Lotsa windows (100) on my new compy
May 31st, 2009I thought I would test out my new i7 computer, so I opened up 100 programs (which includes a virtual machine running XP) and tiled the windows with Switcher. There are 50 programs on each monitor, vuala!
Windows 7 Release Candidate: May 5th
April 24th, 2009The Windows 7 Release Candidate will go public on May 5th. That’s really all there is to tell. If you want to learn more, check out The Windows Blog, The Supersite for Windows and Gizmodo.
How Windows 7 Beta Behaves when you don’t activate it (WGA)
February 23rd, 2009Microsoft introduced Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) in Windows XP. WGA acts as an anti-piracy measure for Windows. In XP it made a lot of sense for Microsoft, because XP required a product key during the install. For pirates that meant finding a key online. This was tricky, because keygens for Windows just don’t exist, so any key that they would find would be used by hundreds (or thousands) of other pirates. This made WGA easily pick out pirates and act accordingly. Vista and 7 don’t require product keys during the install, but give a 30-day grace period between the install and when WGA kicks in. WGA’s behavior when it identifies a copy of windows as “not genuine” has changed even within different service packs.
I believe WGA in XP is basically just a nag from the system notification area. In Vista RTM (pre service pack 1), WGA would disable AERO when the user logged in and only give an Internet Explorer window for the user to purchase a key. (Of course, the IE window allowed the user to open up the command prompt to do various things to get the system back without paying, but that’s not what this post is about.) Vista SP1’s WGA behavior was less of a show-stopper, and did allow the user to get to the desktop and use the computer semi-normally, but onto the Windows 7 behavior.
After a month of avoiding putting in my Windows 7 Beta key, I was greeted this dialogue box while using the computer: 
Windows 7’s update scheme supports adding new features to Windows
February 13th, 2009I just got this notification in my Windows 7 (beta) System Notification Area: 
What Using Windows 7 Multi-Touch is Like
February 3rd, 2009I saw this video on Gizmodo, and I feel that it needs to be seen. The guy doesn’t show that the zoom gesture is actually system-wide, not just in Photo Gallery, but I’m telling you now. 