LibriumArcana.Games

BACKGROUND:

A few years ago, I bought a used laptop with Windows Vista installed and wrote about it - I love Windows Vista. Problem is that laptop had a broken screen - about half of it was unusable. Worth the small amount I paid for it, but not suitable as my main laptop.

This computer still works, but it has to stay hooked to a stationary monitor. (it is great for watching internet movies on a larger screen, and my printer is hooked into it!)

Not being portable, I still needed a craptop. So I purchased another used one last year: a used IBM with Windows XP (my first Windows XP computer ever!).

It works pretty well.... as long as you don't move it. At all. So again, I got a cheap as dirt used laptop that wasn't very portable. However, I could move it from place to place, and it'd be mostly ok as long as it sat on a flat, steady table as I use it.

I've used that computer for a little over a year now, and it still works, but it freezing up the moment the table shakes is a real pain.

So, when I saw a 12" new computer on sale for $350, I actually took a serious look. Being new, it should actually work well, and the 12" size is very convenient to carry around, without being too small to use comfortably - it is about the dimensions of a sheet of paper. It sounded like a good deal, so I went ahead and made the buy.

(despite my old one still working - I usually work my stuff until it simply can't work at all. My old laptop is still pretty good; I'll probably still get a couple years out of it, just set on a desk. Alternatively, I'll put it in a safe box for the day this new laptop breaks. But, I think it'll serve me well from a desk.)


THE LEAD IN:

Anyway, the new computer is a Lenovo IdeaPad - categorized under large netbooks. (Most netbooks are between 7 and 10 inches, whereas this one is 12 inches - the size of a small laptop.)

It came pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium...


...And, a whole pile of crapware. Wow, some dozen useless applications that just auto-load and make the computer slow.

Crapware makes any computer slow, and netbook class processors are slower than your typical computer, so this crap makes it quite slow.

It took an hour and a half to remove it all, but now that it's gone, the little computer is pretty snappy.


THE GOOD STUFF:

The last time I used Windows 7 was the beta, where I spent just a few minutes on it. I didn't like the taskbar changes then. And having actually used it, I still don't like it.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a way to change it back to old style. By switching to small icons and never combine (I hate combining taskbar buttons, horrible idea. The only thing worse is how Windows XP adds a fucking scroll to the taskbar! You have to click little arrow buttons to get to all your things if too many windows are open. Horrible, horrible.

On my Linux desktop, I use a fully custom taskbar that I wrote myself. It makes the buttons shrink to fit them all on at once, never scroll, never combine. By not wasting space, it manages to continue being usable with over 30 windows open! I find Microsoft Windows to be a pain to use with over 10 windows open at once, thanks to the taskbar.

Windows 7 is about the same on this.)


I really like the wireless ease of use, just like on Vista.



ok g2g, will write more later

Well, after a few days of using it, the Windows 7 taskbar actually is pretty good. Of course, I set it to emulate old style as much as possible, but the pin thing is somewhat decent.

If you turn on labels and off grouping, you get a pretty traditional taskbar. But you still have the pin option, which puts an icon on the bar. Click it, and it expands to the full app. Close it, and the button goes back to the little icon.

This isn't half bad. I prefer being able to run multiple copies of an app with ease, but this still works out pretty ok.


I feel secure in saying Windows 7 officially does not suck.

Once you get used to the icons, you'll never want to go back to the old method of bars again. Stacks, pinning, and the little right-click options are amazing for productivity enhancement. I bought a copy through my student email instead of pirating, as it's great software and I'll have it for years.

I've got Win7 toned down to what I'm familiar with to the best of my ability and guess what? It's STILL noticeably superior to XP (never met Vista).
7 beats every prior iteration of Windows possibly excepting Vista even in 'I'm an old man and want Windows to look as ancient as I can make it' mode.
Win7 is up and running in less time than it took my old PC to check the hardware. In fact it currently takes my PC longer to shut down than it does to get up.

The Cleric wrote:Once you get used to the icons, you'll never want to go back to the old method of bars again.

My big problem with it is you can't read the labels without clicking it. A lot of the programs I use change the label as things happen, and I like being able to glance down and see it without clicking. Combining is also somewhat annoying because you can't see the individual icons.

Of course, a lot of apps don't make much use of the icon, just leaving it at something generic for them, but a few of mine do and it is cool.

That said, it isn't so bad for most things. They did some good things with the one click selection and the previews. Microsoft did a good job here.


Note too that Win7 handles a large number of windows well. It smushes the buttons if you turn off grouping (yay) and in icon mode, the click to preview works pretty well to keep things sane.

Stacks, pinning, and the little right-click options are amazing for productivity enhancement.

I'm pretty sure the right click things are the same in both ways; the main difference is just the text label.

Batman wrote:I've got Win7 toned down to what I'm familiar with to the best of my ability and guess what? It's STILL noticeably superior to XP (never met Vista).

Aye. I really like Windows Vista - it is generally quite excellent. Of course, I rarely used XP, but I liked it too.

Win7 is growing on me. Not sure if I want to say it is better than Vista yet, but I am willing to say it is at least as good.


And yeah, it is pretty fast. This little netbook does hibernate faster than the Win XP craptop. (tho the XP box had hardware issues, that made it freeze up at random. Ugh!)

One thing it does too is writes out to the hard drive before it goes into sleep mode - if the battery dies while asleep, when you boot it, it just restores from hibernate! So still faster than a cold boot.

(Win XP would sometimes wake itself up and switch to hibernate as the battery died, but a lot of times, it'd just die and bitch about not being shut down properly.)

My only beef with it is that after sleeping for like 6 hours, it shuts off. I don't care for that - maybe I can configure it out. Though, it isn't all bad since the wake up from hibernate is still quite fast!

I'm only using 7 on my main PC so if it's running without me in front of the keyboard it's doing so because I want it to be running, which generally means a rather large download, which means I don't WANT it to shut down unless I tell it to.
Yes, this rig is still too noisy to sleep next to, but there's nothing saying it can't be kept up, running and downloading stuff when I'm out.

One of the things I find attractive about the netbook concept is the nice long battery life. Having easy, fast (and reliable!) sleep modes really help there.