1 Now you can install that official OS-Tan theme everyone is talking about.

2

Which OS-tan? eh?

I wish I could deactivate the touchpad hardware, but I can't figure out what Windows thinks it's called in the hardware manager. grump grump grump

3 The official OS-Tan that Microsoft themselves commissioned.

4

Steven, it looks like that in Win7 because you've got Aero turned off, but maybe you already knew that.

Also, I think you have different views set in the two screenshots, thus the breakdown between hard drives and removable storage.

Turn it back on and the jelly-bean effect will come back.

 

5 Yeah, but having it as an option is hardly horrible, the problem is when you can't turn the random eye-candy *off*.

( or turning it off requires a Ph.D in CompSci and a hex editor )

6 Er, I wasn't suggesting you do that. I should've said "If you turn it on, ..."

7

Aaaaand, now I see that you did know.  Sorry.  's what happens sometimes if you read stuff in reverse order.  I blame society.

It's interesting that it offered you the old UI at install time.  I don't recall seeing the RC do that.

Interestingly, the eye-candy can be controlled pretty easily from one setting in the system control panel.  In XP, anyway, it's under the Performance section of the Advanced tab.  The bottom-most checkbox, "se visual styles on windows and buttons," controls whether you get the "classic" or candy UI.

8 Let's see, from the top:

Window controls
Navigation bar
Menu bar
Toolbar
Column controls - when there aren't any columns

The clean version reduces five rows of widgets to three.  It's still untidy, but it's certainly improved.

I like the jellybean look, but the layout of the controls in Vista / Windows 7 Explorer is just terrible.

9 I like Windows Vista, myself.  BUT, it is a massive resource hog and I'll be very interested to hear some real-world accounts of 7's performance.  Doubt I'll upgrade before the first service pack, though.

10 The amusing thing about Microsoft's (and desktop Linux's) chrome-and-tailfins paintjobs is that they're imitating a "Mac look" that doesn't exist any more. Apple occasionally abuses drop shadows and transparency effects, but the bulk of the UI is in flat shades of gray, with occasional subtle gradients.

I like the under-the-hood work that went into Vista, but the Aero look just screams "game console" to me. Fortunately, that's all I ever use it for.

-j

11 I haven't even tried looking at Aero. I'm not even curious.

12

What I'm mainly seeing that I like is lots of little tweaks that suggest that Microsoft has been listening.

One thing I hated in Vista was that in the "list" directory mode, the columns were really wide even if they didn't need to be. Now, at least the way I've got things set up, each column is exactly as wide as it needs to be in order to fit the longest filename in that column. That's what I want.

Another thing I've noticed is that there are some changes in how IE works. It used to be that when I wanted to upload a picture to here, IE would open "My Pictures". Now it opens the root, and I can get to the place I keep my pictures in three clicks.

13 Aero is normally enabled by default, it certainly was on all three of the machines I've but the beta and RC on.  I suspect it was disabled for you because of the generic driver and resulting low video performance test numbers.  Most of the aero features I'm sure you won't miss, who really cares if an icon on the taskbar is shaded or not.  However the semi-transparent window borders are quite nice, and the "aero peek" feature of having it pop up a view of the app window as you tab over minimized icons on the task bar or in task manager is one of the nicest new features.  I don't know if you can enable just that or not, it's a checkbox option in the performance tab, but I suspect it has dependencies.

I know you are sticking with 32 bit for the moment to avoid reinstalling all your applications, but I can't put enough force behind the suggestion to bite the bullet and go with 64 bit.  MS isn't making much noise about it, but there are some technologies that are only in the 64 bit version, such as automatic heap defragmentation, that are just huge.

14

I've entertained the idea that once this thing is stable and I'm sure I won't want to retreat, of putting the old 200G drive back in it and installing the 64 bit version on it just to see how it works.

But not really very seriously. It seems like a hell of a lot of work where the main benefit would be bragging rights. Even if there was some kind of performance increase, I really don't do anything on this machine where I need more performance than I'm already getting.

And I'm just a tadge bit worried about what Microsoft might do to me if they see the same registration number going by twice in short succession. Not sure I really want to risk that.

15

I'm running the 64-bit version of the RC and have been for a while; it works pretty fine except for a few issues like not wanting to install unsigned 32-bit drivers, and a few rare applications.  One big advantage is that it lets you have more RAM.

As for the activation, two will be fine, especially on the same computer.

 

Something useful is that you don't _have_ to put in a key when you install it.  You can wait up to 30 days without a key; it'll just nag you every once in a while with a bubble in the tray, so if you only want to play with the 64-bit version, just install it without a key.  (You can also--I believe--use the rearm trick to get a couple of extra 30-day cycles out of it.)

 

16

One big advantage is that it lets you have more RAM.

Theoretically valuable, but utterly useless for me in practice. This computer is maxed out at 2G, which is fully supported by the 32-bit version.

And there isn't anything I do that needs more than that.