One particular title that took we took notice of some time ago was the development of Microsoft’s new operating system to replace Vista, titled Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb or Vienna)

For some time, we’ve been testing Windows 7 on a few internal machines, both phsyical and virtual, and assisting with the ironing out of bugs and believe it or not, we have not found nearly as much wrong with this release as opposed to Vista or even XP prior to their releases.

After months of testing, its finally come down to the wire, with the Windows 7 RTM being pushed out to IT Pros, Techs & System builders via MSDN/Technet. Whilst the RC was free to download for alot of the world’s population, the RTM release has not been quite so widely spread, but we’ve been lucky enough to nab ourselves a copy of Windows 7 Enterprise from Microsoft (thanks guys!)

As a final test, one of our newest additions to our office PC fleet, a little Acer AspireOne Netbook, got the first live production treatment, with Windows 7 Enterprise being loaded onto it (not an easy task considering it had to be done via bootable USB) but easier than expected…and wow!

Major improvements over the BETA’s & RC’s, thats for sure!!!

Windows 7 is performing quite nicely on our little 1.6Ghz Atom Netbook and with only 1GB of ram backing it up, it’s actually quite nice. Aero runs nice and smooth, performance is acceptable and boot times are absolutely fantastic compared to that of Vista and even XP.

Infact, we’d prefer running Windows 7 on our machines over XP and have not really found any software issues or compatibility issues with it as yet (apart from our normal AV software).

Once issue we did find however was  a serious performance drop when AVG Free was loaded on (God we hate AVG anyway!). AVG Free is one of only few AV titles that currently works on Windows 7, but mind you, we noticed a big lag in boot times and overall performance.

We dropped AVG off and replaced it with Antivir, and I say, what a difference! Boot speeds are back to beeing nice again, overall performance is great and personally, I like using Windows 7 over our normal XP office systems.

We have however got a few skeptics about Windows 7, with people asking if it’s going to be as bad, if not worse, than Vista.

Let us tell you now….Vista is horrible; Windows 7 is excellent!

I don’t know what many others think, but to us, Windows 7 is just bliss and a darn sight of an improvement over XP & Vista.

Windows 7 is sheduled for release to the world on October 22, 2009 and we’re looking forward to it and we hope that all other global developers of various software titles step up to the plate.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25824019-5014239,00.html

Happy Birthday MSN Messenger!

Who would of thought…10 years ago, where we were?

I think I had only just started High School??? I think?

It’s sad to admit that although I do not remember when I was in High School, I do remember when MSN Messenger was released…and to look back on it now, god hasn’t it come back a long way.

Even when I’m forced to stoop as low as MSN Messenger 6 or even 7 for that matter, I look at those versions and consider them to be absolutely shocking in comparison

Although it’s now called Windows Live Messenger, many of us internet users still refer to it as MSN Messenger, and I think we all will for a long time yet.

Mind you, considering it’s abundance of new features compared to the “good old days”, it’s become more popular than ever….to the point where I know friends and family using it to communicate with relatives, both young and old.

Whilst there is this apparent “competition” between Windows Live Messenger and the likes of Twitter and Skype, I really don’t think there is any competition at all.

Twitter and Skype are targetted at a totally different market of users and considering they state that more than 151 million messages get sent per day, I’d be interested to see Twitter or Skype pull anywhere near those stats. But I’m sure that will change in due course.

Although, we believe MSN has suffered quite alot since the closure of MSN chat rooms, with more and more people turning to these new forms of social communication like Twitter, Skype, Facebook and MySpace…and although we use most of the above, we’ll be staying well clear of MySpace. I really wouldn’t call MySpace a social communication tool…infact, far from it.

And ICQ…god, that was a horrible instant messenger application if ever I saw one! Even Yahoo Messenger was horrible enough…and still is! Infact, I can’t think of anyone who still uses either of those applications.

Even IRC networks and chats are not as popular as they once were. Once again, I blame the closure of MSN chatrooms for this. I used to personally operate a Sydney chatroom targetted at Sydney users, utilising IRC scripts and MSN customised scripts and even I noticed that all died once MSN closed their chat rooms.

Although, seeing notes like:

According to Microsoft, one user recently proposed on Messenger by saying: “My dearest Lan, here are 999 roses, please be my beautiful bride, will you marry me?”

does make me wonder….are our chat’s really being monitored and recorded without our complete knowledge?

And how the hell do you send 999 roses through MSN? The character limit wouldn’t permit it and physical roses can’t be sent through cyber space…so it’s got us stumped!

Well, like I said before, Happy Birthday MSN Messenger.

We look forward to many more years of MSN/Windows Live messenging experiences!