was gradual.

And it wasn’t as if I immediately knew there was a power outage. Because things went off one by one, it was as if someone or something was just turning stuff off.

So I went outside and walked down the street a little to see if the stop light around the corner was working. Sure enough, as I got to the corner, the light was lit, but the red light slowly dimmed and went dark.

It was like the whole town was slowly going to sleep!

About 10 minutes later, the power came back on all at once. It didn’t wind up like it went down. More like someone threw a switch and said “Let there be light!”

That is the strangest power outage I have ever gone through.

Older Entries Newer Entries