Windows 7 – Adjust Aero Peek Delay
Having recently tried Mac OS X and all of it Exposé and Spaces goodness, I couldn't help but to notice that Aero Peek feels like a complete rip off of the Exposé feature. Don't take me wrong though, it is not a critic. I am of the opinion that progress can only be made if we pick the best bits and pieces out of everything that is out there and put it all into one package. So while Windows still has a long way to go on user experience matters, I see this as a move forward.
Still, Aero Peek came with an annoyance for me: it takes too damn long! Basically, when you activate Exposé on a Mac (either by having a shortcut or by hovering over a hot corner) you instantly get to your desktop and can see what's underneath - with Aero Peek this takes at least one or two seconds which isn't ideal for me by any stretch.
With that in mind, and since there does not seem to be that much documentation about this yet, Microsoft allows you to adjust that delay time with some registry hacking. To adjust the delay, do the following:
- Open regedit (Start -> regedit -> press enter)
- Go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
- Once here, create a new DWORD (32 bit) entry with the name DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime and set it to whatever time you'd like in milliseconds. I found that 100 works best for me but I will leave that at your own discretion.
Now I'm back to testing Windows 7 RTM - have a good one!
Windows 7 RTM’ed
Yes, that's correct. Windows 7 was officially released to manufacturing and this version should be available over the course of the next few days.
Here's the comemoration video the guy at Microsoft made to celebrate the launch:
For the whole release schedule, hit up the Windows Team Blog.
Was Windows Vista a mistake? Not really!
With the advent of Microsoft's latest operating system, the Windows 7, many people have come to state that Windows 7 is Windows Vista done right. Well, excuse me tech whizzes but as an IT professional myself, I beg to differ.
Windows Vista was a massive stepping stone in Microsoft's history. It was the first upgrade from the ever so loved Windows XP, that admittedly had its flaws at birth but it grew to become perhaps the most stable operating system that Microsoft had built until then. It is lightweight and to prove that we have the netbook market share that is dominated by Microsoft.
Now, we have to be analytic. What did Vista bring to the table when compared to XP? In a very brief and sketchy approach, it brought cleanliness to the user folders (no one really liked the spaces in 'Documents and Settings'), it brought UAC that albeit poorly-loved, it brought with it a great layer of security, it brought some driver modifications including a redesigned sound-stack and these last two put together with the bloated memory usage, made Vista Microsoft's bastard child.
Well, when you look at it closely, pretty much every Vista driver will work on Windows 7, including the soundcard drivers. UAC is also part of Windows 7 and has been partly redesigned so that it isn't so naggy. Still, my bottom line is that when switching from XP, Microsoft was always going to get complaints. When you add security, people will complain because the system is more restrictive. When you add features that change the way people interface with the computer, people will complain because we have an inertial nature and are typically against change.
However, now that Vista was Microsoft's escape goat for all the changes that simply had to be made, Windows 7 can come in its shinning armour and save the day. Because Windows 7 is so much better than Vista, even though it's actually Vista, just lighter.
Windows 7 RC out – maybe
Alright ladies and gentlemen, the announcement is out: the first (and hopefully only) Release Candidate of the newest, mind blowing, operating system from the folks at Redmond is out. Or is it really? There's a Microsoft Partners' page announcing the event and I say that that's as reliable as it gets.
According to said page, the RC should be available right now for MSDN and TechNet subscribers but well... it ain't. The same page also announces that a global (and I guess, public) release will be done on May 5th which is actually pretty close in time.
My guess is that we just sit and wait, and that within the day, this RC will be made available on the MSDN downloads page. Or so I hope.
Finally, this release is more coherent with Ed Bott's speculative timeline over at ZDNet which places the Windows 7 RTM release on late August of 2009. At this point, we just wait and see - being a 7 Beta user, I am happy and borderline ecstatic to get a RC release so soon. Way to go, Microsoft!
Courtesy of Neowin.net