Windows 7 Ultimate 7057

Hey folks it's me again. Today I'm here to give a sneak peek into Windows 7 Ultimate. Notice the picture above of the Task Screen or what you get when you hit Control, Alt, Delete when in Windows for those not up to snuff, and you'll notice the Windows Name on the bottom of the screen. Yes folks it's Windows 7 Ultimate. You can click any of the images for a much larger view. Enjoy.

The version I have is what everyone on the internet keeps calling the RC1 or known as Build 7057.

My VM setup was basic, created with only 512MB of RAM and 1 Processor.

Installation was a snap, especially for Windows, also considering the fact that I installed as a VM and not on a true system. Windows as everyone knows usually takes a good 60-90 minutes or so to install, but for Windows 7 on a VM it only took about 25-30 minutes. Vista could be the same in a VM environment and I've never really tested. I used what is known as quick install in VMWare Workstation thus saving most of the questions and answers which also helped with the speed of the install I'm sure.

Here is where I ended up, the good old desktop of Windows 7 Ultimate, you'll notice the version numbers etc. in lower right hand corner. Also notice the new Task Bar and larger icons.



Within no more than 30 minutes I was sitting in Windows and ready to start playing around. Rebooting takes about 2 minutes max and even from a cold boot, the reason it might take a bit longer is that I have an issue with my VM that ends up giving me 32 PCI Express Standard Root Port Devices which are all in conflict, without this issue the system boot time might be reduced by 30 or so seconds making Windows 7 very quick at booting and as mentioned before is astounding for Windows.

I can honestly say Windows 7 Ultimate is really not much more than Vista but on steroids, and what I mean by this is it looks exactly the same, but is much faster and robust, and remember this was with only 512 MB of RAM. I can only imagine how this would run on my normal system. I have 4 Gig on this system.

Lets just hope the speed of boot and the quickness of tasks are the same on a real machine as in my VM, and when the final release comes. If this is the case, Microsoft may finally have what they should have had with Vista.

Windows 7 Ultimate will be a huge success and one I would say everyone on XP and Vista should upgrade to with what I've seen so far. The speed of opening up tasks and windows was a snap unlike my Vista machine which is a complete dog in my opinion. On my Vista machine I'll click to open a program etc. and 10-15 seconds later it might open. With Windows 7 Ultimate these things instantly opened right up. As I mentioned above this is in a VM and I'm sure Vista may be identical in a similar situation, but I'm not here to test the differences. VM usually only has 20-30 processes max running and my Vista machine has upwards of 75-100, this would make for a huge difference between the two, that is for sure. Either way I'm really liking what I see with Windows 7 Ultimate thus far.

With the build I have, many have come to realize a little bug, it's called the Desktop bug and really is nothing more than desktop.ini file being in the startup which then makes notepad open it up since it's a text file and greets you upon entering Windows. You can fix this by removing the desktop.ini files from your profiles Startup areas, you can find the exact locations online by searching for Fix Windows 7 7057 Desktop Bug.

Now onto what little bit may be new to some. Pretty much all the same applications introduced in Vista are back, and some of the older programs are now updated. We see items such as Snyc and Snippet return from Vista. Sync is where you set up offline files and Snippet is similar to a cheap version of Snagit. Powershell is now part of Windows 7 Ultimate as well.

Here is a picture of Snyc. Nothing special or new to us Vista folks.



Below you'll see what Accessories are available in Windows 7 and you'll notice the new look of good old Paint and WordPad. You'll notice how the toolbars have changed to resemble what we've come to know as Ribbons in Microsoft Office 2007. You'll also notice Sticky Notes in the list, which is new and simply puts sticky notes on your desktop as if they were the real deal.



Another new item to Windows 7 Ultimate was what is called Action Center. Below is pretty much what you'll see when entering this. If you know Vista Ultimate you'll know most of what is coming with Windows 7 Ultimate, so really most of the things within this post are not new.



Below you'll see that IE 8 and Windows Media player 12 really have not changed much from what you currently see in Vista. You'd have to really dig deep to find the changes even between the two OS's. For the basic user, the differences between Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows 7 Ultimate probably will not be seenm but for those folks still locked in time with Windows XP, you'll end up getting lost with the new OS, really no different than going from XP to Vista. Us folks that always have the latest and greatest will seamlessly move from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate without a hitch.





Well folks I know it wasn't much, but it's a glimpse of things to come this Summer or Fall from our boys at Microsoft. No release date has been set but I'm sure it's coming. I think all of those who read my blog Windows 7 Ultimate is definitely an OS to all run out and get when it arrives, for being just a Beta or what they are calling RC1, this puppy flies and is one incredible OS. All I can say is I can't wait for it to arrive, this boy will have it upon release no doubt. Hope you enjoy this teaser and stop back I hope to have more about this and other things going on when I have time to do so. Thanks again.

The End... Outsourcing Wins Again.

Here we are again, back to the unemployment lines with most of the US and now simply a statistic for the month of March and failed US jobs and the failed economy.

Well as of March 1st our jobs were not renewed, this all started with a month to month schedule after the new year and a knowledge transfer to our Indian counterparts. Our jobs have been outsourced to India folks. The end of another era for me. My first long term IT job lasted almost 9 years and this current one almost 2 years, short by just a couple weeks.

So as a contractor, 11 years of my life wasted for nothing more than a pay check in return, which I'm not complaining about, but no full time positions offered by the companies that I had worked for or other benefits, such as pension funds and the like. That usually is the goal of working as a contractor is that a company appreciates your work and time put in and brings you in full time for a bit of job security over being just a disposable worker (Contractor).

I had never been late and never missing a single day, and never took any vacation days within those 11 years. Well excuse me, except 3 vacation days taken for the death of my mother. With all of that said it turns out that I had both jobs ended because of outsourcing.

With the current economy who wants to pay the kinds of salaries we make to do our jobs in the IT sector? Now knowing that working in IT, this is usually the departments hit first in corporate America for cut backs and lay offs, only because they usually have the largest expenditures on most budgets.

Now with that said lets just say, "You do get what you pay for", and only time will tell with this next round and this companies first plunge into outsourcing.

The first round or job lost, my previous employer, now 3 years into their outsourcing routine. They have come to realize that outsourcing was the wrong way to go and it is failing miserably and getting worse day by day. Now for this company just taking the plunge, they will also follow that same routine. It seems these things always run on a 3-5 year cycle. Only time will tell if they go down the same path as other companies have in recent years in our general location and in the IT sector.

I started out in IT to get away from manual labor work which I had done for far too many years, it was finally nice to use my brain rather than bronze to get by. I can probably look forward to getting a job for much less but doing much more either in IT again or possibly heading back into the manual labor force, since our government is going to create 4 million jobs that will pay no more than 10-12 dollars an hour to kill yourself in a so called infrastructure job. Yeah I've worked my last 11 years to look forward to this kind of work again... NOT!!!

For now I'll sit back and collect for a while and finally take my vacation I've never taken, sure I won't really be going anywhere or traveling, but it will be simply some time off to reflect and maybe put some more posts out here on my blog.

Hope you enjoyed my latest entry and with nothing but time maybe I'll get my ass out here to post some more posts for your reading enjoyment.