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January 03 A Look Back at 2007 in ReviewsHey everyone, Happy New Year! Yeah its a bit late for that one, but don't worry I have not gone anywhere. I am definitely excited about the year 2008 and what has in store for us technology wise. The year 2007 was a fast pace one and we witnessed the release of major Microsoft products which resulted in numerous reviews, I just would like to take a brief look back what we covered: Software Reviews Hardware Reviews
and there are many more you can find in the ActiveWin Reviews Section There are many products in the pipeline I am looking forward to review such as Windows Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Server 2008!
Technorati tags: 2008, New Year, Reviews, ActiveWin, Acer Ferrari 5000, Windows Vista, Office 2007, Gateway, Microsoft, Wireless, Logitech, 64-Bit, Internet Explorer 8, Windows Server 2008 December 24 Seasons Greetings from Teching It EasyNovember 17 Windows Vista Year in Review
November 17th 2007will mark one year since I have been using Microsoft’s latest client desktop operating system – Windows Vista. Vista has been a momentous release for me, I will admit, there were bumps along the way and there is still a lot more to prove. But the conclusion for me is clear; Windows Vista is a significant release that delivers a first class user experience in comparison to its predecessor and market alternatives. ActiveWin’s year in review is meant to take a look at how the operating system has performed for me since its debut, I hope you will read it and also share your feedback. Windows Vista has experienced strong adoption throughout the year beating many analyst expectations, it is estimated that up to 90 million users have upgraded to the new release through new PC purchases and retail upgrades licenses. So it’s apparent that this release of Windows has been healthy for Microsoft and will continue to do well with the coming holiday season. Numerous sites have also blown up across the web with thousands of enthusiast catering to the new operating system and its various features. I have been using both x86 and x64 Vista platforms, one device driver continues to hold me back from going 100% 64-bit. BVRP Mobile Phone Tools – please work on getting your device driver working properly on Vista x64, it’s been ‘one year’ come on! In regards to compatibility Vista had a rough start no doubt, the device drivers were available, but most were plagued with stability problems, this issue also applied to some software applications. But I can honestly say the problems have pretty much been ironed out and has helped to deliver a better experience for me and other users. Part of this excellence is attributed to the much improved Windows Update service in Vista. Microsoft has gone far and beyond to make users have the latest software and hard drivers by pushing them through the service. The new Problem Reports and Solutions component is also a great feature that continually gives Microsoft structured feedback about issues your system might encounter running Windows Vista. Its one of the great ways to really diagnose and find solutions to common problems users are likely to have such as software compatibility and device driver issues. Interface
In my Windows XP Professional x64 Edition year in review I proclaimed that Vista x64 would be the transition to 64-bit ubiquity, but I must be honest that it has not been entirely so. I previously noted compatibility problems with my cellular phone. The industry is still not behind the platform it seems, but there has been definitely a lot of progress. In comparison to Windows 2000, Vista x64 is probably one of the smoothest Windows migrations I have ever had. This is a testament to detail and effort Microsoft has put into making the experience as identical in everyway to its 32-bit counter part. It’s up to the industry to provide the other half of the bargain and some have definitely done so, nVidia and AMD ATI for example have regularly released updated device drivers for their graphics cards which have improved the stability and performance on Vista systems. Users have not been bombarded with issues such as RAID/SATA issues which were very pronounced for the XP x64 release. Please note, I am not saying the issue does not exist, but it is not as rampant, numerous devices have worked for users since day one and a plethora of software programs have supported Vista since day one, these include Graphics Cards, AIO Printers, Scanners, Wireless and USB Devices. Microsoft has estimated that over 2 million devices are now supported for Windows Vista and the list continues to grow. New avenues have opened up for Windows customers such as the Windows Market Place where users can find over 90,000 products that are designed for the platform. For me personally though, Vista is truly a personalized experience, I have discovered that I am doing more with my computer than I ever did before. During the BETA’s I acquired a Digital Camera and started taking lots of photos, Vista helped me out of the box to really enjoy this leisure task, managing, sorting, editing and viewing photos/videos is such a great time on the computer. Vista’s Photo Gallery has really changed the way I interact with my images, the built in tagging capabilities, the direct integration with applications such as Windows DVD Maker, Windows Movie Maker are allowing me to go beyond just using my computer as a tool and more as an opportunity to create memories I want to enjoy and share. It sounds cliché and more like a commercial and many would come to the argument that I could have done this on a Mac years ago. But I didn’t have to do a major reinvestment in hardware and software/migration. It only took an upgrade from Windows XP to really start doing amazing things with my computer. Vista’s built in search is such a critical part of the Windows Experience, its everywhere in the system and makes the triviality of accessing your files such a second nature thing to do. Users have talked about the new Explorer shell and some problems that I have found frustrating myself. The issue of customized Explorer shells not remembering their settings when applied regardless of the numerous methods and workarounds suggested. The new Command Bar is also an area I wish more focus was invested in terms of retaining some of the control users had in XP. Simply, it cannot be customized to add your own buttons such as Cut, Copy and Paste to speed up common task when working in folders. Still, its all good, features that I do find myself really mesmerized by include the Bread Crumb menus that let me easily back track and take quick short cuts through the folder hierarchy with great ease. A lot users still fail to really see the benefits from a productivity point of view and receive Windows Vista with a mind set that is not necessarily open to change and more focused on stark differences between XP that lets face it are stark differences in how the user is in more control of what they can do with Windows Vista. Performance There have been small issues around performance Microsoft has plugged since its release, during the summer, the Company released performance updates and most recently updated them to improve the reliability and stability in areas such as Copy and Paste which many persons including myself noted as being horribly slow especially when copying large files. Persons still say Vista’s performance in general could be better, but I assume there are some illusions to this and there are some factors to be accounted for. My brother purchased a laptop notebook from Dell Inc. in June of 2006 with Windows XP Home hoping he would have a smooth upgrade to Windows Vista when it hit the market. The notebook was designated Windows Vista Capable, it came with an Intel Core Duo 1.6 GHz processor, 512 MBs of system memory. In February of this year, he upgraded to Vista Business but was immediately burnt by the slow performance he got from the system, upgrading was slow, using the OS was slow. Microsoft has long informed us that Vista works best with 1 GB of RAM. So, a lot of consumers have been misled I personally believe by the OEMs system specs and the Vista Ready logos. Its not entirely Microsoft’s fault here, since Microsoft can’t dictate what OEMs put in their machines and ship to customers. My brother upgraded his memory from 512 to a total of 1.2 GBs and the difference in performance was like night and day. The matter of what is best in terms of system specs for Vista especially when it comes to RAM is still falling on deaf ears. My Sister-in-law purchased a Dell 1501 notebook with Vista Basic in March which I was surprised to know came with 512 MBs of RAM and a 2.0 GHz AMD Sempron processor. I am not surprised by the processor since it is of course a budget notebook. But why is Dell still pushing systems out the door with 512 MBs of RAM? It’s like Dell doesn’t even run some test on these systems to see how they perform before putting them in the hands of consumers. This past summer a friend purchased a Gateway ML3109 notebook which also came with 512 MBs of RAM and Vista Home Basic. OEMs don’t realize the perception this creates for them and the OS, the brand is affected and consumers come to a conclusion the OS is not ready, it’s buggy and slow. I am running Vista Ultimate 32-bit on a Dell 8300 Dimension, 3.2 GHz P4, I purchased in March of 2004, and the machine has been updated since the betas with 2 GBs of RAM. Vista performs exceptionally well on it, it shows when a system is configured the right way how the experience can be a positive one for the end user. The same applies to my brother who is running Vista with 1.2 GBs of RAM and clearly satisfied with the OS for being what most would say is an early adopter. Security I can’t really come to a conclusion on Security in Windows Vista yet, but it’s been good, so far. The top name brand Security vendors have updated their popular Antivirus utilities with full support for both Vista x86 and x64 which is really good in my opinion. Microsoft themselves have also pushed out their Antivirus solution Windows Live OneCare, but I have avoided it based on some lack lustre reasons. I am using Symantec Norton Corporate Edition 10.2 on my desktop and Computer Associates for Vista x64. The controversial UAC is still ‘annoying’ and I am not going to nice it up. Its necessary, but I wish it could be less needy in certain areas or a feature added to the UAC dialog to remember for certain locations of the system I access. I don’t want to sacrifice the integrity of the feature itself, but UAC is just a bit too much, its like this nagging little @#$! I just hate it sometimes <sigh>. So I hope Microsoft focuses on some intelligent way of making UAC understands what can infiltrate the system from what cannot – just be more user aware. Applications still remain another area where UAC is still a big of problem; I have seen only a few applications that have escaped the wrath of the UAC dialog – Microsoft Office is one of them, the worst application is Apple’s iTunes. It’s still early and I am sure developers are still adjusting to the new Least User Privilege architecture in the OS. Backup in Vista is awesome, the Complete PC Backup type feature in particular is something I had to turn to from third party vendors in prior versions of Windows. I personally believe Microsoft should have made the feature available to all SKUs, since I believe everybody’s data is important no matter the platform they are using. What I like about Complete PC Backup in Vista is how simple and straightforward it is, just attach an external drive and I’m good to go. Some persons have reported errors with the feature itself such as (0x800000587) type errors when backing up or restoring the system. I personally have not experienced this, and I have not read any proper resolutions for the problem itself. I do know you can receive such an error on laptops if it’s not plugged into its AC adapter. Compatibility A lot of applications were not working right for Vista back in January, some of my daily apps like Office 2007, Encarta 2007 worked out of the box, other critical applications like Corel Draw X3, Photoshop CS3, new versions QuickBooks 2007 and Peach Tree Accounting 2008 and Ahead Nero 8 were upgraded to work with Vista so I am very satisfied so far and have not experienced a strong case of compatibility issues although this resulted in either purchasing new versions of certain apps such as QuickBooks and Peach Tree or waiting on necessary patches to enable compatibility. A lot of application compatibility issues again go back to the new changes in the user privileges in the OS, prior to Vista applications were designed to run with full Administrator rights, but because Vista made changes to the user account settings most applications do not readily operate properly since they do not get to access the system in an open way as they did in XP and 2000. It’s a tricky situation for many users and the reality is many applications will either have to be updated, run in Compatibility or installed on a supported OS in Virtual PC 2007. The Ultimate Cost
Going Forward I can’t cover everything because it would never be finished; I hope to do a future follow up in the near future. Looking into Vista’s future one can only say it will only get better. Microsoft is currently working on the first Service Pack for the OS which is expected sometime in early 2008. I won’t say it has been all great since day one, but Vista found its footing from early on and the industry started to invest early on in the platforms unique features, I will honestly say that Vista will be a year of building on the momentum and more users will get to experience the OS on machines I believe are more Vista prepared. Vista offers a cohesive experience users will greatly appreciate from multimedia/consumer oriented task to focus on an engaging productive experience for businesses whether it’s seamlessly connecting to wireless networks, managing files, collaboration, searching and really doing more with your PC. I say if you have been on the fence about upgrading to Vista, there is just no more need to wait. Resources: ActiveWin.com: Windows Vista 32 & 64 Bit Review Kristan Kenney: Confessions of a Windows Enthusiast Previously: ActiveWin.com: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition: Year in Review
Technorati tags: Windows Vista, RTM, ActiveWin, Software, Operating Systems, 64-Bit, 32-bit, Service Pack, Vista Ultimate Edition, Reviews, Windows Live, Ultimate Extras October 24 Remaining Ultimate Extra Language Packs Released!From Windows Ultimate via ActiveWin
Learn more here The additional supported languages are:
Also, this release includes an update to the lpksetup.exe installation component, correcting issues that affected some customers at installation. We recommend you download and install this component before installing any language packs; the updated component can be found here.
Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Windows Ultimate, MUI, Multilingual User Interface Pack, Languages, Ultimate Extras, Features, Windows Update New Compatibility, Reliability and Stability update for Windows Vista
From Microsoft Downloads This update improves the compatibility, reliability, and stability of Windows Vista. This update includes the following improvements:
Download x86 HERE Download x64 HERE Previously: An update is available that improves the compatibility and reliability of Windows Vista
Technorati tags: Windows Update, Compatibility, Reliability, Performance, Windows Vista, Microsoft Downloads October 18 Yahoo! Web Mail now supports Windows Live ContactsI logged into my Yahoo email address this morning to catch up on some email. In addition to noticing a new look and feel and removal of the BETA Tag, Yahoo! Mail notified me I can import my Windows Live Contacts so I could also chat with them online. Previously, only Yahoo! contacts were supported for chatting. I love Yahoo's web mail interface, which I believe loads much quicker than Windows Live Hotmail and features integrated instant messaging and just a more flexible experience when it comes to email in the web browser. Its definitely a winner in my book. Check out some of the screenshots I took. I was notified if I would like to import my Windows Live contacts into Yahoo!, too bad I didn't get the dialog that appeared after with the contact listing. Windows Live and Hotmail addresses import successfully, no effort at all. Love the floating modal dialog btw. The Chat experience is amazing, blazing fast and of course instant - Windows Live Hotmail are you learning? IM conversations can also be saved as email messages. Even Windows Live Mail or Hotmail IM Contacts Personal Messages show up - pretty cool! An exceptional update, I hope they improve on the alerts part when it comes to IM part. I notice when my browser was not the active window, I missed a received message. Overall, this is quite an amazing, seamless integrated experience Yahoo has created here that provides a very cohesive experience for users in the Web 2.0 world. Fast, feature rich, powerful, simple, effective! Technorati tags: Windows Live, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo!, Windows Live Contacts, Instant Messaging, IM, Web 2.0, Email October 12 New Windows Live Spaces User Home Page - more Facebook like?I logged in this morning to my Windows Live Space Home Page and was greeted by a new look that had a familiar feel to the popular Facebook user home page with quick overviews of what is going on with your Friends in your Windows Live Space social network. Some familiar features include, friends making new friends and updated photo albumbs or changes made to a persons space. Because Live Space is a blogging service, you still get some old features enhanced and rearranged in a more convenient layout, such as comments on your Space now on the right side, so you can see the latest responses. Its a very nice change thats not only convenient and productive, but just visually richer and connecting. Now this is what I call Social Networking. Check out the screenshots: New Windows Live Spaces User Home Page Friends can see whats going on in their social network, manage and respond to comments on their blog much easier. New Windows Live Spaces 'Friend Request' email Speaking of updates to Spaces, the Friend Request email has also been updated to be more simplified and get to the point. Check it out: You can simply click Be Friends or No, thanks or check out the persons Space before you grant request as before. The old Windows Live Spaces Friend request email Some nice improvements I definitely like and appreciate. Windows Live Spaces is becoming more robust, reliable and offers a more integrated experience that makes blogging, expressing your self and interacting with your friends a treat.
Technorati tags: Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live, Facebook, Social Networking, Blogging, Friends, Windows Live Space Home Page October 09 Safer browsing with Internet Explorer 7From Microsoft
HOW TO: improve the performance of Vista Media CenterFrom APC Mag Quote:
Read the entire article here
Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Tips and Tricks, Media Center, Operating Systems, XP, MCE 2005, Features, software, Performance NVIDIA ForceWare Release 163.75 BETA (Windows Vista 32-bit)Release Highlights:
Technorati tags: Drivers, nVidia, Microsoft Update, Windows Vista, 32-bit, 64-Bit, x86, x64, Geforce, GPU, Graphics Driver, nVidia SLI, Half-Life 2, ForceWare October 04 My Early Preview of Windows Vista SP1 BETAMicrosoft has released a 'test release' of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to a group of its Technical Testers last week. Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is a collection of updates and fixes that have been released for Windows Vista since it was Released to Manufacturering (RTM) in late 2006. Microsoft is also focusing on improving the general performance of the operating system in addition to supporting new technologies and standards. The final release is expected sometime in early 2008, but this is subject to change. Microsoft's Pete McKiernan, a Senior Product Manager for Windows gives us an overview of the update here: Windows Vista Service Pack 1, V.275 build 6001
Learn more HERE Sounds like a worthy update overall. Now on to my experiences with SP1. I installed it yesterday on a machine running Windows Vista Home Premium x86 RTM (no updates applied), no software installed. The time estimated by the software that it would take to install is around 30 minutes, but turned out to be 37 mins for me. Check out my hardware specs: Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz 2.6 GBs of RAM nVidia Geforce FX 5200 128 MB AGP Initial phase of Windows Vista SP1 installation - its a pretty SP. :) The installation was very streamlined and smooth until the rebooting started which happened around three times. During this portion of installation, SP1 lingered on, indicating that "a Service Pack for Windows is being installed", in addition other notifications that informed me that I should not unplug or restart my computer and the update will be applied automatically. Eventually, installation was completed and a dialog appeared on screen that informed that Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista was installed sucessfully. Some scenes from the Windows Vista SP1 installation. Is it? Changes Well, the first big change I noticed was, my theme was set to Windows AERO Basic, the default theme was originally Windows AERO Glass. I tried accessing Explorers such as Personalize and Control Panel, but was unable to. Personalize would not open and the Control Panel applets would not appear. Other parts of the system seemed to work fine. I don't know what has happened here, but I sure will send off a bug report to find out. I did check the Problem Reports and Solutions history to see if there were any issue logged, there was one particular log for Windows Installer Module CPLs. Notable changes to the system include the removal of the Search link on the Start Menu panel and the new Defragment Tool which allows you specify which drives you would like to defrag - very handy and functional compared to whats in the RTM release. So far, those are issues I am experiencing on Windows Vista SP1. Its early days yet and I am sure things will smooth over time such as the numerous reboots required to accomplish the installation. I will be testing out some software to see how well application compatibility performs. The SP1 file is a stand alone installer which weighs around 687 MBs, the x64 file is over 1 GB. The installation seem to have consumed around 2 GBs of disk space, but I am sure there is some debug code in there resulting in smaller release. Also, users will be able to acquire SP1 over Windows Update resulting a small file if they have continually updated their systems since RTM. Users can also look forward to a merged kernel that will be shared with Microsofts next release of their Network Operating System - Windows Server 2008. This should streamline updates and maintainance of both client and server releases in addition to supporting new technologies and standards such as 802.11n based hardware for example and the new EFI standard which was previously mentioned. I am going to do another reinstall though, I suspect something could possibly have gone wrong with my install and I love AERO Glass. ;) Stay tuned for more updates on SP1! Andre Resources: The Windows Experience Blog: Experiencing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 beta Windows Vista Blog: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 beta whitepaper
Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Windows Vista Service Pack 1, SP1, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Search, Security, EFI, AERO Glass, Updates, Windows Update October 03 BITS Repair Tool for Windows VistaThe BITS Repair Tool will help you fix a problem caused by the corruption of BITS state files. The problem stops the host process for Windows Services, which prevents you from using BITS to transfer files. Use this tool to resolve the corruption and re-enable BITS transfers. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.
Technorati tags: Vista, Windows Vista, BITS Repair Tool, ActiveWin, Network, Windows Services, x86, x64 October 02 Windows Vista Reliability and Compatibility UpdatesFrom ActiveWin.com Microsoft has released several updates to improve the reliabiliy and compatibility of Windows Vista in certain scenarios. The issues resolved by these updates are detailed in the following Knowledge Base articles:
My Live Hotmail Storage - Its Huge!I was just checking my email on Windows Live Hotmail and decided to see whats going on around the world, so I clicked the Today link. There I saw my Live Hotmail storage which is now at a whopping 5 GBs! Previously it was at 2 GBs which I barely scratched the surface. Check it out: Windows Live Hotmail Mailbox storage This is definitely an enticing value for users who are sharing large files or just plain email a lot. I love Live Hotmail (except for the banners), I plan to do a review of the entire suite of services soon. The services and technologies are just getting better and better, not to mention well integrated. Microsoft should just purchase Facebook and replace the Friends feature in Windows Live Space and we will be good to go.
Technorati tags: Windows Live Hotmail, Storage, Hotmail, Email, Integration, Windows Live, Windows Live Spaces |