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Disk Compression is the process of running all of your files through a compression algorithm for storage, and a decompression algorithm for usage.

The idea is that you free up space on your hard drive by compressing all of the files, and the trade-off is that you decompress the file when using it, which takes up CPU resources.

http://www.vistarewired.com/2008/03/10/
free-up-hard-drive-space-without-deleting-a-single-file-xp-and-vista

Honestly. I was unaware that MS Double Space was still around. Apparently it is, and I’ve used the original versions, and I know enough about file compression to reliably say the following.

Only idiots use disk compression. End of story. You’ve got to be some kind of dumbass to compress all of the files on your hard drive in a vein attempt to recover a gigabyte. Here’s a few real good reasons why I’m right: (more…)

The Internet, as in the World Wide Web, what you call Google, Myspace, Doug’s Secret Shrine and Online Banking, is nothing more than a series of files, sitting in a folder, on somebodys computer. The internet, as far as the browser’s concerned, is just a bunch of folders sitting in the ‘internet folder’.

Let’s say we’ve got a laptop, connected to a wireless network, running Windows XP. The concept behind this demonstration applies to everything that can access the internet, but for clarity of explaination, I am using the de facto standard OS of the last decade.

If you were to go to ‘run’ in the start menu, and type in ‘c:\windows\sol.exe” solitare will come up. Well, it probably will – but this still applies even if it didn’t : ‘ D

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Well, it’s finally here. Windows 7 Beta 1. Unlike the M3 Builds (well, before running the unlock tool), Windows 7 now sports a strange now Dock. Microsoft’s still calling it a Taskbar, but our good, dear friend ‘Taskbar Classic’ is gone forever. This is probably one of the more radical changes Windows has ever undergone, and it would be a shame to write a review without carefully analyzing this stupendous change to the universes most recognized piece of software.  So, without further ado…

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Because, I’ve got a tad bit of a confession to make. About my HacBook… yeah, I’m calling it a Gateway again. As it turns out, the OSX86 scene isn’t really developed enough to make my gateway a good hacbook pro. It kept overheating, the device support was spotty (especially bluetooth and ACPI) and it was gutting my battery life.

Since I’m a fan of computers I can actually use, I have decided to dust off my actually legit copy of Windows Home Premium, suck it up, and run Vista for a while.

If you’re a patron of my crazy ass rants about the majesty of desktop operating systems, you’d know that I will never use Windows XP, ever again. And, since my little Gateway NX260X will run Windows Vista just as well as anything else, and not to mention the fact that I’m a sucker for eye candy – even when its second rate – I’ve decided to abandon my Leopard build and go with Vista on my primary partition.

Net Gain? Windows Live Writer, better battery performance, and at least I can depend on my hardware. I’m not saying I won’t install Linux in its place tomorrow, especially since Microsoft products have an annoying tendency to ruin my life, but one of the main tenants of my whole Leopard strategy is that it just flippin works. Leopard on a Gateway is the opposite of my mantra. However, Vista on gateway? Oh yeah, it’s going to work. It might convince me to abandon my plans to use it as a workhorse for web design, but at least I can use it when I want to.

Actually, I’m probably going to download a couple of different builds from a few different circles and play around with Leopard on my spare drive. Especially since, when it works, it works like a mathafuckin champion. I just need something a little more polished than what Kalyway 10.5.2 and combo upgrades and a drive full of Kexts can provide today.

Anyways, stay tuned – There’s no way I’m done trying to turn this thing in to a Mac.

So, I have, on my spare 80 gig drive, a running copy of Windows 7 Build 6801. This is a post PDC 08 build that still doesn’t have all the pretties Microsoft’s internal build’s got. It looks a lot like Windows Vista, except for a few slight differences that make this a right decent little beta build, as far as Microsoft OS’s go.

The first thing you’ll notice is that, unlike the M3 builds Microsoft were boasting about with the conspicuous dock-like Task bar replacement that we’re suppose to believe wasn’t copped from OSX, we’ve got something that looks an awful lot like Windows Vista’s Taskbar. It’s OK, though – there’s a few new features that are worth noting.

If you’ll look to the left of the system clock beside the tray, you’ll see a small glass panel. If you click this, it clears to your desktop. If you right click on it, it’ll give you a context menu that offers you the abbility to ‘show desktop’ or ‘preview desktop’. As of this build, they are exactly the same thing. I assume, however, that when finished, the preview desktop feature will remove the window elements from the glass windows decorators so you can see your desktop while keeping perspective of the windows you have in play.

I don’t, for the life of me, understand this feature. You can sort of see what Microsoft’s going for with the new Windows Management feature, which I shall call draggable hotsides.  I don’t know what Microsoft’s calling it, so I shall name it here.

Basically, and let me see if I can’t get a screen shot of this, when you are dragging a window, if you drag the window to the top of the screen, where your cursor actually touches the screen edge, a glassified outline of the window will fill the screen. when you drop the window, it will maximize. If you drag the window to the left or the right, the outline will take up only half the screen, pinned to whichever side you drug it to. In this way, you can easily tile vertically two windows so that you may compare them. Dragging the window to the bottom does nothing, and you can restore a maximized window with this method as well.

It’s kinda obvious what Micosoft’s looking to achive here. Between Compiz (Linux) and Quartz (OSX), Aero just doesn’t offer the world anything new. With 7, they are trying to play catch-up and offer us a few ‘Windows Exclusive’ features that people will use. I haven’t seen anything do the split window hot-sides, however Compiz can do the maximize-restore effect, and then some.

Between this, the Live Thumbnail features that are also not in this build, and the pre-existing Flip 3D stuff they had in Vista, I think Microsoft looks at this as a slam dunk. Sorry, Microsoft. You’re wrong. You want to sell me a copy of Windows 7? Add Expose. Call it whatever you want, pretend you did it first, I don’t care. Just add the fucking thing. Expose is the single most useful feature in this history of Graphical User Interfaces. Windows is the only OS I can’t do it in. I know, there’s 3rd party apps that do a terrible emulation of it, but I want something native and fast. It would go a long way in making a de-switcher out of me.

The system tray has gotten a nice little re-vamp as well. Instead of hiding the system tray icons, and showing them with a spread-out button, they have a pop-up windowette that contains all the hidden system tray icons. I imagine this will be far better when they implement the WinDock.

The Start Menu has also recieved a few nice touch-ups. Start menu searches now take up the entire start pane, the transparency effects are now more glass-like, which looks a lot better. Oh yeah, maximizing windows doesn’t remove the transparency effects like it does in Windows Vista. I hated that, it made the OS seem plastic and cheap. At least now, I’ve got more pretty glass on the screen then I ever even really cared to.

Which, brings me to my next point. Has anyone noticed that Glass really isn’t all that pretty? It looks good with specific desktop backgrounds if you tweak it, but overall I actually prefer the opaque nature of my Windows in Leopard. That goes for Windows Vista as well. I’m sure they’ll rape the Visual Style by RC1, so maybe they’ll get a lot of my nagging problems taken care of.

That’s all for now. They’ve finally added some of the apps they were promising with Longhorn, and some of our old favorites have recieved a much-needed revamp. More in part two.