Archive for July, 2009
After years and years of beta/RC phases and thousands of articles, no “new feature” in a “new OS” ever comes as actual surprise. Most of the time. But everyone still writes those. Why NOT me?
Just to get it out of the way – YES it does FEEL like it’s clearly faster than Vista. YES, the taskbar FEELS like it’s way cooler than the one from Windows 95-Vista. But this is still nothing until the boot screen comes up for the first time, with it’s flying colors instead of the old progress bar! Seriously, this is why people upgrade Microsoft! Boo-yah. Looks very nice.
So what’s different? A few very minor (I fear I will use this term again) additions to the power options, with the most noticeable being the option to dim down displays, after a while of idleness. The huge rest is identical with the rich, trusty options from Vista.
The taskbar. Oh the taskbar… Here they feature one change that’s hard to overlook. I always made use of the quick launch for apps I “worked” with frequently – now they enriched the former program-only bar with this feature and removed the thus obsolete (?) quick launch toolbar. Applications are pinned to the task bar in 7, like links were pinned to the start menu since Vista. With this category gone, it’s necessary to alter the own behavior, because otherwise it’s hard to see which programs are just the icon or are actually running. In the first moment I employed the task manager, just to be sure. This effect occurs especially, when e.g. the first and third icons are active and therefore running (and inactive, “just link” -) applications alternate, when reading through the bar from one side to the other. The next alteration is, that different instances of the same application can now be grouped in the same taskbar icon. So Firefox and the add-ons window share one icon, that looks slightly different if only Firefox is running alone. I disabled this behavior right away, because I didn’t like having to do 2 clicks to get to the add-ons window instead of just one, with separate task bars for everything.
The power action button in the start menu now shows a word instead of an icon, so there’s no guessing which action will be taken after the click. That’s great, it comes in the same tradition as the Vista changes, where menus said save/don’t save over standardized yes/no/cancel.
The notification area enables the user to have control over all visible programs/icons. Annoyances like the action center have no chance. Very good.
The “windows search” formerly known as Windows Desktop Search is now fully integrated and feels no longer like an add-on. The standard explorer has options to configure the indexing behavior. I’m always angered, when the search doesn’t include system folders or hidden files, so this is important, a step in the right direction.
PowerShell 1.0 is now present as default, while it’s installed 2 times after an upgrade, when e.g. 2.0 CTP3 was already on the machine. One can’t have enough POWER, I guess.
Transparency is everywhere, when it comes to the looks of all the windows panes, it’s a little strange at first, when the desktop is always visible, to some part. This can be turned off.
The most useless new feature is without a doubt Aero Peek, or whatever they call it, pointing with the mouse on the rightmost place on the task bar makes (here it is again) all windows transparent, except for their frames. What it could be good for, when win+d gives the desktop at any time, stays a secret.
Some things, as always, were just moved to another spot, like the awesome reliability monitor.
I could only find very few software that wasn’t compatible right away – Daemon Tools doesn’t work, because its SPTD. But with popular stuff like this it’s just a matter of time.
So very little changed for the user, 7 is a Vista with few minor (there you go) improvements in its GUI. 7 however, will probably benefit from the age of XP and the fact, that Vista was often criticized for all the wrong reasons (although there were enough good ones). Users of mobile hardware or cutting edge stuff (touchscreens for monitors) will benefit the most from 7, because this is where the most noticeable changes were made. Although battery lifetime didn’t change at all for me, I really hoped 7 could make a difference.
Anyway, I don’t want to take away from what happened here, after Vista they went with 7 more often in the right direction, than they did not.
Stability, reliability, speed […] are points 7 will have to prove in the months ahead, it’s impossible to evaluate this now.
Half‐Life 2 Lost Coast: Color corruption occurs in the video stress test after
changing the display mode.[…]
Half‐Life 2 Episode One: Gravity Gun has z‐fighting problems on certain portions
of the gun. [263505][…]
Geforce 6800: Half‐Life 2 fog is different when using ATI hardware.144508
Sometimes their level of support is really underestimated, I guess. Still rolling out fixes for good old HL², which was released on 2004/11/16 (although Lost Coast and EO were released later, actually), in a driver from 2009/07/21.
Or should I rather complain about the fact, that a game still needs fixing after it’s been released for 5 years?
The extremely embarrassing amateur-video of (now dead) loved ones (usually wife/kids), the shattered hero watches to reminisce, while off-putting, pseudo-emotional music is played…
Oh please stop filming me! I never would have accepted this gig if I’d known this would only be used for the shitty amateur-video, the hero has to cry to at the end of the episode…
Seriously, I deserve better, I took acting classes! I wanna play a real character, inside the actual footage!
My life sucks! My wife is dead, I’m home alone and all I’ve got to watch is this shitty amateur-video… And if that weren’t enough, all you do is being appalled by the stupidity of scenes like this one!!! No one ever thinks of me, how I feel about having to do stupid jobs like this one, just to make ends meet! Now I’m really depressed and sad, like the scene requires me to be!
You’ll never know how little you can actually accomplish unless you try. It’s depressing!
This animated film belongs to the category of movies, that often leaves me with the feeling of being clearly better than some of the (more or less) comparable live action flicks. Say, I would rather watch this, than “Plot Holorigins”: Wolverine. I also like the art.
The same artist was involved in Wonder Woman, another recent animated film well worth spending time on.
Because having handling only mentioned briefly earlier: The SE is also a fine example that the so often promoted evolution is rarely a positive thing for the player. The SE only blends in verbs and inventory on keyboard shortcuts – getting the idol in the governors mansion is close to missing something, not seeing all the items as they are added and removed. Having SCUMM™ visible all the time, makes the whole step superfluous, to turn the commands on, every time they are needed (2 steps actually).
Guybrush’s death scene is also a fine example (I refer to the modified SCUMM™ commands).
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adrift 