Two Slashes

Since ancient times, seven has been the number of choice for everything.  After all, there are exactly seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  There are (obviously) seven days in the week.  James Bond‘s agent number is 007.  (And what list of numbers would be complete without a blogger throwback to Brooke (more commonly known as Oh My Seven)?  Alright, that was corny…)

But while I’m either pleased with or indifferent to the aforementioned items, there’s one thing tarnishing the number for me.  And (to what I assume is Justin’s eternal glee), of all things, it’s a Microsoft product.

If you’re waiting on me to rant about Windows Mobile 6.5 and my Treo Pro, you would be half-right.  Literally.  Just one-half away from the appropriate version of Windows.  (Well, and a gigantic platform jump over, but who’s counting other than me?)  If you thought I willingly put myself into a position beta-testing the Next Big Thing™ to come out of Washington (other than the Mariners), you’d be right.  Seven points to you.

You might ask why I did it.  Back in October, I posted about how I have no problem whatsoever using in-development software.  (In fact, I’m writing this post using one of the latest nightly builds of Firefox, but I digress…)  Of course, that was before I willingly installed this pile of dung, and in the future I’m going to be putting more consideration into that policy.

Before you ask, it’s not the computer’s fault.  I’ve lived on Pentium 4s for the past several years, and finally decided in December to build a new Core 2 Quad desktop for school.  Of course, what would be better than loading up the test build of the operating system that it will most likely be seeing for most of its useful life, right?  That’s what I thought…

I’ve been using dealing with Windows 7 for about a month, and while I’ve taken to some of the “new” features, on the whole, I still feel like the experience is missing something.  A big something.

Performance-wise, everything seems to run at a very pleasing rate.  Even in beta, the operating system is quick to respond, and I’ve gotten used to some of the “enhancements” (read: mind-numbing changes for the worse) Microsoft made.  Things I’d also installed out of humor, like my old TV tuner, installed without any trouble.  Granted, the workflow in things like the Control Panel could be improved, but I’m going to let that one slide because it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen.

My biggest gripe is that Windows somehow seems to have lost control of user processes.  The same build of Thunderbird, for example, works fine on other operating systems (like my Windows XP-based laptop), but hangs in 7 to the point where it cannot be killed using the Windows Task Manager or even the appropriate command-line commands, and ultimately requires me to restart the machine from the front panel.  (As I write this, there is an unresponsive Thunderbird window where my desktop normally goes.)  This is on top of very annoying bugs I’ve already managed to encounter on more than one occasion.  I’ve also tried several applications that hang immediately, such as the NX remote desktop client, and plenty of applications you would expect to work (like Picasa) blow up without administrative permissions.

My next complaint is with data transfers.  For some reason, I have issues transferring files to and from removable media, though network transfers are fine, as is the removable media when used in conjunction with my laptop.  According to other people running the beta, they haven’t had any such problems, so this might be something I need to look into at a personal level, but it gets annoying that I need to transfer everything over in small chunks.

Win7′s inability to sync properly at all with my Treo is another showstopper, as far as I’m concerned.  And I would complain about power management, but I can’t say I’ve noticed any issues – my computer is kept on all the time, except when it’s being rebooted to ward off evil spirits and afflicted processes.

I’ll keep my hopes up (slightly – I wouldn’t want them dashed, as this is a Microsoft product we’re talking about) that the problems I’ve found get fixed before release.  I don’t know if I would be placing monetary bets on all of these issues being resolved before the final release, however.

What are your thoughts about the beta?

So, it’s been a long time coming, but I was finally bored to crack open some of the development tools and get back to work on some of the projects I have hosted here, at least insofar as some bug-fixing.  (Which is funny, actually, since I have legitimate work and schoolwork to do…)

One of the first projects to get an upgrade is Rolling Paper, the nearly pointless little wallpaper-cycling utility I wrote eons ago to randomly swap wallpapers in a given time period, almost turning your Windows desktop into a picture frame.  (Hint:  If you’re looking to do that without any of the desktop icons in the way, you might want to check out HideIcons while you’re at it.)

While Rolling Paper hasn’t picked up any new features (I know, I need to fix that little one-folder problem…), it has picked up an important bugfix.  A bug that resulted from my stupidity and a bit of zealous copy-pasting with some of the settings code that made it impossible to use the software more than once or twice without manually rewriting the configuration every time you used it.  If you happen to be using it, you might want the update, available now on the Rolling Paper project page.