So now I’m testing Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer. It does install well.

I did encounter one issue on my first time using it though. To add the link I had in the first sentence I had to switch to the source code view, as I couldn’t seem to highlight text in the Edit mode.

It’s nice to see however that Microsoft is becoming more supporting of technology that other people has created. They certainly are trying to no longer be the closed company they used to be.

The categories and post tags seem to be added fairly easily. So if your using Windows, give it a shot.

So, as you may have heard if you follow the technology blogs at all, is that Microsoft has recently released a public beta for Windows 7 Ultimate. This is the upgrade for Windows Vista. Originally they were only going to have a very limited number of people in the public beta, but it was so popular they decided to lift the limit.

My test machine is a Dell Vostro 1000, with 2 GB of RAM.

Previously I was running Windows XP Professional on this system. I must say that Windows 7 is much faster than XP was. This is even true after I have installed most of the software that I had on the XP side.

At least for the Beta, there wasn’t an upgrade option from XP to Windows 7. So what it did was install the new OS after moving my Windows, User and Program Files directories all into a directory called Windows.old. Installing the software was a breeze. Originally I was going to have this run inside a Virtual Machine, but found my computer isn’t fast enough for that.

After I answered some questions, I went to lunch thinking it would take it a while to unpack all of the files off a DVD. By the time I had came back from lunch, it was ready for me to tell it what my login name and password should be. If I had been running Vista previously, it would have been able to do a traditional upgrade.

The interface should be quite familiar to anyone who is used to Apple’s OS X Leopard, however its not quite as elegant, but much better than what we had in Windows XP. Having previously used an iMac almost exclusively for quite a few months, I have found myself wanting to do stuff the same way here, as I did on that Mac, such as hitting the space bar with a document highlighted to get a preview of it.

One issue I was having with XP, was with AVG. AVG would load and want to test for updates, before the wireless had connected. This of course led to it not being able to connect to the internet and therefore complaining. Under Windows 7, it does appear software is either paused, or is notified when Internet is up. Since I have switched to Windows 7 I haven’t had AVG claim it couldn’t connect to the internet to obtain an update.

However not everything is perfect yet in this beta build. I haven’t been able to track down exactly what causes it, however it does appear to have something in regards of switching out of full streaming video from a site like Hulu.com back to the normal version. The problem I occasionally have, is I get a BSOD. I’m unable to see what driver or what not is causing the image, because the screen is displayed very oddly. Next time I get one of these, I will have my camera take a picture of it.

If your like me, and sometimes enjoy playing older graphic games, such as StarCraft, and WarCraft III you probably realize these games are quite old. Microsoft seems has decided to stop fully supporting games that were written with that old of a version of Direct X. I say this because the game will be displayed but either will have off colors or the display will otherwise be really off. If you have a game that Vista doesn’t play very well, don’t expect Windows 7 to do it well either.

I have found, that at least Windows 7 Ultimate will have a built in DVD Decoder (or at least the Beta does). If this feature stays in once its RTM, it will be interesting to see what happens to software like WinDVD.

So far I have found only one part that doesn’t work under Windows 7. This appears to be the screen saver. Originally I thought it was the Google Picasa Screen Saver that may not have been Windows 7 compatible. So I switched to using one that comes with Windows 7. The problem I encounter, with a time limit of 10 minutes before the saver is supposed to come on, is that it doesn’t. I have left the screen for an hour before, and when I come back to it, its still showing the same image as when I left.

Overall, I would say this is a huge improvement over Windows XP, and a lot better than Windows Vista is. Is this an upgrade in your future? At this point the only reason I could say not to, is if your on a really old machine, or if you often play old XP based games still.

Questions or Comments? E-mail me at: chris [at] chrismoody.net!