Pensacola Computer Help Technoblog

I was reading and interesting article about someone who already hates the new Windows 7 because they are a die-hard XP fan: If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7 . In the article, someone who has tested the new Windows 7 Beta tells about what they hate. Thankfully the author of the article goes on to point out why the things that are hated are in fact some of the greatest improvements in Windows. One of these being how the new Search feature works. This is one of the most misunderstood and often unused features in Windows Vista, and every time I show someone how it really works, they are amazed. A lot of Vista’s problems are due to a couple of factors, the main one being that when Vista was first released, there just weren’t enough hardware drivers for it, and as a result a lot of older hardware just wouldn’t work – and this pissed people off. Of course, this led to Vista getting slammed in the press, and what followed was a huge number of people hating Vista without ever really trying it.

Hopefully Windows 7 will not suffer the same fate. While I personally love Vista and have been using it well before it was officially released, I am looking forward to some of the new and improved features in Windows 7. The nice thing about Windows 7 is that it should easily run on hardware that is running Vista now, and in fact it may very well run on some older hardware that doens’t run Vista very well.

While XP was ok when it first came out (although if you were there, you will remember how people screamed that their Windows 98 hardware and software had so many problems trying to run on XP), XP is old, it was never designed for the applications and rich media internet that we experience today. Nor was it designed to deal with the numerous security threats that are out there today. While Microsoft is still issuing security patches for it, it just isn’t as secure as it needs to be, especially if you do anything on the internet. There is also the fact that as time goes on, there will be less and less manufacturers that will release XP drivers for new hardware, as well as less new software that will be supported on it.

I am currently one of the limited number of official Beta Testers for Windows 7, and as the testing progresses I will be writing up some of my opinions (limited somewhat by my Beta Tester agreement with Microsoft). What I can tell you now is that Windows 7 looks to be a great operating system, and for those who have held off moving to Vista from XP, when it is released I will probably highly recommend it to all those people who haven’t upgraded yet.

I recently decided to upgrade my current cell phone to something a bit more. After doing a lot of research (there were so many to chose from), I decided on a Sumsung Omnia. After looking at the Apple iPhone (yuck! and no tether option), and the Blackberry Storm (too many issues and no wireless), the Omnia seemed to have the best feature set for what I needed. These days, a phone can be so much more than just a phone or even a regular PDA, and in reality, the features in this tiny phone would have taken up a whole room 30 years ago.

It has: Wireless so I can connect to my home network or wireless hotspot, Bluetooth so I can use a bluetooth headset as well as ‘beam’ data between it and my home computers, a tether option so I can use it as a broadband modem when connected to my laptop, a pretty cool touch screen, Windows Mobile 6.1 with Word, Excel, and Outlook, as well as Remote Desktop which is something I definitely wanted to be able to remote into various computers if needed. It also has 8GB of onboard storage with the ability to take up to a 16GB micro SD memory card (plenty for files and pictures.

For some nice extra features, it comes with a 5.1 megapixel camera (one of the highest resolutions on a phone), smart voice recognition, and a very cool feature which allows you to take a picture of a business card and then the software will decipher it and create a contact from the info on it. Oh and it even has a built in FM radio!

It totally amazes me the number of features that are packed into this slim phone, and with it I can not only place and receive calls, but I can check my email, surf the web, and get directions as well as take notes, transfer files, listen to music or watch videos, and take care of a great number of my business needs while on the move. It is almost scary to think what will be available in a couple years when I am eligible to upgrade again!

Technology is a wonderful thing – when it works FOR you. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Many times we find ourselves working harder just to use the technology, rather than having the technology we use making things easier.

So, what can we do to change things? Well, the key lies in knowing what works, and how it works. Unfortunately, some things in the technical world just aren’t that intuitive, they are not designed to be user friendly. When faced with such technology, the best thing to do is take the learning approach – and by this I don’t mean jump right in there and plug along, but rather take some initial time to search for some understandable documentation. Sometimes (not often enough it seems), this can be found in the supplied Help documentation – I can’t tell you how many times people never look at help (on most ‘good’ Windows programs, help can easily be found by pressing the F1 key. If that doesn’t do it, there is always the wonderful web, which is full of actual useful information for most technology out there.

You can bet that if something is confusing to you, hard to understand, and just doesn’t make sense, that it was probably that way for other people, and more than likely someone out there has taken the time to explain it in a way that is understandable.