Taskbar versus Dock, are they really the same thing?!

Today I won’t write anything about my experience using Windows 7 Beta 1 on my MacBook cause it goes to well and there are no problems to report.

Today I’m posting a link to a wonderful article I read in which the author talk about Windows’s taskbar, Windows 7’s “superbar” and Mac OS X’s dock. I couldn’t be that much clear to expose the exact same idea and to prove that the brand new Windows 7’s “superbar” isn’t a copy of Mac OS X’s dock.

Paradigms lost: The Windows 7 Taskbar versus the OS X Dock

See you!

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Dear Windows XP user, change your mind or stay stunned

This morning I found this Ed Bott post about the reason an XP user is not going to like Windows 7, as he is not liking Windows Vista.

He points out that the XP users are seeing user interface changes only in the sake of change. Of course they are not thinking to change their mind and I don’t think that such thing will be even possible knowing how closed is the mind of the Vista haters.

I’d like to see them try to use the system forgetting how they where working on Windows XP. I am sure it is not too difficult, I know it will produce a gain in the usability of the system. But they consider themselves power user, while actually they are only half-a-step away form a lamer in the ranking of the most useless people in technology. (Sorry, my dear lamer if I used you in this comparison but you are actually the right person for that)

I am not telling you that someone used to something at the beginning won’t be disappointed by a change of perspective, but why such people are using a PC when they once learned how to use a pencil and a piece of paper? Please go back using this old way of working, trust me, is better for everyone and nobody will hurt (And also the internet will be a better place).

However in his brilliant post Ed Bott has a clue also for who is still missing the old-fashioned, crappy and unfriendly way of working. They can degrade customize their system and get whatever they want, even if it doesn’t makes any sense.

The sad thing is that the only operating system a XP user can stand to use is Windows XP. No chance to change, they are used to it and trying to tell them to do thing in a different way (No matter if easier or more powerful) is something like killing them. Since XP users are proving such a closed mind I can’t tell them to get a Mac nor to become a Linux user. So bad news are not only for Microsoft, but also for the other software house and even for the open source community.

P.S.

Have a nice 2009

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The wow is still now!

Thanks to Windows-Now

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Apple is still using Internet Explorer 5

Today I was surfing through Apple's web site to get some information about the new products shown at the WWDC 2008. Reading about MobileMe (a wonderful piece of software) I noticed they have started using Windows Vista. In fact, till the WWDC 2008, Apple web site used to show Windows XP's screens instead of Windows Vista's screens. In my mind I said "That's a great piece of news! After one year and a half they have finally discovered Vista (WOW!)".

Although Apple engineers have started using Windows Vista instead of Windows XP it's unclear the cause they are still using an "old hag" like Firefox 2 to surf the web instead of Internet Explorer 7 which is more secure (under Windows Vista thanks to the Protected Mode) or Safari 3 for Windows which is certainly faster and in addition to this it's also one of theirs products (they say "The World's best browser").

If these are the facts I've finally understood why Internet Explorer is always the worse browser or even not considered in Apple's comparatives. Although Apple engineers have discovered Windows Vista, it's clear Apple hasn't discovered Internet Explorer 7 yet. They are probably still using Internet Explorer 5 (the last version for Mac OS X) or even a previous version if it's possible. That's the truth!

See you...

News of the day: Opera 9.5 has just been released, few days before Firefox 3. Opera's guys have won the race!

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Who said that a BSOD has to be blue?

Don't worry, today I'm not talking about UNIX kernel panic, since UNIX users should be updating and patching their systems or choosing another browser (maybe if it isn't designed for security is safer) I'm only trying to draw a smile on their faces.

First of all read the only way to see a BSOD on Windows Vista. If you don't want to damage your hardware or install divers signed by Apple you have to follow that link to see a BSOD on Windows.

Now you're ready to start customizing your Screen of Death:

• Start->Run->Sysedit
• Select the System.ini window.
• Add under [386enh] the following lines:
  MessageBackColor= COLOR
  MessageTextColor= COLOR
  In place of color you should insert an hexadecimal number where 0 is black, 1 is blue, 2 is green, 4 is cyan, 5 is red, 6 is magenta, 7 is white, 8 is gray, 9 is bright blue, A is bright green, B is bright cyan, C is bright red, D is bright magenta, E bright yellow and F is bright white.
• Reboot
• Generate a BSOD and post a comment with a photo.

Thanks to Napolux

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Windows, drivers, third-party software, a reflection

Few days ago I was watching my feed list and I saw this article. Judging from the title "The key to Windows success? It’s all about the drivers", I thought it wasn't really interesting, more precisely I thought it was the same article as always so I didn't read it. Today I was reading Massimo Santin's blog that is reporting the same article I didn't read. I decided to take a look.

The article talk about a well-known argument but the thoughts expressed are really interesting. I've only few little notes, I think that "crapware" is an important point of the discussion and it wouldn't be underestimated. The largest part of performance issues depend on the quantity of third-party software installed but I have to agree with Ed Bott when he says that the majority of stability issues are due to badly-written drivers.

Surely OEM need to pay more and more attention about drivers and third-party software. What's your thought about this?! Read the article and then answer this question: do you really think that Vista is worst than XP or do you agree with Microsoft when it says it's not a Vista fault?!

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Customize Vista start search

Via Channel 10

Do you think that Search Everywhere and Search the Internet is not enough for your Start Search?

Customize it is easy, just do the following things:

• Press WinKey and type gpedit.msc (Run it as administrator)
• Open the User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Instant Search\Custom Instant Search Internet Search provider policy setting.
• Enable the policy setting, type provider name in the first textbox, add the address of the search provider you want to have in the second textbox, and click OK. You can find a list of providers at the end of this post.
• Try a Instant Search. If you can see the third provider you have done the work. In the other case you just have to open a command prompt and type gpupdate/force to immediately apply the new policy setting.

Some providers:

Wikipedia (To get other languages change en with your language code): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%w

Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=%w

Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%w

The rule to find the URL for the search provider is to search TEST in the search engine, cut the URL of the result and replace TEST with %w.

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News from Windows Seven

In January I wrote a post with the latest information on Windows Seven. I think that three months later is time to look again at the state of the new OS in development at Redmond.

Looking at the feedback form of Windows Seven came out the five pillars on witch the OS is based:

• Specialized for laptops caring about data security, connectivity, power management and touch/tablet interface.
• Designed for services giving to online services a very important role. The new philosophy are SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and Software as a Service.
• Personalized computing for everyone. We should be able to customize our desktop in a more effective way, access our file form everywhere and easily manage home networks.
• Optimized for Entertainment: you will enjoy your videos and music with the best quality ever seen.
• Engineered for Ease of Ownership, you will have an easier switch to Windows 7 with improved security and compatibility. Everything in a more friendly way!

Knowing the pillar we now only have to speculate on the release date. While you're waiting check what we missed. And don't forget to tell us what do you think about this pillars.

Technorati Tags: Windows, Seven, Pillars

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Guess what: Vista SP1 worst than Vista

For those of you still running Windows there is no good news: users from all around the world are reporting that the first "major" Windows Vista update is causing more headaches than it is solving.

Users are reporting crashes, drivers problems, increased slowness (especially in copy operations) and incredibly long update times.

Since it first came out, Windows Vista hasn't received a warm welcome from the PC community: clearly things haven't improved with researchers at University of Penn advising not to update and security experts even suggesting Microsoft to "throw Vista away".

On the other side Apple is exploiting this phenomenon with a new commercial and some are speculating that this could be the right time for Apple to license its new operating system, Mac OS X Leopard; I personally don't think that Apple will take such way but Steve Jobs moves have always been hardly predictable (remember the switch to Intel?) and I guess that... only time will tell.

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iTrojan horse

Do you remember that your iPod exposes your pc to security risks installing crappy software? Unfortunately the worst isn't over, at Cupertino decided that Safari (The browser designed with bugs in mind) is an iTunes update.

If you want to save your Windows PC from the iBugs invasion you should take care of this:

• don't buy an iPod if you don't have a Mac. The PC designed in California not only contains QuickTime, Safari and iTunes but also comes with the Reality distortion field that hides you every problem.
• say no when Apple Updater asks for the insecurity update.
• uninstall any product of the iBugs suite you already have on your pc
• don't use iTunes, try instead one of this software and Apple Updater will fade away.

Now you're safe, so I can tell you more about the reason of this update: Steve Jobs noticed that the Windows version of iTunes is hugely downloaded and tried to use it as a trojan horse to install in a  betraying way its unlucky browser.

The claim of a faster, more secure and, of course, cool browser failed to bring Safari on Windows, I hope that also this subtle try  will fail. Windows users don't live into the Reality distortion field, this is the right chance to demonstrate it, even if Neelie won't help us.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Safari, Windows

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Save Windows XP?!

These days I was wondering about the meaning of this petition.
What does "Save XP" mean?!
To make it simple, a group of people don't like Windows Vista so they decided they want use Windows XP forever (because the next operating system will be more similar to Vista than XP). XP will be shipped until June 2008 for the retail market and until January 2009 for the OEM market, an impressive record for a software. Save XP wants to continue the shipping for an indefinite time in order to avoid the crappy Vista.
At the moment XP is more like an old hag, it has surely become a rock solid operating system after 6 years (what a long time in IT) of development (2 SP, the SP3 is on the road) but it has lots of limits because of its age and old design and continue the selling after 7 years is completely useless.
Moreover, I clearly remember XP launch in 2001 and I can easily say that it was a bad operating system compared to Vista, although the differences between 2000 and XP were less than the differences between XP and Vista. It seems that people who want to save XP due to the "crappy" Vista have some memory hole... or simply they can't stand change the way they work after 6 years. The fact that Vista hasn't been adopted in enterprise scenarios yet (used to demonstrate that Vista is bad) isn't strange at all, XP has been mass-adopted in enterprise scenarios in 2004/2005 (after the release of SP2), 4 years after the RTM release so speaking about Vista after 1 year isn't properly right.
My opinion?! Vista is a good operating system (the best one from Microsoft), it's modern (introducing some interesting solution like the new model driver), it has good performance (recent benchmark demonstrate that the initial differences between XP and Vista was caused by bad device driver), it can take advantage of your brand new PCs (4-core microprocessors, 6-core ones are coming soon) and finally it permits the use of your x64 microprocessors (XP x64 lacks of device driver and support). When you buy a new PC don't make the wrong choice, try Windows Vista before erasing it only considering your friends words (they have really tried Windows Vista?!).
One last thing, how can you really trust InfoWorld that first says "Vista sucks" and than "Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is technically advanced" considering that Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista "back-end" (the base, the technically advanced part) it's the same?!

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IE8 will be "Super Standard"!

Following the IE team blog I have learnt that Microsoft have decided to listen to community words and this is not a normal choice for a big software house, thank you Microsoft.

The original Microsoft idea was to use an improved "IE7 Standard Mode" as a default rendering mode for IE8. Reading Microsoft last words seems that IE8 will use "IE8 Standard Mode" which was previously known as "IE8 Super Standard Mode" and leave to the Web developer the choice to use the previous version "Standard Mode".

What about compatibility which was the main point of the initial idea?

Microsoft decided to use "IE7 Standard Mode" in order to guarantee a good rendering for lots of Web pages and leave to the Web dev the choice to use the standard compliant rendering engine in order to improve compatibility with the legacy Web pages.

Now Web developers con chose "IE7 Standard Mode" using a http/header meta tag approach, so compatibility remains but the default choice is "IE8 Standard Mode" in in order to guarantee interoperability instead of compatibility.

Yes, interoperability. Microsoft is using this word so much in this period!

You can read the official announce: Microsoft's Interoperability Principles and IE8.

sirus

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Which operating system needs to be restarted?

Every time I talk with a UNIX zealot about the advantages and the drawbacks of Windows he always says: "Windows needs to be often restarted".
Recently I was reading about MacBook Air anche RemoteDisc and I had to notice that if you install RemoteDisc services on a Mac you need to restart the Mac before using RD... well this is not necessary if you install the same services on you Windows PC!
So, which operating system needs to be restarted?! It seems that it isn't Windows!

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Geek music

A song made using only windows sounds!

Technorati Tags: Fun, Music, Windows

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Paranoia is a virtue - File shredding

Technorati Tags: Windows, Security

In this and in the next posts I'm giving you some tips to keep your data away from others view. Let's start by definitely erase files you have on your hard disk.

If you think that when you empty your recycle bin the files you deleted are gone forever you're terribly wrong, maybe you can't get the file you deleted with regular system utilities, but with a simple search you can find a big number of software that does this work.

Wait, don't throw away your pc, the solution isn't to go back to the paper era. If a sheet of paper can be burn a file on a hard disk can be shred.

One of the best utilities to do this is Eraser that allows you to perform a single file wipe, a folder wipe or even the unused disk space wipe. One of the best thing of this software is that you can schedule file deletion in order to always have your disk clean and your secret safe.

Stay tuned, in the next weeks we are going to talk about cryptography, steganography and how to secure your communications.

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Top 5 Windows Utilities

If you're looking for a useless application you're in the wrong place, I listed only the most useful applications that you can find for free on the net.

Switcher

Do you think that Mac OS exposè is a good way to have a look on your crowded desktop? With this tool you get an easily customizable exposè like application with some extra feature you will be glad to discover.

Notebook Hardware Control

When you run on battery is important to save as much power as possible. One way to do this is to set your CPU working frequency and voltage.

KeePass

Since you're reading this post I suppose that you've got so much ID and password to keep in mind. Usually this isn't so easy nor so effective (you're like to select always the same password).

You'd better save your passwords on a encrypted file and remember only its password.

ClipX

Give memory to your clipboard and you won't need again to switch from a window to another only to cut and paste parts of the same documents.

 

IE7 Pro

Do you think that IE should have a download manager, a tab history, ad-blocker and a more user friendly way to change proxy? Install IE7 pro and you'll find this feature (and many others) coming on your browser!

Did I forget something?

Technorati Tags: Windows, Utilities

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Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista brings 551 fixes

This is the complete list of modified modules:

• 75 Internet Explorer
• 41 Sleep/Hibernation & Power Management
• 38 Storage
• 35 Hardware and Drivers
• 35 Networking
• 28 Desktop and Shell
• 25 Printing & Scanning Technologies
• 25 .NET Framework, Data Components, Development Tools
• 24 Setup, Deployment, Backup, and Activation
• 24 Windows Media Center
• 23 International/Localization
• 20 Computer Management, Administration, and Tools
• 19 Application Compatibility
• 19 Multimedia
• 16 Performance and Reliability
• 16 Startup/Shutdown
• 13 Time Zone/Daylight Saving Time
• 13 Windows Media Player and Related Technologies
• 12 Security
• 12 Remote Access, VPN
• 8 IIS and WebDAV issues
• 7 Wireless Networking
• 7 Offline Files
• 6 Windows Mail and Web-based Software
• 5 Windows Sidebar and SideShow
• 5 Windows Portable Devices

Obviously Internet Explorer (the Internet exposed module of Windows) is the one with more patches, however I'm glad to see lots of updates for "Sleep/Hibernation & Power Management", "Storage" and "Networking".

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Get a BSOD with three keystrokes and became a youtube-star

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows, BSoD

If you're using Windows Vista or XP SP2 regardless of hardware problems you maybe never saw a Blue Screen of Death.

If you want to see what a BSoD looks like, or show the world how easily Windows crashes there is a simple trick to generate a memory dump with your keyboard.

To activate the superpower just follow this simple steps:

• Run regedit
• go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters if you have an USB keyboard or to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters if you have a ps/2 keyboard
• Add a new DWORD CrashOnCtrlScroll with 1 as value
• Reboot to apply changes
• Hold down right Ctrl and hit Scroll Lock twice

Now that your keyboard has this superpower why don't use it to became a youtube-star?

• Run notepad, flip3d, minesweeper or another Windows built-in program
• Do something
• Use the superpower of your keyboard
• Say WOW
• Make a link to www.apple.com/getamac

Congratulations, you are a youtube-star!

Links

How To Geek

MSDN - support page

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Windows 7, what we know so far (no fakes)

Technorati Tags: Windows, Seven

In the last days many bloggers claimed to have tried Windows 7 M1 (Milestone 1), just to publish fake pictures and have some visits on their site.

Here the facts (more or less official)

Kernel

Seven will have MinWin like kernel, a little micro-kernel quite different from the "hybrid-kernel" of Vista. Microsoft is going on reducing NT kernel size in order to get a more flexible and modular system.

User Interface

Microsoft has reported that Seven M1 has a Vista like UI, on the other hand the work on the UI isn't started yet. Probably we will see a Ribbon-like UI considering that the new project leader is the old Office division leader.

For sure one of the keyword will be multi-touch UI.

"I will say that if you are impressed by the "touch features" in the iPhone, you'll be blown away by what's coming in Windows 7. Now if only we could convince more OEMs that Windows Touch Technology is going to drive their sales."

Hilton Lock on his MSDN blog pages

Surface should be a good sample and a good starting point. This new kind of input method will definitely change the way we use our PCs!

Windows Live integration

Well integrated software and wonderful web services. In a always-on world why don't take advantage of the Web? Operating system and bundled software should use Live platform to make the user able to communicate, share data, save settings in an easier way.

Virtualization

Say goodbye to compatibility issue, your old programs will run in a virtual machine (quite sure). Probably the standard API will be the .NET framework and Win32 API will only be available through virtualization.

Moreover it is possibile that processes will be more isolated than they are in Vista (like Singularity does).

64-bit

64-bit processors will be the only choice in 2010 so Seven would be the first Microsoft desktop operating system release optimized for this processors and not for 32-bit processors (like XP and probably Vista). We should talk about Windows 7 and Windows 7 x32 (yes, a 32-bit release is scheduled) while we now talk about Windows Vista and Windows Vista x64.

3-years operating system

Starting with Vista, Microsoft has decided that a new versione of its operating systems will be released every 3 years... so forget XP and its extra-ordinary long life!

In the end... please stop linking fake image and video!

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Information for license

Microsoft launched for its US-only costumers Windows Feedback Program to improve user experience by observing their behavior.

Is this a good deal for the user?

Pros

• You'll get a Windows or Office license for free
• Microsoft guys will take a look at your behavior and probably next versions of Windows will fit better your habits

Cons

• You have a software that looks what you're doing

I think that in this case pros are truly convenient (you're getting free licenses) and cons are simply an excess of paranoia.

Since you're using closed-source software you can't be 100% sure that it isn't yet looking at your data. You only have to trust Microsoft. Since they have control over your Operating System, they just don't need to give you a license to make you install a spyware-like software.

It seems that many Windows users liked this initiative that in the first few hours went sold out, so people who join the program now can't get the license.

Is it really worth it?

Tciddaniw's opinion: I have a few points here

• How can you trust Microsoft? Is the company known for its loyalty?! I don't think so!
• You should never sell your privacy... and certainly not for an Office license! Seriously: why don't you get OpenOffice (Windows and Linux) or NeoOffice (Mac)?
• The initiative isn't clear: as reported here, you can still sign up but you won't get any license! No, thanks!

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