Sunday, August 30, 2009

Windows 7 Rocks!

Windows 7 has to be the best Windows yet. It is much faster than Vista (despite what the experts say). The install has to be the easiest of any Windows to date. And the look and feel is just much better than Vista. In fact, I have moved my taskbar and start menu to the top of the screen to have more of an Ubuntu feel than that of thoe traditional Windows feel.

The 64bit version appears to be the best with the least amount of issues with drivers and hardware. The 32bit is also good, but lacks the perfection found in 64 bit.

Memory: Windows 7 64 bit comes to life past 4 Gig of ram. Memory is relatively cheap so stock up and enjoy the pain free love of Windows 7. As far as 32bit Windows7, I have had no problems with my 2 Gig laptop.

Processor: Dual Core, Quad Core, Core i7????? I have found that Windows 7 runs just fine on and older 1.86 GHz Pentium M Centrino with an Intel 945 Graphics chipset. It does not have Aero, but Windows 7 does not need Aero to feel good.

Screen Size: Bigger is always better, but I am doing just fine with Windows 7 on 1366X768. Yea, 1280X800 is the sweet spot and my dual 1980X1200 24" monitors rock. But this OS works just fine with smaller screens.

Compatibility and Drivers: I have not found a piece of hardware that would not work with Windows 7. Printers, scanners, sound cards, video cards, all appear to work just fine. If the hardware worked on Vista, it will work on Windows 7.

So more is to come with the testing. I need to look into XP Compatibility mode and running Office 2003 in a virtual environment. After mixing 2007 and 2003 on the same PC for the last 2 year, that mistake will not be repeated.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

How To Kill A Panther

Think clunking a Grand Marquis is the only way to kill the car. This poor car driven by a thirty year old Philadelphia lady was severely smashed when it was driven into the Philadelpha Iquirer building at 4:oo am this morning. From the looks of the carnage, she must have been going at a pretty good clip to sustain that much damage to a body on frame hulk like the Grand Marquis.

From CBS3 Philly

What a Wreck!

This is proof of the concept of lost in translation. Captured at the Woodward Dream Cruise this past weekend, this bike is proof that everything that can be done to a chopper is not necessarily the right thing to do. From the photo, the bike looks well made, but the question of why still persists.

From Autoblog

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Miles 2.0 a.k.a. MILO


I have owned Miles 2.0 now for 4 and a half months and have yet to post about the fine lad on my blog. Despite the problems that I had with the original Miles, my 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis, I had to put that aside and move up with the 2009 model when it was time to purchase a new car. I picked him up on the day before Easter and I have never been more thrilled with a car. Milo has a bit more "push" on the road than the other GrandMa on the highway, but that will be remedied with Ford HPP 21mm sway bar to be installed on the rear. Milo now has a bit more growl under the hood thanks to the addition of a P71 ziptube for the air intake. Plus, by the end of the year, it will have dual exhausts installed for a touch more high end ponies to compliment the 278lb. ft. of torque generated by the 4.6 liter V8. The car is truly a classy ride with its additional 1" height courtesy of the 17" wheels and the brakes are even bigger than the monsters that brought Miles to an easy stop from any speed. It is a model produced before mandatory stability program is required on cars so it is a bit fun to slide around the corners like any proper rear drive car. And as should be with every touring car, gas milage is a dream with a mixed city highway number around 22.5 MPG (if I drive with a soft foot.) But the neat feature is the trip computer that tells you when you are driving too hard so you can adjust you style to maximize efficiency.




Quite simply, this is the finest car I have ever owned. Hopefully, it will last as long and be as trouble free as my 1992 Jeep Cherokee a.k.a Murphy (March 14, 2002 - October 7, 2005 R.I.P.)

Friday, August 14, 2009

Preparing for Windows 7

The preparations for Windows 7 continued tonight. I have a big project on the deck currently so I cannot tear into "Monster" until August 25th, but that does not mean that I cannot start prepping. I buzzed into MicroCenter in St. Davids, PA and picked up some essentials for the build. I grabbed an extra 4GB of ram bringing the total memory in the computer to 8GB and the primary hard is going to be increased from the 500GB unit purchased in December 2007 for a 1.5 TB, 7200 RPM drive with 32 MB of onboard cache. This should make Monster fast enough to handle everything in Windows 7 as compared to the struggles that I have had with 32bit Windows Vista Ultimate. The overall speed of the current configuration is not slow, but it definitely has moments of being sluggish when first booting the system and when launching media center. The widgets ate up much of the resources at startup and I have needed to disable them to make the computer usable in less than 4 minutes of starting the PC.

More inforamtion to come later on the overall build.

Almost time to throw out Vista

Out with the old and in with the new. I must say that Vista, you have stayed around a little too long and have worn out the welcome.

Microsoft's operating system that was designed to be the system to topple the OS X migration of PC users and revolutionize how we use our PCs did not turn out as planned. The OS was released late after many delays in development. The hardware manufacturers were slow to develop new drivers for the OS. Next, businesses were staging a boycott of the system because they feared incompatibilities with existing Windows based systems.

In order to convince everyone that Vista was good, MS took the phased roll out approach and offered licensing to MSDN subscribers and businesses two months ahead of the consumer release. This worked a little but still users were afraid of the OS. And properly so because most hardware was not compatible. Issues with transferring large files plagued the OS. Most newer PC and the majority of laptops were not even capable of running Vista with the Aero interface and snappier looking graphics even if they had a Vista capable stickers on them. The problems for Microsoft did not get much better even with the release of SP1 and even SP2 . The operating system is still relatively slow and sluggish to react. The release of Internet Explorer 8 also was a bit of trouble of Microsoft because it was much slower than Firefox and Chrome.

Now, the phased rollout of Windows 7 is taking place and MSDN Subscribers, MS Partners, and Enterprise users are testing the OS to see if it has what it takes. From what has been seen so far, the results look promising. Some Mac fans and Google clones are talking some misinformation, but for the most part, things are looking pretty good. In the next few weeks, I too will begin the build of a Windows 7 PC and let all know how it goes. The anxiety is pretty great for the build that will begin in about 2 and a half weeks.

Until then, it is clearing out projects until I can get things ready to start the project.