No fears! Once I get in the groove, all will be well. Oh, and do yourself a favor and check out the latest trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Amazing!

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The only exception is that I will continue to post written product reviews. The reason for this is that its difficult to truly review a product in a few minutes of speaking. The written form will be as complete as I make them now. This has the benefit of providing you folk the ability to get the news out of the podcast and still get complete and thorough reviews on the site. 

Just note, however, that there will be fewer stories posted on the site as I will be spending more of my time sorting through stories for the p’cast and writing product reviews. Consider FeedReaders a weekly wrap-up for you to take in. I truly hope you enjoy the p’cast and the new format of The Dojo. I think that it will be a lot easier for me to get everything together and The Dojo will become a more complete resource for everyone. 

Thanks, as always, for sticking around!

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The HBM-770 is just like every other Bluetooth headset, as I’ve said before. It has a power button, a charging port, volume controls, and you can plug it in the charge. It sits on your ear using a large loop (See image left). which starts behind the microphone and causes it to gently rest on your ear. Its the in-ear piece which defines how it sits on the side of your head, which really seems to work for me.

The speaker horn (that’s what I’m calling it… deal) sticks out a ways and rests very lightly in your ear canal. Its so light overall that there are times when I forget I’m wearing it and put my hand to my head to check. To switch the side of your head you want to headset on, you just flip the ear hoop. You don’t have to pull it out or swap it with another one. Its also nice that this one doesn’t need to invade your ear canal in order to work. I don’t think it has significant noise cancellation, but a good, loud handset makes up for that. 

I’m actually rather amazed its so light. They actually crammed the standard LG handset charger port onto this thing, which is real overkill to me, and had they not, it could have been a few grams lighter. It might have even floated. That’s fantastic since I have managed to alienate every headset I’ve ever received. It hurts the back of my ear. It hurts the front of my ear. It has too many pieces. It goes in too far. It doesn’t go in far enough. Mostly, though, they’ve never been loud enough. 

This is loud and clear, which means I can actually hear conversations instead of guessing what someone is saying to me. Even the operational tones the headset makes are useful. I can easily identify each noise that its making without the need to consult a manual or query the phone. Its simple, clean, and without drama of any kind. I like it. Hell, it even turns on and off smartly. When its off, touch the power button for a second and it comes on. When its on, hold it for 3 seconds and it turns off. There are no incantations, certifications, or teams of professionals required to operate it. 

I can’t help it, but if you need a simple, plain Bluetooth headset, there is no other choice but the LG HBM-770. It beats the pants off of anything else out there for me. Even the Jawbone. Sure, the Jawbone looks fantastic and has that wicked noise cancellation technology which can delete lawnmowers from a conversation, but it doesn’t work for me. So, for US$80 list, I cannot and will not beat this thing with a stick of any kind. I’ve found my headset soul mate. Feel free to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

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The key to the functionality of the Pulse is manifold, but it can be counted down to the infrared camera perched under the nib (I’m old, so look it up), the voice recording capabilities, and the special paper the pens use in order to work their magic. Now don’t go groaning over the fact that you have to buy special paper. Have you seen what a simple notepad costs at Barnes & Noble these days? Shocking to the point where you’ll think that paying $20 for a 200 sheet notebook which enables the power of the Pulse is a steal and a half. Combine that with the fact that the most recent Windows version of the software can print blank pages, and you’re on easy street.

So, how do the camera, recorder, and paper work to together to make this powerful combo I speak of? That’s a more complicated question, but there are answers. I am, however, going to quickly describe the Pulse and what the package comes with. First, there’s the pen, of course. Its a large pen, but not much larger than the big, thick, expensive pens which you can buy that don’t do anything the Pulse does. In the box there is a 200 page starter notebook (8.5″ x 11″, college ruled), a nicely small and portable USB magnetic dock, a pair of stereo headphones with a microphone in each earpiece, a lanyard for the headphones, a set of replacement ink cartridges and a stylus tip (nice touch!), and a crappy faux leather case (What happened!?). Take a gander at the image below:

The pen has a display embedded in the side of it. Nicely, there are several options for how you can use the pen, and one of them is to change the orientation of the screen depending on what hand you use (I’m a lefty… deal). That grill you can see under the screen is a speaker and on the top end of the pen is the headphone/microphone jack. I’ll get to the headphones later. They’re super neat. 

Now, whenever the pen is on and you write on the special paper (check out the image), the pen stores everything you write in its memory. I have the 1GB version, though there’s also a 2GB model. So, as long as the pen is on it records what you write. Now for the voice recording. If you tap on the Record button which are conveniently located on the bottom edge of every page then the Pulse starts to record, just like a standard voice recorder. Here’s where the neat trick comes into play though: as you write, the Pulse keeps track of what you are writing and tags the audio recorded to that writing. 

When you’re done taking notes, you click the Stop button. Here’s the next neato trick: While the Pulse is not recording, you can tap on any of your notes and it will play back the audio recorded for that segment. Pretty slick, eh! The trick I’ve learned already is to just write a keyword as I’m recording instead of trying to keep up and missing stuff. If I have a question, I’ll write down a snippet to remind me of the question and then carry on with my conversation. Fraking brilliant! The other controls on the pages allow you to control volume, speed, jumping forward and backward to tracks, and making bookmarks. 

Using the headphones also sports a neat trick. The jack right into the end of the Pulse so you can listen to the recorded audio in stereo. Why? Sure, the built-in mic only records in mono, but when you jack in those wicked headphones, the Pulse records in stereo. That’s why there is a microphone in each earbud. Trust me when I tell you that this is remarkably helpful. Say, for instance, you’re sitting at a table talking with 4 or 5 people. Wearing the headphones (or wearing them down on your neck using the lanyard) lets the Pulse record your environment the same way you hear. When you play this stereo sound back later, you hear the direction people are speaking from. I find it a fantastic way to recall how the conversation was going since I can visualize the meeting. 

Once you’ve collected stuff on your new pen, its time to get that data onto your desktop. LiveScribe nicely offers both Windows and Mac OS X versions of the desktop client, though the Mac version has some catching up to do. For one thing, with the Windows version you can print your own paper. Not so on the Mac. Shame! Interestingly, the box doesn’t come with a CD in it, but when you do download the client for your operating system at least you’re getting the latest version. Once its installed, all you need to do is plug in the dock and place the pen into it. It connects and moves everything from the pen to the desktop client. Once there, everything which has a voice recording attached to it is highlighted in green. 

Now, if that wasn’t enough, there’s more. Say, for example, that you’ve been taking notes for a few months now and you’ve been asked by a colleague or classmate for a note you made back in some project meeting or lecture. All you need to do is load up LiveScribeDesktop and search for the keywords. The software is so smart that it can actually parse your handwriting and show you which pages any hits are on. No kidding! This thing is so smart that it can tell which notebook you are in and which page you’re turned to. Very, very cool indeed. 

There are some other gee willikers things the Pulse can do, but they really don’t add to the functionality except for the calculator. The nice thing that the developers have allowed for is adding new features through software updates. In fact, for the first month I had this thing I received no less that 10 updates to the pen software. Its pretty amazing that the Pulse sports a 150MHz ARM9 processor and a 300mAh LiIon rechargeable battery and crams ups to 2GB of storage space into such a cool pen. 

Simply put, if you pair the Pulse up with an iPhone, BlackBerry, or one of the new Palm Pre devices, you are set to go laptop free. I’m not kidding. The only thing that LiveScribe is missing is some more options in paper products. They have the big college-ruled notebooks and some largish bound notebooks with lines or no lines, but there are no notebooks or calendar books. I’d love to see a notebook which is as long as the Pulse, 3-4″ wide, unlined, with a barrel on the spine into which you can slide the Pulse while you’re not working with it. That and I’d really like to see an integrated calendar management tool. Maybe even synching it up to Windows or Mac OS X. Now that would rock. 

Now that I’ve turned you all on to the Pulse, I would like to inform you that you can have your own right now. You can head on over to LiveScribe’s web site and order one there or you can swing over to your local Target and get it there. The 1GB model runs for US$150 while the 2GB model runs for US$200. The reality is that this is just one of the single coolest gadgets available on the planet and I can only see it getting better and better.

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Speaking of the Blackberry, I’ve been digging up some software. For upcoming review will be PocketDay, a very powerful data integrator, and Agendus, a new addition to the Blackberry fold. I’m also going to run down a range of freeware applications which are, frankly, good and bad. On the Mac side, I’ll be reviewing Missing Sync for Blackberry, which so far is brilliant. Later on I’ll be diving head first into Plazmic, RIM’s theme development environment, and try to cobble together some not-so-crappy themes for a few Blackberrys. 

To round things up, I’ve got some new lappy bags from Sumdex which are quite nice and not too expensive (hint: they make bags for other companies who then mark them up). I’ve then got a pair of reviews coming up for a duo of new products from our old pals over at FileMaker. Finally, I’m starting up a new project! I’m teaching myself how to program, and I’m going to start with “C”, a language I tried to learn back in High School. Go Wildcats!

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The ethic behind the Defender Series is to provide the best possible protection without limiting access to or diminishing the value of the device which the case protects. After ensconcing my black Centro in the case, it becomes protected from the elements (aside from full emersion) and yet is remarkably easy to use. It is certainly chunkier, and somewhat heavier, but if you are prepared to protect your phone against almost all damage, then you’re ready to use this case.

The case is very smartly designed. It comes in three components which work very closely together to provide several layers of protection to your Centro. In the box, the case comes mostly assembled in that the hard shell and the soft cover are already joined. Taking apart the case involves removing the rubber soft cover, then splitting the seams to split the hard shell into front and rear shells. Inside the case was a thin, rubbery sheet which had the impression of the frontside of a Centro on one leaf. I soon figured out that this is the internal protection. The internal sheet also acts as a screen protector, using static to neatly attach to the display. The cover is perfectly clear, as well, making it very easy to see through. You can see the parts in the image below.

Once you’ve neatly placed the internal cover where it goes, you slip the front of the Centro into the front hard shell which has the added benefit of stopping the internal cover from moving around any more. Then you pull down the back cover, position it, then slip on the back shell. The two halves snap together easily enough to hold them firmly, but when I took it apart again to take the image you see to the left it wasn’t difficult to get them separated again. Once the whole kit ‘n kaboodle is together, you pull the rubber cover on and fit it to the cutouts and pins which hold it to the shell. Now its all one unit and ready to rock. 

The Defender case isn’t water proof, but it is somewhat resistant to dust and moisture. The case is very nicely designed to offer access to all of the ports and controls on the Centro. There is a clear port on the back for the camera and a grill for the speaker which has a dust cover preventing dust from getting into the case. There is another filter protecting the earpiece on the top front of the handset, as well. To the left of that there is a passthrough which lets you see the power/alert light. There are rubber actuator buttons on the left side which let you control the buttons for volume, ringer, and the option button right through the case. At the bottom of the front of the case there is an internal horn which directs speech into the microphone which is located at the bottom of the phone.

To get to the stylus and the Silent switch there is a peel-out rubber cover. Its very easy to open, and once you’ve practiced with it a bit, a snap to close again. There is another such cover on the bottom of the case which allows access to the sync/power port and 1/8th inch headphone jack. That one is a tad more difficult to close, but it shouldn’t be very often that you have to open it. Overall, the fit of the case is nearly perfect and doens’t creak a lot or limit your access to anything. Sound quality even seems to be improved, especially through the microphone which the case smartly redirects to the front, therefore pointing right at your mouth. 

The feel of the case is wonderful. It sits well in the hand and greatly increases the grip without making it too much heavier than the handset itself. Pushing controls and using the touchscreen through the protective cover is easy. Even using the Centro’s dinky QWERTY keyboard works just fine. In fact, the case may be improving my big-fingered accuracy, which is a feat but can’t be confirmed. The case itself comes with a belt pack which the case firmly snaps into. It takes a good tug to pull the handset out, but if you want this case, then you’re likely looking for protection, which includes not dropping it from your belt. 

I’m quite pleased with the case and the design, fully knowing what the case was designed for. Otterbox has created yet another unquestionably capable, mission-specific case, adding another notch to its already notched up case belt. The Otterbox Defender Series case for Palm Centro is available now and can be had for US$49.95.

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So, can IE beat Firefox? No. Its not possible for two reasons. One, Microsoft is slowly but surely losing marketshare to Apple. Two, Microsoft has been losing its edge in applications for some time. They’re being beaten by the likes of Google and Facebook and there are dozens of Web 2.0 sites which do neat stuff. Three, Microsoft can’t win at media players (the Zune is about to die, I’m sure) or smartphones. Apple has those markets sewn up. Four, the Firefox web browser works on nearly all platforms including Windows and Mac OS X. With addons which work in both places and tools which can sync them, there’s little need to focus on a single platform. Five, People are bored with being brand loyal and are happy to own a Dell lappy and an Apple iPod.

So, in the end, it doesn’t come down to how well MS has programmer IE8. It will never matter until their produce versions of IE with the same features and compatibilities for Mac OS X and Linux. Windows compatibility is become a thing of the past. I’m not saying were in the “cloud” yet. That won’t happen for some time (4-7 years, likely later rather than earlier). There are a lot of things we do in the cloud, though. Google, Facebook, MySpace (blech!), WoW, YouTube, Pandora, NetFlix, Hulu, etc… We email. We browse. We shop. We SMS. We post silly videos. We play. We meet. We goof off. We speak out mind. IE8 may make that happen better than IE7 did, but it still can’t ever beat Firefox.

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I have to say that I’m very disappointed to hear of this. Apparently, a PR rep at Belkin (not mine, fortunately) has been named as the individual blatantly offering $0.65 per fake review of Belkin products on social product review sites. That’s not all, however, as the fake reviewer was also required to find reviews to competing products and mark the reviews as negative in hopes that it would “delegitamize” them. This kind of baldfaced, scandalous, anti-competitive marketing is about as bad as it can get for people like me.

I’m a blogger. I started PDA Handyman in January of 2001, which means I’ve been doing this for 8 years now. I’ve had large and small readerships (I currently draw around 130,000 readers a month) and I created the site and maintain it because I wanted to carry my love of neat little gadgets to anyone interested in my opinion. With that in mind, I determined early on that I would be careful about how I would review products.

My first rule is simple. If I don’t think a product is of any value to me, I don’t request it from the vendor for review. This is why you don’t see reviews of (much less stories promoting) stupid ass products like USB hand warmers or Hello Kitty mobile phones. Sure, I’ll run up the flag on something stupid to ridicule it, but certainly never to give it any time in the limelight. I request quality products which I think will carry a value over to my readers.

To see, then, that this unscrupulous PR person at Belkin, a company whom I’ve had lots of dealing in the past with, was paying for reviews disgusts me. Later in the piece you will learn that Belkin would also prepare special ROMs for certain devices which would mask any of the known issues those devices were having to skew the results for the reviewer. Since I haven’t reviewed any Belkin products since the Great Mobodojo Revivial of 2008 or during PDA Handyman’s Halcyon Days, there are no Belkin products reviews on the site now.

In case you don’t know, and you likely don’t, PR people who ship out products for review will often open the product, charge it up, and insert a personal note or reviewers guide. It does now raise questions in my mind about who could have done what to anything I have reviewed, though from my experience I’d have to say that the chances of that happening are slim to none. As you know if you’re a regular reader, I very rarely give out 100% glowing reviews. In some cases, like Sony’s nearly unusable Mylo 2 internet tablet, I give very, very poor reviews.

My PR person looked at it and responded thusly:

“That’s a pretty rough review, but thanks for sending along the link. As for the P Series, I will add you to our list, but we have a bunch of requests, so it’s going to be a wait before we can get you a unit. I will be in touch, though, and will let you know as soon as we have one available. It’s a great product and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

As you can clearly see, I didn’t receive a note informing me that due to my unpleasant review of the Mylo 2 I would no longer be allowed to review Sony products. This is because there is an awareness between PR people and journalists which says that you win some and you lose some. PR people are paid to promote a product or a company, not to force a prescribed view on anyone. PR people are also pragmatic in understanding that not everything a company makes will the consumers like. The PR firm just won’t use any of my review in their PR pieces. I do know, however, that someone will come along and smartly decide not to buy something because of what I wrote.

For that, I’m glad. I want my readers to walk away from Mobodojo feeling like they got some value out of their time on the site. The last thing I’d ever want, as I imagine any legitimate blogger would, is to be considered a mouthpiece or a shill for a vendor or vendors. Belkin may need some time to restructure so they can save some face in this disgraceful debacle. I truly hope that they do. They make some good stuff.

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Just so you know right off the bat, we’re not talking US$69 special at Walmart here. This is a US$229 MSRP piece of crafted espresso machine. Well, mostly crafted. The key to the perfect cup of cappuccino is the concerted effort of a selection of tools and the skill and/or practice of the barista. Each and every part of a well oiled machine must work in harmony for the result to be palatable. So, before I can review the espresso machine, I must first talk of the coffee beans and the grinder. In my opinion, there are only two coffee beans in the entire world. One is Jose’s, a low-cost brand you can buy at CostCo, the likes of which cannot be found elsewhere, with exception to one, 8 O’clock. 8 O’clock’s peerless bean selection, blending, and roasting produces the perfectly rounded selection of coffees from a single bean. (I should note that Green Mountain Coffee is likely the single best coffee bean on the planet, but only within spitting distance of Vermont. I’m convinced that they have roasteries around the country, and not all are equal. We used to shop at the original store in Waitsfield. -TCR.)

Its all in how you grind it and how you prepare it for use. I will not detail coffee grinding here, but suffice it to say that the correct grind is required of the correct bean. You want a mostly fine grind for espresso machines. Once the grind is ready, allowing the greshly ground beans to offer their most flavorful potential, you place it into the filter (that thing with a handle on it), tamp it down just right (it takes practice with your machine to find the right amount), and then secure it to the base of the pressure head. Now, you don’t just turn on the water. You need to heat up the system first. I suggest, for the Café Roma at least, that you let it warm up for about 10 minutes (check the on-board water level first) before firing up the pump.

The Café Roma is a simplified espresso machine designed to be used by people not accustomed to brewing their own coffees outside of a Mr. Coffee or Krups drip machine. Turn the knob left to make coffee, then turn it right to make steam. This means that the Café Roma is a single pump machine. Most machines above US$200 sport dual pumps, but this one seems to work well. I also had an issue with not being able to moderate the steam pressure for preparing the froth, but Breville has managed to figure out a new tip which makes frothing as simple as peeling a pouring the milk into the mug. (I personally steam in the mug I drink from as it warms the mug and makes less to clean. -TCR.)

The Café Roma comes with two double-walled espresso shots, the filter handle and inserts for single, double, and pod, a frothing jug, a tamper and scoop, and a small cleaning tool. One thing I noticed right off is that when the pump is working the deck vibrates and the shot cups start moving around. At my wife’s suggestion, is placed a slightly damp towel under them and no more moving about. Second, when I moved over to frothing it didn’t seem like it was doing anything at first, but it certainly was. Before long my mug was warm, the milk was hot, and the froth was creamy and thick. Extended use has revealed some best practices, but I’m sure its different with everyone. Its also easy to clean and keep together. It has a heated top, like its larger brethren, and the water canister is sizable without being obtrusive. Everything about it and its accessories speaks of pretty good quality, except the tamper/scoop.

It took a few weeks, but now the coffee is coming out nearly perfect. Yeah. Nearly. I don’t know what it is about the Café Roma, but its just won’t make strong coffee. I’ve adjusted the grind, modified the tamping, tried darker roasted beans, even tried several Italian incantations to no avail. I don’t know if its the pressure or the way that Breville creates its pressure head, or how the holes are made in the filter cup or what, but the higher pressure system seems to work fine, it just won’t make stronger, Turkish-style coffee. Feh. Do I like the machine? Yes, I do, and it would be perfect for anyone who doesn’t have the same extreme needs I do when it comes to variance in coffee. I’m not a fan of burnt beans. I like a well rounded, robust, complex flavor, and the Café Roma just doesn’t seem to be able to bring out the more finessed ranges.

I’m pleased to have it on my countertop, though.

* I made up this number. Sue me.

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When Vista was announced, it was reveled that Microsoft’s Windows team was yanking features (including WinFS, their new filesystem baby), and then its system requirements, I knew we were in for a rocky road with Microsoft’s obsession with making Windows more Mac-like. I was far from wrong. Vista has turned out to be Microsoft’s least liked OS ever (even less popular than Windows Me, though not nearly as hated as BOB).

Microsoft even stooped to tricking people into liking Vista by showing them Mojave, a tweaked version of Vista. Now, if they’re willing to modify the system to make all references to Vista become Mojave instead, what else were they willing to change… but I digress. I reported here that I would not be upgrading, and for some time I didn’t, but since Microsoft had sent me a press kit with a copy of Vista Ultimate, I couldn’t resist for long.

My fears, however, were well founded, and even on my powerhouse MacBook Pro, the best rated laptop (not Mac laptop, but laptop overall. If you don’t believe me, check it out in PC World Magazine) for running Windows Vista, I was disappointed. I had stability issues, speed problems, application crashes, random errors, and just general lack of cohesiveness, even after upgrading to Vista SP1. So, I removed Vista and reinstalled XP with SP2 back into my Boot Camp partition. I was done with Windows Vista.

But then… along came Windows 7. Microsoft had been telling us that it had been working on Windows 7. Now, my conspiracy theory explanation is that Microsoft determined that they were not going to finish Windows 7 in time to release anywhere near their announced date and so they were going to have a hard time getting rid of Windows XP the longer people used it. Its at the time, I believe, that they plucked a few concepts from their target OS and crafted a version of Windows Server 2008 with the UI elements from the upcoming Windows 7 to cobble together Vista.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Interestingly, Vista’s release did quell the dissent which was pelting the intarwebs. It didn’t take long, though, for the issues to start cropping up and people to begin complaning. The complaints from all corners of the computing world that it seemingly pushed Microsoft to announce Windows 7 early. They opened beta testing to more developers, and word started leaking out that, while it looked like Vista, it didn’t work like it. The errors were gone, the UI pains were gone or modified to work better, the underlying core was far more efficient, and it all took less resources to do the same thing Vista had so much trouble with.

When Microsoft released Windows 7 to general beta, I hopped on over to my resource and got a copy. I did not, however, want to install it on my MacBook Pro. I already have a nearly year old install of XP SP2 over there, keep it up to date, and play my Windows games over there. Sure, I use Steam, but I’d had to back everything up and it would be a hassle. My wife just stepped on the Averatec AIO, de-tailing the mouse and gouging the screen, so that was out, so my eyes fell to the Averatec Buddy netbook which came with the AIO. I burned the installer DVD (x86, if you’re interested) image to a disc, plugged in my LG external USB DVD burner, and fired it up.

Total install was absolutely painless. It even archived the XP install into the ../windows.old directory and created a boot loader entry for it. I had previously installed Wubi’s Xubuntu, and that boot entry was retained as well. I should note for details sake that I’ve not booted either, removed them from the boot.ini file and deleted them. I wanted to focus on Windows 7 and nothing else. For posterity, Xubuntu 8.10 worked fantastically well, though I was unable to get the wireless module to compile correctly and was unable to test the webcam. Of course, XFce is a fantastic window manager, but its not resource intensive.

That’s good, too, since the Averatec Buddy netbook sports a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB drive, a 10″ 1024×600 display, an integrated webcam, wi-fi and Ethernet connectivity, and SD card slot and an anemic 3-cell 2200 mAh battery pack. Its really no different than just about any other netbook out there and its a repro of the MSI Wind series. From what I can tell, it can even take the replacement batteries designed for the MSI Wind. With less than two hours of battery life, getting a large 9 or 12 cell pack should be a priority. I also wish it had integrated Bluetooth, but you get what you get.

Installation of Windows 7 took approximately one hour, maybe a little less. The process is generally the same as installing Vista, but is cleaner. That may be my imagination. Setup was straightforward, though it wouldn’t accept my key until I entered it correctly (yeah, I’m a dork). W7 intalled drivers for video (Intel GMA950), audio, and Ethernet (everything else is Realtek except the webcam) but was unable to install drivers for the wi-fi adapter, SD card reader, and Buffalo webcam. Installation of drivers spec’ed for Vista was easy, though.

There are a number of improvements to the entire system. I’m not going to get into details in this article. I’ll save that for a full review when it actually ships. I’ve experienced it when Microsoft makes last minute changes to a product after the Beta phase has been passed, so I don’t want to miss anything here. RIght off the bat, though, Microsoft makes it clear that they knew they made mistakes with the Vista interface, so they’ve made nice changes which make it more usable. The first thing you will notice is the intergration of the Quicklaunch buttons, the Start Menu pinning feature, and the list of running tasks all into one neat, clean, tidy, and functional icon.

The taskbar also works slightly differently. You’ll note that the entire Start button fits all the way into the taskbar. This makes the pinned icons or icons from active applications larger and, therefore, easier to see. You can change this behavior by making the icons small (then the Start button protrudes again), add the title, or show all buttons for all windows, just like the old system. The new visual identification system, however, just works better. Its amazing that its taken so many years for Microsoft to get this. Apple finally got it when Mac OS X 10.0 shipped in 2000 and introduced the dock. Linux got it years earlier with various window managers.

The second thing you notice is that everything seems to run faster and more efficiently. One drawback is having to use Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s unfortunate choice for a direction for their web browser. IE7 was bad enough, but it could be tolerated. IE8 is just crap. Like most products Microsoft created based on the successes of others (like Firefox), they have taken what is good from them and created overly complicated and unecessarily obtuse versions. Don’t look to IE8′s add-ons to be anything even vaguely like Firefox’s plugins. I installed one for Skype into both Firefox and IE8, and where the former works just fine, the latter still won’t start, and there’s no clear way to get add-ons to start. Feh.

The third thing I noticed was how theming and interface tweaking has changed. Its mostly the same way as it was in Vista, but they’ve added some important changes. For one, you can now select any number of wallpaper images and arbitrarily decide when they change. Aero also apparently requires far less resources to work right. Linux distributions have proven that transparencies can be done easily on low power systems for years (I don’t count it when the console app shows the wallpaper but not the windows which are underneath… That’s just silly). Aero would not run on a MacBook (pre-unibody) in Vista, but will run on an underpowered netbook in Windows 7. Aero isn’t just some silly eye candy, either. There are subtle little behaviors which Aero can perform which improve readability and object identification.

For software, I promptly installed Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email, OpenOffice 3.0 for productivity, and, for the first time ever, Digsby for IM and social networking. All installations worked perfectly and there were no hiccups. Since I was getting the latest versions of them for installation I didn’t need to do any patching. I also went into Windows Update out of habit and gave that a shot, only to get an error. Oddly, two days later it started getting updates on its own. I don’t know why it happened, but it did. There’s been a long history of Windows fixing itself while giving no indications as to how or why. Maybe it was because I rebooted. Overall, everything I installed works just fine. I also installed Skype 4.0 beta and it works perfectly as well.

SIDEBAR: I’m disappointed and pleased with Digsby at the same time. While its very functional and has a lot of great features, it tries to trick you into installing no less than SIX freaking spyware/cashware/crapware titles onto your machine. You can opt out of each one, but its not a no-brainer. TIP: click the Decline button for everything after the first page where its deactivated (you have to install Digsby). I’d rather donate money to the project. -TCR

Working on a small 1024×600 display isn’t hard, either. Windows 7 has some new features which deal with this (or I didn’t notice them in Vista since I never installed it on a netbook). When you drag a window to the top of the display, it automatically fullscreens it. It will also move dialogs so that the buttons are exposed. They also added a permanent Show Desktop button to the far right of the taskbar. Once I had sussed all of that out, I then installed a few widgets. At first, I thought that they just made the widget bar invisible, but then I added more widgets than will fit, and it showed up in the middle of the screen. That’s when I realized you can place widgets anywhere on the display.

I haven’t tested enterprise networking, directory integration, VPN connectivity, or any of the other elements which made working with Vista a pain in the ass, but most of the crap that Vista dished out seems to have been rectified in Windows 7. Of course, its still running on NTFS and there was no sign on WinFS. I think that Microsoft may be on track to fix the problems they created from whole cloth with Vista, but I don’t think there will be a way to fix the growth Apple has made into their territory, and that’s a good thing. Microsoft needs to do a lot of growing up. It will have to innovate in order to remain relevant. Windows 7 is just a start.

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