Category Archives: Uncategorized

5 random things about Windows 7

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Finally finished downloading Windows 7 and installed it on my Dell. Went with replacing Windows Vista. :P   For a Beta release Windows 7 feels far more stable and responsive than Windows Vista SP1. It even boots faster than Vista.

Some random things about Windows 7:

  1. The first thing I did was turn off UAC but apparently that has a side effect. Desktop gadgets cannot be used without turning on UAC. Don’t know why.
  2. If you are beta testing Windows 7, be sure to read this great list of 30 Windows 7 secrets by Tim Sneath. Its a seriously great article about some cool things that are present in Windows 7.
  3. If you are annoyed by the Send Feedback link present on all windows, use this simple registry hack from Tech Recipes to get rid of that.
  4. Love the desktop slideshow feature of Windows 7. Just select a folder containing wallpapers and specify a rotation interval, Windows 7 will rotate the wallpapers. Earlier people used to downloaded third party software for doing this.
  5. Windows 7 includes DivX support in Windows Media Player. So codec packs are not needed more. :)

Official Windows 7 Beta Download from Microsoft

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Windows 7 LogoFinally Microsoft has put together its act and made Windows 7 Beta available for download (along with the product keys). No secret links are required, just visit the official Windows 7 site and get the product key and the ISO of Windows 7 Beta. :)

You will need a Passport ID to login. Also Firefox is not supported for the download. You will need IE 7 and above to download the ISO. Thats because MS uses an Active X Control as a download manager to resume downloads.

Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 support the Windows 7 Beta download experience. Please note that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 users behind a proxy server should use the automatic configuration for their proxy server for the best download experience.

It is good that MS has extended the availability of Windows 7 Beta till 24th January. Hopefully the 3.15 GB x64 ISO will have finished downloading by then on my computer.

P.S. – I have a 160 kbps unlimited internet connection. :P

KDE 4.2 Beta 2 on Archlinux II

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After reading all the great reviews of KDE 4.2, I ended up installing KDE 4.2 Beta 2 on my Arch Linux. :) So how does it feel…

Some of the problems which were bugging me on KDE 4.1 were slow responsiveness and lack of features when compared to KDE 3.5. Also the graphics performance was not that good with my nVidia GPU. These were the first things I wanted to be fixed in KDE 4.2.

Thankfully, KDE 4.2 fixes most if not all the problems in KDE 4.1. And if you experience graphics problem be sure to install the latest beta of the nVidia driver. (180.18 is the version available in AUR). The driver makes things on KDE 4.2 a lot smoother.

You can read a pretty nice review of KDE 4.2 Beta here and here along with some delicious looking screenshots. :D

But in between all these improvements there are some  things which are bugging me in KDE 4.2 Beta. :P

  1. Plasma seems to be taking shape well with Plasma add-ons working pretty good now. But still Plasma keeps crashing every now and then. And everytime I go offline in Kopete, Plasma crashes. :(
  2. The new system tray is nice but it keeps flickering everytime I minimize or restore a window. I hope that is fixed before KDE 4.2 is released. Also the system tray icons seem a bit blurred at times.
  3. This one is not really KDE related but I dont like Amarok’s new look and feel. :( Hope the developers give the UI a second thought.
  4. I really hate KTorrent startup. It keeps on stacking notifications on top the system tray. Though the notifications are OK when I am copying or moving a file, KTorrent stacks at least 10 notifications when I open it.
  5. KDE 4.2 reminds me of Vista. The taskbar is too similar to the one in Windows Vista. Though KDE has been using that kind of taskbar even before Vista. :P
  6. Theming – KDE 4.2 appearance is not all that customizable.

These are not really negatives. May be I am just stuck with GNOME.

Hopefully I will try out KDE 4.2 final when it is out. For now I am back on GNOME 2.24 + Compiz Fusion. :)

Did you try KDE 4.2?

Try KDE 4.2 Beta 2 on Archlinux

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KDE 4.2 Beta 2 was released on 18th of December by the KDE community. As per the announcement 1665 new bugs have been opened, and 2243 bugs have been closed since the release of Beta 1.

If you are using ArchLinux you can grab the KDE 4.2 packages from the kde-unstable repository of Arch Linux. Though the repo is not announced yet, the KDE 4.2 Beta 2 packages (4.1.85) are available in all the mirrors.

Just add the following lines to your /etc/pacman.conf file.

[kde-unstable]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

The lines have to be added above all the repositories core,extra and community. You will also need to enable the [testing] repository as the kde-unstable packages have been built on the packages from testing.

After adding the above lines to pacman.conf, give the command pacman -Sy as root.

Then give the command pacman -S kde to install the full KDE 4.2 Beta 2 packages or pacman -S kdebase-workspace to have a minimal KDE 4.2 environment.

I am installing KDE 4.2 Beta 2 now. I will write about my experience once I try it out. :)

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista discontinued

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The Yahoo! messenger blog has announced that the Yahoo! messenger for Vista will not be available for download anymore.

The Yahoo! messenger team will be stopping development on the Vista version of Yahoo! messenger and instead concentrate on the Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 which works on all versions of Windows.

As of today, Yahoo! Messenger for Vista will no longer be available for download from the Yahoo! Messenger website. We have discontinued stand-alone releases of the Yahoo! Messenger for Vista application in order to focus on delivering one Windows experience that is optimized for all Windows users.

This decision will help us increase efficiencies on our team and deliver one consistent, full-featured product for all of our Windows users. Our application was based on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) platform which we will continue to experiment with and invest in. The knowledge we gathered from developing Yahoo! Messenger for Vista will also help us improve future versions of our Windows software.

Bad news. Yahoo! messenger was starting to look good on Vista because of  WPF. Guess its finally time to move on from Yahoo! messenger. :)

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista version is no longer available

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic vs Apple iPhone

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Technologizer has does a nice side by side comparision of the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with the Apple iPhone 3G. The Nokia 5800 comes with 8GB of memory, a single touch screen and Nokia Maps.

It does look similar to the iPhone and if the Nokia 5800 is retailing at 387$, it sure is going to attract a lot of buyers. Also it has got some nice features like a better camera with flash,video recording, voice dialing, and FM radio, which the iPhone currently lacks.

Will you buy it if it is cheaper than the iPhone ?

Windows 7 without Mail, Photo Gallery & Movie Maker

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Now this is really a nice move from Microsoft. :)

Microsoft has announced that it will not be shipping Windows Mail, Photo Gallery & Movie Maker along with Windows 7. Instead users can download the Windows Live programs themselves as and when they need it.

In a follow-up interview on Monday, Windows Vista general manager Brian Hall said Microsoft made the decision to remove the tools from Windows for several reasons, including a desire to issue new operating system releases more quickly than it has in the past. The move also removes the confusion of offering and supporting two different programs that perform essentially similar functions.

“It makes it much cleaner,” Hall said.

A huge step to a cleaner Windows install.

But as to how Microsoft will advertise its Windows Live services inside Windows 7 OS remains to be seen. If users have to download a mail client they can download Thunderbird instead, why to go for Windows Mail. Or for Photo Gallery, Picasa can do the job. So if MS is removing Windows Mail, Photo Gallery it will have to aggressively pursue the users to download the Live programs.