Is Windows 7 just about what kids want these days–music, videos, pictures, or is there more to it, that say, a developer might like too? Did the MS teams even ask adults, who work for a living, what they wanted? As always, they say it is so.
First impression wasn't good. Mom still has a 56k modem — the young developers never thought of that, I bet! — and it's impossible to set up email, internet, printers, an old Access application and Word with that! So off we go to my house where we start with a wireless connect. Our Lexmark driver didn't work to the multifunction printer scanner. Kodak easy picture or whatever did work. Transferring old files from the old PC worked, including pictures. What!? There is no email application installed?! What were they thinking? (Search Google for Windows Live e-mail or try http://download.live.com/wlmail here.) That was too much for a modem of course. Good time to find something else. How about Thunderbird?! Yup. No problem downloading that, installing, setup. (But we did have trouble importing Outlook Express contacts. Messages not so much). Okay, I know IE is going to be a very b i g and slow application. Gosh! Here's an icon to load Chrome. Worked perfectly. All those lawsuits must have worked out for others. And Windows is now just an OS. Obviously, this is going to take a while. To learn. To set up, and to re-educate. Damn.
Like me, at one time you may have said it before:
I love DOS (I hate it!)
I love WIN98 (I hate it!) … Windows 2000 etc.
I love XP (hmmm, not much to not like there)
I avoided Vista (not to be confused with AltaVista)
Now the only new PCs come with Windows 7. (I miss typing the old OS' short name: XP. Can we just call it, se7en?, or, 7en?)
So, where do we start? Through trial and error here we go.
LINKS
- http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Windows7/
- http://windowsteamblog.com/
- http://www.askvg.com/ Lots of tweaks
- Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode. We'll need this.
- We skipped Vista, but now we'll try some of the cool Gadgets in W7.
We'll be adding more later.