I’ve Been Busy…

February 7, 2009 by Mark.

I always hated the holidays. Christmas is probably the worst time of the year and what makes it so is all the rushing and running around and pointless stress. Giving and spending time with your family should be the focus of Christmas, not some faceless marketing campaign. On top of all this, I moved back to Hamilton. I should note that if you’re planning on moving in the middle of the winter time, make sure you do it on the warmest day possible. This was our second move on one of the coldest days of the year and it was the least bit pleasant. Regardless, all is well now and I have the next 10 months to recuperate.

I got my hands on a copy of Windows 7, and I am not impressed. It is, hands down, Vista Service Pack 2. Vista never impressed me, and Windows 7 is barely an upgrade from that. I have to admit, some of the features it has run faster, as they should, and are generally more efficient. For example, I run Windows 7 in VMWare. This VMWare image is being hosted by a Vista Machine running on raw hardware. Even though Windows 7 is virtualized, it still runs faster then Vista on raw hardware. Not only that, all the settings are buried so far away from the user that it becomes absurd. Changing network settings takes twice the amount of time as it used to (and this is not including the UAC pop-ups). As a word of advice, if you’re a poweruser and you want to have ease of use, stick with Windows XP, or 2000. If you are a Vista lover, Windows 7 is for you. Basically, ditch Vista by going back to XP/2K, or upgrade to Windows 7 once it matures.

On a side note, on the off chance I will upgrade to Windows 7, I have been looking for alternate shells and some seem promising. I’d rather have a shell that is poweruser friendly and fast. Litestep is one such product. Unfortunately, there is no way to actually replace all the functionality of explorer so there will be some annoyances. Linux is looking much better each time I look at Vista or Windows 7. With the way this post is going, maybe I should rename my blog to Grumble Grumble, Things that piss me off.

I’m currently looking into a thing called “Visual Studio Visualizers.” They are small scripts that allow you to modify the way the debugger displays information. I’m not done my research yet, but expect a nice big article on this. It’s barely documented and really cool :).

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