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Hands-On with Windows 7

Will Smith — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:30:00 -0600

Once more unto the breach, dear friends. The first iteration of Microsoft’s next operating system has arrived, and things are looking up for the Windows faithful. In fact, the first beta of Windows 7 is so reliable and responsive that it reminds us of the early Windows XP betas. With less than 12 months to go before launch, Windows 7 is in much better shape than Vista was at the same time, and it feels like a much more usable operating system than even XP did during its beta phase.

So what’s new with Windows 7? The first thing you’ll notice is a completely overhauled user interface. The Taskbar, which has worked more or less the same way since Windows 95, has changed. Instead of having separate areas for the Quick Launch toolbar and running applications, the new Taskbar combines the two in a way that’s similar to OS X’s Dock. Start an app, and its icon will show up in the Taskbar. Hover over it, and you’ll see a ton of useful info about it, including recently opened files and thumbnails of all the open windows. Move your mouse over a thumbnail and everything else on the screen except that window fades out, making it simple to find things on even the most cluttered desktop. Say you like having your favorite apps in the Quick Launch area—with Windows 7, you can pin apps to the Taskbar, and they’ll remain there whether they’re running or not.

What else is new? Homegroups make sharing printers and files between the computers on your network dead simple, without mucking around with NTFS permissions and user accounts. Libraries let you collect all your important files in one place. The new navigation column in Windows Explorer gives you speedy access to the locations on your PC and network that you use most. Gadgets embed directly on the Desktop instead of the Sidebar. The notification area on the Taskbar (where all the small icons for running applications show up) puts spammy or misbehaving apps in a holding pen where they won’t annoy you. Oh, and UAC is much less annoying—we’re even using it.

Additionally, there are dozens of small tweaks to the OS that, taken alone, don’t amount to much but combined make a significant impact on your end-user experience. For example, Windows 7 will ship with an array of common audio and video codecs, including H.264, AAC, and DivX. Also on the media front, the built-in streaming server can handle all the formats that the Xbox 360 uses. You can sort and search your files by perceived type—that is, the type of content in the file rather than the file format. The Action Center corrals many of the system warnings that previously would have popped up in disparate locations. Drag a window to the top edge of the screen to maximize it. Drag it to the right side of the screen and it expands vertically to fill your screen. When you open a communication app or game that uses the microphone, Win7 reduces the volume of all other apps. The Shut Down button has even made its triumphant return to the Start menu.

Don’t get too excited yet. Even though Windows 7’s first beta surpasses Vista in many ways, we still know very little about the final OS. We don’t have a firm release date or even know the number of different flavors there will be (we’re hoping for one, but that’s probably a pipe dream) or what it will cost. However, we’ve learned enough from the first beta to leave us cautiously optimistic that Windows 7 will be more XP than Vista.

The single biggest change in Windows 7 is the new Taskbar. It combines the QuickLaunch bar and the old-school Taskbar into one hyperfunctional notification area. Hover over an open application and you’ll see a handy menu showing thumbnails of all open windows associated with that app. Hover over a thumbnail, and Windows fades the rest of the clutter away, leaving just the window you’re looking for. Windows 7 will ship with support for all popular codecs, including H.264, AAC, and DivX. Still no word on Blu-ray support, though!

We frequently have five, 10, or even 20 windows open at once. Windows 7 includes much-needed UI tweaks that make it easy to manage tons of open apps and windows. That’s perfect for power users and neophytes alike.

While we’d prefer an OS that let us control whether system notification apps run at all, this is the next best thing. Now you can hide notification apps entirely, see notifications from them, or treat them exactly as you did in Vista or XP.

Libraries allow you to combine the contents of multiple folders on your hard drive into a single folder analog for convenience. You can create your own Libraries and even save files to them (they’ll show up in a folder you specify).

Want to take a quick peek at the Gadgets embedded in your desktop? Just hover your mouse over the lower right corner of the screen. Software widget enthusiasts will be pleased to know that Windows 7 moves Gadgets from Vista’s Sidebar to the Desktop.

The new Action Center puts all the assorted warnings, alerts, and other operating system noise in one convenient location. In addition to more info, you can also choose to archive or ignore annoying messages.

The apps that remain integrated with Windows (Mail, Photo Gallery, Messenger, and Movie Maker are now part of the downloadable Windows Live Essentials) all got the Ribbon treatment, à la Office 2007.

Jump lists give app developers a way to show context-sensitive information about their apps directly on the Taskbar. For example, Word displays a list of recently accessed files.

Hands-on with Lenovo's Monstrous W700 17" ThinkPad -- Photos and Impressions

Nathan Edwards — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:20:39 -0500

When we first walked into our meeting with Lenovo last week, we thought it was an oversized mockup. Sure, it looked like a ThinkPad. But it was huge! We're used to small, slim, no-nonsense ThinkPads; we were unprepared for this. Who would want a 17" ThinkPad?

Once we took a closer look at the just-announced W700, though, we got our answer: We want one. Maybe it's the integrated Wacom digitizer. Or the onboard HueyPro color calibrator. Or maybe we like the idea of a 640GB RAID array in a laptop. Or the 1GB of dedicated graphics memory. This is a big, powerful system, aimed at digital content professionals: photographers, videographers, animators, CAD/CAM engineers, and the like.

Looking closely at the specs, we can see that Lenovo’s not pulling any punches. The W700 will be the first notebook to ship with Intel’s not-so-secret Core 2 Extreme mobile quad-core CPU (officially launching at next week’s Intel Developer’s Conference), and the first with Nvidia’s just-announced Quadro FX3700M GPU, which has 1GB of video memory (Lenovo claims internal testing yielded over 10,000 in 3DMark06). Oh, and they’ll also put in up to 8GB of DDR3 memory.

The onboard HueyPro color calibrator will be especially handy with the professional-quality 1920x1200 WUXGA screen (a 72% Gamut 400 NIT display). To calibrate, you simple activate the program and clamp down the laptop lid – the software does the rest. With such a high end display, Lenovo recommends that users calibrate once a week.

And that integrated Wacom tablet? It’s a sizeable 12cm by 8cm digitizer that’s activated with a magnetic pen that hides in the side of the notebook. You can use it with digital content applications like Photoshop or Illustrator or configure it to map to the entire screen to manipulate your cursor.

The W700 also boasts a 7-in-1 media card reader, integrated camera, 5 USB ports, and plenty of display outputs – Dual Link DVI, VGA, even DisplayPort. Unfortunately, you’ll have to look to the optional port replicator dock for eSATA support (priced at $279).

The whole thing weighs about 8.3lbs, and Lenovo says it’ll get between 2.5 and 3 hours of battery life, which is hardly earth-shattering but a lot better than we’d expect from such a big machine. Placed next to a slim Thinkpad X300, the W700 dwarfs the ultraportable in comparison. We can’t imagine lugging it on business trips across the country, but we could see professionals using it as a desktop replacement at the office and bringing it home to work at night.

Prices will start at about $3K, and the machine will be pretty customizable – you can leave out the Wacom, calibrator, or both, and choose between normal hard drives (up to 320GB each at 5400RPM in RAID, or 200GB each at 7200 RPM) and SSDs (up to 128GB). Expect to pay upwards of five grand for a fully kitted-out notebook.

Hands-On Lab Test! We Scrutinze Polaroid's New Pogo Portable Printer

Gordon Mah Ung — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:50:03 -0500

I still own a vintage Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera but feeding it was expensive then and now nigh impossible thanks to the end of instant film. Polaroid’s POGO portable printer brings back some of the fun I had with the SX-70. This pocket printer is the first to use Zero Imaging’s Zero Ink paper that does away with ink in favor of billions of embedded crystals in the 2x3 sheets of paper.

Hook your PictBridge-enabled digital camera up to the POGO via a Type A USB cable and let the fun begin. Once the camera has finished chewing on the image, it will take about 30 seconds to print out. The POGO will print full bleed to the tiny pieces of paper and the adhesive back lets you stick ‘em anywhere.

Fun, right? Well not if you try to print via Bluetooth. It’s not Polaroid’s fault but I’d guess that you have a 50/50 chance of your phone working due to Blutooth's horrible frakking reliability. Much of the mess is the fault of the phone vendors and the providers. Even the vaunted iPhone, for example, doesn't support the OBEX profile this printer needs. A ton of others don’t as well. Your best bet is to use USB.

A few other weaknesses: the print quality ranges average to mediocre (Polaroid claims its comparable to a 300dpi printer). However, for wallet prints or the photo that’s going to get stuck on the dash board of the car, we don't mind the lack of fidelity. We’re more bugged by the sad battery life. You can probably get 20 images if you print them in one sitting. Otherwise, expect more like 10 to 15. Finally, the battery charger (see below) is literally a brick. It’s actually bigger than the actual printer, and comes close to the power bricks that come with laptops. Combine that with the crappy battery life and, well, our smile goes away.

Part of my smile does come back though just printing out the pics that we can give away. Yeah, I could say “check out the web site” or “I’ll email it to you!” but I never do. With the POGO, you truly recover some of the spontaneity that the mad the Land Camera so damned fun. We'll do some more testing, so look out for our full review soon!