Philip Khor

It is almost a month since Windows 7 was officially released. Leaked copies of the final version has been out for over 2 months. So, how was my experience?

5 major points I’d like to make.

1. Conflicts with some programs. I had an old version of Kaspersky. It caused my installation to be extremely buggy and unusable. Credit to them though for releasing a fix within days.

2. ReadyBoost (as described earlier elsewhere) is a godsent! You’ll notice signficicant boost in general performance by plugging in a Thumb drive and dedicating it for cache disk duties. The responsiveness is just breathtaking.

3. This is truly a multitasker. Past versions prior to Win 7 had terrible multitasking performances. Run an antivirus scan and your PC is basically useless. The code has been optimised and the core handles all your requests in small threads (pretty much like Mac OS X since its inception in 7 years ago!). Microsoft has finally caught up!

4. Everything works out of the box. With a Win XP installation, you won’t have Network connection or audio for example. You need the CD to get started. Win 7 includes basic drivers to save you the headache (at least for my setup!)

5. Try this. Open all 6 programs in Microsoft Office 2003 in one go. Chances are, you’ll take 4-5 seconds. On Win 7, it takes half the time! The programs are ready to use as soon as you click on the icons.

My first test went well. I needed a miracle, and I think I got it (gotta wait til mid Dec to find out). Here is an article related to my studies which is interesting to read:

http://www.ceaconline.org/pdf... [link]

In today’s fast paced world, change is imminent. In order to gain an advantage, you gotta “change” the Players, Added Value, Rules, Tactics and Scope of the Game.

Another article worth a look is the Holy Bible translated in Lolcat language! [link here and here]

I think its an internet phenomena / meme. If you go to Youtube, you can find cats do all sorts of crazy stuff, including playing an organ! They’re so “cute and adorable” thats why any cat related jokes are damn viral!

I’m using Google Desktop and Google Chrome now. Chrome has seen much improvements. And speed wise, its the best. Every tab is a different process. This means multi-core systems will see significant boost in speed! Give Chrome a try [link]

It is a beautiful Wednesday!

Here it is, my moment of Zen :)

My birthday

“Are you happy?” This is the question I like to ask to friends who seem happy. Believe it or not, sometimes we fail to acknowledge happiness, and when asked, we just shrug and bitch about how our lives are mundane. Just like Pam in “The Office” does, “take a mental photograph of a happy event”. *click*

Here’s a list of 10 Latin phrases you “pretend to understand”! [link]

Of note,

Cogito Ergo Sum

(CO-gee-toe ER-go SOME): “I think, therefore I am”

Quid Pro Quo

(kwid proh KWOH): “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”

Right. Sounds like some Harry Potter spells. Nevertheless, amusing to the ear.

Also, 2010′s most fuel efficient cars [link]

The Smart for Two actually made it to the Top 10, which is not a hybrid.

On the other end of the scale, we have the Lamborghini Murcielago and Bugatti Veyron giving us about 13MPG on highways. Ideally used in countries like Venezuela and Brunei!

Last but not least, a bit of CSI and Hollywood magic! [link] the surveylance camera must be running Hollywood OS!

Today is the Launch of Windows 7. I can report to you that the experience has been awsm thus far. I recommend buying a fast 4GB thumb drive, plug it permanently to the computer and enable ReadyBoost. The overall response of the computer would just increase many fold. Solid state “flash drives” have access times of under 0.5 ms (even after interface overheads, interface being USB) whereas mechanical hard drive heads needs at least 10 ms to get warmed up.

[technical jargon alert] ReadyBoost will write the small 1K to 4K chunks of memory dumps to the flash drive because its faster than Hard Disk. For bigger memory dumps, 1MB above, Win 7 is smart enough to revert back to the hard disk for scratch space.

Bottom line is, to launch all 7 Microsoft Office 2003 applications at the same time takes under 1.5 seconds on my machine, compared to the 5 seconds it would take sans ReadyBoost [/jargon]

*thanks Kathryn for the treat last night. And the fun games of pool at Asia Cafe with the “big holes”.. mmmm :)

Have a nice day, everyone!