I know it’s been a while since my last post but I recently purchased my first home and have been pre-occupied with everything surround that process. It’s pretty stressful and very time consuming but worth every minute of it. The wife and I are very pleased. Anyway on to the post…

I’ve been using Windows 7 as my main operating system for 2 months and 5 days (66 days) and I am still very impressed. Not only does it run smoothly but I’ve yet to encounter the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death”. Windows is notoriously bad for requiring reboots all the time for just about everything but this has not been the case for me. I only occasionally have to reboot when there are security and/or feature updates from Windows Update that require it.

I’ve also been testing the beta version of Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows XP Mode. Both of which run fantastically well on my system. Unfortunately, at least for testing purposes, all of  applications I use work fine on 7 so I don’t have much use for XP mode. Although, I must say, the application integration in XP Mode works quite well even for apps that do work in Windows 7. Even my work doesn’t have a whole lot of legacy software that would require such a feature but I am sure some organizations do.

I also have 7 running on my work laptop so I can test in an Active Directory Domain environment. I am able to get most of my drive mappings, applications, and printers (with proper drivers) to work. There are, however, two minor issues I have encountered. One of these issues is not Windows 7`s fault but rather that of Cisco. We use a Cisco VPN concentrator for remote connections to the office and the Cisco VPN client does not support 64bit versions (of any Windows ) and requires a bit of trickery to get working on Windows 7 32bit. The second issue is the login screen. Once you have joined a domain, 7 automatically defaults to the login for that domain. Unlike XP, where you could choose the domain or computer from a drop down box on the login screen, you have to type in computer-name\username then your password to log in locally. I`ve yet to figure out how (or even if) this can be changed back to the old style.

All in all, my feeling is still very positive towards Windows 7 and I suspect this will finally be the next version for businesses and corporations looking to upgrade. Home users who were not happy with Vista should also be pretty satisfied with Windows 7 as long as the final version is as stable as the release candidate.

Cheers!
TheNerd

Windows XP Mode is a new virtualization feature to be available to Windows 7 users running the Ultimate, Professional or Enterprise versions of the operating system. This is basically a revamped version of Microsoft Virtual PC and a pre-configure Windows XP virtual machine.

The beauty of this set up is that you can have your XP applications run just as if they were installed in Windows 7. There is a folder created in your start menu that allows you to launch these applications with a single click without having to load the XP virtual machine manually each time. In effect, the XP virtual machine will be running in the background when these applications are being used but it’s transparent to the user.

As of the present time, XP Mode is still in beta and requires you to download and install Windows Virtual PC. Both are freely available as beta versions from the Microsoft website. The requirements to run XP Mode are as follows:

1. Windows 7 (Ultimate, Professional or Enterprise)
2. Hard disk: 2GB for installing Windows XP Mode. Addtional 15GB of hard disk space for the virtual Windows environment.
3. A processor capable of hardware virtualization, with AMD-V™ or Intel® VT (use this handy little application to find out if you have this capability)

If all these conditions are met you can download XP Mode, Windows Virtual PC and install them. I’ve been using this set up for a few days now and it’s very handy to run some older applications that do not work well under Vista or 7. You can also use Windows Virtual PC to create new virtual machines or run existing ones that were created with older versions (it even runs my eComStation 2.0 RC5 vm).

Cheers!
~TheNerd

I’ve been running Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) for a few weeks now and I must say that I am quite impressed. I had more problems with Vista (RTM) in the first two days after installation that I’ve had in the whole three weeks I’ve had 7 installed.

I’m running it on my desktop computer which is made up of the following components:

• ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
• AMD Athlon X2 4200+ CPU (Dual Core 2.2GHz)
• 4GB DDR 2 RAM
• ~1.5TB of disk space (2x 500GB, 1x 250GB, 1x 160GB)
• Sapphire RADEON X1650 PRO Video
• DVD Drive
• 2x 19″ LCD Monitors

The hardware worked right off the bat and I did not need to install any drivers to get going. Once I had set things up and looked for some Windows updates there was an updated driver for the video card which I installed but reall didn’t notice a difference.

As far as software is concerned, everthing appears to be working more or less as expected. The only software that has caused me problem was Call of Duty: World At War, which tried to get me to install Direct X 9 which failed and then wouldn’t load. There might be a way to get this running but I haven’t looked into it at this time.

Lastly, I am very impressed with the stability and robustness of this OS. It’s not once given me a blue screen or crashed in any way. The only time I’ve had to reboot was after some Windows updates.

All in all it looks like Windows 7 will be the OS to go with, at least for home users. I’ve yet to test it in a business capacity but I suspect that it will fair pretty well running enterprise software in a corporate networked environment. It’s much improved compared to Vista and can even run on some hardware that Vista had trouble with. Hopefully Microsoft will continue along this path and continue to create operating systems of this quality (hopefully the RTM version will be as good).

Cheers!
~TheNerd

For the greater part of the past 5 years I’ve worked mostly with Novell’s eDirectory and related services. I thought it was a great combination but I’m starting to realize how much better Active Directory is.

Now, as I get settled into my new position at my new company I’ve started to realize how much I actually missed working with Active Directory.

In the past I thought that eDirectory and NetWare was the way to go. It seemed reliable, fast, and easy to administer. For the most part I guess it was but Active Directory works that much better.

In my old environment we had NetWare servers, eDirectory for authentication and user related stuff, and GroupWise email. My new company uses Windows servers, Active Directory and Outlook/Exchange for email.

One of my main complaints about Novell was that it required client side software to connect to the services (Novell Client) where as Windows already has a built in client for Active Directory logins (I don’t care about Client Services for NetWare). What is the point of using a system that requires extra overhead of another client when there is already one built in. Not to mention the endless problems that arise because of NDPS/iPrint, NMAS, NICI etc that have to also be installed for the use of a lot of NetWare/eDir services.

With NetWare based services you have to use three different tools to administer everything, ConsoleONE, Netware Administrator and iManager just to accomplish simple tasks. And most of the time they never work right to begin with. With Active Directory most of it is done in the Active Directory Users and Computers console.

Working with printers in NetWare can be a nightmare. You have to manage the Broker, Manager, and printer agents. In Windows you just set up the printer and connect it to the print server (usually by creating an IP printer port on a dedicated print server). There’s not as many components to deal with or to fail in a Windows environment.

Those are just a few things, I could probably go on for quite a while about all the short falls of NetWare but I won’t. I’m quite happy re-learning all of the things associated with Windows and Active Directory. The one thing that makes Windows so much easier to work with is Remote Desktop. It’s much easier working in a GUI session on a Windows machine than it is to muddle through the NetWare console and it’s text based interface.

I’m not saying that NetWare and eDirectory is all bad but now that I’ve re-experienced a Windows environment I’m hard pressed to find a lot of good to say. Maybe it’s because I’m enjoying the challenge and the new environment but I suspect these feelings won’t go away anytime soon.

In my trek for a MAC OS X style dock for my Ubuntu PC, the other day, I happened upon a neat little app called Rocket Dock. This app is actually for Windows but I decided to try it out anyway (I’ve yet to find one for Ubuntu that I like).

I was pleasantly surprised. It was a fairly small download and was quick to install. So far I have been running it for 3 days and haven’t had any issues whatsoever.

One of my favorite things about this is the availability of custom icons, skins, docklets available to make your experience with it that much better. The icons are particularly useful because some applications don’t fare well with Rocket Dock’s method of rendering the icons. The one that sticks out in my mind is Internet Explorer.

If you are interested in such a tool I suggest giving rocket dock a try. You can get it from their official website at http://www.rocketdock.com/.