Blog posts by category: Windows
Tom Gromak
The Detroit News
Category: Windows
Posted by Tom Gromak (The Detroit News) on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 1:12 AMDid anyone else have any Win 7 issues last night?
Two machines at my house went belly-up Wednesday night -- both of them running Windows 7 -- on the eve of the launch of Microsoft's new operating system.
One was a desktop PC. The other was a Win7 installation in the Boot Camp partition of a Macbook Pro.
I'm reluctant to blame it all on Microsoft, but it seems a little odd to just be coincidental.
I'm still not sure what fubared the Macbook. The way Boot Camp partitions work makes it tough to diagnose. Windows attempts to boot, fails with a quickly-flashed blue screen, the Boot Camp reboots and launches OS X. No amount of repairing seems to fix it. A reinstall is probably necessary.
My desktop PC repeated many of the same symptoms. But it offered a clue. Because it didn't have Boot Camp to contend with, the failed boot and subsequent reboot got stuck at a prompt at which I'd ordinarily be able to select between Win 7 and my old Win Vista installation or to "Set Up Windows."
Since Win 7 was missing as an option, and I didn't want Vista, I chose "Set up." Windows started to boot, then failed with a black screen and a warning that a Microsoft update failed and would have to be reverted.
Okay. I rebooted. That failed, too, with a request to insert my original Windows 7 installation disk. I did, rebooted again, and -- like magic -- Win 7 was back.
My PC is functioning again, but I'm wondering what will happen when the next update installs overnight. We'll find out in the morning. More disconcerting is the fact that my Boot Camp installation appears completely unrecoverable.
I guess, once I'm reinstalled, it's time to test out that new Windows 7 feature that helps you create a back-up disk image of your drive. After my glowing review, I didn't think I'd need it this soon.
Anyone else running the trial of Vista notice anything odd?
Tom Gromak
The Detroit News
Category: Windows
Posted by Tom Gromak (The Detroit News) on Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:16 AMI think Redmond is onto something here
Two years ago, I bought a Macbook Pro and immersed myself in OS X. Two weeks ago, I downloaded Windows 7 and installed it with Bootcamp as a secondary operating system. All I can say is "wow."
For the first time in a long time, I find myself spending more time in Windows.
Windows 7 is everything Vista was not: Sleek, stylish and speedy. It's got features clearly lifted from Apple's offerings: an easy-to-use screen magnifier, snipping tools that allow you to turn web pages into desktop gadgets, and lots of ways to view the data on your disks.
But it's also got features that, frankly, make OS X start to look a little dated. Some are big, like the many ways you can handle your digital media in Windows Explorer (hint to Apple: I know you want me to use iTunes to manage all my music and movies, but I really want to be able to do meaningful file management in Finder, too). There's a vastly improved Windows Media player, better movie- and dvd-making, and eye candy. Lots of eye candy.
Here's one example that I stumbled upon that seems so intuitive: Grab a window by the title bar and pull it to the top of your screen, and it maximizes. Pull it back away from the top, and it returns to its original size. Drag it right or left and it auto resizes to a width about a third of your screen's width. Oh, and unlike Finder (still, Apple? Really?), you can still grab and resize a window from any edge or corner you might like or need to grab.
Minimize a browser window, and you get a nice preview when you hover over its button on the redesigned taskbar. Minimize a browser window with multiple tabs open, and you get a preview of each tab and the ability to pick which tab you want opened when you un-minimize IE.
Windows Explorer, the venerable file manager, has new ways to quickly get to commonly used folders and places and, for the first time in a long time, actually works quite well with my home network. XP was always a little spotty in its ability to communicate with my other PCs, and Vista was downright hostile in its overbearing and underperforming ways.
Win 7 is, well, sweet.
And Microsoft, in an attempt to woo me, is even sweeter. When Vista came out, I had just a short period of time to give it a test drive. But Windows 7? I get a year. A whole year. Even shareware authors only allow you a week or a month, but computing's 800 pound gorilla says I can test drive the operating system -- the 'Ultimate' version, no less, with all its bells and whistles -- until June 10, 2010.
I've been in it for just a couple weeks, but you can be sure that, as I find more features, I'll be back here to keep you filled in. Until then, you can take the chance yourself and download the release candidate (sort of a last test version) of Windows 7 directly from Microsoft's Windows 7 site.
