17 Dec 2008

Windows 7 a month and a half in

I've now been playing with Windows 7 on my Dev laptop for the last month and a half and can't complain. I was initially a little dubious at putting an Alpha on a live box, but I've had no problems.

So what has this given me over Vista? At this stage, no huge UI differences apart from my new friend the Lighthouse down in the system tray

This rather natty little chap hides notifications and the up arrow to it's left hides icons, so you no longer have icons a mile long and continual notifications poppng up. You have the ability to decide which icons are displayed in the system tray or hidden behind the up arrow, as well as to what level notifications are displays. Top stuff :)

Another cool feature is you can now connect to WiFi networks that don't broadcast their name, which you couldn't do with XP or Vista (AFAIK).

And lastly we've got the ability to mount Virtual HDs, which means I've been able to share drives between the Virtual PC and the actual box when I've needed to.

Apart from that a lot of the cool new features aren't available until the Beta, but you can use the Blue Badge unlocking feature to get at unfinsihed versions. A friend did it on a virtual machine, but the features weren't that stable so I gave it a miss.

I've also installed AVG Anti Virus and haven't had any problems with it, shame on you McAfee!

16 Dec 2008

PDC Podcast number 2

The second podcast from my excursion to PDC is now up on the NxtGenUG site here.

In this one Chris and I talk to Silverlight Guru Shaun Burke, and PDC organisers Mike Swanson and Tim Sneath. Mike even lets slip a little nugget about when VS2010 should be around :)

Enjoy.

The third and final podcast should be out in time for the New Year :)