The bridges are burnt, there is no going back. It’s Windows 7 from here on out. Still lots of software to install.
- Password Safe, copy the database
- SpamBayes, copy the database (takes some fiddling)
- Nokia PC Suite, new install, test synch with Outlook
- Garmin Mapsource (GPS) has a new bug saving as GPX, workaround is to load a GPX first.
- Microsoft SQL Server and Management Console Express are hard: there is a complex sequence of installation, install service pack and manually set configuration without which the 2008 release will not work.
- Picasa, Gimp, Adobe Flash
- XNA: build some samples, check out the video card.
- RenderMonkey is excellent for stressing the video card, and turns in around 1300 fps on a test picture compared to around 100 on the previous card. Fast!
- Putty, Ruby
- WinZip, EditPlus, Beyond Compare are all upgrades and have to be paid for. Well worth it.
- Silverlight.
Finally, activate Windows. So what now?
My Documents
Windows XP introduced the idea of a single user root folder, hidden down amongs the Documents & Settings, but allowed it to be moved elsewhere. It was my practice to set up a D:\MyDocs and make that My Documents. The downside is that lots of pieces of software know about My Documents and it rapidly gets contaminated by “stuff I didn’t put there”.
Windows 7 is different and it’s hard to know the best way to go. There is a user directory with your login name on it, but that is contaminated with AppData, Desktop, Searches and all kinds of other stuff. There is also a Libraries capability, which makes it easy to find things in other places if you add them to the list of Libraries. On the other hand, lots of older software really doesn’t play all that well.
Solution pro tem: Stick with D:\MyDocs and D:\DL (for downloads) and add them, plus a handful of other interesting places, into Libraries\Documents. Seems to work for now.
Search
Windows 7 Search is great! Just press the Windows key and start typing. It searches installed programs, recent documents, all files and email messages in roughly that order. Compared to XP, the indexer does not keep folders and files open, and after a rename or move it updates almost instantly.
On the minus side, the search doesn’t tell you much about what it found and it would be nice to know which found a file is found in. Still a few minor bumps to iron out, methinks.
