Been working with the Windows 7 right from the beta stage to
the RC1 now.Just felt like reviewing it. It is by far their best operating system.Finally microsoft has managed to bring out something thats good.
After the bloatware/malware that was vista, Windows 7 has a real light footprint.Its way faster than vista without losing out on the looks. The Aero interface is carried forward from vista and its way better. It still has the annoying user access control that pops up a msg when ever you want to do something other than watch movies or browse.
The toolbar is neat and it clubs the buttons and hides the labels by default. Instead of carrying forward the sidebar for widgets as in vista the microsoft guys have allowed free placement of widgets which are very handy. One of the things i liked about windows 7 is the Resource monitor tool that is in the performance tab of the task manager. This gives an application wise usage of network, disk, CPU,etc. This comes in very handy when wanting to close those CPU/Memory hogging applications.
Yes the total install size of Windows 7 Ultimate edition is about 8GB but the memory foot print is quite low.It only uses around 500MB logical memory with a basic regular usage of browsing and watching movies as compared to 1200MB used by vista. In the Virtual machine it runs smoothly even with a 256MB RAM and a 1.2 GHz processor and 20GB Hard Disk. It even runs with a 128MB RAM but is slow and comparable to a vista on a 512MB RAM or an XP at 128MB RAM. Since the RAM used is less the OS is no doubt faster.
The start-ups and the shut-downs are very quick.20-25 seconds for a start-up or a shut-down. This is way quicker than the long wait for start-up or shut-down in most operating systems.Under the hood Windows 7 has a virtual machine that runs Windows XP programs without a glitch. Better than the compatibility mode in vista. So its completely backward compatible.
It runs DirectX 11. This is quite impressive. But the wait is on for D3D 11 which promises to be way better than D3D10. D3D10 executed D3D9 and lower based applications in a compatibility mode and this was quite buggy. D3D 11 to be shipped with the retail version of Windows 7 promises to address these issues.
But Microsoft where is the Ground breaking new File system that you promised to launch with your earlier operating system(longhorn/vista). We were expecting to see it atleast with windows 7. Yes we are still struck with NTFS and FAT32 on windows 7. The WinFS is not there atleast in the RC 1. WinFS promised search based on content of a file rather than the file name.
Windows 7 does impress. It does not have any ground breaking new technologies but it is much more user friendly and much more faster than Vista. Many will migrate to windows 7 directly from XP.
Next Posts: Screen Grabs from windows 7
Friday, July 31, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
TYTN II truly a TITAN
Hello folks,
Been a while since my last post.Was busy with the regular activities of life and i couldnt find time to make a post. But here i am with a new one.
This time it is about an awesome piece of technology.
I lost my mobile a HTC touch and was sad about it so to get over it i got myself a TYTN II.
This is truly a marvelous piece of technology engineered to perfection.
The design itself is amazing as the phone slides out and props up which makes it possible to place the mobile on surfaces and still be able to view the screen sitting on a chair. The qwerty keypad that slides out is also very good. There are 2 soft keys on the keypad for the options that appear on the screen. These are a little hard to access as they are placed right below where the screen rests. It is also impossible in the opened up mode for single hand operations. Single hand operations are best done when the phone is closed with the touch screen. The phone is very robust and is built to withstand harsh usage. One problem is that it is a little bulky and heavy. But to support all the features and functionality it requires to be so.
On the technology side it has a Qualcom 400 mhz processor with 128mb RAM and a 256mb ROM. Am still using it with the 1gb memory card that i got with the phone. The touch screen is quite responsive and the sound quality is neat. It does have some issues with video playback at high resolutions. The connectivity is also really good with a quad band reciever that works with almost any network possible(GSM,WCDMA,UMTS).It supports HSDPA and EDGE technologies and this gives us real fast internet connectivity. The GPS receiver is pretty good but works even better with an external antenna. The one down side is the battery life. I could use it for at-most 2 days after turning off GPRS and other power hungry technology from time to time. The GPS is a battery killer as it drains the battery quickly.
The phone runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 which is pretty good. It is not really finger friendly and requires the use of stylus at times. The built in applications are standard on any windows mobile with a few plug-ins and applications thrown in from HTC. The HTC Home plug-in now sports a 5 tab interface. Tab 1 for the clock, 2 for quick dial contacts, 3 for the local weather, 4 for shortcut to applications and 5th tab for selecting the profile. The applications run without a hitch. It allows a great deal of multi-tasking as i have tried to run over 10 different processes simultaneously and they all work without a hitch. But if the audio player is running you might notice a few pauses in the audio that is playing but that is only when too many apps are running.
All in all the phone is quite robust, it has great features and is a true pocket PC.
The price tag attached is a little high at Rs.27k thats about $600 but all pocket pcs are priced at this range. With so many plus points this is worth the price.
Been a while since my last post.Was busy with the regular activities of life and i couldnt find time to make a post. But here i am with a new one.
This time it is about an awesome piece of technology.
I lost my mobile a HTC touch and was sad about it so to get over it i got myself a TYTN II.
This is truly a marvelous piece of technology engineered to perfection.
The design itself is amazing as the phone slides out and props up which makes it possible to place the mobile on surfaces and still be able to view the screen sitting on a chair. The qwerty keypad that slides out is also very good. There are 2 soft keys on the keypad for the options that appear on the screen. These are a little hard to access as they are placed right below where the screen rests. It is also impossible in the opened up mode for single hand operations. Single hand operations are best done when the phone is closed with the touch screen. The phone is very robust and is built to withstand harsh usage. One problem is that it is a little bulky and heavy. But to support all the features and functionality it requires to be so.
On the technology side it has a Qualcom 400 mhz processor with 128mb RAM and a 256mb ROM. Am still using it with the 1gb memory card that i got with the phone. The touch screen is quite responsive and the sound quality is neat. It does have some issues with video playback at high resolutions. The connectivity is also really good with a quad band reciever that works with almost any network possible(GSM,WCDMA,UMTS).It supports HSDPA and EDGE technologies and this gives us real fast internet connectivity. The GPS receiver is pretty good but works even better with an external antenna. The one down side is the battery life. I could use it for at-most 2 days after turning off GPRS and other power hungry technology from time to time. The GPS is a battery killer as it drains the battery quickly.
The phone runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 which is pretty good. It is not really finger friendly and requires the use of stylus at times. The built in applications are standard on any windows mobile with a few plug-ins and applications thrown in from HTC. The HTC Home plug-in now sports a 5 tab interface. Tab 1 for the clock, 2 for quick dial contacts, 3 for the local weather, 4 for shortcut to applications and 5th tab for selecting the profile. The applications run without a hitch. It allows a great deal of multi-tasking as i have tried to run over 10 different processes simultaneously and they all work without a hitch. But if the audio player is running you might notice a few pauses in the audio that is playing but that is only when too many apps are running.
All in all the phone is quite robust, it has great features and is a true pocket PC.
The price tag attached is a little high at Rs.27k thats about $600 but all pocket pcs are priced at this range. With so many plus points this is worth the price.
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