windows 7

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My Windows 7 Experience – To Date

January 11, 2009 Keith 1

It didn’t take me long to find my weekend project. I jumped on the extremely large Windows 7 bandwagon, and I’m glad I did. On Friday night (yes, that is what it has come to on a Friday night), I partitioned one of my hard drives and installed Windows 7 on my main computer. I can now dual boot and use Windows 7 or Vista Ultimate. Of course I didn’t upgrade my Vista install since I really didn’t know what to expect. Let me state that I believe Windows 7 lives up to the hype. Here is a taste of what I have found to date: Windows 7 OS Installation: The install was beyond easy. Windows has always been an easy install, but this time around it didn’t ask me the pointless/easy questions. It was one or two questions and then off to the races. The install timing was pretty […]

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Downloading Windows 7

January 9, 2009 Keith 0

My download of windows 7 is in progress. I’m hopeful that I can configure a dual boot setup (Vista and Windows 7) setup this weekend (if time permits). I can’t fully switch over to Windows 7 because the wife would shoot me. I’m utilizing an official MSDN subscription to grab the release, so I shouldn’t have any issues getting the copy soon (per my download manager…one hour left). However, the public release should be available as well (was expected at 15:00 EST today). I will report back with any information. – Keith

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Items of Interest – CES 2009

January 8, 2009 Keith 1

CES 2009 has officially kicked off and is in high gear. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, gave the keynote last night. I was very disappointing that Media Center was not a topic; what a bummer. Microsoft, in general, disappointed me with their (lack of) announcements. Here are some items I found interesting from the first day: Microsoft is going to release Windows 7 Beta to the public tomorrow, Jan 9. It will be available for download on Microsoft.com. Now I just need a spare machine so I can get it loaded and start playing! There are 17 Million active Xbox Live members. That is pretty impressive. I actually signed up years ago with the original Xbox. I let my gamer tag/account expire. They won’t let me reclaim my old one so I have boycotted Xbox Live every since. Honestly, I don’t get a chance to play games much, so I’m […]

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Windows Media Center – W7MC

January 4, 2009 Keith 0

I currently use Vista’s Windows Media Center (aka VMC) product to fulfill all my in-home (and outside, actually) entertainment desires.  I am running VMC on a central server with 4 tuners (two HD tuners and 2 normal cable tuners).  I have 3 media center extenders throughout the house.  This setup allows us to watch movies, home videos, TV and a handful of other media.  I can also listen to my entire music collection, shoutcast, or even tune into the local radio stations (or radio stations far away, for that matter). VMC has its share of shortcomings, no doubt.  My biggest complaint is the incorporation of the cable-card devices.  I need premium HD channels and you need specific hardware to make this work. Honestly, this is more of a hardware issue than VMC.  Only a few hardware manufacturers are providing compatible cable-card readers.  I believe there is some Microsoft partnership related […]