Blogging the network

• Look-and-feel: Although I can't seem to install the XP Royalle theme or the Zune Desktop theme due to the fact that their installer doesn't seem to work on x64, the eXPerience is still very good.



• ClearType: Instead of anti-aliasing just the very large or very tiny font size, now Cleartype anti-aliases almost all sized fonts.



• 64-bit: Finding native 64-bit applications is a real pain in the neck! Although Microsoft seems to give some seperate links for 64-bit applications and softwares, the truth is, most software developers don't seem to bother or it's probably too difficult. Heck! There's even no Flash support for 64-bit IE. I have to run it in 32-bit mode for the Flash plugin to work! (which is actually great if I have to avoid Flash on some site for some reason! ;))



• FlashGet: For wierd reason has auto-registered itself when I installed it. This is a clean OS install over which I downloaded a newer version of FlashGet. However to my surprise, it is already registered! I didn't even do anything!
  
  

• IE 7 : Love it for the tabs. Hate it for the tabs! While re-doing their tabs design into a no-frills version, they completely broke my IE 6 functionality. The Links bar dissapeared. Earlier I used to place the Address bar next to the Menu bar and the Links bar next to the Toolbar and the Googlet Browser button used to work as the integrated browser search. So total occupied space by the entire top portion was 75 px. Now I can't seem to move the Links bar out of its fixed place. I can't even shift the Address bar anywhere or even resize it. And the menu bar is nowhere to be seen! And yet, even without the Links bar it takes up 95 px! And I can't really do without the Links bar, so for me it takes up almost 120 px! And thats a lot of space going waste!

• Winamp 5.52: Rocks! Even though there is no substantial change, the new Bento skin is pretty nice too.
  
  

• Kaspersky 7: Works like a charm, except that my key is blacklisted. Keeps giving me that annoying pop-up!
  
  
• Mouse: For some reason my mouse seems to work much smoother. When I move it on the mousepad, it physically seems a bit smoother! Even the functionality in the new 64-bit Microsoft Mouse software I had to download is good. The middle-scroll-click doesn't open a new tab! It shows 'Instant viewer'. Allows me to switch between the windows I've opened so far. Good, except that its a bit slow on my PC. Another good feature is the Magnify (thumb) button. I can instantly magnify anything on screen with the click of a button. You'd be surprised how useful this feature can be!

Fig 1.3: Instant viewer in Microsoft Mouse

• RAM: Need some more of this please. 512MB is not enough. As it is I'm running low on disk space. So can't even increase the Virtual memory size much.
  

• Office 2007: Looks nice, works great! They've totally redesigned Office! Don't even get me started on where the menu bar went! But this time its for good! I really like what they've done with it! Unfortunately.... no more Clippy!! :( :( Boohoo!!
  

• SMPS: Seems my Power supply (SMPS) is going bad. Sometimes it unexpectedly reboots. All I was doing was opening some folder and BAM! Reboot! No BSODs even! Other times it just doesn't start up at one go. It powers up, then powers off again before the boots screen shows up. Sometimes it even induces my harddisk to not showup at the BIOS screen. I truly hope its not the harddisk going bad! Once it even conked off when I was trying to plug in my USB printer! I saw some sparks fly, and POW! It rebooted! Trouble is, I haven't much time to debug this issue, so I really hope it works well for a while.
  
  
• Tech@MET is here to rock! 8th & 9th Feb 2008. MET's ICS is having its own festival - Tech@MET . Did the designing of the brochures & posters. And got plenty of events in it.
  
  
  

So much for now. Rest of them updates later! :)