Zach Beauvais

Windows 7: Vista-II

// January 12th, 2009 // Comments // Apps, perspective, review, tech

Reviews of new Windows releases always seem to say the same thing, depending on what kind of person writes them. Mac enthusiasts say it’s yet again stolen more MacOS features. Microsofties defend the new-found stability and the speed compared to last editions. Non-techies say how pretty this one is in comparison with the last, et cetera.

Well, I’ve got a preview build of Windows 7, and I’d like to give you a three-way look at it.

The Good

Windows 7 already feels stronger and faster than Vista. It installed easily using Bootcamp, and is happily running on my MacbookPro. When I got all the drivers working (to be expected running on an Apple, I suppose) it’s robust and more or less respectable. This particular build/driver combination is particularly nice, because it’s got some special Apple drivers which let it play nice with my keyboard and F-button settings (volume, keyboard and screen brightness, eject).

Windows found my external display fairly quickly, though it would not use it’s full resolution at first. Then, randomly, it let me do so (though nothing had been downloaded or tweaked—it couldn’t; I had yet to connect to my network!). This was a nice surprise, but I kind of wish it would let me choose what’s going on instead of hiding its preferences and features in the background (more on this later).

A slight improvement over Vista is the ease by which Windows 7 seemed to handle getting online. It’s a breeze to select a wireless network and get connected. I also like some of the more subtle things they’ve done with 7, which make it a bit more pleasant to use such as the way they’ve layed-out the control panel settings, and the better file-layout in the navigation panels of explorer windows.

By far, so far, the best thing has been the speed. Windows 7, at this stage, is fast enough to work nicely. I don’t know how it will do after months of updates, registry bloat, and anti-malware software; but it MUST be better than Vista in this regard. Finally, however, is a small thing that I like: Windows Live Writer. It’s great! It’s available for Vista, however, so it’s not new. However, the Live Essentials on this version seem a bit easier to get going and running. Windows Live Writer is the only application that I wish I had on the Mac, and it’s still the best blogging tool out there.

The Bad

Firstly, why is networking with Windows so hard? It found my router, got onto the internet, and updated itself fine. It talks with the Windows Mothership on the cloud easily enough. Would it, however, find my Mac on the same network? My iPhone? Yes… through Bluetooth! When will Windows start to recognise they need to make networking easy for users?

Secondly, this is basically Vista done not-so-badly. It’s, so far, what Vista should have been. Light (ish), easy, stable. But, to me, these are table-stakes. It’s not that impressive to say: “Our operating system doesn’t hang when you use default features! It’s stable, It’s easy!” It should be, why are you so proud of this?

The final reason why this isn’t going to be the best OS out there, however, is that it’s still Windows. Now, before you label me a fanboy or anti-establishmentarian; let me say why this is a problem. There are countless menus and features and settings and objects on this system. There are too many, unconnected settings. Windows Control Panel has 63 icons! OSX, in comparison, makes do with 26. The user also doesn’t often see an immediate effect from a settings change. After several sets of “OK” are pressed, I find out my network adapter’s been disabled, and have to go though a completely different route to get it back. The language used to describe the setup options has always been difficult to follow. Consider the Networking setup: Some based on actions, so you can “set up a new connection or network;” “connect to a network;” “fix network problem” etc. Others are categorical ‘HomeGroup,” “Internet Options,” “Wireless Network Connection” etc… I’ve had to go through every single one of them, and many subsequent menus besides in order to setup my home network. The “wizard” does nothing. It’s always been this way with Windows…you are expected to know exactly where the settings are hidden within some obscure menu, but you’re teased with easy options along the way. My favourite screen so far has been one which says: “Troubleshooting could not identify the problem.” Thanks for the help…

This problem stems from always being the Least Common Denominator. What results is that every set of functions is a compromise of some kind.

The Not-Ugly but unfortunately Not-Original

It’s not a new thing to say that this version of Windows is copying Mac. I grew up being told that Windows has stolen every good idea it’s ever had from someone else. While this may have been true with many things, I can’t believe they have never had an original thought. Despite its many shortcomings, Microsoft’s software is the market dominator, and has been for as long as anyone can remember. Sure, they’ve bought companies and talent along the way (so has Google… so has Apple!), but the Live stuff is pretty different, and works decently (except for its annoying insistence that all the services you use should be MS—a characteristic it shares with Apple services like MobileMe.)

Having a look at the promotional video for VistaII—I mean, Windows 7—and I’m struck by how little there is to say about it.

Firstly: “Windows Gurus”? Tell me that’s not a play on “Apple Geniuses”. You can imagine the board meeting that chose that name: “Right, we need something of an authority on the matter that sounds brainy and starts with G, but isn’t ‘Genius.’ Wilkinson?” “Uh, er, guardian…guarantor…general… guru?”

They seem terribly proud about how the windows all have previews and there’s a brilliant new thing called a Task Bar! Windows has had a taskbar for years, this one just works a bit more like the Dock in OSX. That’s it, move along.

They’ve renamed the “Workgroup” the “Homegroup”, and it does the same thing. It’s tweaked, supposedly, but it’s just a network. I find myself wondering if this a reaction to the “I’m a Mac” ads? “This isn’t work, it’s home. We’ve renamed it, HOME, cause it’s not at work. Get it?”

IE has had a few features added, called “accelerators” which essentially allow for interaction with the web through the browser. It could be a great step, except that there are Firefox folks doing it so much better. Bit.Ly plugin allows for a huge range of interaction with data on the screen through Firefox.  Ubiquity on Firefox is a genuinely new way of blurring the web, our human interactions, and our machines. “Accelerators” just seem like a glorified right-click or contextual menu. There’s also “InPrivate Browsing” which turns off cookies and history. Guess what Safari has called this? “Private Browsing”. Go figure…

I know this is a preview release, but my overall impression is that Windows 7 should have been launched in 2006. This is great, for a Windows release, it works and pretty well so far. Aside from the basic problem that it is Windows, and works by being everything to everyone, it’s OK. But it’s not exciting, it’s not THAT new, and it feels a bit like we should be seeing a real breakthrough by now.

Aesthetics and Applications

// June 12th, 2008 // Comments // blogging, tech

Image by . SantiMB . (too busy) via Flickr

I grew up in a Mac family. My dad used to programme accounts recievable applications on an old, black and white Macintosh, and that was my first encounter with any sort of GUI. Since then, I’ve used both Mac’s and PC’s and have a MacBook for work and a poorly-running, but still brand-new Vista box in my home study. I’ve even dabbled with Linux several times.

However, I’m starting to realise something: an aweful lot of applications (on every platform) get aesthetics completely wrong.

There’s a balance between looking nice, feeling comfortable, and aiding use. I think that the appearance of an application is as important a part of the design as the application itself. It’s a part of the usability, it’s not ‘eye candy’ slapped on for gratuitous reasons.

This is something Mac’s understand, and their GUI is gorgeous. Vista’s pretty good-looking itself, but that’s it’s problem: that’s all it is. The operating system is huge, heavy, slow and unpredictible. It crashes, hangs, and takes minutes to load. I bought a brand new (though admittedly budget-conscious PC) from a manufacturer who shall remain nameless (cough! Dell! cough…) which barely runs just the OS. I’ve had to triple the RAM and will be re-installing this weekend.

So, what Can I do about it? I can switch Aero off… leaving me with a huge, heavy, unpredictable and slightly-less-slow OS which is now ugly. So there’s Vista, tipping in the balance with an “eye candy” approach at aesthetic design.

I see the visual layout, graphics, and overall presence of an application as part of it’s feature-set. It should be intuitive to interact with it somehow. I fine OS X much more intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing. Some apps written for it, however, fall far short it it’s high mark.

ecto is a blogging application for OS X, and it’s plain. It’s not minimalist-chic. It’s not “sleek”. It’s boring and plain. It also isn’t intuitive, unfortunately. It’s got loads of features, but it misses its greatest asset: the fact that it’s built on the most advanced Graphic User Interface ever developed.

Strangely, I much prefer to blog using Windows Live Writer! Its design works well, it’s interesting-looking (without being LOUD, like the rest of the intrusive Vista package) and it does what it says it will. It interacts very well with images (unlike ecto!), videos and links. It also has the ingenious feature of dowloading your site’s CSS so you can actually see how the post *should* look in situ. (Granted, this doesn’t always work…)

The point of this slightly oblique and poorly-thought-out rant, is that the point of software is to make peoples lives better. Designers completely miss that. Window’s OS designers seem to have thought: “I know, they want pretty. We’ll give ‘em pretty. It’ll be so pretty, it’ll need 3GB RAM and a high-end Graphics Card just to run… that’ll show ‘em!”

Well, it’s rubbish.

However, whoever was heading the design team for the Live suite (Writer, Mail, Messenger et al), was clearly desinging from an end-user’s perspective. Their thoughts were probably more along the lines of:

“hmm, when I blog, I like to be able to do that with images. Wouldn’t it be good if we could see how it’d look on the site before we publish? Yeah, Hey! I think people will find this useful… ooh, that looks good, too.”

I’d love to hear how you get on when designing or using software. Being me, I don’t think it stops with software design, but is actually a feature of how we live and interact. Let me know…

sliderocket: Powerpoint on the web

// April 7th, 2008 // Comments // Uncategorized, Web 2.0, interesting, review, tech

I read about sliderocket over on R/WW, and at ZDNet, today, and signed up for a Beta. While I’m waiting for them to send one out (I hope) I’d like to talk a little about why I love the idea of this product.

Firstly, I was recently tasked with conducting a 40-minute presentation. This is something I was quite excited to do, since it was about the Semantic Web, but I didn’t have any presentation software on my PC. I downloaded a copy of OpenOffice, which has a presentation application built in, and found it ironically bland for an app called ‘Impress’. I know, as a person of geekish persuasion (I’m only half-geek, on my father’s side) I shouldn’t give a toss about what an application looks like, but should focus entirely on what it does and how well. But this is a presentation–aesthetics is what the software was written for. I’m not crunching numbers or writing code, I’m standing up in front of people discussing an exciting topic, trying to put forward a well-polished talk. I want my slides to reflect that–they need to add to the talk, and they can’t do that if they’re boring.

Not only this, but I find OpenOffice’s Impress seemed to have loads of options in random places, and a difficult-to-follow system of preferences. It has dozens of background settings, but it’s like pulling teeth to get a gradient you like.

Eventually, I downloaded a trial of Microsoft’s Powerpoint 2007 and found it much, much better. It’s easy to use, simple-to-navigate, and aesthetically pleasing. It’s huge downside, however, is that it’s expensive.

Now, having seen sliderocket’s site, and had a look at their demo presentation, I’m struck by three things. First, it’s gorgeous! The actual presentation is stunning, and eye-catching and flawless. This is desperately important for a presentation app.

Secondly, because it’s a web app, it can incorporate web-features natively. Granted, I find it hard to think why I’d need a hyperlink in a presentation (I’m there, pointing to it, after all), but it offers import assets from Flickr and other web-tools. This is a huge step towards a semantic-type application which could use the very latest information in a presentation (live stock reports, automatically-updated images, up-to-date contact information for companies…).

Finally, this is platform agnostic. It’s on the web, so you can use it on the web. Although there is an offline reader for download, you can play it using just flash seamlessly. No longer will you have to make sure the place’s projector will talk to your laptop (or like me, that the laptop they provide has a reader for your presentation ;~)). It’ll run on Linux, Mac, and Windows!

There is one, only one, concern of mine, though, That’s that when you click to advance a slide, your curser turns into a clock and you have a bit of a delay. This could be incredibly annoying for time-critical presentations or animations. We’ll just have to see how well this bears out in a trial, though.

Why do I want more coffee gadgets?

// April 7th, 2008 // Comments // tech

Gizmodo is a techblog with loads of interesting products. They have a complete set of Coffee-tagged products, all of which I want to own.

I have no idea why, but I’ve got this thing for coffee gadgets. Every part of the kit appeals to me.

• I love coffee
• They’re gadgets
• They involve an addictive process (like setting up a blogging engine)
• It’s a type of lifehack
• There’s a considerable risk (you might get burned, or it might explode)

So, if you have any coffee gadgets you’d like to tell me about, please let me know!!!

P.S. this is my first post ever using BlogJet… It’ll probably also be my last, since it’s virtually the same as Windows Live Writer, but costs—and isn’t as pretty.

Photos

// April 4th, 2008 // Comments // blogging, tech

I’ve added a lightbox photo gallery to the site, if you ever want to have a look at random images they’re there. There’s also a link in the navigation bar. I’m liking this new blog, it’s easier to use and integrates better with Windows Live Writer… except the visual styles… typical.

Windows Live Services Suck/Look Nice (Delete as Appropriate)

// March 8th, 2008 // Comments // blogging, review, tech

Live Writer

Right, so I’ve been blogging using Windows Live Writer for a few weeks, and have generally enjoyed it. It’s easier than logging into my CMS, and it integrates with the site theme, so what I see is actually what the post looks like.

As you can see, it’s a pretty slick interface, and I think it’s  relatively simple, so the focus is on the writing rather than the application (Windows’ biggest design fault IMHO!) There are a few exasperatives, however:

• Insert Video only works with a select set of video sources, and I even had trouble with YouTube. It’s a slick idea, but it executes poorly.
• My Site favicon appears, which is nice, but it runs over ‘View Weblog’ and falls off the bottom of the window. Surely it’s not too hard to resize or align it in a satisfactory way?
• Set-up was quick, but there’s no native support for Drupal (you have to cheat and call it WordPress or MetaWebLog). This isn’t so bad, but it does limit the options you’re given if you choose the wrong one.
• It has the ability to tag posts, but it calls them ‘Categories’. They’re Tags. It’s a Blog. And, it’s one of the things that doesn’t work if you choose the wrong set-up type.

Aside from those, it’s brilliant. I use it all the time, and it is easy to use. You just have to html-in the videos you want. And, like I said, it’s pretty.

Live Mail

I hate Outlook. It’s ugly, complicated, and runs slowly and in its own very particular way. I’m sure it’s brilliant for all you Server-Oriented people out there, but I don’t use Exchange. I’ve been using Gmail’s web interface for three years or so, and decided I’d like to explore a desktop app. I set up Outlook 2003, but I hate it so much… Besides, I use Google Calendar, and I haven’t got a satisfactory sync yet (Yes, I have added Google’s new Sync app, but I use multiple calendars…) You have to muck about with the OS’s Mail settings to get rid of unwanted accounts. Then it crashed, cause I deleted it’s precious Data File…  so, Outlook’s out. Instinctively, I’d use Thunderbird, but it isn’t as good as Firefox for some reason, and I don’t want to think of Mozilla in a bad way… (Whoever said I was unbiased?)

Thing is, I like the OS integration of things I use all the time, I just don’t like Window’s versions. I like the Idea of Internet Explorer, but Firefox is better in so many ways. I like the idea of Windows Contacts, but it doesn’t grab my contacts from the Cloud… like Plaxo used to before it broke! So I love the idea of Windows Live Mail… it’s eye candy Aero style and looks simple, to contrast Outlook’s frankly cluttered layout.

Unfortunately it works simple too. Not simple as in keep it simple, but  simple as in: ‘He was a bit simple, now you mention it.’ IMAP frankly frightens it, and you have to use advanced settings to keep it from defaulting to POP. My favourite thing about it so far, though, is the way it mindlessly keeps doing what I tell it not to. I don’t want it to synchronise the ‘All Mail’ folder with Google, cause it’s colossal. I don’t want it to sync the spam folder, cause it’s full of spam and I’m happy with my c0k $iz£, thanks! But it keeps doing it. I tell it not to synchronise, and even remove it’s messages; they keep appearing. And I know it remembers what I told it because the tick box is still ticked (it’s not the only thing getting a ticking off) (See Image).

It also doesn’t seem connected with its tray icon, which still displays unread mail long after you’ve read and cleared the inbox.

For some positives, it’s pretty, not complicated, and it has a structure which works better than Outlook. It supports a big, one-stop inbox without needing a BSc (Hons): Outlook Settings and Apologetics. I like it, I just wish it worked like it should. Kinda… like Vista!

Update

It looks like Live Writer has updated and now recognises Drupal. Unfortunately, it now sees the CSS in a different way, and makes posting very visually difficult! It used to have  a white background (See top image) but now looks like this:

It’s a nightmare to read… oh well, I can’t really be arsed to muck about with the CSS of my theme… it was fun while it lasted!