Back on Vista…. and using Opera
Posted by Tyler Brown
Yes, you heard it correctly. I am back on Vista. So what happened? I was on Windows 7 Ultimate for nearly a year (From the RC to the RTM).
Well, as some of you may have known, I had gotten an MSDN account through another staff member when I was a staff member at McInTEC. After I had decided to leave in January, I lost my MSDN account too. No big deal, right? I saved my keys. That was all fine and dandy until just within the past week or so all my Windows 7 Ultimate Keys that I had, about 3, ended up getting blacklisted from Microsoft for no reason.
So why didn't I fight Microsoft to get my keys back? Well, for a couple reasons. First off, I got the MSDN account for free through that other staff member at McInTEC. No point in trying to get back keys that I didn't even pay for in the first part, even if they were legit in the first place. Secondly, I will be going to college this fall, and as a college student, I will either be able to get a huge discount on Windows 7, or the school that I plan on going to will offer a copy of Windows 7 Pro to their students via an MSDNAA account.
So anyway, now that I'm back on Vista, this time Vista Ultimate x64 (Thanks to a couple good friends! 
), I might as well talk about my experience a tiny bit. I will say one thing for sure, it isn't until you go back to using Windows Vista, that you start really noticing the small things in Windows 7 that you got really used to. For example, on Windows 7, I had gotten quite used to the superbar, especially how it grouped applications together, and how I could close a window just by clicking the scroll-wheel on my mouse. I had also gotten used to using Aero Peek to check my widgets, primarily using the keyboard shortcut Win+Space. Yeah, I know on Windows Vista it also brings the gadgets to the front, but it doesn't put them back in the background either. Those were just probably a few of the things I've kinda gotten used to again.
So, as usual when it comes to an OS reload, it'll probably take a couple weeks to a month to remember to reinstall everything that I use every now and then, but from the looks of it, everything is running alright, I am having no issues, etc. Enough about Vista though, I'm going to talk about Opera.
So about early March is when Opera 10.50 came out to the public as a final release, in time for the EU Mandated Browser Ballot Box Microsoft had to include in Windows 7 to be released, which is the reasoning they used as to why the Linux and OS X releases hadn't been released. Then about later that month Opera 10.51 was release, which fixed a few bugs, improved performance, etc. Anyway, when I did the reinstall of Vista, I decided that instead of installing Chrome first, I would instead give Opera a chance and use that as my primary browser for a little while. So far its been a pretty interesting experiences, a few bumps here and there, but definitely I can say its a great browser.
To start off with, Opera 10.5x sports an amazing new UI, including support for Aero integration with Vista/7, as well as including integration into XP Luna, Zune, and Media Center themes, which is going above and beyond what Google has done for UI integration w/ Chrome on XP and what Mozilla has done with Firefox. Opera 10.5x also includes a new tab design, and has moved the entire menu bar over to one button on the top left corner, that sports a red background and a white Opera logo (you still do have the option to move the Menu bar back to normal).
Opera 10.51 UI for Vista/7
Enough about the UI, what about the speed, and its performance. Opera 10.5x is the first version of Opera that I've used that has had an amazingly fast JS rendering engine. Its about as fast as both Safari and Google Chrome's Javascript engines. Its loading of pages is also very very quick. Loading pages is also very very quick. In terms of resource usage, when using flash, it can be a bit of hog, but thats not very surprising. Flash by itself on browsers that take advantage of out of process flash is also very much a hog. Overall, performance for me has been very good, speed has been great, and most of my issues may have come from the websites themselves.
So despite the many great features I've found with Opera, it does have its own issues. Mostly with how certain websites act in it, including a few pages on Facebook, Google Reader, and including Geeks.pirillo.com. I'm not going to go more in-depth of other features, issues, etc. Because, its nearly 2 months after the original release of Opera 10.50, so theres probably already enough blog posts on it. Overall, I'm just going to say thats its been a great browser so far in the past few days, and I'm going to continue using it for a little while. Who knows, it may stay my default browser, or I might have to go back to Chrome. I'll update that for you all in a week.
Anyway, thanks for reading the first blog post in a couple months! Please subscribe to my blog by clicking the orange RSS icon if you want to see more content. I also appreciate comments, and CONSTRUCTIVE criticism on my writing.
- Tyler Brown
Has Microsoft lost focus?
Posted by Tyler Brown
I've been looking into it a bit recently, and I am thinking more and more that Microsoft has lost their focus with Windows, and is possibly even looking into the wrong direction.
So what is that wrong direction that Microsoft is looking towards? That direction is back towards the past. Microsoft has announced that with every copy of Windows 7 Business and Ultimate, there will also be a copy of Windows XP available to Install in Microsoft VPC2007.
I know there are a lot of people who will want XP around to use, but most people who will take the time to virtualize it, probably already have a license, and for the purposes they want to virtualize it for, they will probably just use VMWare or Virtualbox, especially if they choose to play a few old games on there, Virtualbox supports Graphics acceleration, while MSVPC2007 does not.
I also think they may have lost their focus on Windows, while they are trying to compete with every market out there. I know Microsoft is a large company, and they do have quite a few divisions, but I feel that when Microsoft does pay attention to their key product, Windows, they seem to be looking again, into a wrong direction, whether it be the past, or the wrong group of users. I feel that with Microsoft offering that copy of XP, instead of listening to the users who said "I don't like Vista, but Microsoft, with the next version, you could do this, and modify this a bit, you could also work on this a bit." enough, and they decided to pay more attention to the users who were like "OMG! VISTA SUXORZ! DON'T GET IT! VIVA LA XP! THEY CAN'T DO A THING TO SAVE IT!!!1!1!1!!!"
A couple of other things that Microsoft paid attention to, that again, they shouldn't have really even considered, were listening to users who didn't have adequate hardware to run Vista and still complained about it, those that only run Windows in virtual machines to run certain pieces of software they can't run on their native OS (thats directed to **NIX and OS X users,) and one new thing that popped up in the past few years that has gotten Microsoft even more involved with keeping XP, was the Netbook market.
Yes, I mentioned netbooks, which brings me to my next point, one of the major reasons Microsoft has lost focus on their key product, is they are trying to enter and compete in other markets as well, including competing with new Phone OS', Netbooks, web-search, advertising, mp3 players, and quite a few other markets.
I know Microsoft previous had a phone OS, so I will excuse them on that, and they don't even focus on that as well, but, Microsoft's irrational fear of Linux taking over due Linux having great success in the Netbook market, kind of really dragged MS into the netbook market, causing Microsoft to loose focus, again, on the future version of Windows because Vista was just way too large for netbooks, so focusing on the past, they extended XP support to go along with the netbook craze.
Then you've got Search and advertising, while I haven't seen much in advertising, I know Microsoft has been trying constantly in the past few years to compete Google - face it Microsoft, Google is king of the Search industry. When people want to search something, 95% of the time, you will hear Google. You're trying way too hard, and are lacking the simplicity that keeps bringing people back to Google.
Then you've got the mp3 market with the Zune, ah yes, the Zune. Ok, you had a bunch of people complement the Zune, ok, but, I do believe the Zune was almost as bad as Apple in the DRM department, if not worse with the Zune subscription service. I think after you quit the Zune subscription service, your songs just won't play after like a week, while if you quit iTunes, I believe you still have your songs (but, of course, they only play on one type of player, the iPod.)
Before I loose you in the midst of my rambling, I will sum it all up: Microsoft has lost focus and keeps looking into the wrong direction. I can even imagine an Apple commercial out of this - Where PC's neck is crooked starting at his own arse. Anyway, thanks for reading, please subscribe to this blog, pass it on, etc. etc.
~ Tyler Brown (condoulo)