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Permalink: Windows 7 Power Users Guide

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes from ZDNet Hardware 2.0 has done a series of benchmarks, not raw ones with exact numbers, but with ratings as results. He took Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, 7 Beta 1 build 7000 (32 bit and 64 bit), 7 build 7048 (64 bit) and 7 build 7057 32 bit which is the most recent leaked build. He tested the builds on 2 separate systems with these configurations and took 31 tests in total.

• An AMD Phenom 9700 2.4GHz system fitted with an ATI Radeon 3850 and 4GB of RAM
• An Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2GHz fitted with an NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS and 1GB of RAM

Keep in mind that raw benchmark results aren’t allowed under the Windows 7 EULA. Here are the test results from both systems:  Read more...

Permalink: Windows 7 build 7057 vs. Vista, XP and older 7 builds

Rafael from WithinWindows has done it again. He has discovered a new logon UI background customization trick that Microsoft has put in Windows 7 for OEMs. It requires a registry change and a few folder changes but does it without the need of any third party tools or hacks.

This does require a bit of work to get it working. First of all you’ll have to enable the functionality in the registry by creating ( if missing ) a DWORD value named OEMBackground in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background and enable its value to 1 or to 0 if you want to disable the functionality. Or you can just use this registry file I created, to quickly enable it.  Read more...

Permalink: Easily change your Logon Background in Windows 7!

Windows 7 build 7057 has been leaked on the tubes now. It’s available in both x86 and x64 variants and contains a few new tidbits. Here’s a quick review of some of the new features in this new build.  Read more...

• A stunning new login background. The image tile, password box and button are the same, only the image has changed. So, it’s just too much hype for the new login screen over just a new background. You can download the new background by clicking on the image above which will open the 1920×1200 sized version.
• It contains the same new icons as in build 7048 for Paint, WordPad, Remote Desktop and others. It seems that Microsoft has taken a step back from the ultra realistic icons of the Windows Vista era and made a new mixture of Vista+XP icon styles which result in the new icons we have seen so far. They look really good to me so far.
• The performance seems to have improved considerably over time. Build 7048 seemed to be somewhat buggy for many people but this one, marked as RC 1, is very fast indeed. The Hard disk I/O issues that some people were facing don’t seem to be there in this build.

Permalink: Quick Review of Windows 7 build 7057

While Window 7 feature set might have been set in stone before being released as a Beta to the public, there are still a lot of new features being uncovered in the leaked pre-RC/RC build. Internet Home Media Access is another new gem uncovered from Windows 7 build 7048. It’s a new feature in Windows Media Player which lets you share your home media with anyone over the Internet or lets you access your home media from anywhere online. It seems similar to how Windows Home Server can let you access your files from anywhere via the Web, but this seems to be restricted to media files only. Users can be granted access to your media using their Windows Live ID.  Read more...

Permalink: Internet Home Media Access in Windows 7 Media Player

Microsoft has released a reliability update marked KB962921 for Internet Explorer in Windows 7 Beta. According to the Windows Internet Explorer Blog, the main areas of fixes have been the crashes and hang ups in the browser. They took into account the feedback generated by Beta users and reports sent in by the Windows Error Reporting tool. So, unlike the claims by some people who think these services hog the OS down, these mechanisms really make Windows more better for us.  Read more...

Permalink: Internet Explorer in Windows 7 Beta gets updated, but not to RC 1

Ed Bott has a good benchmarking review of how Windows 7 handle 512 MB of memory when compared to Windows XP and Windows Vista. I had recently posted about a touchscreen 6000 MHz UMPC with 512 MB running Windows 7 nicely, so it shows that Windows 7 is indeed a step forward in terms of performance on low end systems. Good news for all you netbook advocates out there ( I’m not one of you, sorry ! ), and bad news for all the Linux zealots as they’ve got competition now. Interesting thing about Ed’s benchmarking is that he used the x64 edition of Windows 7 Beta, x86 version of Windows Vista and don’t know which version of Windows XP. To keep it fair, he updated all the operating systems with any critical and recommended updates available for them. No third party software was installed apart from Firefox on Windows XP. All these operating systems were testing in a virtual machine. Here are the memory and disk usage results:  Read more...

Permalink: Windows XP vs Windows Vista vs Windows 7 using 512 MB

Not that I hadn’t read this before, but Ars Technica has the official word on the death of Ultimate Extras:  Read more...

Permalink: The Death of Ultimate Extras (RIP)

*chirp just got updated and renamed to blu. TinyURL integration is available in the new version. Just paste in the URL and it’ll convert into a TinyURL. It’s really that simple. The performance also seems noticeably faster in blu than chirp. chirp used to hog around 110 MB of memory for me, where as blu just uses 36 MB.  Read more...

Permalink: *chirp updated and renamed to blu

Google Chrome looks as good on XP as it does on Vista. I like the blue title bar that shows up for Chrome in XP. I had been wondering how to get that theme in Windows Vista as well. If you use the Vista Basic theme, you can use Chrome with the blue theme in Vista as well, but after much research, I found out this relatively simple trick to revert Chrome to the XP theme in Vista, without turning off Aero.

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Permalink: Use Google Chrome’s XP theme in Vista