If you have not followed this series from day one start here: DAY ONE 

8:20

Start my day with my usual tasks, yesterday putty started using my key for ssh, this morning it won’t. And Windows now takes two minutes before I can launch any programs…

I have decided that desktop widgets, plasmoids, gadgets (as windows refers to them) or even conky is useless as a means for getting information about your system, being notified of e-mails or keeping up to date with the latest rss feeds.

Your open programs keep covering them! Last night I minimised all my windows and stared blankly at the CPU monitoring gadget for a moment. “What’s that doing there?” Then I remembered that I added it to keep an eye on how much resources Windows 7 actually uses. That was about the same time that I also realised that I did not look at this gadget since the day I enabled it because it was constantly covered by whatever I had open and was working on.

Conky also has a short life with me when I am using gnome. I usually only start it now when I have specific need of the info I set it up to provide, and conky is also the main reason I have set my terminal to transparent so that I can see what is going on with my system while I am hacking away in terminal.

Controversial as it sounds, but the Vista sidebar was better suited to the job. It allowed you to keep your gadgets visible while working, and was well suited to the wider format of screens that we work on today.

It was a resource hog though, and I disliked it. Most users I know disable it because their computer runs faster without it, and they tend to begin ignoring it after a while.

Go figure…

10:28

I must say I have been enjoying my working on Win7 this morning. Once my housekeeping was done I really experienced little hassle. I was happy.

THen I started to work on a webpage with Dreamweaver.

The process involves taking text from a word document and inserting it in an HTML file paragraph by paragraph. Now Microsoft Office Word works fine in this regard, and so does Dreamweaver.

My frustration is with the lack of multiple desktops. I now know why each of our developers have two screens in twinview mode.

Right now I have to click on the taskbar Icon for word, select the text, click on the taskbar Icon for dreamweaver, paste the text, edit it until it is just right, click on the IE Icon on the taskbar, click on the preview of the particular tab where my localhost is displayed and click refresh.

I really miss having multiple desktops!

In gnome, the way I had is set up I would ctrl+alt+left to Word, copy, ctrl+alt+right to Dreamweaver, paste and edit, ctrl+alt+right to view my localhost etc, etc. It is much more intuitive. My need of using the mouse would be kept to a minimum and I would be working at a quicker pace.

I wonder why Micorosoft has not introduced multiple virtual desktops on Windows on the mainstream releases yet. Sure there is powertools for Windows, but I cannot find a version for Win7 or Vista.

If any of you know where I can get it please let me know…

Likes and Dislikes time!

Right. Time for another roundup of what I like and dislike.

Likes

• Windows 7 seems really solid. Besides the lock ups I had in the first two days I haven’t had much to complain about.
• I really like playing DVD’s on Windows 7. Windows Media Player is really streets ahead anything in Linux in this regards. At least the version that comes with Ultimate Edition.
• Windows Media Centre is also quite nice.

Dislikes

• Booting my laptop takes longer every time. It is up to two minutes now from where I log in to where I can actually start working. That is totally unacceptable.
• IE 8 x64 does not have flash support.
• The extra clicks and steps to do what I want. Want to run putty? ARE YOU SURE??? Okay then you can run it… also note what I said on day five with regards to the extra clicks…
• Whenever I log in after a startup I have tons of popup applications that first need to be closed before I can get any work done.

All in all I can say there is a big improvement over Vista with Windows 7. What bothers me is that symptomatic problems that bugged users with previous versions of Windows have not been resolved – slow response on startup and first login, tons of programs that load popups and splash screens when you first log in.

I can definitely notice a performance degradation when I start running a lot of programs at the same time. Today I had IE, Word, Access, Dreamweaver and Skype open at the same time and it was noticeable how much the computer slowed down. Not as bad as with Vista by a long shot, but still enough to notice.

I fell asleep while watching a movie on the laptop with the kids so no update. Read on for Day 7

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