Im Your Sun Behind The Dark Clouds

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Happy Birthday

Went to Ms to celebrate LiShan's Birthday today hahahahahahahaa

went to just acia to eat :D

den after that went to play pool :D

shall post some peektures :D

:D hope u had a wonderful birthday :D

kk now...im excited for monday going to jap!

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Saturday, December 05, 2009

lol

lol watch my assignment

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Tuesday, December 01, 2009

lol

OMG 2 MORE WEEKS TO JAPAN TRIP <3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Monday, November 30, 2009

Lol

Sitex is offically over...made alot of friends =)

and still gt 2 assholes down there like to steal customers...

zzz o well.. did flash mob again at vivo hahah :D

ok ba time to do assignments :D

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Monday, November 23, 2009

Woo

Well Went For flashmob on sat :D

was fun fun fun!!!

even managed to perform for a couple who were proposing to each other how cool is that!!!

i love flashmob :D

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Friday, November 20, 2009

The week..

Well went to watch 2012 with herman and lishan ytd..ohhh man that show was awesome .. so review time!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well overall the film is great i do have some complaints.......

like the cgi, the special effects in fact plays a key row in the movie like blowing the world up etc etc the effects are not up to standard comparing to transformers and they need to step up a few notches before they can acheive that.

having said that, i love the movie.. well executed humour scenes well planned music and a few touching scene.

they acted well , well scripted ..

4 popcorns out of 5 for me =)

Today...

well back home now..

walk around northpoint and chatted with lishan and daryl..
bumped into sijie, carrisa (havent seen those two for a long time) and sheryl along the way ..

den aft that ls had to go to some place in queenstown.. and den tat daryl went home =X

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Bad day

Had a really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really REALLY REALLY bad day today..

Lets start with on my way to school...

Mrt... I REALLY HATE THE MORNING HOUR COMMUTERS .. STUPID PPL CROWD THE ENTERANCE PPL CANT GET OUT!!!!!!!!!! I AT THE SIDE LET THE PPL OUT THOSE BLUR SOTONGS IN THE MIDDLE STAND THERE DO NTH !@#$!!!!!!!!!! DEN WORSE OF ALL THOSE IDIOTS IN THE MIDDLE ALSO DUN WAN GO IN? THEY THINK THEY WAD BARRIER ISIT?????????????????

Yck mrt station.. !!@#$% THOSE SMOKERS.. I WALK PAST THAT !@#$% CHINESE GUY COME AND BLOW SMOKE AT ME !!!!!!! ARGHHH MY LIFESPAN GOT CUT SHORT BY 15MINS ...

The worst part of the day come from an unexpected source THE SCHOOL COMPUTER GAHHH
was working my stuffs half way den !@#$!!!!!!!!! blue screen!! hardware failure..
shit...nvr save work.. NEVER MIND..

reboot the com again... do work halfway save in the computer !@#$% BLUE SCREEN AGAIN!!!!!!!! HARDWARE FAILURE.. i thought oh well.. on again shud save it to hard disk GUESS WHAT? THE COM SPOIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT? WHAT? WHAT????????/ ALL MY STUFFS INSIDE ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

no comments.................................

Managed to reach home in one peace.. sigh...look forward to tomorrow =X

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Monday, November 16, 2009

o.o

Back from sch.. went gym ..

wooo i think i gaining muscles on my arms le <3 :D:D:D:D

had alot of workout on my arms....

den went for lunch at north canteen.........

eat yong tao foo .......................

shiok ahhhhh

den den went for class...

rofl damm funny........go do rotopainting hahaha

clone ppl and play with their faces

shiok

and uhh assignment for post production -.-

sounds fun alot of ideas cant wait to get it started =)

uhhh -.- sian tml finish sch at 3 den nth to do.. oh well

o well cant wait to catch 2012 on thrusday :D

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Sunday, November 15, 2009

LOl

Whole day rot at home sia zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

coz do the stupid scooter rigging finally done.. wanna go out but its raining and its like 6.30 sianzzzzzzzz

o well sch tml yay.........................

and oh.. thursday :D

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Saturday, November 14, 2009

WEll

I have been in a daze for the whole day...

Im having playbacks of the dreams in my head for the whole day..

why was this so significant?

odd............

Well i suppose i should share my dream

I was awaken from my sleep (in my dream of course)by my usual screaming alarm at around 5 am. saw my handphone the date was 14 dec 2009. date of my japan trip.

took a shower and then got dressed up in jeans a sweater and a jacket.

left home with my huge luggage bag...

i wandered aimlessly around the bus stop with a gut feeling that i was freaking late for the flight.

checked the time i was like ok.. its only 5.30..

bus 858 arrived....hopped onto it......

buss reached the next stop.......

Now.. the werid stuffs happened..

A passenger boarded the bus and i didnt take much notice into it until she walked past me. i looked up and saw and blurted out Sheryl!!

with a dazed look , she say hey hi.....

Then i was like hey wazzup? been a long while since i seen u its like 6 mths?

den she said nth much.. where u going ?

i replied .. going to japan for a trip what about u?camping?

den for no reason she started crying uncontrollably..

i was like hey what happened.. started patting her back and trying to console her.

then she said nvm and went off the bus..

den just when i was about to rush out.. i woke up =.=...

werid dream...

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Weeeeeeeeeeee

Worked at expo for some NHLC event named know your bmi
quite fun LOL..stationed at nitendo wii there <3
den the kids were like uncle uncle!! i was like wa lao i so old meh -.-
den the kids bully me hahahahaha

$75 for playing wii LOL so good

Wei thai tio bully vids

Me kena assaulted in HD OMG

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Thursday, November 05, 2009

NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!

NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!NEW BLOGSKIN!!!!!v

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Tuesday, November 03, 2009

WINDOWS 7

I INSTALLED WINDOWS 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A bit less than three years ago, Windows Vista was officially launched after a long delay. The operating system brought a raft of long-overdue new features to the Windows platform to make it truly fit for hardware of the 21st century. In came a new graphics stack and sound stack, as well as significant security, networking, and storage changes.

The changes were all well and good—the graphics work in particular was essential to allow Windows to offer functionality equivalent to that found in Mac OS X for many years—but they came at a high cost. To take advantage of all the new features required the use of all-new Windows Vista hardware drivers. In the OS's early days, these were often slow, unreliable, or simply non-existent. In spite of the extended development process and lengthy open beta, many vendors were apparently caught off-guard by Windows Vista's release and its preference for new drivers, so they chose to ignore the new OS for many months.

Software vendors didn't fare much better. Vista's new User Account Control (UAC) system meant that most of the time even administrators were stripped of their full privileges, forcing all software to run as a regular user account; full access was only provided after a confirmation prompt. Though software should long ago have stopped requiring admin rights—Windows NT had this kind of security since its inception—the reality was that many applications lazily assumed that the person running them would have full administrator privileges all the time. Take those privileges away, and the programs start breaking.

As for its impact on users, Vista also brought with it higher hardware demands that caused many to recoil in horror. This wasn't a new phenomenon, of course; Windows XP and Windows 2000 before it both had the same effect. So big, so bloated, so slow—these are traditional criticisms leveled at any new Windows release, and Vista was no exception. In truth, Vista's hardware requirements were not egregious; the problem was that in comparison to XP's ancient, five-year-old requirements, Vista's requirements represented a big step up, especially in the area of video hardware.

So when Windows Vista became publicly available in early 2007, the reception was rather lukewarm. Third-party hardware and software support was spotty, backwards compatibility was reduced, and system demands were markedly higher. This led to a computing public that clamored for the continued availability of Windows XP, and many businesses (chipmaker Intel among them) swore off the new version of Windows in favor of its ancient predecessor. This was unfortunate. Sure, the new operating system had teething trouble, but this was nothing new.
XP also got booed

Long-time Windows observers will remember that XP's reception was immensely hostile, and for substantially the same reasons; users migrating from Windows 98 found that the new Windows didn't work with their hardware, didn't work with their software, ran slower, and used more memory. And who would want that? Business users similarly saw little compelling reason to migrate from Windows 2000 (which was then less than two years old), as XP offered them relatively little.

The thing that XP had on its side was time. XP should have been replaced by Windows Longhorn in 2004 or 2005, but the cancellation of the Longhorn project and subsequent wait for Vista meant that everyone—users, software developers, hardware vendors—treated Windows XP as the main (or even only) version of Windows, with the result that everything worked with XP. The early woes were forgotten, and XP, old and clunky as it was, became the version of Windows that everyone loved and adored (or at least, tolerated).

Just as XP was fundamentally not as bad as its initial reception would lead one to believe, the same was true of Vista. Stripped of the Vista name and placed in front of unsuspecting users, "Windows Mojave" was warmly received. And even corporate customers have started to migrate to the OS.
Vista was progress, and it paved the way for Windows 7

Although Windows Vista may have caused vendors and users alike some amount of pain, it was all for a good reason. To take advantage of modern video cards, Windows needed a new graphics stack; to withstand the increasing malware onslaught, Windows needed to tighten security and make running as a regular user more comfortable. These changes were not made lightly; the break with the past was necessary to put the operating system on the same footing as its competition and to address long-standing, legitimate criticisms of the platform. Microsoft was never going to revert to a more XP-like operating system, no matter how desperately some cling to the old OS.

Indeed, in this writer's view, Vista was far and away the best version of Windows ever shipped; the searchable Start menu alone ensured it received that accolade. I have way too many icons in my Start menu and way too many documents on my PC for hunting through hierarchies to ever be an effective way of finding, well, anything. Hitting the Windows key and then just typing what I'm looking for beats browsing hierarchies hands-down. And it's like crack; I was hooked from the first time I ever did it, and using Windows XP (with its dumb old-fashioned Start menu) feels like stepping back into the 1980s. People put up with that? And for so long?! Unbelievable. But I digress.

The Start menu wasn't the only positive change in Vista. The new video subsystem, for example, meant that I'm no longer beholden to the likes of NVIDIA or ATI for my computer's stability. My video drivers still crash, but hey, it no longer bluescreens my machine. Vista moved the bulk of video drivers into user mode, which means that they can crash and be restarted more or less seamlessly. In a similar vein, upgrading video drivers without rebooting is now a reality. Moving from video to sound, Vista's new sound stack lets me set my audio volume on a per-application basis, which is another feature I can't believe I lived without.

In the end, Vista brought a lot of good stuff. It was a major overhaul of the platform, and in retrospect, it's not entirely surprising that the transition was somewhat imperfect. Third parties could, and should, have done better, but they have at least caught up now.

Windows 7 can take advantage of the two and a half years of progress that hardware and software vendors have made in supporting Vista. It can exploit the fact that Moore's Law means even cheap netbooks have got the horsepower to run the new OS. Vista's life was always going to be hard; any major update to a platform as diverse and widely used as Windows is always going to be met with resistance. But Vista has done its job; XP is no longer the target platform for developers, and vendors are producing hardware and software that works with the stricter security and modernized graphics and audio subsystems.

Windows 7 has an important job to do. First, it must consolidate the architectural changes that made Vista so painful, and to provide small refinements to the platform and smooth off rough edges. And second, it has to be a version of Windows that people want to run, and it needs to be this right out the gate. Another stumble—especially one that leaves customers still clinging to the obsolete Windows XP—would be bad news of course for Redmond, and bad news for the computer industry as a whole; a shiny new version of Windows should help sell hardware, and in a troubled economic climate, vendors need every bit of assistance they can get.
Version madness

The first thing Microsoft has done to make Windows 7 more palatable is to rationalize some of the version madness that afflicted Vista. From an economic perspective, creating multiple versions for different market segments makes a lot of sense—it lets Redmond charge more to businesses than to home users—but the situation with Vista was hostile in the extreme.

The mainstream versions of Vista—Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate—contained almost arbitrary sets of features. For example, Home Premium included DVD video support without third-party software. Business and Enterprise, however, did not, so any corporate users hoping to watch a DVD on a flight had to look to third-party software. Conversely, the (fantastically awesome and indispensable) Shadow Copy feature was present in Business and Enterprise but not Home Premium. Likewise, Tablet PC support was found in the two business-oriented versions, but not the home user versions. Users who wanted a mix of "business" and non-"business" features had to spring for the (considerably more expensive) Ultimate edition.

Windows 7 resolves the major problem with version fragmentation by making more expensive versions proper supersets of the cheaper versions. This makes the product line-up much simpler; pay more money and you get more features. There's no longer a need to make trade-offs between the different versions, you simply get the cheapest version that has everything you need.

Nonetheless, Windows 7 still has a plethora of versions. From worst to best, these are: Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. In practice, though, there are only three versions that matter. Starter Edition is worthless; it's crippled (it omits most of the user-visible features that make Vista and Windows 7 worthwhile), only available for 32-bit systems, only available as an OEM pre-install, and really should never have seen the light of day. Its only purpose is to allow Microsoft to have a dirt-cheap OS to offer to netbook makers as an alternative to Linux, but frankly you'd be better off with a pocket calculator. Home Basic is restricted to emerging markets; though less limited than Starter edition, it too lacks most of the features that make Windows 7 attractive to consumers. Enterprise and Ultimate can be taken together; they're identical except for their licensing; Enterprise is for volume license customers, Ultimate is available through retail and OEM channels.

This means that there will in general be three feature sets for consumers to pick from; Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. As the name suggests, Home Premium is suitable for most home users; Professional is aimed at small and medium businesses, and Enterprise/Ultimate at large corporates/geeks who just gotta have it all. Wikipedia has a more detailed tabulation of which version contains what; there seems little point in reproducing it here.

Even with the new feature line-up, not everything makes sense. Remote Desktop support is only available in Professional and higher; Home Premium users don't get the ability to remotely view their PC's desktop. Unless, that is, they install the (free) Live Mesh beta, which provides remote desktop support for all. One might suggest that perhaps the left hand is not so familiar with what the right hand is doing; if remote desktop support is a feature that we can have for a free download, on any supported version of Windows, why not let us use the (technically superior) built-in facility?

One thing not found in the new versions is any follow-up to the Ultimate Extras debacle. Anyone shelling out for the full Vista Ultimate was promised desirable new features and add-ons over the course of the product's lifetime. What they got was a couple of games (a briefly distracting but ultimately uncaptivating Texas Hold 'Em poker game, and a rather more intriguing robotic puzzle game that I'm sorry to see hasn't made it to Windows 7), some improvements to BitLocker and EFS, animated wallpapers, and, er, that's about it. The value proposition of the Ultimate Extras was nothing short of piss-poor, and Microsoft's support for them thoroughly lackadaisical. The concept was always dubious—any add-on that was really any good shouldn't be restricted to the niche Ultimate SKU, so what Extras they did produce were always condemned to being mediocre. Recognition of this is likely one of the factors that led to Vista Ultimate's price being cut, but that does little to satisfy those who paid the original asking price. Frankly, I think the company should apologize for taking people's money but failing to deliver anything even remotely close to what it promised. Anyway, that horrible mistake is now behind us; Windows 7 Ultimate has no Extras.
Pricing and upgrade options

On top of the considerably more sane version lineup, Microsoft has also cut certain retail prices. Windows 7 Home Premium is cheaper than its predecessor, and Windows 7 Professional, though priced the same as Windows Vista Business, now gives better value as it incorporates all the features from Home Premium. That's not all. Redmond has introduced a Windows 7 Family Pack; this is a low-price upgrade pack allowing three separate PCs to be upgraded to Home Premium. The Family Packs will not be available universally; currently only North America and parts of Europe are eligible, and are a limited-time release, available only while stocks last.

Though the software giant has offered upgrade editions since time immemorial, this is the first time it has priced them so aggressively and so attractively. Upgrades have always received discounted pricing, sure, but $50 per system is less than any previous upgrade, by quite a margin. Redmond traditionally has depended on hardware sales (with their OEM pre-installs) to move most Windows licenses. The speed at which each new version of Windows is taken up is largely governed by the rate at which hardware is replaced, with retail and upgrade sales a relatively small proportion of the overall installed base. This trend has been bucked somewhat by Vista; the new operating system didn't cause a surge in sales, and a significant number of users opted to use the downgrade rights to stick with XP. The Family Packs should kickstart the migration process and do so independently of hardware sales.

The upgrade editions are available to anyone running Windows 2000, XP, or Vista, although only Vista users will receive a true upgrade. Though 2000 and XP are eligible for upgrade pricing, the install media will not perform an upgrade; instead, it will perform a clean installation, moving the old operating system and installed programs out of the way. While many advocate clean installs even for upgraders, the truth is that it's convenient to be able to perform an in-place upgrade and hence avoid reinstalling all your software; I've been performing (unsupported) upgrades of the Windows 7 betas, and they've all gone very smoothly, albeit rather slowly.

The install process

It is something of a tradition in OS reviews to focus excessively on the installation process. On the one hand, this is absurd; an OS's installation represents only a tiny fraction of the OS experience—at worst it takes an hour or two, compared to the many thousands of hours that will be spent actually using the OS. One the other hand, for any OS not preinstalled, the installation is a necessary hurdle that must be cleared before it can be used.
The installer

Perhaps cognizant of the relative unimportance of the installer in an OS that's normally preinstalled anyway, or perhaps out of sheer laziness, the Windows NT installer has traditionally been the worst of any mainstream OS. The text-mode blue-screen portion of the installer includes such wonderful features as being incapable of loading third-party disk drivers from any source other than a floppy disk. A perfectly sound decision in 1993, of course, but over XP's life it went from being tolerable (if short-sighted) to an infuriating anachronism; to install XP onto a reasonably modern machine using SATA and AHCI (or motherboard RAID) meant either tainting a brand new PC with an appalling bit of legacy hardware (the day of the 3.5" floppy drive has long since passed) or constructing a custom boot CD that includes the drivers already, a process that typically took me about 20 dud burned CDs before I finally managed to concoct one that did the job.

Vista finally fixed these long-standing annoyances. The new installer is all graphical, with a mouse and everything, so gone is the cutting-edge 1980s technology motif that permeated the old installer. Even more welcome than this is that the new installer can load drivers from sources other than floppy disks. CDs, USB keys, and hard drives can all be used as a source of drivers. With Windows 7, the install medium itself is no longer restricted to optical media; though boxed copies will all be DVD (Vista included a 5-CD option, but that's now gone), Windows 7 can be installed from USB key or hard disk, which makes for much faster installs, not to mention much less frustration when trying to customize the process.

One of the objectives of the new Windows 7 installer was to cut down the number of questions asked that make installation less interactive; previous versions of Windows would ask questions about networking minutiae and other trivia part-way through the process, so it required some degree of babysitting. The few questions that are asked now occur either at the start of the install or near the very end. The questions have been tweaked a little to move them around, but the overall process will be familiar to those who've installed Vista, and a welcome relief to those used to XP.

Installation itself is pretty quick; an install into a Virtual PC VM on my rather slow laptop took about half an hour (Vista took a bit longer, about 50 minutes, into a similar VM). The new OS is somewhat smaller on-disk than Vista; the fresh Vista SP2 install is around 7 GB (excluding the pagefile etc.), Windows 7 is around 5. The new smaller size is a deliberate ploy to make Windows 7 more attractive to netbooks. The biggest single reason for Vista's large size was the substantial number of drivers it included. Though these made for a good user experience—they increased the chance that a device would work automatically—they also occupied a lot of space. Before the widespread use of netbooks and other machines with small, often solid-state, disks, it was worth using the extra space. The huge growth in use of SSDs has, for the time being, reversed that storage trend, so saving space is more valuable than it once was. Dedicating a large chunk of space to drivers that probably weren't going to be used anyway was no longer worthwhile—especially as more prevalent network connectivity and a more complete Windows Update mean that up-to-date drivers are just a download away anyway. Drivers aren't the only thing that have been stripped out, but they're the biggest.

As slow as upgrading can be, it does seem to do a good job of migrating data and programs while still providing a robust install procedure even in the face of screwed up system configurations. Before the upgrade process starts, it performs pre-flight checks to warn of incompatible hardware or software, insufficient disk space, etc., so potential issues can be detected and repaired before they become real problems.

Windows Vista introduced the Anytime Upgrade, allowing upgrading between versions to be performed without having to reinstall, with pricing equivalent to the price difference between versions. This was a new capability; XP offered no upgrade pricing or capability to users wishing to switch from, say, XP Home to XP Professional, instead requiring a full reinstall of a full-price copy. Windows 7 streamlines the Anytime Upgrade process so that switching versions takes around 10 minutes and doesn't even require physical media. The Windows 7 install process installs everything to disk; the Anytime Upgrade merely unlocks what's already present.

In keeping with the minimal interaction goal of the install process, at no point are you asked which features you want to install. Instead, the available components are managed (as with Vista) in a separate dialog accessed through Control Panel. By default, quite a few things are omitted, though most of these are of fairly narrow interest (for example, Web developers might well want the IIS web server installed). One thing that has people excited—especially legislators—is the ability to remove Internet Explorer 8. If IE8 is unticked, then Windows removes all user-visible ways of invoking the Web browser. The "working" parts of the browser are unaffected because so many applications (including the OS itself) embed them for various reasons, so the rendering engine is still present and still important, but as an actual Web browser, IE8 can now be fully removed.

Shell and user interface
Desktop

Once up and running, after briefly admiring the new startup logo, you're presented with probably the ugliest default wallpaper of any current OS; even the fecal brown of Ubuntu is more aesthetically pleasing. The Windows 7 betas had an amusing fish as their wallpaper (a betta fish; betta, beta, geddit?). The fish has unfortunately had his chips and is gone, replaced by a frankly gross Windows logo overlaid with silhouettes of trees, butterflies, and random dots. The styling is inconsistent with the visual cues in the rest of the operating system (it doesn't follow from the theming of either the new startup screen or the logo on the Start orb, or anywhere else that the logo is used), it's inconsistent with the Aero Glass appearance that 7 inherits from Vista. And, most importantly, it's just irredeemably ugly and horrid.
This is horrible. Horrible.

This is a pity, because some of the other wallpapers provided with Windows 7 are very nice indeed. 7 has a handful of new themes that include some nice photographs and fun artwork. As with Vista, users in some countries will also have a custom country-specific theme showing landmarks and vistas belonging to their nation. I'm sure some focus group or designer somewhere will justify the default wallpaper and explain how wonderful it is, but I couldn't stand to look at it and I think it falls a long way short of the standard set by the other themes. Architecture is my favorite.

Once the hideousness of the wallpaper has been overcome, careful observers might notice that Vista's Sidebar has disappeared, but its Gadgets remain. Gadgets now float above any desktop icons, below all windows. I think this is a better place for them (they no longer impinge on the usable area of the screen, which I appreciate on my laptop), but I still don't find myself using them to any great extent. I have a weather widget that's handy, but none of the other bundled ones inspire me, and though there are now a few hundred to download, there are few that strike me as particularly compelling. There are things I would like to have as Gadgets (a nice Twitter reader, for example), but the overall selection is poor. This isn't helped by poor support from Microsoft; there are a couple of Outlook gadgets out there to do things like show upcoming appointments, but honestly, these things should ship with Office, not as separate downloads. Promote the technology, don't just let it languish, unloved.

I can at least now add Gadgets without worrying about running out of memory. The memory footprint of Gadgets in Vista was awful; different Gadgets ran in different processes, and as best I could tell they leaked memory like a sieve. That no longer appears to be the case.
Appearance

Windows 7 will look familiar to Vista users; it retains the Aero Glass theme with its translucent, textured window borders. There are some minor modifications, as the window borders and taskbar no longer go opaque when you maximize a window, but overall the new OS looks very much like the old one, and things that are bad in Vista (the minimal differentiation between active and inactive windows, ugly menu bars) are bad in Windows 7. I am disappointed with just how familiar the appearance is, in fact. Vista has a lot of visual inconsistencies, both due to a failure to follow new UI guidelines and a failure to pay attention, and many of these are retained in Windows 7. It makes the OS look very sloppy; there is a great lack of attention to detail, suggesting that Redmond doesn't really care about how it looks.

Some of these inconsistencies are broad in scope. Control Panel has a new style of applet that loads up within the Control Panel window rather than in a pop-up dialog box. The new style looks better and is more flexible (it can be resized, for example), but many applets use the old style, meaning that you're never quite sure what will happen when you pick an applet. Sometimes a new window will pop open, sometimes it won't. This was perhaps excusable in Vista, as a transitional OS bridging the old with the new, but the same situation exists in 7. Many built-in applets (for example, the mouse control panel) are still stuck in the old style.

The mouse control panel is doubly bad, because not only is it still an ugly dialog box, it also reverts to battleship grey! Battleship grey should be dead and buried, but a quick peek at the Hardware tab reveals it in all its glory. And doesn't it look splendid? The new, themed white tab with ugly battleship grey contents. It's even more jarring because the border around the content area is still themed and white, leaving a strange white line down the left-hand side of the window.
This is the right styling.
This ain't.

And OK, it's being picky, but why oh why do Explorer and Internet Explorer look different? They are meant to look the same. An attempt has clearly been made to give them the same styling and appearance. Yet they're gratuitously different. Not terribly different, but different all the same. The spacings are different, and the address bars are different heights. It's just haphazard and random. The widgets have been plopped down onto a window and someone's just said "yeah, that looks close enough", even though it's wrong. Fit and finish matters. As the new UI guidelines say: Pay attention to detail, and make sure everything is polished. Don't assume that users won't notice small things. They will.

Just a note .. WINDOWS 7 ROCKS!

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Saturday, October 24, 2009

Happy Birthday To Sanji

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SANJEVEN AHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!

went kbox ytd..tot cmfrm damm sian coz i cant sing but..LOL HAD A GREATTTTTTTT TIMEEEEEEEEE WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

VIDS ARE UPLOADING ON FACEBOOK SHALL POST THEM ONCE IM DONE!

[EDIT]

HERE ARE THE VIDS!

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Monday, October 19, 2009

zz

look at this LOL

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