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Windows 7: Release Candidate 1 Previewby Ryan Smith and Gary Key on 5/5/2009 11:00 PM EST
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izal169 - Thursday, July 02, 2009 - linkdevelopment of the technology is quite rapid. My computer specifications are not strong for Windows 7 that high quality. specification of my computer, intel core 2 duo, 1 Gb RAM, VGA Nvidia 7300 GS. microsoft is very cool. can make the OS with a relatively quick time.
deteugma - Friday, June 05, 2009 - linkI was an XP diehard until I installed Windows 7. Now I'm a convert and a proselytizer. I love Windows 7. It will be the first version Windows that I actually buy for myself, rather than accept for free from a family member's employer (university license). MS won't have trouble winning converts from the diehard crowd. Reply
Biomorphic - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - linkWindows 7 has software based audio processing just like Windows Vista and my question is, will VXP enable hardware based audio processing or will it remain software based? Reply
PC Reviewer - Monday, May 18, 2009 - linkit looks alright as long as its performance is as good as, if not better than xp's. Im looking to do a review about Windows 7 on my blog soon aswell. http://www.pcreviewer.org">http://www.pcreviewer.org Reply
alon - Sunday, May 17, 2009 - linkFirst, I did not read all the comments, so if this has already been stated, I do apologize. For that matter, after the "Standard Test Bed" page I stopped reading the article. So .. maybe these issues have already been discussed.
1) OK, so Vista x64 SP2 was released around May 11th (at least for my MSDN subscription, possibly earlier for others?) And it appears that the Windows 2008 SP2 bits were released around May
14th. I still don't see an SP2 installer, but I can do a clean install with SP2 already slipstreamed. So ... I've looked and looked, but I can not find an XP Pro x64 SP3 anywhere. And according to Microsoft around last September, there was not going to be an WinXP Pro x64 SP3. So ... if you do have this SP3 around ... please let me know what MSDN/TechNet or whatever subscription you have so I can upgrade mine ... or point me to the release page.
2) Concerning corporate IT ... one of the issues mentioned at the beginning of the article is the computing resources needed to run Vista ... which to me alludes to the fact that many companies chose not to upgrade to Vista based on HW requirements (of course Vista without Aero can run on many "lower" configurations, but of course the average company employee does not know this). I digress ... your test bed platform is not really anything that CorporateIT depts will be deploying. Core i7 ... released 7 months ago ... 6GB RAM. Please ... if you are going to try and "proove" that performance is decent with Windows 7 ... at least run some test systems that are not the toys we dream of, but the systems that are installed in the office. Until Microsoft and folks like you understand that companies can not afford to always buy new HW, the new OSs have to run on the last generation technology (actually more like HW from 2 years ago) ... your comparisons and results are useless ... and my 18month old Lenovo T61 does exactly what I need it to do. So, there would be no reason to upgrade to Win7 until MS End-of-lifes WinXP.
Razer2911 - Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - linkMoving on from Vista 32, I have to say i'm impressed. There are very subtle changes and tweaks which actually make the experience better. A simple example would be the new taskbar, Jump lists and Aero peek feature. I for one dont like a million windows open on my desktop, somehow i always found it cumbersome and cluttered but within a couple of hours of using Windows 7 i found myself using 10-15 windows without getting bothered by the clutter. Never used a Mac but these new features actually have both form and function.
One thing that i have not been able to figure out as yet is that all my videos (divx) and movies look very grainy and slightly pixelated on WMP 12 and VLC. Reply
tomb18 - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - linkSupport for canadian television in canada has always been limited in Media Center. Since HD digital over the air broadcasts (atsc)became available in the US, this has been supported in Media Center but not if you lived in Canada. Digital tuners are DISABLED by media center in all versions including Windows 7. This is in spite of the fact that canada uses the same ATSC system as the US. Many hacks have appeared but they always seem to be disabled by updates. This continues in Windows 7. As soon as the software determines that you reside in Canada, it disables the ATSC tuner.
But get this. South Korea uses the same ATSC standard and it IS supported in that country.
There are a lot of forums (such as the green button, run by the media center developers)that discuss this to no avail. No amount of questions, emails, or anything will get a comment from Microsoft. Even when MSVP's try to take up the battle nothing gives.
There has been a lot of hope for Windows 7, that it would finally be supported, but alas, it is the status quo. My question is will Microsoft give a warning about the version of Windows 7 that contain media center for the canadian market telling canadians that their digital tuners will not work?
I really wish that some website with industry influence (hint...hint) would expose this pointing out to the canadian market that they should not buy Windows 7 if they want to use the media center.
AnnihilatorX - Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - linkReplace the function of minimising other windows with one that makes the window being shaked always on top. Now this is a useful function.
Nevertheless I have been using AutoHotkey (automation programming platform) to assign Alt+z hotkey to make windows always on top in other windows. This is a feature I can't live without, along with Windows key + Scroll wheel on mouse to change transparency. These had help me multitask with different windows very efficiently. Reply
rasmasyean - Sunday, May 10, 2009 - linkI think people might have over-estimated Vista as the OS that will sweep across the world and change computers as we know it over-night. It didn't exactly turn out as expected, but I don't think it doesn't seem it did too bad.
Gartner research report predicted that Vista business adoption in 2008 will actually beat that of XP during the same time frame (21.3% vs. 16.9%)[80] while IDC had indicated that the launch of Windows Server 2008 served as a catalyst for the stronger adoption rates.[81][82] As of January 2009, Forrester Research had indicated that almost one third of North American and European corporations have started deploying Vista.[83]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista Reply
compuser2010 - Sunday, May 10, 2009 - link"Never underestimate the power of marketing – many people can tell you they don't like Vista, few can tell you why."
I don't like Vista primarily because of built-in Digital Rights Management (DRM). Any time I need to capture, edit and/or transcode audio and/or video, I need to go back to XP.
I have confirmed this with the following programs:
Audacity 1.2.6
Canopus EDIUS Broadcast 4.61
Creative Labs Smart Recorder 2.40.23
Moyea FLV to Video Converter Pro 2
Ulead DVD Workshop 2
Jman13 - Friday, May 08, 2009 - linkI installed the x64 version of RC1 last night. Painless install, and VERY fast. Much faster than my XP install. I'm talking about actual usage of the computer, not the install (though that was fast too). I skipped Vista, but Win7 really looks to be a very good OS. Some of the usability features in Win7 are really nice (half screen docking to the side, for instance. I'm now using RC1 as my main OS, and likely will stay that way until the actual release, where I will finally upgrade from XP.
I'm very pleased. Reply
Jackattak - Friday, May 08, 2009 - linkMine also went completely as planned last night. I loaded it onto my Dell XPS420 on a spare 160GB HD I had in there.
Painless, flawless, and runs like a dream (as does Vista, so that was to be expected).
Loaded the 185 drivers from nVidia for my 8800GT 512MB, installed Left 4 Dead (and Steam), and played for an hour without any issues at all.
Lovin' the new UI. Hopefully it gets even cooler when the retail release comes out, but I doubt they'll make any drastic changes by then as there would be lots of RC users taken aback.
Great work so far, M$. Keep it up.
~Jackattak Reply
Grandpa - Friday, May 08, 2009 - linkI absolutely hate the menu in Win 7. 3 to 4 clicks to open a program that would only take 1 click in XP or Vista. Also, in Control Panel, there is no option for the Classic look there. I don't see any performance boost over Vista whatsoever. There just isn't a good reason to pay good money for this. Linux is a much better value. Reply
Jman13 - Friday, May 08, 2009 - linkThere's an option for the classic look. Just change the view to large or small icons in the upper right corner. Reply
Grandpa - Monday, May 11, 2009 - linkIt isn't just the look. When you hover over the folder you want to open, it doesn't open unless you click ( even though the option for that to happen is checked ).
PS: I have used Linux. It's just a little difficult to play the games I like playing with it. Reply
B3an - Friday, May 08, 2009 - linkOh look a linux fanboy bashing Win7. Like your've even fucking tried it. Reply
HellcatM - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkI thought Vista was ok, I liked the start menu and it just bets better with Windows 7. I find things just as easy as well, if not easier because I can just type in the search.
I think setting up a network, wireless and a printer is much easier too. I haven't tested home network because I don't have two computers computers to test it on. I like the idea though.
The UI I like, the launch bar is good. I'm just wondering if Microsoft is going to do a UI change for the gold release. My thought is they know that since they did an open beta they way they did where anyone can use it, that people at Apple are going to be looking at it really closely and they'll make changes to Mac OS. With a UI change it'll give a curveball to Apple. Maybe MS has a major jaw dropping UI change. I just don't think their going to take a chance that Apple is going to test Win 7 and not make changes to their own. I know if I were Apple I would.
I think Windows 7 is ready now. Its a strong OS and I haven't had any major problems. Its quick, has some nice features, and it looks nice. Reply
Jackattak - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkLoved it. I have downloaded both the x64 and x86 versions and will be installing them tonight.
My one comment on OS brands (I use all of them for one thing or another at work and at home):
When Apple has a serious market share in the personal computing world and can truly develop an operating system for use on hardware from thousands (millions?) of different manufacturers, THEN (and only then) Microsoft will have a problem. Until then, Microsoft will continue to rule the planet, complainers and whiners be damned.
Apple has no serious market share in the home or business.
Linux is for computer professionals and tinkerers.
Microsoft is for the other 97% of the world.
~Jackattak Reply
DrRap - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkwindows has left the building guys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVM32aEABGY&fea...">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVM32aEABGY&fea... Reply
Techno Pride - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkI don't get it. It's just an OS, a tool. Does it really matter what brand of hammer you use?
Shouldn't it matter more whether any tangible results are produced using whatever tools are available? Reply
nubie - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkI have the W7 Beta, and it wouldn't install off of a SATA Optical Drive onto a PATA HDD.
Weirdest problem I have ever seen, couldn't even see the Optical drive once 'windows' the (pre-installation environment) had loaded.
I guess I needed to load RAID drivers? Seems annoying to let it boot the install without drivers, and then hang when attempting the install off media it just booted from.
It isn't "Terrible", but it ain't quick neither. I hope it gets better, but it still doesn't have the lean and mean feel of a good fresh 2000 SP4 install, or even XP SP2/3. (dual core 2.4Ghz 2GB DDR2-800 8600GTS)
Maybe I need an SSD? Reply
nowayout99 - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkRandom question from an XP user. ;)
I mostly like RC1. I was able to customize the UI enough to be mostly satisfied with it, except for one setting.
In XP, when you navigate the Start menu folders, the different folders cascade from left to right. Example: Start > Programs > System Tools > Backup. You know the drill.
In RC1, each folder overlaps the previous, and you have to use forward/back buttons to backtrack. I find this annoying actually. I prefer XP's workflow. Is there a setting where I can make the folders function like XP? Reply
Morgifier - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkThanks for the excellent article guys, covered practically everything I wanted to know about the RC before taking the plunge myself and formatting my hard drive for the install.
Cheers! Reply
heavyglow - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - link"Multiple GDI applications can now issue commands to it at the same time, and this is all pushed off to the video card to be its problem."
I'm pretty sure this means that alt-tabing from a game to desktop will be quicker. :) Reply
sample626 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkIt's all good, but Windows XP x64 is not an XP. It is based on Win 2003 Server core and share's the same updates (so there is no Win XP x64 SP3)
It doesn't reflect the real XP performance and it's not that good from compatibility view. The most common OS switch would probably be Win XP x32 -> Vista x32/64 ?-> Win7 646432/64 Reply
JimmyJimmington - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkAnyone know how to get hardware accelerated video decoding in windows 7. I've gone through a couple guides with no luck so far. Reply
brian26 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkSeriously, fuck off with the apple loving bullshit. Mac os isnt competing against Microsoft, if they did they would have their asses handed to them by the mass public complaining nothing works. They build their os for a specific set of hardware.. thats like making a fucking Operating system for a console. Until they have the balls to step out and compete against Microsoft in the OS department and drop their over priced proprietary bullshit then they can fucking burn down for all I care. So stop putting them on the table like they even matter. Its been 5 minutes you better go fucking check to see if steve jobs is in the hospital again hadnt you bitch ? Reply
strikeback03 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkYou're late - the people claiming Anandtech has a MS bias got in on the first few pages of comments. Reply
Lexington02 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkHe is not late, he is claiming otherwise to the other people who think that Anandtech is MS loving while this dude is claiming to be Apple loving. I wonder, which is true... Apple lovers or Microsoft lovers... Reply
Lexington02 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkHe is not late, he is claiming otherwise to the other people who think that Anandtech is MS loving while this dude is claiming to be Apple loving. I wonder, which is true... Apple lovers or Microsoft lovers... Reply
Lexington02 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkHe is not late, he is claiming otherwise to the other people who think that Anandtech is MS loving while this dude is claiming to be Apple loving. I wonder, which is true... Apple lovers or Microsoft lovers... Reply
Lexington02 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkHe is not late, he is claiming otherwise to the other people who think that Anandtech is MS loving while this dude is claiming to be Apple loving. I wonder, which is true... Apple lovers or Microsoft lovers... Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkFrom my perspective, if I'm being accused of being an Apple and a Microsoft fanboy in the same article, then I must be doing something right.;-)
I'll note that I have a preference for Mac OS X if given a choice, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll talk more about that in next week's Ubuntu article. Reply
strikeback03 - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkThat was my point - I have long stated that 90% of the articles here that compare something generate comments from both sides claiming bias each way. So the anti-Apple comments were late arriving compared to the anti-MS ones.
Are we really going to get a Ubuntu article? Is it now on the transition to 9.04 instead of 8.04? Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - link8.04 (because it's the LTS and most comparable to Windows/Mac OS X as such), to be followed up with 9.04. Reply
strikeback03 - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkCool. 9.04 finally resolved some out-of-the-box compatibility problems my desktop has had with each release since I started (6.10) Reply
Gary Key - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkI am still a big fan of DR-DOS. Does that mean I am anti-MS also? :) Reply
MichaelD - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkThis is important for me as that's what I use for an AV/AM solution. Overall, it looks very impressive, particularly for a RC; it may just get me away from XP. Reply
masterbm - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI have been using windows 7 on my old amd socket 939 4200 4gb ram 8800gs. I started since build 7000. I started out being guy how felt that I was going to stay on vista for most of my machine I will upgrade to windows when it released. My htpc/file server at this time I plan on leaving it at vista. Due to their is no really good way to convert the .wtv format. This htpc box is automated in since it defrag it self scan it self for virus and spyware. Then It just added auto convert of the show that records. I took while to do that stuff not sure if want do every again.(also note htpc is amd 3800)The other thing I will note is that windows 7 becuase it feels snappier has made use that system more then use to Reply
fausto412 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkThey need to make the defrag problem able to do more than one drive at a time...or to schedule them out. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkActually, it has both of those features, although as the article was running long and I didn't consider them important I didn't mention them. It can defrag drives simultaneously. Scheduling has been in there since at least Vista. Reply
strikeback03 - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkI was able to schedule weekly defrags back in Win2000 on my old laptop Reply
leexgx - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkit can if you use command line on win7 (emm i think it does loet you defrag more then one disk at the same time in the GUI, got no power for laptop so cant find out yet) Reply
Pirks - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkhttp://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001675.h...">http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001675.h... Reply
leexgx - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkHide extensions for known file types, yes every PC i am on i untick that option, its So unsafe its unreal
with windows 7 extensions should Not be hidden be it any verson of windows with vista pressing F2 or rename only selects the name now not all of the file name like XP and lower does so harder to lose the extension Reply
Pirks - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkYeah, I agree that extensions should NOT be hidden BY DEFAULT. Unfortunately they are hidden. So, Win 7 is still a virus heaven _by default_! Reply
JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkHiding extensions doesn't make it a "virus heaven"; it just makes it possible for Trojan horses to trick stupid users a bit easier. How does that malware.txt.exe file get to the PC in the first place? By some user being stupid. If extensions are hidden, then why is that file called "malware.txt" rather than just "malware"? Oh yes: because it's trying to trick you by not doing the same thing as every other icon, so it's already a red flag (which admittedly most computer users are not smart enough to notice).
For technical people, the extensions mean something - I know I always show them - but for most computer users the fact that an icon says "EXE", "SCR", "COM", "CMD", or anything else as the extension means very little. If you don't *know* what an icon is, you shouldn't click it. Simple! But sadly most computer users are not smart enough to know that. Reply
B3an - Friday, May 08, 2009 - linkThat comment was posted by Pirks. Possibly the biggest apple fanboy ever. I'm not sure i've seen a comment of his on DailyTech that hasn't been rated down. Dont feed the troll. Reply
leexgx - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linknetwork tests need to be done not the same as XP
please open winamp, WMP or teamspeak play something and then do the gigabit network test thay must of fixed the 10MB/s cap problem on Win7 when playing sound (have to mess with vista reg to remove the MMS limiter), none raid to none raid pcs shouuld be doing harddisk speeds acroess the network {70-90mb/s ish,}raid to raid or SSD should be 120MB/s about on the network Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkIt's a time issue; we didn't have a chance to work that it. It has been noted, and I'll make sure that gets in the next W7 article. Reply
Gary Key - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkWe have an additional article coming with ATI vs NV, IGP, netbook, and we will delve into storage and networking with a Promise NAS server. I just received Win7 specific network drivers so I will complete the multi-task testing shortly. Reply
Natfly - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkThank god for the media center improvements. ClearQAM support FINALLY, after hearing almost nothing for years. Better codec support is also extremely welcome. Reply
flipmode - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkWhile Vista's adoption has not been a failure, it hasn't necessarily been a success story either.
What? Can you please explain to me how you define "failure" as it pertains to Microsoft's OS? Doesn't it have about 5% penetration in business? You don't call that failure? You can't define the term based on consumer products - consumers who buy off the shelf PCs have no choice in the matter. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkFor what it's worth, my definition of failure would be "Businesses won't take it, and the consumers situation is so bad that the majority of OEMs are still shipping XP as the default desktop OS".
Vista didn't go well for Microsoft, but the fact that the vast majority of computers being sold are using Vista and the guys in our forums are using Vista near-exclusively is proof to me that it clearly wasn't a failure. A late bloomer perhaps, or maybe a lame duck. Reply
strikeback03 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkBusinesses can be extremely slow to change, with some still using Win2k. I doubt XP had that much market penetration in business after ~2 years either. If MS left Vista around as the newest OS for several years it would probably have more, as XP does now. I'd say the larger failure is that consumers were making buying decisions on computers based on which one they could get with XP.
I'd guess the automatic window resizing can probably be disabled (I like my windows the size I set them, thank you very much) but how about adding text labels back onto the taskbar icons and not merging them together? If I have multiple Firefox windows open, there is probably a reason for it and I don't want to keep having them merged. Reply
strikeback03 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkAlso, with this pinned icon being the taskbar icon thing, how do I launch a new window of whatever program that is? Firefox again, for example, will clicking it allow me to launch a new window? Or would I have to maximize a current window and then use the menu to launch a new window? Reply
JonnyBlaze - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkleft click and drag up or shift click Reply
JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkThe task bar can be set to several options. The default is "Always combine, hide labels". The second option is "Combine when taskbar is full" - that's the one I like, and you get text labels up to the point where the windows merge. The final option is "Never combine", which gives text labels and behaves in a WinXP manner. Reply
Earballs - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkAnyone get a display driver to install on a HD 4770 under W7 RC? Reply
Gary Key - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - link9.5 in a couple of weeks.. could not get the 8.612 from yesterday to work right, it would load through the manual process, but performance was way off compared to Vista 64. Reply
Gary Key - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkActually, the public release of the 8.612 betas work fine with the HD 4770. AMD made a couple of changes right before they were posted on the site. :) Reply
CSMR - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkBest source of information on Windows 7 by far. Nice work! Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkIn the article you said that the "Jump Menus" have their roots in OS X? Not at all. They've been their for years. The only example I can think of at this time is Winamp. It had a "jump menu" in Windows 98 for controlling playback. Reply
Axell - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkWell, this is actually Windows 7 Release Candidate. There won't be a second RC, so it's "Release Candidate" only, no RC1 like the title and text suggests. Reply
vectorm12 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkJust for the sake of argument.
Ever thought about how long it usually takes for MS to actually make their OS:es work well? Doesn't anyone remember what a abysmal OS XP was before SP1 let alone SP2(which in my opinion was the point where I felt confident enough to upgrade from win2k). I'm starting to wonder if people have actually forgotten how much they where complaining about XP before SP1&2 or if they just don't want to remember. What about the security vulnerabilities that still plague XP? The fact that both Vista and Win7 improves on these seem to have been lost in the quest to keep XP alive.
After all do you hear Apple users complaining about 10.5.6 being significantly slower in many respects than 10.4? The fact that 10.4 in my opinion had a bunch of features lost in 10.5 that where really useful doesn't seem to bother them half as much. In the end I think this whole discussion has become more of a "hey I'm cool for bashing Microsoft and Vista rather than keeping an open mind and actually seeing the improvements they make"
How long did it take for Microsoft to make windows 2k a better OS than NT4.0 besides the USB support (which for the first couple of years was more or less pointless anyway).
Windows 95 and RC2 and so on. I mean it usually takes years for MS to actually make a OS superior to the older version.
What sets Windows7 apart from Vista in my opinion is just that.
Windows 7 may as well be a dressed up/optimized/"insert random comment" version of Windows Vista. Sure they could have made major GUI changes and feature updates to Vista through service packs etc but the fact is that when people hear or think vista it usually equals "dog turd" or worse and usually that is because it's become cool to bash Vista. In my opinion I wouldn't hesitate to run Vista SP1 on our studio computer where I work but unfortunately most of the software required for production purposes require specific software configurations which means Vista isn't supported other than in the latest releases.
The name change is a chance for people to try what in many ways is a vastly improved OS without having that association in mind when doing so. Sure Windows 7 is still more bloated and in certain areas probably slower than XP because of bloated code/new functions etc but the fact is Microsoft has actually taken a lot of great functionality in vista and(most likely taken inspiration from Mac OS in certain areas) and improved upon it even further.
I for one want a Microsoft OS for my gaming computer. I can't be bothered running Linux and wine just to play WoW and run the Adobe suite. Given the choice I'm going for Win7 rather than XP or vista, it's safer, I've got performance to spare and there's nothing wrong with a little eyecandy to make things look more exciting.
Macs are fine but to be honest I don't like OS x THAT much to pay the premium.
Linux works perfectly on my work computer and on the servers I run at work or on my laptop that I use to surf the web. Reply
leexgx - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkapart from some drivers XP has allways worked well for me (+ i was behind an router so RDP basid worms was not an problem),
Vista is slugish and bloted for the most part and it allways will be as thay not port stuff to vista that are makeing windows 7 run far more smoother,
i have loaded win 7 onto an amd64 3000+ 2ghz, 2gb ram, it works well there is One small bug not sure why but it thinks i got 16gb installed in an socket 754 socket lol, but lists 2gb useable (at least Win7 now Shows Both numbers useable and installed as on SP1 for vista that was an joke hideing useable ram) need to report that to MS but not sure where i submit that Reply
Lexington02 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - link:face palm:
You have 32 bit and that is not MS's fault for 32bit portion, it is pure math. Also 64 bit will always be slower than 32 bit on the same specs. Think about it, 64 is twice as big as 32 bit... Reply
Bmadd - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkIf any of that was refering to my post my Thanks MS was for giving me the features i wanted and not having to go to win7. Not that they make bad products. I love the one ppl "hate" the most. PS xp needs to be laid to rest, please Reply
iAURA - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI'm in the same boat as the above poster, all I will get from W7 is a "funner" GUI and DX11, but hey, there's still tons of game being released as DX9 games. Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkDX11 will be released for Vista as well. Reply
Bmadd - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI see the graphs, i see the new features and i honestly cant be the only person who doesn't want to change from my Vista x64 install? Can i? i got a dual core and 4gig of ram, a dash of tweaks and moving the pagefile and everything loads within a second of running. I personally dont see how going from vista to 7 for me can be a thought when there gonna give me the only thing i care for in 7 and thats DirectX11 and the new aero features. Thanks MS Reply
Sazar - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkWhy not?
It's free to use and try. If you don't like it, go back.
I have switched both my HTPC and my main rig to Windows 7 simply because it is a more efficient way for me to work. The homegroups sharing features is miles better than the old, archaic sharing method and the new Media Center interface is fantastic.
Also, Windows 7 loaded up all the drivers I needed by default, including both of my Hauppauge TV Tuner drivers and it just worked.
I see a lot of naysayers nit-picking, which is fine. However, I have yet to see anyone point out anything meaningful that should disuade people from either using Vista or Windows 7.
Btw, for me, the biggest selling feature, beyond the vastly improved 10 foot interface in MCE, was Aero Peak. Can't go back to Vista now without that functionality :) Reply
Bmadd - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkWell i have never really used gadgets, widgets and such. There not for me like myspace and twitter aren't for me. I would hate to change to win7 after setting me vista install up so nicely only to not like it and have to spend time getting it back to the sleak thing it is at the moment.
Perhaps i will download the RC and just keep it there till Win7 is released and drivers are all sweet, install RC on a new hard drive and go from there but i am fair to pleased with my current vista install to consider changing Reply
papapapapapapapababy - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linknot a single feature that i want or even care about. how about a good competent fast image viewer? more drm? giant icons? no classic ui? terrible. just give me a smaller, faster, stronger and more efficient xp or gtfo ms. Reply
TonkaTuff - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkMicrosoft should count themselves very lucky that Apple remains uninterested in being the OS for everyone and restrict themselves to the premium OS and hardware market.
Yeah Snookie Im sure apple holds themseves back from over 90% of the O/S market based on there morals and lack of interest in making more money. What kind of deranged fanboy are you? Comments like the one above show how brainwashed some of you looney tunes are becoming.
It really is scary and you should seek professional help.
A comment in the article really hit the nail on the head,
Yeah Vista had issues when it first was released, it was a major step from the XP O/S but that was 2 bloody years ago. Ive been running Vista on my Gaming rig and my Work Laptop and a server/seed box and in 12 months I havnt had 1 crash that was the O/S's fault, Not one crash, not one BSOD, probably 4 or 5 freeze ups that had to be end tasked in 12 months on 3 systems numbering well over a 1000 hours of use, not even XP could claim to be that stable.
Like any O/S it has its annoyances, they all do (yes snookie even your precious mac).
Do I expect Win7 to be much different from Vista? No not really, I expect it will be a dressed up and refined version of Vista.
Why would Microshaft do such a thing, they just want more money, why not release it as a service pack for Vista?
End of rant.......Snookie you sir are a sychotic applemac fanboi, get help for god sake. Reply
squeezee - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkMicrosoft has said to developers (at PDC at least) that Direct2D and DirectWrite along with the rest of DirectX 11 functionality will be available on windows Vista. Reply
fendell - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkHas anyone tested Windows 7 and Ventrilo (any version) over some time?
It's the only thing that keeps me on 64bit XP at the moment, because ventrilo has this weird behaviour on windows 7 where it suddenly doesnt recieve data for 2-5 minutes, then suddenly gets everything at once, this is veery frustrating and in fact raidbreaking in wow ;) Reply
nycromes - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI have also used Windows 7 RC for WoW raiding and have had no major issues. Ensure you are running it as an administrator. I had a few issues before doing that, but none like you are describing. I am using a USB microphone and a standard soundcard speaker combination with no issue.
vectorm12 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI use ventrilo for wow a couple of times per week, at times for hours without any issues on build 7077x64(correct me if I'm wrong, found on piratebay.org btw). However I do use a USB connected wireless Microsoft headset(looks like the 360 one but grey) which might have some impact as it works like a second soundcard. Reply
snookie - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkIf you think XP is the best OS ever then you haven't used very many. It is archaic.
"The biggest news is that the Ultimate/Business/Home Premium schism has been resolved with Windows 7."
This is a pretty amazing statement seeing as how it took a further paragraph to partly but not fully describe what all the versions are for.
The Start Menu remains a horrible user interface designed by committee. Just awful.
Windows 7! Now with even more DRM!!!
UAC is an attempt to place responsibility for security too much on the user which is why it was so intrusive. A certain amount of user action is reasonable but UAC went far beyond that.
WTF, why does IE 8 take up so much space with its headers? Seriously Microsoft do you have no idea at all about usability? Slapping a ribbon interface on a simple text processor is just dumb.
Mail, Calendar, and Movie Maker might as well have been removed because they suck. But their removal points out even more how Microsoft needs its own version of iLife.
ISO implementation is so Microsoft. Half-ass as usual.
Why does Windows 7 need a disk defragmenter in 2009? No other modern OS does.
Virtual Windows XP? Is this a joke? Probably won't run on older machines which is where it is needed most and even more headaches for desktop admins for configuration and administration.
Why would you do performance testing on an SSD drive which very few desktop boxes have these days?
Looks like Windows 7 will suck on laptops as much as Vista does. Not good news since so many notebooks are sold these days.
My recommendation to Corporations is that for the 95% of users who need basic functionality they replace Windows entirely with a locked down Linux of some form. Many that I have worked with are considering this very thing and I have no doubt the Windows 7 will hasten this decision. XP requires far too intensive support ( yes i know your handbuilt game tower never has to be rebooted with XP, sure it doesn't).
Microsoft should count themselves very lucky that Apple remains uninterested in being the OS for everyone and restrict themselves to the premium OS and hardware market and that an unrestricted Linux desktop is still to complicated for most users. more and more companies are providing their high end IT Architects and Developers with Macs and they are happily snapping them up. I have seen this at Cisco, Oracle, Motorola, and may others. When Visual Studio using .NET developers would rather use a VM on OS X t do their development there is something very wrong and I'm seeing a lot of that.
The authors really do not understand the relationship between development tools, threads, the kernel, and processor usage.
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkExactly what SkullOne said. I also use Linux and know in what areas it's better than Windows. But I also know there are so many other areas in which it's a pain to use. Reply
SkullOne - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkSpoken like a true jaded Linux fanboi. People like you are the reason Linux will never be mainstream. You think you're so high and mighty (or more secure) when you're not.
Thanks for the laugh. I'd love for you to back up ANY of your comments with facts.
Disclaimer: I use Linux and Windows every day in production environments. They both have their place in the world. Reply
snookie - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkThis blaming of Microsoft's Vista woes on Apple and a few commercials is just ridiculous. Most people pay no attention to such things those few that see them. It also has nothing to do with why Vista was a flop in the consumer space and an even bigger flop in the corporate marketplace. Certainly nothing to do with so many companies offering XP downgrades. Vista is a lousy product plain and simple and if there is any marketing fault it is Windows with their arcane multiple editions at ever increasing prices designed to milk customers. People aren't stupid even if they are computer novices. They know when they have been had, something is difficult to use, or not reliable. This is the result of years of piling layer upon layer of code on an ever expanding code base with no effort to start over and offer a clean efficient OS. The ONLY thing Windows 7 has over Vista is the interface is simplified and gets out of your way better. It can SEEM to run faster all it wants but test after test shows Windows 7 is barely faster than Vista at many tasks and in fact slower at some. Microsoft is in real trouble here because years of cruft code have left a huge amount of unusable code that consumes resources, adds instability, and provides entry to all sorts of malware. There is no way this codebase can be made to work efficiently with the quad and higher core procs that will be even more common in the next few years and what is Microsoft going to do then? They have three failed ad campaigns under their belt so their years of lying to their customers has fallen flat and corporate customers long ago stopped believing anything Microsoft said which is why open source that doesn't lock you in is becoming more and more prevalent. Microsoft has met the enemy and it is them.
I notice you run Microsoft ads btw. Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI know so many people who haven't even TRIED Vista once and they keep telling other people how bad it is. Reply
formulav8 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI agree almost 100%. I have customers who wants to make sure they have/get windows xp because vista is so bad. If you ask them why, they basically say its because a friend of a friends father said it was slow.
I do know one of the biggest downfalls for Microsoft and Vista was allowing Intel to pressure them into getting Vista Certified compatability with those trashy integrated chipsets of Intel. So many users have those trash Intel xtreme/gma video chipsets and they had very bad Aero interface performance.
Anyways, I use both Vista and Windows7 daily. I like Vista better than XP overall and like Windows7 thus far compared to Vista.
I really think Windows7 will end up being one of the best oses made, even when compared to osx and windows xp.
Jason Reply
vectorm12 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkPersonally I never took to windows XP nor vista(had it been tecnologically possible I would still have been on WinNT 4.0), however as I bought a new PC I hit the RAM cap of 32bit XP Pro and therefore felt I had no decent choice than to move to 64bit Vista.
My Vista experience has been far from great, reinstalls, crap drivers from nVidia and ATI not to mention a bunch of other third parties. However it hasn't been all bad, vista has quite a few ideas that just didn't work out just the way I would have liked.
Look at the save file dialogs for example where you actually had to click a button to browse directories other than the default one.
I've now been running on Win7 x64 since build 7k reinstalling almost every time a new version has been leaked and I'd say most of the things that bugged me with Vista has been corrected.
At this point the only thing I still want for Win7 is the "old" style control panel and an integration of the "administrator tools" into the control panel.
Looking at the big picture I say Win7 (even in BETA) is the best modern OS Microsoft has produced. The performance issues of Vista have been dealt with to a large degree. Drivers seem to work better and the most annoying GUI issues have been dealt with.
All Microsoft can do now to make me feel completely satisfied with my computing experience over the last few years is give me a BIG rebate on the upgrade to Windows7 from my old Vista licence. Reply
johnsonx - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI just upgraded my XP-era Vista box (2.2ghz single core A64, 2GB RAM, VIA AGP mobo, X1950Pro) to Windows 7 tonight, and it was absolutely painless. It certainly seems faster than Vista, in particular I notice that my e-mail client and web browser launch and become ready much more quickly.
I'm finding the new UI features to be actually useful as well, rather than Vista's pointless eye candy. I often have 6 or 7 browser tabs and several e-mail windows open, along with another couple of apps, and the new task bar makes it much easier to switch among them. I can see if I have any new e-mail just by moving the mouse over the client icon on the taskbar, no need to even click on it. Aero-Peek makes gadgets more usable too, since you can see them without minimizing every window. AeroSnap is great too. Only AeroShake defies explanation, but perhaps time will prove that one too.
I was never a Vista hater, though it certainly had it's frustrations. But it only took me 20 minutes with Windows 7 to never want to touch another Vista box again.
I was initially concerned that ATI's Windows 7 driver only supports cards back to the HD2000 series (presumably because the WDDM 1.1 driver model requires DX10 class hardware, which my X1950Pro is not), but the MS provided driver had no problems with Half-Life 2 (the only game I happen to have installed on this box) or any of the fancy GUI features.
The only weirdness so far as that at last boot up Windows told me a driver for Trend Micro Internet Security was being blocked due to a compatibility problem with Windows 7. That's understandable, except for the fact that I don't have any Trend Micro product installed, nor has one ever been installed in the past. It wouldn't tell me exactly what driver it was complaining about though, so I can't investigate further (I suspect some log somewhere will tell me exactly what driver it blocked).
One taskbar UI incontinuity: so much now works by simply moving the mouse over the various items, it suddenly seems odd to have to actually click on the start menu to get it to open.
johnsonx - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkok, it turns out the offending driver was TMCOMM.SYS, and it really was from Trend Micro. I have a vague recollection of running an online scan once a couple years ago (trying to scan a friend's external drive), so I guess it was trend micro and it left that driver around.
As with most such things, the blocking event was neatly logged in the system event log.
thebeastie - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkWow, this new OS looks like Vista but with all the latest patches,IE8 and DirectX11. Then just a few cosmetic graphics changes.
Come on what else did you expect? Maybe its something that has stuck deep in side people since they were kids around new PCs but when it comes to Microsoft new OSes people are just getting more and more nieve.
thebeastie - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkMore tests appear to be slower in Windows 7 then Vista etc.
Things like reltek sound performance can be put to just as much to the 3rd party drivers then anything else.
I can't believe how many people I have talked to that use but hate Vista and expect Windows server to be light on its feet as XP but with the features of Vista, they are behaving as its something they could bet their life on.
What does it take for people to get some some technical intuition?
I mean thats what people really really really need here. Reply
thebeastie - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI guess what would be the most naive is to think that Windows 7 is about anything else but money, I mean they could easily improve Vista to have every feature that Windows 7 has, but they wont.
MS has handed out whole new versions of DirectX and just about every other type of similar feature that is in Windows 7 so forth via service packs in the past.
Some how come that is not possible these days? Its just about treating us like complete fools.
B3an - Friday, May 08, 2009 - link...You do know you're talking to yourself thebeastie??
Are you really this stupid or is apple paying you to write this? Reply
SkateNY - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkMicrosoft is a company in decline. It's top managers, supporters, fanboys, and investors are all in denial about this.
Their most recent OS was and remains an abysmal failure. Their attempt at competing in the MP3 market is a disaster, no matter how many people tell us that they love their Zune. Their "loss leader" in game consoles is just that...a leader in losses.
Want proof? Look at the stock price for the past five years...at least five years.
MSFT investors are desperate. They'll say and do anything to make others believe that the company is doing as well now as they were doing before they were adjudicated by the US Department of Justice as violating the Sherman Anti-trust Law in restraint of trade.
They've lost a great deal of their investments over the past ten years. They're so desperate that they need to tell themselves -- and anyone who will listen -- that this is a great company.
Sorry, but as is true in the rest of the real world, what has Microsoft done for anyone invested in them lately? The soft answer would be "nothing." The truth is that they've damaged their investors through bad judgment, poor management, and malfeasance.
What they've done is move a great deal of their previously loyal customers to Apple and Linux. And a large percentage of them who haven't made that move are looking into it.
It's a sad story. With so many resources, the best they could do was barely maintain their core products...Windows and Office. Not enough. The rest of the tech world is passing them by, and they don't seem to have a clue. Reply
piroroadkill - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkHuh?
Microsoft aren't going anywhere. Reply
SimpleLance - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - link"It's a sad story. With so many resources, the best they could do was barely maintain their core products...Windows and Office. Not enough. The rest of the tech world is passing them by, and they don't seem to have a clue."
Who in the tech world is passing them by? Linux? There is nothing in the Linux world that is an innovation. Everything is a just a bad copying of what they see in Windows. Same goes for OSX. Name a technology from Linux or OSX, and you will find that in Windows years ago.
In the mean time, there is a lot of Windows features that neither OSX or Linux has.
BitLocker drive encryption - OSX only has folder encryption. Windows has had that since Windows NT 3.x.
Active Directory - now being copied by Linux
Access Control List - only recently added in OSX. Has been in Windows NT 1.0.
Remote Desktop - no equivalent at all in Linux or OSX. All they have is VNC. VNC started in the Windows world that got implemented in Linux and OSX. That is the worst form of remote desktop (screen scraping). Its like a high school student's home work. With Remote Desktop, Windows users threw away VNC as trash, and Linux/OSX picked it up - they really have nothing else, but junk.
SMB - copied as Samba. Where is AppleTalk now? Apple does not know how to write an OS. They had to take BSD.
DirectX - makes Open GL like a kid's work.
Etc. etc.
Who again is overtaking who?
New in Win7...
BITS Branch Cache (Vista had something called Peer Cache) - serverless P2P.
Support for TRIM command for SSD - now perhaps being added to Linux. Another me too effort. Definitely not in OSX.
Improved (less chatty) SMB - Samba is behind again. Nobody in the Linux world could make a better SMB. MS had to do it.
VHD Booting - Linux folks probably scratching their head now. What is that? they say. How do we copy that?
Plus all the other eye candy that people talk about. Reply
Hgr - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link"In the mean time, there is a lot of Windows features that neither OSX or Linux has."
I am sure of that, but of those you are listing here, many simply do not apply.
"BitLocker drive encryption - OSX only has folder encryption. Windows has had that since Windows NT 3.x."
BitLocker is a trademark of Microsoft, so it will be difficult to find it in non-Microsoft operating systems. If you're looking for drive encryption in Linux, distributions have been supporting this for years.
"Active Directory - now being copied by Linux"
Yes, the Samba folks are quite active in reimplementing AD in Samba 4 - as a means of Windows interoperability. Note that DNS, LDAP and Kerberos, the three most important of the protocols that AD is built upon, have been copied by Microsoft from Unix systems. They have been available for Linux de facto from their inception.
"Remote Desktop - no equivalent at all in Linux or OSX. All they have is VNC. VNC started in the Windows world that got implemented in Linux and OSX. That is the worst form of remote desktop (screen scraping). Its like a high school student's home work. With Remote Desktop, Windows users threw away VNC as trash, and Linux/OSX picked it up - they really have nothing else, but junk."
Just because you don't know better solutions does not mean that there are none. VNC certainly isn't a native Linux remote desktop protocol, much less a universal tool for everyday work (it has not been designed to be one). For years, X11 SSH tunnelling has been available. For those who want a low-latency remote desktop, the NX compression protocol and software suite have been available for quite some time, and many are perfectly happy with it. Linux's NX can compress even Windows RDP even further. ;-)
"DirectX - makes Open GL like a kid's work."
Just because DirectX is good for making games does not make OpenGL "a kid's work". After all, DirectX is more akin to SDL than to OpenGL. OpenGL has clearly a different target audience - it is used to build industrial software. Is it surprising that it's different?
"SMB - copied as Samba. Where is AppleTalk now? Apple does not know how to write an OS. They had to take BSD."
Actually, SMB was not invented "at Microsoft". It is an intellectual child of three companies - IBM, Microsoft, and 3com. Many operating systems have later adopted this protocol. Surprising, again? We want to be able to talk to other systems so we adopt it. In Linux, you can use at least half a dozen networked file systems.
"Improved (less chatty) SMB - Samba is behind again. Nobody in the Linux world could make a better SMB. MS had to do it."
Why hasn't it been less chatty before? :-) Well, of course, Samba is behind, Microsoft is in charge of updating their broken protocols, the Samba team is not going to do this for them. A Linux user simply uses a less chatty (less broken?) protocol.
"Support for TRIM command for SSD - now perhaps being added to Linux. Another me too effort. Definitely not in OSX. "
Linux kernel and its file system modules have been ready for this since half a year ago, according to one of the leading Linux file system developers. And it is no "me too effort", not as long as it is not Microsoft that invented it a started manufacturing the devices. Are you trying to imply that for any hardware feature, there is only one OS allowed to support it without being accused of me-too-ism, and that all other systems that include support later are just copycats? Great, I've mentioned Kerberos. Good to see that MS joined the "I want it too" crowd. :-) Reply
andrihb - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkIn your dreams, maybe. Reply
strikeback03 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkUnfortunately, there are plenty of applications that don't run natively in any *nix (Adobe is my problem) so some version of Windows is the only option. Reply
coolkev99 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI don't buy an OS based on company stock price. Reply
C'DaleRider - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - link[quote]Look at the stock price for the past five years...at least five years.[/quote]
OK...I did....and the stock price 5 years ago was in the $24/share range, as it was 4 years ago, 3 years ago, 2 years ago, last year. In fact, it's been around $24 per share going back almost 10 years ago.....although just after the beginning of 2000 it spiked to $48 per share, but then the dot com bubble burst and every tech stock fell, MS's included. The release of XP did give a bump to roughly $34/share, but again fell back to its "base" of around $24/share.
Sorry, but this is the first fact you are sadly misinformed on.
Then, the investors. Don't think most are crying and desperate at all. MSFT has been paying dividends every quarter, like clockwork. Granted, since Vista's release, it's not been spectacular, but has been fairly consistent.
Consider MSFT's 5 yr. net profit margin, 27.9%, is still well above sector and industry average. The company's low price-to-earnings ratio -- which Oakmark Fund places at less than nine, based on estimates for this year's earnings -- is closer to seven if you exclude the $4 a share in net cash.
Nicely, the stock is also currently sporting a dividend yield of 3%. But one problem is that investors, especially individual investors, put too much focus on growth expectations and too little focus on price.
Here's another tidbit you overlooked in your bashing.....MS had an EPS of $1.87 in '08, its highest EPS pay since '99. And MS's net profit has grown from '04-'08, every year. (FYI...net profits were, from '04-'08: $8.1B, $12.2B, $12.6B, $14B, and $17.6B).
Granted '09 will be "dismal," it's been dismal for everyone. But MS will still show a net profit and is paying nice dividends on its stock.
And as for everyone crying and gnashing teeth about MS, I wonder why Barron's, and every other analyist, puts Microsoft as a strong buy and NOT ONE has MS as a sell of any sort.
And game consoles? MS never planned to turn a profit on each...it IS a loss leader, just like the PS3. The games themselves are the profit center. Always has been like that and probably will always be like that.
So, where's the panic? Where's the problem? MS is still sitting on over $640M in cash reserves.....something a lot of companies can only wish to have.
Adul - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkMS cash reserves are actually around $26.3 billion Reply
snookie - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkApple's stock is dramatically higher and they have much more cash in reserve. Xbox sure in hell was designed to be profitable on both hardware and games and neither is. Microsoft knew they would lose money the 1st few years but nothing like this. It's been a total disaster for them financially.
Investors are bullish on Microsoft? Well a lot of them aren't. Microsoft lost half its value in 2008. Half.
Q9 has not been dismal for Apple. Biggest 2nd quarter ever in the middle of a recession. i guess that must be because of their commercials though....new iPhone coming up in June which will sell as fast as they can make them and Microsoft can't even get that blind, crippled, and dumb Windows Mobile out the door. This is a company in dire need of new leadership and middle management. Instead their answer is to rant and rave and piecemeal out development to whichever country is cheaper this week? Sound like a long term formula to success to you? Reply
chewietobbacca - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkYou're kidding right? Apple's stock is higher but their market cap is worth $60 billion less because share prices don't mean sh!t. Apple has fewer shares out there hence each one is worth more, but MSFT is still worth 60billion more than AAPL, and if MSFT goes up to $24 a share again, it'll be worth even more. Reply
Patrick Wolf - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkPsycho... Reply
Jjoshua2 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkThat's good to see its performance is good in general, and its gaming is consistently higher as well. Posting from Windows 7 on my Wind Netbook FTW :)
Any pricing news? I hope there's a great student rate. Reply
griffhamlin - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - link"gaming perfs constistently higher" ???
are you kidding ? the song remain the same ... Reply
samspqr - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkthe main reason I hate vista is because it's not XP: everything looks different, I can never find what I'm looking for, so getting used to it would require an effort that doesn't seem to have any compensating advantages (I don't like fancy UIs -I still use the W2K look- and I don't really play games anymore)
then, about windows7, I still feel it's just a re-spun new SP for vista, with a UI revision, and the only reason it's getting better reviews than the original vista is that some time has passed, so there are better drivers, and you're testing it on much more powerful hardware
now, that Wind comment makes me wonder...
may even I fall on this one?
we'll see Reply
cyriene - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI never understood how XP users say they "can never find anything in Vista."
I'm not Windows expert, but after using my new laptop with Vista for 3 hours I knew where over 95% of the things and setting are located. And mos tof them are in the same place as XP for that matter. Control panel is the same... Start menu slightly different, but similar enough to figure out in 5 seconds. Plus if there is something you're looking for, the Vista help search actually ...HELPED me find it! I was actually suprised how well the help works. Also, if that failed a quick Google search is all it takes.
I don't feel MS should make ever OS exactly the same with everything in the same place. It makes sense for some things to move, and it isn't hard to find them if you take 5 seconds to do that. Reply
dmpk - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - linkI agree. I think it is easy to find stuff on Vista with a little bit of playing. The transition is same as that from Windows 98 to Windows XP... Reply
piroroadkill - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkI completely agree. If you can't find something in Vista and you're used to XP, it's either so unused that it was removed, or you're just not trying, at all. Reply
strikeback03 - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkIn some things I can understand moving stuff, but there are also some that were moved for no good reason. For example, in XP to get display properties, you right click the desktop and click properties. In Vista there is at least one additional page to click through to get that. Ultimately, it seems to me that MS tries too hard to hide the settings, likely to protect the users who don't know what they are doing, but a pain for the users who do. For the record, I had the same complaint about XP coming from win2000, that whenever you hop on a system that wasn't set to all the classic settings, it is a pain to get around. Reply
Jackattak - Thursday, May 07, 2009 - linkBut Strikeback you're talking about probably 10% of the users (power users). The majority of Windows users don't give a crap about modification, and that's who they're "protecting" based on your explanation.
If you were running Microsoft, wouldn't you find it a small issue that you were "inconveniencing" 10% of your user base by making them go "one page deeper" in order to "protect" 90% of your users? Reply
strikeback03 - Friday, May 08, 2009 - linkThen do like the GPU companies do and have both simple and advanced versions of the interface. Allow them to change one setting to show or hide all the "advanced" stuff across the OS. And put it somewhere easy to find, like the start menu. Reply
mathew7 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI'm also a XP-lover. Even in XP I'm using it with classic view (2K view).
My main problem is removal of old start-menu (cascading menus). I really hate the Vista style-menu.
Also, I prefer UAC disabled and using run-as different user. Unfortunately (in Beta), explorer would not take the new permissions (launch in separate process was enabled for both users), which means configurations had to be done with admin logon. I have not tried this yet in RC. Also, once UAC was disabled, the UAC menu items (with the shield) were still present with no actions (again I don't know about RC).
On the other hand, the new taskbar (with previews) and the multimedia settings are good-enough reason for me to switch. Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkStart menu is one of the best features that were introduced in Vista. It's great on a netbook or a small monitor. You also don't need to move your mouse, just type in the first few letters of the app name. It also searches your documents for you.
And about that RAM issue, what did you expect? I'm surprised it even runs on 512MB. Even netbooks have at least a gig of RAM. Reply
SirKronan - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI like the revamped start menu as well. Love instant search!
But did they add Blu-ray support to Media Center? This has been one of my complaints from the beginning about Media Center. It has to launch a separate program to play Blu-rays & HD DVD's, and I haven't found any way around it short of ripping the movies to a hard disk. I realize there are anti-trust/competitive laws, and I honestly don't mind having to buy PowerDVD or WinDVD to get their decoder, but I want the movie to play back in MEDIA CENTER with all of the interface's great features, like the smooth playback and intuitive controls, guide information, zoom feature (get rid of black letterbox - with 1080p you certainly have enough resolution to scale a tad!), etc.
Have they added that yet? If not, PLEASE, Anand, ask them to for us! Reply
KingViper - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkArchsoft and the newest version of PowerDVD both have plugins for Media Center..from what I hear. Although Media Center itself isn't actually playing the Blu-Ray..it looks like it integrates well. You might try out the trial versions. Reply
chrnochime - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkJust because netbooks have more ram(and not every one of them has 1G, some has 512MB), doesn't mean the OS should try to gobble up as much as is available. I don't get why every iteration of their OS just keep getting bigger and bigger, with little discernible improvements to the average user.
and this? "Ultimately, with Microsoft throwing Windows 7 RC1 out to the masses, we can't think of a good reason not to try it."
Unless they have ways to export the settings in programs and whatever document users have when they were using W7, it'd be really hard to convince the average user to try out just for sake of novelty. Reply
KingViper - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - link"I don't get why every iteration of their OS just keep getting bigger and bigger, with little discernible improvements to the average user. "
Many things an OS is responsible for is not necessarily obvious to the average user. Compatibility with almost all hardware available, including keeping the OS as secure as possible. DX10\DX11 and h264 codecs etc. etc. etc. TONS of stuff is added, but it isn't necessarily used everyday. Of course it's going to get bigger.
I don't understand how XP users are about as bitter with Microsoft as Mac users are. Can you just not afford a Mac or what? Reply
mathew7 - Wednesday, May 06, 2009 - linkI also would like to say about W7RC and low-RAM:
Windows 7 on 512MB RAM (desktop Intel G45 MB w/laptop HDD) feels to me like XP din on a 64MB RAM laptop years ago. It's good for internet/light work, but even for that you need patience because of swapping. Reply
adelaidewright - Friday, February 11, 2011 - linkDefinitely, Windows 7 is about to impresses the XP users who resisted to Vista on the ground of performance and compatibility. Windows' newest avatar has a great look and it consumes least of the system resources. It's not surprising that more and more users are migrating to Windows 7. Windows 7 is a multi talented Operating System which includes native functionality to read and write Blue-Ray discs. Windows 7 has many built-in tools to help with program compatibility and it also features an improved backup solution to help keep your information safe. Windows7 is an advanced Operating System with excellent features. Windows 7 builds on the substantial investment.
The Window Support is an independent provider of on-demand tech support and not affiliated with any third party brand unless specified. Their service was very professional and resolved my problem completely. As always were very patience and knowledgeable. They managed to solve the problem. Reply


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Yes, cheap, easy headline, but true nonetheless. Today we're talking NHL-level hockey. I think if the prime minster of Canada went on air tonight to say the country was seceding to Russia, nobody would turn the channel up north.
It's old news that USA is being declared the underdog — underage, underskilled, undersized — but hey, not to get all parochial here, but as the great American philosopher John Winger once said (adapted here for theme purposes), "We're all dogfaces, we're all very, very different, but there is one thing that we all have in common: we were all stupid enough to join the NHL. We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us – we're hockey players. But we're American hockey players! … Now we don't have to worry about whether or not we practiced. We don't have to worry about whether Captain Clutch wants to have us hung. All we have to do is to be the great American fighting hockey player that is inside each one of us. Now do what I do, and say what I say. And make me proud."
Here's your line-up for today:
Russia v. Czechs, 3 p.m. NBC (network, wow!)
USA v. Canada, 7:40 MSNBC (of course)
Hank v. Findland, midnight MSNBC
Here's some pre-game reads.
• From nhl.com
• Two pieces on the "teammates become opponents/enemies" theme.
Perhaps I'll be shown to be totally wrong (wouldn't be the first time), but a part of me just doesn't buy that one teammate is going to take out another in any serious way. Do you think a Ranger would really go for Gabby if it meant posing any risk? Well, we'll see later I suppose.
And last, but not least:
Eleven, count 'em, 11 curling games today! At noon, USA v. Canada women's curling (MSNBC), the day's underrated North American duel on ice. At 5, men take on Great Britain (CNBC)
I'll probably put up a clean slate before the game tonight. Later…..
Post-game update:
Well Jagrites, today just wasn't your day. Or, as nhl.com so gently put it, Ovi crushes Jagr. At least the Fighting Slovaks have a chance :)

subset: commoncrawl


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Teen Mom Jenelle's Implants Are In A Bikini Already
Teen Mom star Jenelle Evans literally got new implants five minutes ago, yet here she is already parading them around in a bikini because meth doesn't grow on trees. She's tried. Not that I'm complaining because these are the type of sexy pictures I love posting on The Superficial. Just a hot, thick, awesome, real American woman's body right down to the hooch tattoo, belly button ring and a handy key to let you know her wrist is always open for roadside tugs. It's like staring into the face of pure beauty, having it ask if you mind watching her kid while she runs to the store "real quick" and then learning real quick is junkie talk for five weeks. Haha, you idiot.
Photos: Raef-Ramirez/AKM-GSI


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I never really know what to do with parsnips when they show up in our CSA box. Thankfully they keep well, since it gives me some time to come up with uses for them, other than making veggie broth or throwing them on the compost pile. However, I read recently that they're quite nutritious*, so I decided to try them in a recipe for Nora.
* I will confess that I am a little prejudiced when in comes to veggies and fruits, since I tend to feed Nora (and myself, for that matter) by color. The more colorful a meal is, the more diverse nutrients it must have. This is a pretty good shorthand, but there are some tricky colorless foods out there, like parsnips, that are nutritionally valuable.
Personally, I think parsnips are pretty boring on their own, so I added some apple to the mix and roasted everything with a nice coating of butter.
They were a hit with Nora, and, as an added bonus, I was able to freeze the leftovers in baby-sized portions for use in future meals. Gotta love that!
Butter-Roasted Parsnips with Apples
3-4 parsnips (depending on size)
1 apple
1 Tbsp butter, melted
Peel the parsnips and apple. Chop the parsnips into coins, and the apple into bite-sized chunks. Toss the parsnips and apples with the butter. Spread in a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes, or until tender. Serve or freeze in individual portions for later use.


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The new asphalt highway to Barack Obama's ancestral village winds past maize fields and thatched-roof mud huts for several miles before terminating at a startling sight: a row of lime-green cottages with pink pagoda-style roofs, flanked by two whitewashed, four-story villas. Kogelo Village Resort, a 40-bed hotel and conference center that opened last November, is the latest manifestation of the worldwide fascination with the U.S. president's Kenyan roots. Owner Nicholas Rajula, a big man with a booming voice, was sitting beneath a canopy on the parched front lawn answering a pair of cellphones when I drove through the gate. Rajula stirred controversy here in 2007, shortly after he helped organize a tour of western Kenya for the junior senator from Illinois. Calling himself a distant cousin, Rajula ran for a seat in the Kenyan Parliament. Obama's campaign officials disputed his family connections, and Rajula lost the election.
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Now, five years later, the Kenyan entrepreneur is back in the Obama business. "I visited Barack three times in Washington when he was a U.S. senator," said Rajula, a textbook distributor who built his hotel, as his brochure boasts, "only 200 meters away from Mama Sarah Obama's home" (a reference to the president's step-grandmother). Furthermore, Rajula claimed, "Barack inspired me. We were alone in the lift, in the U.S. Capitol, and he patted my back and said, 'Cousin, I am proud of you. You are a businessman.'" Most members of the local Luo tribe, Rajula asserted, are "lazy people, not good at business. I told myself that should Barack come back to Kogelo, he will find the Luo businessman that he met in D.C. and see that he owns this magnificent hotel."
Nyang'oma Kogelo first came to public attention in Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, his acclaimed autobiography published in 1995. The story is largely about young Obama's search for the truth about his brilliant but self-destructive father. A Kenyan exchange student who met the future president's mother, Ann Dunham, at the University of Hawaii in 1960, Barack Sr. abandoned the family when his son was 2, returned to Kenya and went on to a career as a government economist. After falling into alcoholism and poverty, he died in a car crash in Nairobi in 1982, at age 46. "He had almost succeeded, in a way his own father could never have hoped for," writes the son he left behind in America, toward the end of Dreams From My Father. "And then, after seeming to travel so far, to discover that he had not escaped at all!"
Five years after his father's death, the younger Obama flew to Nairobi and embarked on an emotional trip to the family homestead in Nyang'oma Kogelo. "I remember the rustle of corn leaves, the concentration on my uncles' faces, the smell of our sweat as we mended a hole in the fence bounding the western line of the property," he writes. "It wasn't simply joy that I felt in each of these moments. Rather, it was a sense that everything I was doing, every touch and breath and word, carried the full weight of my life, that a circle was beginning to close."
Tourists—especially Americans—have followed Obama's footsteps to this once-obscure rural community a half-hour north of Lake Victoria ever since. After Obama's 2008 victory, many Kenyan tour operators added side trips to Nyang'oma Kogelo. These tours typically promise an opportunity to meet Obama's relatives, visit the market, gaze at the fields and house where Barack Sr. spent much of his childhood, and ponder the president's uniquely cross-cultural identity. Nyang'oma Kogelo is also at the center of a push to invigorate what is optimistically known as the Western Kenya Tourism Circuit: little-visited but beautiful highlands that include Lake Victoria, the lakeside railroad city of Kisumu, bird sanctuaries and sites where legendary paleontologists Mary and Louis Leakey made some of their landmark discoveries about the origins of mankind. Locals continue to hope that investment will flow into this long-neglected region. Here, the HIV-AIDS infection rate is among the highest in the country and unemployment, boredom and poverty drive young people to migrate to the urban slums in search of opportunity. So far, however, the global attention paid to Nyang'oma Kogelo has proved a boon to only a few enterprising insiders like Rajula. For the rest, the initial wave of excitement has dimmed, replaced by disappointing reality.
In Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama begins his journey west by train from Nairobi to Kisumu. He notes from his window "the curve of the tracks behind us, a line of track that had helped usher in Kenya's colonial history." Kisumu was founded in 1901, at the terminus of the Uganda Railway, which ran for 600 miles from Mombasa to the shores of Lake Victoria. It set forth a wave of white colonial migration deep into the East African interior that would soon touch the life of Hussein Onyango, Barack's grandfather. Born in 1895 in Kendu Bay on Lake Victoria, Onyango moved as a young man back to the ancestral lands of Nyang'oma Kogelo. Onyango both respected and resented the white man's power. He worked as a cook for British families, served with the King's African Rifles during the First and Second world wars, and was jailed for six months in 1949, charged with membership in an anti-colonial political organization. The migration would also affect the fate of Barack Obama Sr.—the bright schoolboy dabbled in anti-colonial politics following his father's detention, then pursued a Western education in the hope of transforming his fragile, emerging nation, which would achieve independence in 1963.
Kisumu is a sleepy provincial city that sprawls along the eastern shore of Lake Victoria. As I journeyed by rented 4 x 4 from there, deeper into the Kenyan countryside, I encountered all the signs of rural poverty that the young Obama had noted on the same route. Here were the "shoeless children," the "stray dogs [snapping] at each other in the dust," the "occasional cinder- block house soon replaced by mud huts with thatched, conical roofs." Then I crossed a chocolate-colored river and at a crossroads reached Nyang'oma Kogelo.
The market, a typical African bazaar, consisted of rickety stalls surrounded by shabby shops selling T-shirts and tins of condensed milk. A drive down a red-earth road, past groves of bananas and rolling hills covered with plots of millet and maize, brought me to the homestead of Malik Obama. Born Roy Obama in 1958, he is the president's half-brother and the oldest son of Barack Obama Sr., who had eight children with four wives. He has invested a large sum in the soon-to-open Barack H. Obama Recreation Center and Rest Area in Nyang'oma Kogelo. Obama has also developed a reputation as something of an operator. When, en route to Nyang'oma Kogelo, I inquired about the possibility of an interview, he texted back: "My schedule is brutal but I might/could squeeze you in for about thirty minutes if I can get $1,500 for my trouble." I politely declined.
Mama Sarah Obama, the widow of Barack's grandfather, lives in a tin-roofed house set back a few hundred yards from the road. After the inauguration, Mama Sarah was besieged by well-wishers, greeting dozens of strangers a day. "She is a very social, very jovial person," a friendly police officer at her front gate told me. The strangers included those with more nefarious purposes, such as members of the U.S. "birther" movement, who hoped to gather "proof" that the president was born in Kenya.
After the killing of Osama bin Laden last year, the Kenyan government heightened security around Mama Sarah's compound. Even so, she still meets visitors. When I phoned her daughter from the gate, I was told that her mother was resting, but that I should come back in several hours. Unfortunately, my timing was not fortuitous. Mama Sarah, 91, was recovering from minor injuries suffered two days earlier when the car she'd been riding in overturned on the way back from Kendu Bay, near Lake Victoria. She wasn't up for greeting me today, a plainclothes security man told me when I returned.


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Australian shares rose today, winning back a good chunk of losses in the previous session, as data showed the economy slowed in the third quarter but was still growing at a faster pace than any other developed nation.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index rose 16.8 points, or 0.4 per cent, to at 4520.4, after falling 0.6 per cent on Tuesday.
"It was a solid, if not spectacular performance, with shares grinding higher despite another indifferent showing on Wall Street and the underwhelming local GDP print," said Tim Waterer, strategist at CMC Markets.
Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 0.5 per cent in the third quarter, in line with forecasts albeit the smallest rise since early 2011.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut interest rates to a record-matching low of 3 per cent yesterday and investors suspect further easing will be needed to offset a profusion of headwinds, from a falling terms of trade to a high local dollar.
"A lower rate environment will ultimately help drive more allocation away from cash to equities in 2013," said UBS strategist George Boubouras.
"Lower cash rates drive investors towards higher-risk assets to search for a higher return. In all cycles, lower rates drive more risk-seeking behaviour. That is what lower funding costs aim to do - drive equity and property prices higher," he wrote in a report.
Top banks extended gains after the rate cut, with Commonwealth Bank advancing 1 per cent.
Ten Network requested a trading halt ahead of an announcement in relation to a proposed capital raising.
"The raising will be a bitter pill for shareholders to swallow," said Cameron eacock, strategist at IG Markets.
"Ten is a company bleeding cash, both from its operations and its shareholders. Due to poor programming, Ten has lost significant TV market share and as a result has seen TV ad revenues slump," he said.
Iron ore miner Sundance Resources plunged 12 per cent to 34.5 cents after it said its takeover by Hanlong Group would be delayed to the end of January because the Chinese company has not yet obtained the necessary funding. The deal had been due to close on January 8.
Discovery Metals jumped 2.6 per cent to $1.61 as investors bet its Chinese suitor was likely to be successful with its $1.70 a share, or $824 million, hostile offer, after the copper miner announced it had run into problems at its Boseto mine in Botswana.
"I expect that there would be a few others who'd be quite happy to sell at this price, particularly when you factor in what they (Discovery) just said - that we have to stop mining at the Boseto open cut," said Pieter Bruinstroop, an analyst at broker Octa Phillip.
Coal of Africa's fell 8 per cent to 17.5 cents after workers at its Mooiplaats colliery in South Africa embarked on an illegal strike following the suspension of four workers.


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Britteny Desvaux had good reason to believe she had already suffered enough during the floods that ravaged northern NSW.
Twenty-four weeks pregnant, she spent three nights holed up in a car with her partner Aaron Godwin, his two primary school-aged children and their pet dog.
However a week after being cut off from their rented Clarence Valley house, Ms Desvaux recalled the emotion-charged moment of inspecting the damage done to their home.
"The water came in up to waist-level," she told AAP.
"It was devastating.
"I cried when I saw all the new things we'd bought for the baby that we hadn't even set up yet, things we hadn't even got out of boxes."
Mr Godwin said they had lost almost everything.
"I suppose there's probably a couple of fridge magnets that the water missed," he said.
His children, Caleb, 10, and Trinesha, 5, were due to start school last week but have been unable to go as they have no bags, uniforms or school supplies.
"We can't send them with nothing," Ms Desvaux said.
The Salvation Army found the family emergency accommodation but it ran out on Monday and they were waiting at the Clarence Valley Disaster Recovery Centre on Monday to see if someone could help them find somewhere to stay.
Their stories came as NSW deputy Premier Andrew Stoner paid a visit to the flood-hit northern NSW town of Grafton to open the centre.
Mr Stoner said the centre was established to help residents in the wake of the Clarence River's record flood last week and that he would be taking information back to cabinet regarding the extent of the damage.
"This will be a one-stop shop to help the entire community get back on their feet," Mr Stoner said.
"The last thing people need is to get the runaround and be flicked from one agency to another."
Mr Stoner said the government had employed extra staff because of concerns about water contamination in the area.
"The Department of Resources has employed 40 extra compliance officers and some of those are based in the north east of the state."


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Ella America Breedlove Adams entered The Lord's courts with praise on June 23, 2013. The celebration of her life was held in Monroe, GA, June 29, 2013.
She fulfilled scripture of the Proverbial Woman. She was of noble character and the teaching of kindness was on her tongue.
She was predeceased by her husband of 63 years, Floyd Adams. Her three devoted children and spouses are, Karen (Herb) Sheheane, Barbara (Mike) Summers, and David (Teresa) Adams.
Her grandchildren who adore her are Dene (Carrie) Sheheane, Tish (Rob) Bachert, Gabe (Nichole) Sheheane, Zachary and Austin Slay, Lindsay (Chas) Darnell, Tattie Grace Estes, and Rachel and Daniel Adams.
Her Christian legacy continues with her great grandchildren: Riley, Max and Tess Sheheane, Robby and Ella Bachert, Allura, Hunter, and Bening Sheheane, Alyssa, Madison, and Grady Darnell who love their LALA.
Those who wish may sign the on-line guest registry at www.mcmullenfuneralhome.com.
Ella America Breedlove Adams
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CRUNCH-TIME has arrived for Westlecot men as they seek to clinch a place in the 2013/14 Wessex League play-offs.
They face Oxfordshire neighbours Carterton tomorrow (10am) in their final east region group match, which is a crucial top-of-the-table clash that will certainly settle each club's fate.
Westlecot boosted their hopes of reaching the end of season play-offs with a 98-58 win a fortnight ago against Oxford & District and collected a maximum 16 points in their penultimate east region group match.
That result lifted Westlecot into second spot albeit on shots difference in the East Region table and into one of the two automatic play-off places. It also ensured with only one round of group matches to be played that the race for play-off spots would go right down to the wire.
The Old Town club know that their fate lies in their own hands and a win tomorrow against Carterton should ensure at worst a play-off wildcard, while a victory and a maximum 16 points would give them top spot above Loddon Vale.
Currently four clubs are vying for the automatic east region play-off places and the chance to claim one of four wildcards that are on offer at the finish of all six regional sections to the best four non-qualifiers on average points per game.
A grand finale is therefore step-up for tomorrow with several permutations possible involving all four clubs.
Westlecot make three changes to the side that beat Oxford & District in the last round of group matches.
Kyle Anderson is unavailable while away players Geoff and Lawrence Smith revert to the reserves bench.
At home, where Westlecot have an excellent winning record, Mike Titcombe Junior switches over to number three in place of Anderson in Dave Godwin's rink, while Ian Jefferies rink that have recorded a few big wins since Christmas is unchanged.
Chris Cheesley's away rink has a new front end consisting of the vastly experienced duo of John Thomas and Dave Matthews coming in for Mike Titcombe and Geoff Smith.
In the other way rink named at Carterton, England senior men's triallist Neil Smith is available to play and comes in at skip resulting in James Nobbs and Mike Shawyer moving down to three and two respectively while Lawrence Smith reverts to the subs bench.
Home - Rink 1: John Anderson, Tom Pittuck, Mike Titcombe Jnr & Dave Godwin. Rink 2: Keith Williamson, Mike Bowden, Kevin Embling & Ian Jefferies. Res: Terry Walton, Kevin Lee, John Blake, John Wilson and Brian Coles.
Away - Rink 1: John Thomas, Dave Matthews, Steve Remington & Chris Cheesley. Rink 2: Josh Cottle, Mike Shawyer, James Nobbs & Neil Smith. Res: Jeff Nichols, Lawrence Smith, Denis Holborow and Geoff Smith.
Sunday, Feb 23: Banbury v Rivermead (Reading); Oxford & District v West Berks (Newbury); Carterton v Westlecot; Chipping Norton v Oxford City & County.


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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 2/1/2013 (1694 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Don Fehr has been the unequivocal star of the NHL's 2012-13 lockout.
The union leader has been the maverick, the villain, the Robin Hood and the philosopher.
Fehr has galvanized the players, polarized fans and frustrated the NHL. He has been a bit of everything in his first starring turn among the hockey world.
The NHL lockout has produced some winners and losers to date among the union, media and league as we have watched this labour impasse unfold on Twitter, in newspapers and broadcast formats.
Most of us have tired of the spectacle at this point and only want hockey to get back on the ice.
But we've spent a lot of time talking and writing and viewing and listening on all things lockout. Here's a list of some of the winners, losers and unforgettable moments so far:
The Manhattan meltdown
On Dec. 6, the usually unflappable NHL commissioner Gary Bettman lost his cool and went on a tirade in front of a national Canadian TV audience. Bettman was infuriated with Fehr for suggesting a deal was imminent and that the sides were very close on all major issues.
The podium
NHL media took a photo of a lonely podium and posted it on Twitter. The podium soon had its own Twitter account.
The NHL lockout was covered by social media like no other labour dispute. Players used it to bash ownership and league management and agents used it to support players. Some players (hello Evander Kane) used it to get fans riled up. TSN analyst Darren Dreger was snapped in a Twitter pick making a serious face and soon #dregerface was trending.
Ron Hainsey
The Jets defenceman has become a household name during the lockout as he has emerged as Fehr's top lieutenant among the players. Hainsey has drawn fire from fans but he as held fast to his beliefs and done an admirable job representing his fellow players.
Disclaimer of interest
Many of us had never heard the term before but the union introduced the mechanism in December as it held a vote and gave its executive the right to execute a disclaimer of interest. In essence the manoeuvre is union leadership saying it can no longer represent the collective and moving to dissolve the union.
Media darlings
The usual suspects from TSN and Sportsnet have kept busy doing their thing but new stars like Chris Johnston of The Canadian Press and Nick Cotsonika of Yahoo Sports have also emerged. The lockout put a different spotlight on the NHL and fans used Twitter to follow the play-by-play.
firstname.lastname@example.com Twitter:@garylawless


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A plucky stuntwoman becomes hopelessly intertwined with the CEO of a luxury department store after he mistakes her for an identically outfitted famous actress. The arrogant Joo Won tries to forget about his gaffe, but he can't get the feisty Ra Im out of his mind. When they both end up at a remote restaurant called the Secret Garden on Jeju Island, they awake the next morning to discover to their horror that they have switched bodies. How can they survive their new gender-bending existence? "Secret Garden" is a South Korean drama series directed by Shin Woo Chul and Kwon Hyuk Chan that originally aired on SBS from November 2010 to January 2011. The series swept a number of major awards at the 2010 SBS Drama Awards and the 47th Baeksang Arts Awards.


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Odorizzi roughed up as Rays drop rubber game
Righty allows five runs in 46-pitch first inning in series finale vs. Angels
ST. PETERSBURG -- An odd homestand drew to a close on Sunday, when the Rays took a 7-5 loss to the Angels at Tropicana Field.
The Rays (54-57) have now lost three of four, dropping to 8 1/2 games behind the American League East-leading Orioles, who defeated the Mariners on Sunday. They also lost a chance to gain ground for the AL's second Wild Card spot, as the Blue Jays lost to the Astros.
The Rays departed after the game for a three-stop, 10-game road trip to Oakland, Chicago and Texas, where, ultimately, their fate could be determined.
Carrying a five-series winning streak into their weekend set, the Rays were dealing with the departure of David Price. For the length of the weekend, the team appeared to be adjusting to the new order while clinging to the idea they can remain relevant without their best pitcher.
Jake Odorizzi got off to a rough start. The Rays right-hander delivered the first pitch of the game at 1:41 p.m. and did not record the first out of the inning until 2:01 p.m.
Before the first had run its course, the Angels had scored five runs, sent nine men to the plate and Odorizzi had thrown 46 pitches -- a career-high for a single inning.
"We had good counts the whole first inning and took advantage of it," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said.
A frustrated Odorizzi called Sunday's start "one of those days where you make some bad pitches and they find holes."
"You make a good pitch, it finds holes, too," Odorizzi said. "You just have to fight through it. Today was just a tough day overall for me. Started off bad, didn't get any better. The first inning was just a tough inning. When you start off a game like that, a five spot in the first just doesn't give our team any help from the start."
Odorizzi got an early hook after throwing 82 pitches through three innings. He allowed five runs on eight hits and three walks en route to his ninth loss of the season.
"Jake just did not have his day," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "It wasn't going to work for him today ... I really thought he was going to have a good day based on how he's been pitching."
The Rays loaded the bases against Jered Weaver in the fourth and only scored once, via a Jose Molina sacrifice fly. They got busy again in the fifth, when Ben Zobrist singled to lead off the inning and Matt Joyce walked, bringing cleanup hitter Evan Longoria to the plate.
Surprising everyone in the ballpark, Longoria dropped a bunt in the direction of third base. Weaver managed to make a nice play on the ball, throwing out Longoria at first. But the sacrifice put the runners in scoring position. James Loney then flied out to center field to drive home the Rays' second run to cut the Angels lead to 5-2.
Mike Trout singled home a run in the sixth and David Freese had a sacrifice fly in the seventh to push the lead to 7-2.
In the seventh, Loney singled home a run, Longoria scored on a wild pitch by Kevin Jepsen, and Cole Figueroa drove in another when he drew a walk against Joe Smith with the bases loaded to narrow the gap to 7-5. Unfortunately for the Rays, Kevin Kiermaier grounded out on the first pitch he saw to end the inning.
"It was a good pitch to hit," Kiermaier said. "I was looking for something over the plate, and I should have done more but I didn't. I knew he was going to come right there with the fastball and try to get ahead. He threw me a pitch that I could handle but I didn't take advantage of. ... It's something you need to take advantage of in games like that, and I didn't."
Weaver earned his 12th win of the season, allowing two runs on six hits, and four relievers followed to seal the win.
"When push came to shove, we got some big outs all afternoon," Scioscia said.
While the Rays hitters did manage to push across five runs, they left 12 runners on base and went 3-for-13 with runners in scoring position.
"We had plenty of opportunities and had the right guys up at the right time today," said Maddon, noting that the offense just didn't thrive Sunday, particularly with the bases loaded.
Bill Chastain is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.