Followup to Snow Leopard & Boot Camp 3.0
2009.09.17 08:35 PM Filed in: Technology
Good evening,
I just wanted to do a quick follow-up on my last blog posting with some new information. Since the last post was a novel, this one will be brief.
Battery life
Under Windows 7 and Boot Camp 3.0, battery life is now on par with what I am seeing under the Mac OS. In my testing, I was on track for about 4.5 hours. Drastically improved from Boot Camp 2.1 (almost double).
Horizontal scrolling
I tried opening one of my wide spreadsheets in Excel 2007, but alas no horizontal scrolling. As I mentioned, IE8 didn't either, and neither does anything else with a horizontal scroll bar.
Final verdict
After using Windows 7 exclusively for a few days, I must say it is definitely the best version of Windows ever made. It is fast, stable, and slick, and if I wasn't a Mac guy, I'd be in love. Please don't take that to mean that I've imbibed of the Apple Kool-Aid and am a Mac fanboy, because I'm not. I was very much prepared to make the switch back to Windows if that turned out to be the best operating system for me. However, it still isn't.
Features like the new task bar and how Aero Peek has been integrated make finding the window you want to get to very convenient. I was quite enamoured with it, but it's still no Exposé. Yes, even though Exposé is all chunky now, it's still the fastest and most efficient way of all to navigate to my desired open (and now minimized) window. How can it get any better than seeing *all* of your open windows scaled down and spread out to pick the one you like?
There are other things too, little things that don't seem significant, but when you get used to them find they really make a difference in your productivity. One such thing in particular that comes to mind is that I had gotten used to the fact that if I want to scroll something, I'd put my mouse pointer over it and then scroll. It didn't matter if its window was in focus or not, it just worked. In Windows 7, I found I still had to click inside the scrolling component before that would scroll, and then it would scroll no matter where my mouse pointer was. This really aggravated me when I was tweaking the power settings. The default focus was on a drop down that switched between the power modes (Best performance, best battery life, balanced [or something to that effect]), and right below that was a long scrollable list with the details of that profile. Well, I wanted to scroll down to see what was down there, but scrolling down just caused the profiles to flip through the drop down list items above, not the list I was pointing at. Whereas now, I can scroll up to review earlier parts of this post, go to the pane above to scroll the list of all my blog posts, and point to my email program in another window that is still visible but not in focus and scroll through an open email message (suppose I was referring to it while writing a post) all by pointing at it and scrolling but not having to click to change focus.
To wrap this up, Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system, and by far the best Redmond has ever put out. I definitely encourage all Windows users to upgrade - it is a significant step forward. Boot Camp 3.0 is probably the best thing to come out of Snow Leopard, at least today. In the future, as application programmers write their applications to take full advantage of the vast new power and features that Snow Leopard provides, then we'll finally get to see Snow Leopard shine. But overall, I must say that while it came close (very close), it wasn't enough to sway me from Mac OS X, and I still encourage everybody to research and at least consider it when it comes time to upgrade to a new computer.
So much for a brief post.
I just wanted to do a quick follow-up on my last blog posting with some new information. Since the last post was a novel, this one will be brief.
Battery life
Under Windows 7 and Boot Camp 3.0, battery life is now on par with what I am seeing under the Mac OS. In my testing, I was on track for about 4.5 hours. Drastically improved from Boot Camp 2.1 (almost double).
Horizontal scrolling
I tried opening one of my wide spreadsheets in Excel 2007, but alas no horizontal scrolling. As I mentioned, IE8 didn't either, and neither does anything else with a horizontal scroll bar.
Final verdict
After using Windows 7 exclusively for a few days, I must say it is definitely the best version of Windows ever made. It is fast, stable, and slick, and if I wasn't a Mac guy, I'd be in love. Please don't take that to mean that I've imbibed of the Apple Kool-Aid and am a Mac fanboy, because I'm not. I was very much prepared to make the switch back to Windows if that turned out to be the best operating system for me. However, it still isn't.
Features like the new task bar and how Aero Peek has been integrated make finding the window you want to get to very convenient. I was quite enamoured with it, but it's still no Exposé. Yes, even though Exposé is all chunky now, it's still the fastest and most efficient way of all to navigate to my desired open (and now minimized) window. How can it get any better than seeing *all* of your open windows scaled down and spread out to pick the one you like?
There are other things too, little things that don't seem significant, but when you get used to them find they really make a difference in your productivity. One such thing in particular that comes to mind is that I had gotten used to the fact that if I want to scroll something, I'd put my mouse pointer over it and then scroll. It didn't matter if its window was in focus or not, it just worked. In Windows 7, I found I still had to click inside the scrolling component before that would scroll, and then it would scroll no matter where my mouse pointer was. This really aggravated me when I was tweaking the power settings. The default focus was on a drop down that switched between the power modes (Best performance, best battery life, balanced [or something to that effect]), and right below that was a long scrollable list with the details of that profile. Well, I wanted to scroll down to see what was down there, but scrolling down just caused the profiles to flip through the drop down list items above, not the list I was pointing at. Whereas now, I can scroll up to review earlier parts of this post, go to the pane above to scroll the list of all my blog posts, and point to my email program in another window that is still visible but not in focus and scroll through an open email message (suppose I was referring to it while writing a post) all by pointing at it and scrolling but not having to click to change focus.
To wrap this up, Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system, and by far the best Redmond has ever put out. I definitely encourage all Windows users to upgrade - it is a significant step forward. Boot Camp 3.0 is probably the best thing to come out of Snow Leopard, at least today. In the future, as application programmers write their applications to take full advantage of the vast new power and features that Snow Leopard provides, then we'll finally get to see Snow Leopard shine. But overall, I must say that while it came close (very close), it wasn't enough to sway me from Mac OS X, and I still encourage everybody to research and at least consider it when it comes time to upgrade to a new computer.
So much for a brief post.