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Vol. 1, # 11 - Nov 19, 2009 - Issue # 11 |
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The Old Copycat Debate, Revived
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- Editor's Corner
- The Old Copycat Debate, Revived
- Follow-up: Building Behemoths
- Quotes of the Week
- Cool Tools
- News, Hints, Tips and Tricks
- Transparent caching speeds up data access across the network
- How to: Using the New Windows 7 Features
- How to set your computer to wake up for Remote Desktop access
- Windows 7 and Vista Security
- Windows 7 security advisory
- Question Corner
- Can Explorer display the date a file was originally created?
- Windows 7 Configuration and Troubleshooting
- How to stop IE8 from "going mobile"
- Fav Links
- This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff
- Product of the Week
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Even if you run "free" antivirus software, it hijacks 20% of your PC, so it's really not
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http://www.win7news.net/091119-VIPRE
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Editor's Corner |
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The Old Copycat Debate, Revived
One of Microsoft's manager's in the U.K. opened up a bag of worms last week when
he opined, in a public interview, that Windows 7 was created with a "Mac look
and feel." Ouch. Company representatives immediately issued statements noting
that the employee in question was not involved in designing Windows 7. Then
others sprang to his defense and the story has become much bigger than it ever
deserved to be:
http://www.win7news.net/091119-Inspired-By-Mac
Amidst all the internal argumentation, Mac fans gloated over the "admission."
But is it even true? I'm writing this on a Windows 7 computer, and I have a Mac
running Snow Leopard sitting right across the room. Do they look alike? Not
really. Are there similarities? Sure - they both have taskbars (which Apple
calls a dock), they both have desktop icons, they both have "pretty" interfaces.
The Windows 7 taskbar is far more functional, though: if I hover over a dock
icon on the Mac, I get nothing but a pop-up of the application's or folder's
name. If I hover over a taskbar icon in Win7, I get a preview of every instance
of that app that's open.
Right clicking a dock item in OS X does give me a list of the open windows; for
example, if I have three Safari windows open, I see a text list indicating the
pages (e.g., "Apple Store," "Wikipedia," and "YouTube." If I don't remember
which actual site I was on but would recognize it visually, I'm out of luck.
Also on the right click menu for a Safari in the dock are options to hide, quit
or open a new window, and options to keep the program in the dock or show it in
the Finder (file manager). A right click on the IE taskbar icon shows me a list
of the twenty web sites I've visited most frequently, making it easy to go to
one of those - along with the options to open a new tab, open a new window, quit
the program (close all windows), unpin the app from the taskbar or start "in
private" browsing. Some say the ability to pin apps to the taskbar in Windows 7
is a case of copying the dock. But we have been able to put apps on the taskbar
since Windows 95, in the form of the Quick Launch bar. There's nothing new about
that.
How about desktop gadgets? Did Microsoft copy Mac's widgets? Not really.
Leaving aside the fact that gadgets were introduced in Vista, not Windows 7,
they don't work the same way as the Mac widgets. Although both are small
applications that provide information (clocks, weather, stock market info,
etc.), there's a fundamental difference in the way they're implemented. On the
Mac, the widgets reside on the "Dashboard." When you have the Dashboard
displayed, you can't do anything with your other applications. When you click on
an application window, the Dashboard disappears. I can't find a way to be able
to work on a document and see my widgets at the same time, as I can so easily do
with Windows gadgets.
What else? The Start button? The Mac puts its Apple button on a whole
different taskbar, across the top of the screen. It contains some of the same
things as the Windows Start menu: recent items, the options to sleep, restart,
shutdown or log off. But it's not nearly as flexible; the Windows Start menu
displays your favorite applications in the top left section, most recently used
apps in the bottom left section, and links to commonly accessed folders and
tools (documents, pictures, music, downloads, the computer, the network, devices
and printers, Control Panel) in the right section. Windows 7 also places the
Search box here, whereas the Mac's search tool is at the far right of the top
taskbar.
As I've mentioned before, Apple has "borrowed" or "adapted" just as many ideas
from Windows as the other way around. They're just now getting around to
releasing a 64 bit desktop OS, they've "copied" Exchange support from Windows,
Leopard introduced "stacks" for combining items in the dock (emulating the
"groups" that did the same, years before, in Windows). Apple's Quick Look for
viewing documents in the Finder without opening them seemed a whole lot like
Vista's Explorer preview pane, which came first. I could go on, but here's my
point: just because two operating systems have a similar look, or even have
similar features, that doesn't mean that one is a "copy" of the other. And if
Apple folks think it's such an outrage for Microsoft's operating systems to
adopt features that are similar to their own, why don't they feel the same sort
of outrage about all the new graphical interfaces for Linux that look so much
like Mac and Windows? Heck, if Microsoft were really out to "copy" OS X,
wouldn't they have ripped off my very favorite thing about the Mac interface:
the genie effect?
Fact is: Those who know the history of computing know that the whole graphical
interface idea originated with Xerox at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
Their GUI introduced the concepts of windows, icons, menus and cut & paste, and
both Microsoft and Apple operating systems (along with IBM's OS/2 and every
other GUI-based OS in the world) evolved from that common ancestor. But there
are enough big differences now between the major operating systems to make each
unique, and most folks are likely to find one more to their liking than the
other. For consumers, that's a good thing.
And similarities between product lines from different companies certainly isn't
confined to the software business. Why do the automobile designs from different
car companies tend to look so much alike from year to year? Why do clothing
designers all tend to drop or raise hemlines in unison? Why do TV networks
"copy" trends (comedies, reality shows, cop dramas, medical dramas) from one
another? It's because they're trying to respond to what they think the
customers want. Software vendors are bound to do the same thing.
Tell us what you think. Do you think Windows 7 "copies" the look and feel of the
Mac, or is it completely different? Should "copying" be prohibited, with a
software vendor unable to add new features if a competitor already has something
similar? Just how much alike do two things have to be for one to be considered
"copying?" Are there features that you wish Microsoft would copy from the
Mac or Linux OS? We invite you to join the discussion on this topic in our
forum at
http://www.win7news.net/091119-Discussion-Forum
Follow-up: Building Behemoths
Based on reader input, it seems quite a few of you have built your own Windows 7
behemoths, or are contemplating doing so. I love reading about your experiences
and was glad to hear that for the most part, Windows 7 is working well for you.
Thank you to those who offered ideas for alternatives to those pesky F
connectors on the coax. I am definitely going to check out both options (BNC to
F connectors and mini-coax jumpers).
For the reader who asked about signal loss when splitting the signal, that has
been a problem for me in the past. I used a splitter that has a signal amplifier
built in. You can also get standalone signal boosters to install behind the
splitter. The Hauppauge tuners also have signal strength monitoring software
available as a free download, which you can use to determine whether a signal
booster might be needed. It shows you the number of uncorrectable errors and the
signal to noise ratio. You can get it here:
http://www.win7news.net/091119-Signal-Strength-Monitor
Even with the signal booster, the picture quality on analog channels is not as
good as it was before it was split. Since we almost never want to record
multiple SD channels at the same time, I ended up removing one of the two
splitters to get better quality. With digital channels, it tends to be more of
an "all or nothing" situation - if the signal strength is too low, you don't get
a picture at all, rather than getting a degraded picture as you do with analog.
Luckily, our HD channels come in crystal clear.
To the one reader who doesn't like the "blow by blow" accounts of my upgrading
adventures, I'm sorry that article wasn't interesting to you. In the past, they
have been pretty popular with the readers (and apparently were with some of the
readers this time, too). One thing I've learned over years of doing these
editorials is that some people love to read about the first hand experiences,
some like the purely theoretical technical stuff, and others prefer the "social
aspects of technology" topics or the straight opinion pieces. It's impossible to
please everybody every time. That's the reason I try to mix it up and do
different types of articles each week, so that there will be something for
everybody.
As always, thanks to all of you who participated in the discussion and, if you
don't like the topics I've been choosing, please write to me and let me know
what topics you would like to see me address in future newsletters.
'Til next week,
Deb Shinder, Editor
feedback@win7news.net
PS: Did you know this newsletter has a sister publication for XP users called
WXPnews?
You can subscribe here, and tell your friends:
http://www.win7news.net/091119-WXPNews
And for IT pros, there's our "big sister," WServer News, at
http://www.win7news.net/091119-WServerNews
Join the Win7News fan page on Facebook!
http://www.win7news.net/091119-Win7News-on-Facebook
Quotes of the Week
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. - Albert Einstein
Believe you can and you're halfway there. - Theodore Roosevelt
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one. - George Washington
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Cool Tools |
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News, Hints, Tips and Tricks |
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Transparent caching speeds up data access across the network
Accessing files across a slow network can be a real pain - or at least, it was
prior to Windows 7. That's because the client computer always retrieved the file
from server, even if it had just recently opened the file and no changes had
been made. Now Windows 7 clients can cache remote files on the local disk, and
read it from that disk if you need to open it again. But never fear - that
doesn't mean you'll get an outdated version of the file. Windows 7 checks with
the server to verify that the cached copy is current, and if you make updates,
they'll be written to the server. Meanwhile, it can speed up your file access
experience considerably. Read more about it here:
http://www.win7news.net/091119-File-Sharing
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How to: Using the New Windows 7 Features |
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How to set your computer to wake up for Remote Desktop access
If you need to access your computer remotely using the Remote Desktop Protocol
(RDP), but you don't want to leave the machine running at full power all the
time, you can configure the power settings on your network interface card to
allow the NIC to wake the computer up from Sleep mode. Here's how:
- Open the Device Manager (either from Control Panel or from the Computer
Management Console that's accessed by clicking Start, right clicking Computer
and clicking Manage.
- Expand the Network Adapters section.
- Right click your NIC and click Properties.
- Click the Power Management tab.
- Click the check the box "Allow this device to wake the computer.
- Click OK.
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Windows 7 and Vista Security |
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Windows 7 security advisory
One of the first exploits affecting Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2), both
32 bit and 64 bit editions, was reported last week and Microsoft has released a
security advisory to address it. The vulnerability in the SMB v2 protocol can
lead to a denial of service situation and the workaround is to block TCP ports
139 and 445 in the firewall to prevent this. Unfortunately, blocking these ports
can impact a number of services and applications. The advisory contains
instructions and additional information. See the full text of the advisory here:
http://www.win7news.net/091119-Security-Advisory
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Question Corner |
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Can Explorer display the date a file was originally created?
QUESTION:
In Windows 7 in Windows Explorer, when I look at the details view of the files
and folders, I want to see the date that a file was first created but it shows
me the date it was modified last. Is there a way to change this? I would be
most grateful. - Robert L.
ANSWER:
You can configure Windows Explorer to display additional columns in the Details
view to give you much more information about your files at a glance. First, make
sure Explorer has the menu bar displayed (File | Edit | View | Tools | Help)
across the top. If it's not there, click Organize | Layout and click to check
Menu Bar.
Now, click View | Choose Details. You will see a long list of details that can
be displayed, with the default ones checked. In the list, scroll down and click
to check "Date Created." Click OK, and a new column should appear in Details
view. You can click and drag the column header to move this column to a
different location in the row of columns, if you like.
Take a look at the rest of the available details items, too. Depending on the
types of files in the folder, you might want to display additional columns. For
example, you can display the author of a document, its word count, or the file
version. For photo files, you can display the focal length of the camera lens
that was used to take it or the ISO speed at which it was taken. There are many,
many useful fields from which to choose.
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Windows 7 Configuration and Troubleshooting |
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How to stop IE8 from "going mobile"
I recently had a problem whereby Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7 on my desktop
computer suddenly started redirecting to the mobile versions of web sites. For
example, if I typed www.redlobster.com in the browser's address box, it sent me
to www.redlobster.com/mobile, which is formatted for smart phones. This was
annoying because the mobile pages often don't have as much information as the
regular pages. Here's how I fixed it:
- In the menu bar, click Tools | Internet Options.
- Click the Advanced tab.
- Under "Reset Internet Explorer Settings," click the Reset button.
- In the "Are you sure?" dialog box, note the things that will be reset (and
your custom settings for them lost). If you're okay with it, click Reset again.
- In the "Resetting Internet Explorer Settings" dialog box, click Close.
- In the "For changes to take effect" dialog box, click OK.
- Shut down all running instances of IE8, then reopen the browser to apply the
change.
Now you should be able to go to the regular sites instead of the mobile ones.
However, if this doesn't fix it, do this:
- Click Tools | Delete Browsing History
- Check Preserve Favorites Website Data, Temporary Internet Files, and History.
Click Delete.
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Fav Links |
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This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff
Disclaimer: VistaNews does not assume and cannot be
responsible for any liability related to you clicking any of
these linked Web sites.
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Product of the Week |
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iPod Access for Windows
The premier iPhone/ iPod music and video application for the PC.
iPod Access for Windows V.4.3.1 is the leading iPhone and iPod music and video
transfer application for the PC. With iPod Access you have instant access to all
the songs on your iPod or iPhone. Your songs can be displayed and sorted in
almost any fashion so you can find the songs you need right when you need them.
With the new instant search feature in v4 you can find songs just as quickly as
you would in iTunes. And once you have found the songs, movies and playlists
that you want, iPod Access will copy them right back into iTunes or to an
external drive for backup. If you need music from your iPod back on your
computer then you need iPod Access. Now improved iTunes 9.X support. Get more
information and download the free evaluation. Use the discount for Win7news
readers to buy it.
http://www.win7news.net/091119-iPodAccess
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Copyright © 1996-2010 Sunbelt Media Services. All rights reserved.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Other products and companies
referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or mark holders.
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