On monday i dowlnoaded and installed Windows Vista RC1. We have a technet subscription through work, so it was no problem getting it…

I have to say, i really like windows vista. It runs decently (even on a mediocre laptop) and overall has a good look and feel to it. It has blue screened 5 times in 2 days, but hey – its still a beta technically.

The windows explorer interface now seems to be heavily based on the Mac interface. The bread crumbs, the structured left to right browsing, i kept thinking ‘jeez, this is how a mac works’. Running on a crummy laptop, i’m not really able to take advantage of some of the supposed 3d enhancements and capabilities, but i really do like Vista. 🙁

I took some screenshots, and also copied all the wallpapers i could find in vista. If interested—

• Screenshots of Vista
• Vista’s Wallpapers

So M$ has released internet explorer 7 in beta… Since it requires validation, I installed it on my work computer.

I took some screenshots… check them out.

Basically, it adds tabbed browsing and a new look/feel. However, they did try to outdo firefox’s tabbed browsing with a thumbnail view of all open tabs… Overall, I kind of like it 🙁

I love Google… I’m going to install this the minute it is available.
Google Working on Desktop Linux

Google employees must read p4p.
Google Rocks

Google is one of the few software companies that have become a house hold name. Even most “non technical” people know the word “Google”.

Basically, everything that Google does is awesome. Not only for their search engine capabilities, but for the assortment of all kinds of online services they offer – for free. Google analytics, Rss reader, Gmail, Google local, etc. I am very impressed with this company; specifically that they are able to offer great software and services completely free of charge.

They probably are able to do this because they really dont advertise. You don’t see google tv commercials, google newspaper/magazine ads.. etc. They dont have to. Everyone just knows their name. But even so, not everybody knows them beyond their search engine.

I think Google is going to be the company that breaks Microsoft’s dominance in the computer industry. Although their business model is mainly an online initiative, they have written desktop software such as Picasa and Google earth. If i were google i’d be having a development team writing an operating system, a vendor like HP or dell ready to use that OS on their hardware, etc. I know that I would definitely give a Google OS a spin if it were available for download.

People know and love Google… and with Google’s past record with software I’m more than certain they are capable of producing such a product.

Check out Google’s stuff.
Google Services
Check out Google’s “beta” stuff
Google Labs

For some time now I have been a ‘computer guy’… Being said computer guy, I have always been curious about trying new things, customizing old things, just breaking things, fixing things, redoing things, you get the point. Part of that curiosity has been trying out alternative operating systems. “Windows” and I always seem to have a love/hate relationship… I leave it for brief periods of time to explore(mainly, i explore the ways that an end user can customize any part of a linux distribution… it actually is somewhat overwhelming), but in the end always return back to my trusty “Win XP”. With my current exploration, however, I may try to make a permanent switch. My most recent exploration is ubuntu linux.

I used this operating system a few months back, but only briefly… I’m going to force myself to give it a good run, and only boot windows if I must, or if i feel like playing counter strike. Now on my 3rd day of ubuntu, i really have no complaints. One of the things i first noticed is that it seems the gap between windows and linux is definitely shrinking. Alot of programs i would use on a daily basis in windows are installed by default on linux; firefox, thunderbird, gaim, the gimp, just to name a few. With OpenOffice 2, i really dont see how I should need to use Windows except to play counter strike… My daily regiment of internet/email/chatting is set up EXACTLY like it would be on a windows system… Another big plus with ubuntu, it is the first distribution i have used that comes with synaptic/apt installed and ready to go. I’ve always had to set that up and configure it manually on a redhat/fedora install.

Long story short, I really like Ubuntu. As far as linux goes, its an easy to use, very functional distribution. Check out some screenshots.

I really wonder if linux will ever get to be a mainstream OS for consumers…
it seems that Macs are doing a great job of bridging the gap(perhaps due to
the sound coat tails of the Ipod)… Really, the masses don’t care what’s on
their computer, they just buy it from a reseller and then use it when they get
home. So really it will probably take a PC manufacturer to standardize a
linux distro and begin shipping their PC’s with linux pre-loaded. The fact
that Novell has purchased SuSE linux is huge… absolutely monumental.
Hospitals, Universities, probably the federal government, all the large firms
have implemented Novell. Why? Well, these large firms needed a robust and
functionally sound network infrastructure very early on in network computing,
when there wasn’t an alternative like Active Directory. Novell is going
linux, hence offering an imaged linux client, hence novell networks will
probably start veering towards linux (or, migrate to Active Directory). If
people use it at work, they will become familiar with it and feel comfortable
using it at home. I think its happening… slowly but surely.

comments