Tag Archives: windows 7

Windows 7 one year old today!

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Well, today marks one year since Microsoft launched Windows 7 to the general public.

By the sounds of it, Windows 7 has been a great success from Microsoft – after the dismal performance of Windows Vista. Windows 7 (as of September 2010) has a market share of 17% which is pretty amazing for 12 months on the market.

I’ve had Windows 7 since launch day and I have been extremely impressed with it. If you haven’t already given it a spin, you could be really missing out as it definitely performs much better than Vista and has considerably better features than XP.

Users of XP still don’t seem to be giving up just yet, though. Although XP’s market share is dropping rapidly, it still (as of September 2010) has just over 60% of the market share – so it still has some way to go. With basic security support for XP not due to expire until 2014, I don’t think too many will be rushing to upgrade their existing PCs.

iTunes 10 (Windows) review – worth the upgrade

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It was announced yesterday that Apple would be releasing their newest version of iTunes in the early hours of this morning. And as if by magic, the Apple Software Updater today alerted me that a new version of the software was available. So I’ve downloaded it, given it a spin and here’s what I have to say.

If you’re just a casual user of iTunes, you probably won’t notice any huge difference except from the new design and interface. They’ve replaced the CD logo with a new logo of a music note. The general UI of the program has been changed quite considerably. I quite like it, but I think this new approach to listing my music library looks very untidy.

Thankfully, I use the album cover view to see my music, so that won’t affect me hugely.

The biggest new feature to the program is the new “Ping”. Essentially, it’s just a copy of last.fm with the ability to like, review and follow artists/songs that are of interest to you. You can then share this with other users that you happen to be following. The software will give you up to date information from the artists you are following.

Personally, I quite like the feature. I’ll find it very useful for “discovering” new music as Apple like to put it. However, I think it’s sad that Apple are so desperate for ideas that they have to go and copy a concept that already exists. I much prefer last.fm’s approach and I think Apple will have a job getting people to convert to their idea.

I happen to think performance has improved considerably with the new version. Even with a dual core 2.8ghz processor and Windows 7, iTunes 9 still seemed to be pretty sluggish. The new version appears to load up pretty quickly and navigating through the software seems to be much more speedy. Gone are the days when you have to wait several seconds for iTunes to respond to you clicking a menu option.

Other than that though, there isn’t really much the casual iTunes user will notice. The store hasn’t really changed much, except for “Ping” integration. The iPod management is almost identical to the old version, with exception to a tiny bit of new design.

Overall, I’d go grab it. It’ll probably be essential to upgrade soon anyway. You can get it from apple.com/itunes or from the Apple Software Updater.

Microsoft starting bi-hourly shutdowns for the Windows 7 Release Candidate next month

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Time’s almost up for the testers…

If you’re still one of the few using the Windows 7 Release Candidate, you’ll be interested to know that Microsoft are [finally] starting the bi-hourly shutdowns next month. It means that from March 1st, you’re computer will automatically shut down every 2 hours. Three months after that (1st June), you’ll loose use of the release candidate altogether.

So, now’s the time to be making decisions. You either need to buy a copy of Windows 7 (which I seriously recommend you do if you have previously used Windows) or change your operating system.

Windows 7 Media Center can record from hibernate!

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A new feature in Windows 7 Media Center that enhances it’s power saving!

One thing I used to find really annoying about Windows Media Center in Vista was that if you wanted to record a programme, the system always had to be in either awake mode or S1/S3 standby mode.

This has changed with Windows 7 Media Center and Microsoft has finally solved the issue.

With Windows 7 Media Center (providing your motherboard supports it), you should be able to hibernate your comptuer – and Windows will wake your computer approximately 10 minutes before a scheduled recording. It should then return to hibernate shortly after a recording has finished.

This is a really big advantage. No more wasting vast amounts of electricity by leaving your computer in standby. I can finally leave my computer over a weekend and come back knowing that the system has done all of my recordings and hasn’t cost the Earth in electricity!

So incase you weren’t already aware of this – next time you need to leave your computer to record TV while you are away, put the system into hibernate.

Hibernate works differently to standby. When you hibernate a system, the entire contents of the RAM is saved to a big file on the hard drive. The system can then fully shut down. When you wake the system, it will transfer all of the RAM contents on the hard drive back to the RAM, and your system should be able to just return to its previous state.

Windows 7 standby issue…

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What’s up with Windows 7 standby?

I have a real problem with Windows 7 at this point in time. It has a really annoying bug that drives me insane!

It seems to be an issue that occurs with ATI drivers – and since I have an ATI Radeon HD 4550, I get the issue.

When you standby your computer, the system goes into standby as normal. However, when you wake the system the Aero glass interface mysteriously disappears. For some reason, the DWM (desktop window manager), which deals with the Aero management, crashes. The only resolution to the problem is to reboot the PC – you cant fix it any other way.

It slightly defeats the point of using standby on Windows. The problem doesn’t seem to occur if you hibernate the system, but it’s still very annoying.

I tried contacting ATI but their customer support didn’t seem to understand the issue.

Is it just me or is the problem common with other systems as well?