Its HERE!

My Windows 7 Party pack has arrived. There have been a lot of posts about this elsewhere. Even an unboxing on youtube. Which was posted on October 3rd? How did he get his so damn fast! I also have to say that I am disappointed in the balloons. Plain color balloons. No "Windows 7" logo or even a "Microsoft" logo? How else will my prospective guests find their way to my hovel, and not to all of the garage sales or bounce houses which infest my neighborhood on weekends. Jeez, printed balloon technology is pretty mature Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates used to spring for em all the time. and you know if you dont measure up as cool as Gates. Thats saying something.

I haven't seen any mention of the other contents. Or perhaps my box is "regionalized" for the cynical west coast with extra incentives? In addition to all the other goodies, there are a good wad of flyers or what may better be described as handbills.

1-"Thank you for attending our windows 7 launch party" cards. Business card sized containing a URL which will allegedly have special offers on Oct 22nd and thereafter.

2-14 day free tryouts for Zune. Apparently Zune is a monthly fee with unlimited music. Still I can't see installing a media program like Zune for only a 14 day tryout. A month, maybe.

3-Flyers for Corel WinDVD pro and Digital Studio. Also with a discount code for 50% off. Neither of these appeal to me as I already have Sonar 7, Cubase 4 and Logic 8. I also already play DVDs on my computer everyday, woth no problem. ($99 for dvd/blue ray software? What does a standalone player cost, $101 dollars?)

4-Postcard sized flyer from Sonic Solutions for a package deal on Nero 9 and "Backitup and Burn it". Never heard of the latter product. Nero has worked well for me in the past.

5-A postcard good for a 40% discount on Norton Internet Security 2010. Nothing good to say about Norton.

6-Finally, postcards for a free download of Kaspersky and an entry into their contest for a Kaspersky themed martini party. Yeah that sounds like fun, distilled spirits and anti virus software. With olives.

Yeah, pretty mundane stuff.

Virtual Shmirtual

Went to an IT event last night at the Ritz Carlton. The focus was desktop virtualization. Noticably absent were Oracle and Sun who have been huge proponents of the thin client/virtual client thing. It was an HP, Citrix, Intel Micorsoft party.
The food was excellent. The prizes were neat (an HP netbook and some core 2 duo processors). I wish I had won one! There were some gee whiz demonstrations of the flexibilty of the technology. I like the one where the guy opened up powerpoint in an XP desktop, then opened vista and it migrates there, then he opens a windows 7 desktop and it automatically migrates there as well.
A couple of questions come to mind though.
If everyone is accessing their desktop 'virtually' over the network this will mean you probably need to upgrade network infrastructure. Especially if they are relying on thin clients that cant do any lifting of their own. A network outage will be even more paralyzing than with regular desktops!
Also, this seems like it takes work away from low paid entry level workers and shifts it to middle management, back end MIS types. So the job you used to pay 5 guys $30k to do, you are now paying 2 guys $80k to do. and youhave less coverage of the 'floor'.
It's like with printers. Network printers are supposed to put a stop to waste and make things more efficient. But almost every company I work for has multiple local printers in addition to the big HP 8100's at teh end of each cubicle row.
I dont think virtual desktops will replace regular desktops. They do fill a niche rather well. For instance for telemarketers and customer service people that have a high turnover and not much personalization. Also for medical profession workers this may have some benefits.
I think I will download the demo and play with it for kicks though.

Party Pack!

My UPS notification came on Thursday. My "party pack" is on its way! The contents of which are intended for my Windows 7 party.
The alleged items in the box;
win 7 ultimate "Steve Ballmer signature edition"
Win 7 64 bit upgrade disk
Win 7 playing cards
10 Win 7 tote bags
Win 7 napkins (no table cloth?)
a Win 7 puzzle
Win 7 balloons
and a poster.

There may be some other stuff as well. If there is it slipped my mind.
I had originally intended for my party to be a "Win 7 does music production party".
Instead I think I will make it more a Win vs Mac party. I have a mac mini running 10.5.5 and my Lenovo laptop running Win 7 RC. They both have the same Intel 945 chipset, almost identical cpus and ram. The laptop has a much bigger faster hard drive though.
The laptop shreds the mac mini! It can't be just the hard drive. The Mac mini is'nt just slower, its agonizing!
I think it will also be interesting to see the differences and similarities between the two.
BTW I snagged the photo of the box from another fellows blog. Interesting story. He went to the Win 7 House Party website and tried to sign up as a host. Apparently his tiny Carribean nation was not represented! He wrote Microsoft about this (or emailed I am not clear) and was sent a full party pack! So even though he isnt officially hosting a party he seems to be among the earliest folks to receive their party packs!
It also bears mentioning that some people are selling theirs on ebay. Not very sporting, but not surprising.

H4N, Windows Party

So I made it to the finals for the windows party. Then because I completed the "finalist" steps immediately after receiving the confirmation email, I was apparently confirmed as a party host just by virtue of my promptness.
The theme of my Windows 7 release party is "Windows 7 for Audio Production: ready for prime time?" I will be running my RTM candidate version of win 7 with Sonar 7 and Cubase 4 audio applications.
check it out if you are interested. Feel free to bring some chips and dip.
http://www.houseparty.com/party/183483

In more annoying news I noticed just recently that ZOOM/Samson does not offer a Macintosh driver for the H4N portable audio recorder. So if I decided to upgrade to a Macbook I would have to boot to Windows in order to access the device? This is annoying as I had hoped to use Logic on a Macbook. Part of my long range plan for upgrading my audio production facility. So now if I want to rock Logic on a Macbook I will be buying a 3rd audio interface!

7 7 7 7 7 7 more seven

Well windows seven definitely has drawbacks as well.
I had a hard time finding 'run', so that I could get to a command line. finally did a search for 'run' then pinned that to my task bar.
Not totally jazzed with how services works. While it is neat that Task Manager shows both processes and services, you are able to kill less of them. I am still trying to find a good resource on which processes I can nuke. I had this notebook down to 18 processes under XP. My desktop at home does great on 15 with XP pro. But it also has no wifi!
Wheras Win 7 has about 38-41 in most situations. Not killing me, but JEEEZ, this is a 2ghz core 2 duo, with 2 gigs of ram and a 7200rpm 200gig hard drive (not a bad notebook). And my ram usage is at 48%!
I also am pretty annoyed with HP. I had to print out a boarding pass formyflight to NYC today. The HP 'win 2k/XP/Vista' driver that I downloaded, all 100mb, returned an error that it could not function on this operating system! Well Sonar 7 (last years version) runs great, as does crusty old photoshop 7. Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.0.37 and Syncplcity are just peachy.
So I had to go install the HP driver (180mb!) on my Mac-mini and physically move the damn printer across the room.


On the plus side...
The task bar thing works great. Love the preview! You can even see a mini view of the video if you are watching youtube or adultswim. I must say I am really impressed with how well the graphics of the OS work. I actually get snappier smoother looking UI interaction than I did with XP on the same machine! Media Player 11 in Windows seven works rather well (comes with a DVD codec! unlike XP sp3!) Though the subtitle options and root menu optins are rather buried.
To access any real configuration options of media player you have to switch from 'player' mode to 'library' mode. Which is not exactly intuitive. This is a theme with Win 7. My Documents is all under 'Libraries' which is kind of an awkward word to me. Not that I have any problem with books! I just think it is an old fashioned armature to hang your media off of. A library is very linear and rigid. Digital media is not.

and the honeymoon is over

Well I have been digging around with Win7 a lot. The windows experience index give me a measly 3.0 score! I have a lot of ram, fast hefty hard drive and a decent processor.
2gb corsair ddr2, hitachi 7k200 200gb SATA II, and T7200 core 2 duo mobile (2ghz). Not the latest, greatest but not a freakin PIII either!
Well I get nothing higher than 5.1 on the individual scores. And my hard drive, which was the top of the heap for notebooks last year, scores a measly 3.0.

I went back and turned off all the crazy eye candy in an effort to improve my score. While this goosed up my video scores, it leaves the UI looking very win2k. I would think that they could have made a sub-aero interface that wasn't so ugly. Maybe something more monochrome a la Mac OS system 4.0?

On the plus side the wireless connectivity is better than win xp. And windows expericen score aside my mere GMA 950 does okay with the aero stuff turned on.
Though every 15 minutes or so I see a little video gremlin hiccup. I attribute this more to the beta runtime aspect.