paulmellors dot net

I’ve been using the RC version of windows 7 and it’s great, i can’t think of anything i don’t like about it, however, the most obvious is the lack of applications that are supplied by default.

For example, i can download and install windows live photo gallery which has basic tools, but what happens if, as i normally do, want to edit the photos, give then some luvin I can’t without downloading an app or purchasing one.

Same goes for office apps, download one or purchase one. ok so it’s not a problem to download openoffice or install gimp for windows, but wouldn’t it be better for MS to supply these with the OS? As it stands with a default installation, you can do pretty much sweet FA. WIndows 7 has even removed the default mail client, so no outlook express.

It seems strange to me that, while MS seems to improve the OS time after time, they still want to make people spend $ before they can use it to it’s full potential

TIP #1: Install a linux distribution, it’s all free and you don’t need to spend anything other than your time downloading it and burning it to a CD….

And embed a song in your brain till the end of time

I get many a friend asking me about email attachments and the fact they just open them without thinking, not a good thing really. Here is a video from the BBC that hightlights the issues. Hay perhaps it’s a good reason to move to a open source solution?

I upgraded one of my laptops from vista home premium to Windows 7 RC last night, and to be honest it went really smooth, i was pleasantly surprised. However one thing really confused me. As part of the upgrade it removed windows mail, that basically means that a default install won’t include any email clients i've only spent about 15 mins with the RC so don't quote me on that. Yes i know they can be downloaded and there is Windows Live essentials, but it seemed strange to me.

Is this related to all the actions against Microsoft in the courts? Why don’t they take a leaf out of the linux distributions and include one but make it uninstallable??

While i do like windows quite a bit, i still can’t justify running windows on certain machines while there are free alternatives.

I’ve just downloaded windows 7 rc and installed it to a virtualbox virtual machine, all was well and good until i installed the Guest Additions.  For some reason it now only displays 256 colours.  I did read a suggestion saying  run the install using compatability mode.  No worky   Does anyone have a resolution for this as i don’t want to upgrade my vista machine until it’s actually GOLD.    Other than that, it does look nice.

Then again with all these new linux distributions perhaps i should go back to that instead of shelling out £xxxxx