You will be Missed!

With the folders not automatically expanding on the Navigation pane I had to manually expand them to do a copy or use copy/paste to do it.  This took much longer and was incredibly annoying.  Today while looking through the Folder Options in Windows Explorer I found the solution.  There are two new options on the General Tab of the Folder Options dialog  box.  They are listed under a section called Navigation pane.  The first option is “Show all folders”, this will show all the folders you are used to seeing in the old Windows explorer.  It will show all the folders on your desktop, your User folder, etc.  The other option (The one I was looking for) is called “Automatically expand to current folder”, this does exactly what it says and is exactly what I was looking for.  Someone at Microsoft had the brilliant idea to disable these options by default.

Personally I have the “Show all folders” disabled and “Automatically expand to current folder” enabled.  I think this give me the best of the old and new versions.  It also allow me to copy and move files without a lot of extra click.  In case anyone does not know, you get to the Folder Options by clicking the Organize Button then click “Folder and search options”.

The second install went much smoother.  I installed it on my Toshiba P100 laptop and there were no delays showing the input screens.  It booted from the DVD and asked me the language, etc right away.  I continued the install and it finished in about 15 – 20 minutes.  The only problem I had with this install was that the drivers from my Intergraded Conexant High Definition Audio and my Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Integrated FlashMedia Controller did not get installed.  In both cases I just downloaded the Vista driver from the Toshiba Support site and they worked perfectly.

I like the changes to the new interface.  The new taskbar is nice but I wish it was more obvious which icons represented open programs vs just shortcuts.  Right now it draws a shaded box around the open icons but I don’t think they stand out enough.  Hovering the mouse over the icon to see the running programs in very nice.  You can see a preview of your document without clicking anything.  Although I think the icons are a little too wide and I did not find an option to customize them.

The New HomeGroup feature to setup networking is well done.  Although I found that If I changed the default HomeGroup password that was generated when I created the HomeGroup. I could no longer add any computers to the home group.  I had to delete the HomeGroup and recreate it using the default generated password to add computers.  Hopefully that will be fixed before release.  After that was setup it worked very well.  It is way easier than any other version of windows.

So far I have been unable to use Device Stage very much as the only device I have that it recognizes is my HP printer and it just gives me options to scan, change setting and not much more.  I also can’t access these features over the network.

Performance wise, windows 7 seams to boot faster and be more responsive.  There is still a lot of Hard Drive activity at this point but hopefully that will settle down.

One really nice feature that i absolutely love is the ability to have your background wallpaper automatically change every xx minutes.  I have mine set for 3 minutes and it is great to see the background change as you work.

Over all Windows 7 beta looks good and I think Microsoft is on the right track with this one.  I think it will be a great product when it is finally released.

So far Joomla v1.5 is a great CMS and I will most likely be using it for all my website in the future.  Unless they are a blog in which case I will continue to use WordPress as I am doing with this site.

The iPod Touch 2nd Generation (2G) is different than the 1st Generation iPod Touch in only a few ways.  First the 2G has dedicated Volume Up and Down buttons on the side,  this is very handy as you don’t have to go into the software to change the volume.  The 2G also has a built in speaker so you do not have to use the ear buds.  This is great if you want to use the Alarm clock or don’t feel like using the ear buds.  The battery is also supposed to last longer than the 1st gen as will but I don’t have one to compare it against.  The shape of the Wi-Fi antenna on the back is also different although it is only a cosmetic change.  (It’s oval shaped now)

I have been using the built in Wi-Fi to browse the web and it makes a good portable internet device.  I have also been listening to Audio Books a fair bit.  I had to figure out iTunes to get that to work correctly.  None of my music or Audio Books came from iTunes (They came from CD’s or other online stores).  When I imported all my Audio Books they came in as regular music in MP3 format.  After some poking around in iTunes and searching on the web, I discovered that I could select Audio Book or Speech for the Genre then CTRL-A to select all the tracks.  Then I right-clicked them and selected “Get Info” then clicked on the “Options” tab.  From there I check off “Media Kind” and set it to “Audiobook”, set “Remember Position” to Yes, “Skip when shuffling” to Yes and “Gapless Album” to Yes.  I press OK and after a few seconds the tracks disappeared from my Music list.  To see them again I had to click on the Edit Menu then Preferences and make sure Audio Books was check off.  After Syncing them to my iPod, I could access them by clicking Music then More then Audiobooks.  They played great and could press the Home button to browse the web or play as game as I listened.

So far I love it and have not encountered any problems with it.  

Now I just have to figure out how to enable the new built in gallery.

Update: I am currently using v0.9.8 and it works great with no need to edit it.  Just install and activate and it works great.