Windows 7 adventures

I’ve been wanting to write about Windows 7 for some time now but waited to try them more in order to get a clearer picture for Microsoft’s new operating system.

So here’s what I found out so far:

Advantages:

Really really small footprint which results in great performance. I’ve even tried it to a small netbook I’ve got and it works really really well.
New and improved taskbar allows program grouping. One of my greatest features. Windows 7 new taskbar groups all the programs that are running into a single icon in the taskbar. You can take a peak at the running instances by just hovering over it. What’s more, there’s a program specific context menu on each icon allowing you to perform common tasks faster.
Sidebar gadgets everywhere not just at the side. This has triggered a lot of discussion on the web. There are some people who are disappointed with this change but I always felt somehow restricted with that so I feel quite happy with this new feature. If you need to have the gadgets where you previously had them you can always arrange them like that.
Networking is greatly improved. Menus and Forms have been redesigned to be cleared and enable easier and faster connections to available networks.
Action Center a new feature that groups all error and attention messages into a single form.

Disadvantages:

Chrome not running. Well not that much of a disadvantage as I don’t really like and rarely use Google’s browser ;-).
Visual studio installation breaks after Live platform installation. This is one of the problems that bugged me most of all. I had to re-format my pc several times until I found out what was causing Visual Studio Setup crashes. The installation process was constantly crashing on Document Writer installation. I’m guessing that the problem was caused because Live platform was installing some Visual Studio Runtime that conflicted with Visual Studio.
Cosmote Internet On the go software doesn’t work. I use a mobile 3G usb dongle to connect to the web when I’m on the road and what I found out is that while software installs correctly, I can not connect with it. Thankfully I’ve found a workaround to this problem. After entering the pin of my mobile carrier I close the program and use Windows Dialup option to connect.
Generic Rdis Driver not found. I have a windows mobile PC which I often syncronize with my PC. What I found out is that the Generic Rdis driver that is used in order to connect my device just isn’t there anymore.
Sidebar gadgets System undefined exception. This is a tricky one and don’t know if that’s a windows 7 thing or an IE 8 one. I’ve posted an issue at both teams and hope that I’ll have a response soon.

Windows 7 adventures

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