Windows 7 News

Taiwan’s Acer, the worlds #2 pc maker has announced that it is expecting that it’s PC sales will improve for the 4th quarter due to the release of Windows 7. While the gains were within expectations, the company expects that its 4th quarter growth will improve 25% over the same period a year ago. Acer’s expectations for the upcoming year are a growth of 15%.  Globally it is expecting a growth rate of 50% by the end of 2010. Overall, according to Giofranco Lansi , CEO, Windows 7 has been a positive spur “When we saw the features of Windows 7, we already knew that it would be good for demand.

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Please see yesterday’s Part One post for my introduction and the first three upgraded computers. Read on for the final three computers and my conclusions! My Brother Hardware : Dell Vostro 1310 laptop 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processor Nvidia GeForce 8400 M GS dedicated graphics 3GB RAM 250GB hard drive Primary use : Web browsing, video editing, music listening and video watching, Microsoft Office work, and light gaming Notes : This is my brother’s college laptop – he needed something easy to carry and inexpensive that still packed a little power and would last awhile – every dollar needed to count. This 13-inch Vostro notebook with a 3-year warranty was a bargain from the Dell Outlet. The Good : Once again, the Windows 7 upgrade took without issue. My brother is the most sophisticated computer user in the family (after myself), and he became familiar with the new OS quickly

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Although there is some disagreement over whether laptop battery life has got better or worse in Windows 7 (on my laptops it has), the battery  information that Windows 7 provides is limited so it can be hard to ascertain how well your battery is performing.  A great application to install to give more Windows 7 battery information is BatteryBar , which comes in both a free and Pro version. BatteryBar is a simple, straight-forward, battery meter that monitors the status of your battery and displays your battery’s status in the taskbar.  All data is captured so that historical performance data on your battery can be accessed so that a more accurate battery life remaining estimate can be produced – hopefully your laptop will no longer die when it’s claiming it has 1o mins of power left.

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If you want to send a quick reminder to yourself or a loved one that they should pick up dinner on the way home from the office or that they have a doctor’s appointment at 3pm, Memorari can help. The service is slim and trim and designed to give you a quick way to create and send reminders without the overhead of a complete task management application that keeps track of all of your other to-dos. The nice thing about Memorari is how incredibly simple it is. Select the date and time you want the reminder sent, choose how you want the reminder sent to the recipient (SMS message, e-mail, or instant message), and then fill in the message itself, and click “Remember.” When you’re finished, a reminder will go out at the appointed time with your text in it.

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Two things have bugged me with Windows Live Messenger in Windows 7: I don’t like the way the Windows Live Messenger icon stays permanently in the Windows 7 Taskbar I don’t get sound notifications when I get a new message I have a solution to the first problem, but if anyone has a fix for the 2nd then please let me know. To move the Windows Live Messenger icon from the windows 7 notification area: right-click on your windows live messenger icon shortcut and click ‘Properties’ Go to the Compatibility tab and choose to run it in ‘Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)’ mode Your Live Messenger icon will now be back in its usual place in your system tray.  If you can’t see it then you might need to customise your notification area settings to ’show icon and notifications’ for Windows Live Messenger. I’m not sure if this tweak will work for other programs, but it’s a worth a try.

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I’ve been using Windows Media Center ever since the initial XP version, and I currently have 3 machines running the Windows 7 Media Center .  If you’re a serious W7MC user like me then one site you should subscribe to is Hacking Windows 7 Media Center, which has almost daily tips on getting the most out of W7MC.  One example post is a list of W7MC switches you can add to customise the way W7MC behaves .  My favourites are: /mediamode – start in “media only mode” with no minimize/close buttons, which is great if you are using a dedicated media center PC like me /playfavmusic – Play favorite music at startup, which gives you something to listen to while you decide what to watch Other Windows 7 Media Center Switches include: /nostartupanimation – disables the startup animation /noshutdownui – removes the shutdown item from Tasks /widescreen – force widescreen mode /nochrome – launch windowed mode without the containing window /playallmusic – Play all music at startup /playfavslideshow – Play favorite slideshow at startup /playfavslideshowwithmusic – Same as above with music /playslideshow – Play all slideshows /playslideshowwithmusic – Same as above with music /screensaver – Start media center in screensaver mode /configuress – Start media center at configuring screen saver menu To activate any of these switches just add the chosen argument to the end of the ‘target’ field for your Media Center shortcut and add a space between each option: Copyright

Comscore today released its numbers for Black Friday spending, and, at least online, the news looks good for retailers. According to the organization, spending rose 11 percent over the same day last year, for a total of $595 million in online sales. Spending on Thanksgiving also rose 10 percent over last year, from $288 million to $318 million. The increase for the entire month of November (up to and including Black Friday) was a bit less impressive, with only a 3 percent increase

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The past couple of months have been good to Android, but the mobile OS has yet to escape the iPhone’s towering shadow. What will it take to establish Google’s operating system as a major player? How about porn—tons and tons of it? A new company, MiKandi (the actual site is something of an edgy PG), has developed “the world’s first mobile adult app store.” This app store is coming to the Android platform, which is less stringently vetted than Apple’s App Store.

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Gone are the days of the dead rabbits and choreographed street fights. According to a recent story in The New York Daily News , more and more today’s gang fights in the big Apple are being staged on Twitter. The paper cites a recent shooting on Harlem’s Lenox Avenue, which was said to have originated on the micro-blogging site.

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To heck with Google. At least, that’s what Navigon seems to be suggesting with the release of MobileNavigator for Android, a voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS app for Android-powered smartphones. The thinking, according to Engadget , is that Navigon is fully aware of Google’s awesome, free Google Maps Navigation . But Google’s app only works in the U.S.–leaving the rest of the world’s hankering for Android GPS goodness free for the taking.

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