Tag: windows 7

Windows 7 on the Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

Two years ago I decided to upgrade my tablet PC to Windows Vista, a process that I detailed here. I don’t use my tablet very much, but I do like to get the pen out from time to time to do some scribbling. The improvements in Windows Vista made the tablet much more usable, and though it wasn’t without problems, I wouldn’t have gone back to Windows XP. Slowly but surely I’ve replaced or upgraded the rest of my computers to Windows 7, and I love it. It’s a great operating system that just works. I decided to see if Seven could breathe new life into my tablet too.

Windows 7 on Toshiba Portege M200

The first hurdle was the same as last time – the lack of a DVD drive in the tablet. Fortunately it was much easier to deal with this time! I took the installation DVD and put it on a USB key, something that appears to be quite common given all the tutorials available online. Here’s the TechNet guide and here’s a useful guide from Ars Technica.

The install proceeded normally, and as quickly as I had come to expect from Windows 7. All was going well until the first boot up after installation, when the machine froze. I restarted it, but the same thing happened. I decided to try to boot into safe mode, which didn’t work because the machine had not yet been setup. I searched around online and found many people talking about removing unnecessary hardware. The only extra thing I had was the D-Link Wireless card I had added (you can see it sticking out in the picture). I removed it, restarted, and everything worked fine! Success!

After all the Windows updates were finished, I installed a couple more things. First was the Toshiba Value Added Package for Windows 7 (click on Downloads), which is meant for the M400 but works fine on the M200. Second was the NVIDIA ForceWare driver. The 96.85 version worked reliably for me, enabling Aero without transparency. After that it was pretty much good to go!

I ran the Windows Experience test, which resulted in an overall drop from what I had under Vista:

Oddly enough, the gaming graphics score went up slightly! A score of 1.0 is a far cry from the 5.9 my desktop computer gets (and that’s just because of the hard drive score, everything else is 6.9 or higher), but considering how old the tablet is, I guess I can’t complain.

Under Windows Vista, everything worked as it did in Windows XP except for the external display. I haven’t tried that under Windows 7 yet, but a few other things no longer work, such as the buttons on the side of the screen, and more importantly, screen rotation. I’ve looked into a few threads where some people have successfully made it work, but I haven’t tried any of their solutions just yet. I’m not sure I want to mess with the video drivers too much now that I have something stable. I never take my tablet with me anymore anyway (I have a netbook for that), it’s strictly a home PC, so I’m not too worried about it.

There are some nice improvements to the tablet functionality in Windows 7, and combined with how much better the OS is than Vista in general, I’m happy with the upgrade! I’m not sure how much life the hardware has left though – I suspect Windows 7 will be the last OS it runs, but you never know.

Windows 7 Feature Request: Unified Application Updates

I’m sick of the way software updates are handled in Windows, and I want a new unified application update center in Windows 7 to solve the problem. Apparently Microsoft is asking Windows 7 beta participants questions related to “a single place for finding and managing updates on my PC.” The survey seems to go beyond updating however, and covers installing, uninstalling, configuring, and even discovering new applications. I think they should keep it simple – make updating applications easy.

The problem today is that every new application ships with its own update mechanism, if it has the ability at all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told the Adobe Updater to screw off because it has started automatically downloading 500 MBs worth of updates in the background. At least Logitech asks me before it starts using my bandwidth. Why is it bad for each application to have its own updater?

  • Instead of one OS component running to perform updates, dozens of little apps or background processes may be running to support the various applications you have installed. Each one takes resources.
  • Every time I want to configure an updater, I have to start from scratch because they all have different interfaces and options. This wastes my time.
  • Related to the previous point, if I want to see if my applications are up-to-date, I have to check each one individually! Again, this wastes my time.

I’m not sure exactly how Microsoft would go about implementing this (do Adobe servers push notifications to Microsoft servers?) but I think it should be like Windows Update on steroids. Here’s what I want:

  • The ability to see all of my applications and whether or not they are up-to-date.
  • The ability to define a schedule for downloading and installing updates, preferably on a per-application basis.
  • The ability to see a complete history of application updates.
  • The ability to easily suspend all updating temporarily.
  • Options for notifications. I want to be notified about some application updates, and others I never want to hear about.
  • The ability to have a restore point set before each update.

I think having unified application updates would drastically improve the user experience on Windows. It would reduce user frustration and improve system performance and security. The survey is definitely encouraging – I hope this becomes a reality!

Windows 7 Feature Request: Presence & Status API

When RSS feeds were all the rage, Microsoft took notice and built support into Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista. I think the Common Feed List was a great addition to the operating system – why try to manage and synchronize a different list of feeds for each application? It makes far more sense for the OS to manage it. This situation is a good example of how Windows can make your life easier.

I would like to see a similar feature added in Windows 7 – a common presence and status API.

Presence is your availability, such as “Available”, “Busy”, and “Not Available”. There are dozens of applications that support this type of functionality in their own way. I’ve got three running right now – Windows Live Messenger, Skype, and Pidgin (well and Exchange, I suppose). You’ve probably got a similar list, perhaps with a few more applications.

Status is the short text description of what you’re doing, such as “Working in the office”. Think Twitter and Facebook. Many software applications have this type of functionality as well, including Windows Live Messenger and Skype.

Here again, the operating system should be taking care of this to make life easier. When I want to change my presence from “Available” to “Busy”, I currently have to make that change in every single application. Likewise, to update my status I need to copy and paste it to a bunch of different places. Too messy, too much work.

Here’s what I’d like to see in the API:

  • The ability to set the presence and/or status of the currently logged in user.
  • The ability to query the presence and/or status of the currently logged in user.
  • An event subscription mechanism to be notified when the currently logged in user’s presence and/or status has been updated.

That would be very cool, I think. I could then change my presence or status in Skype and it could be reflected in Windows Live Messenger and other applications. This information could also be displayed in other places, such as the Welcome screen, or in my email signature, etc.

But we can make it better – let’s hook in Windows Live support! Extend the Windows Live Presence API to support status updates as well, and let me grant access to third party services. That way I could potentially hook in Ping.fm and other services. When I update my presence and status on my computer, it updates Windows Live in the background, which in turn updates any other services I’ve added.

With that in place, this scenario becomes a reality: I open a gadget on my desktop, change my presence to “Available” and my status to “Writing a blog entry” and it’s reflected in Windows Live Messenger, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I’d love to have that functionality! Perhaps it could work with the new location API too. I’ve got tons of feature requests for Windows 7 (as I’m sure everyone does) but this one would definitely be near the top of my wish list.

Windows 7 Revealed

Today at PDC, Microsoft gave the first public demonstration of Windows 7. They’ve been pretty tight-lipped about the new OS until now (with the one exception being the Engineering 7 blog), in stark contrast to the way Vista was announced. I read some of today’s reaction, and I’ve been reading the news over the last couple of weeks too. Here are a few of the things we know about Windows 7:

  • The final name will be simply Windows 7.
  • The version number will be 6.1, which indicates that the codebase is based on Vista.
  • There won’t be a major interface overhaul – just refinements and improvements to Vista’s attractive UI.
  • User Account Control (UAC) isn’t going away, but it has been refined.
  • The sidebar has been killed – gadgets now live on the desktop.
  • Windows 7 will run on netbooks on the small end, and will support up to 256 CPUs on the large end.
  • Built-in apps like Mail and Calendar are gone, with Windows Live Essentials left to fill the void.
  • The final release will likely come in the latter half of 2009.

For a simple overview of what was demonstrated today, check out The Windows Blog. If you want something a little more in-depth, check out Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite or ActiveWin. If you’re just looking for screenshots, see this post.

As you can see, it looks a lot like Vista! I’m definitely looking forward to playing with the revamped taskbar. Even ignoring the new functionality, the clear look is a welcome improvement.

Looking good so far Microsoft!

Windows 7 will be called…Windows 7

windows logo Microsoft announced yesterday that the next version of Windows will go by its codename when it is released, a first for the operating system. The successor to Windows Vista will be called simply, Windows 7:

Over the years, we have taken different approaches to naming Windows. We’ve used version numbers like Windows 3.11, or dates like Windows 98, or “aspirational” monikers like Windows XP or Windows Vista. And since we do not ship new versions of Windows every year, using a date did not make sense. Likewise, coming up with an all-new “aspirational” name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Windows Vista into the next generation of Windows.

Even though I’m somewhat surprised by the decision, I think it’s a good one.

Most people call Windows XP just “XP” and Windows Vista just “Vista”. By the time Windows 7 comes out, it will have been ten years since we’ve had a version with a common moniker that includes the name “Windows” (of course, that would be Windows 2000). I suppose it’s possible that people may refer to it as just “Seven”, but I think “Windows 7” will be used more commonly. That’ll be good for the overall brand.

I also like the idea of evolving and refining Windows Vista, though it’s less clear how consumers will make that connection based on the name alone (I doubt most people think of Windows Vista as version 6). I think Windows 7 strikes a nice balance between “Windows Vienna” (or whatever other aspirational name was thrown around) and “Windows Vista R2”.

I wonder if this is a new trend for Microsoft? They also just released Silverlight 2 (not Silverlight 2.0). Maybe the next release of Office will be called Office 14 (they are skipping 13 due to superstition).

A version number is simple and easy-to-understand. It’s immediately clear that 7 came after 6. And removing the minor version (7.0) makes it less geeky. It also divorces the software from a yearly release cycle, which means Microsoft can focus on quality before making a new release.

I hope this decision is a sign of things to come for Windows 7. Simple and effective.