Windows 7 comes with a lot of fuss/excitement/promotion around it but when it comes down to it, it’s all about how it compares with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and even Ubuntu. And while by far most people out there are still Window XP or Vista users, everyone seems to hate Vista. It doesn’t help Windows either that Apple makes really cool products like iPhones and Mac Books. Windows 7 is Microsoft’s solution to the challenge of improving its own really good OS and also meeting the coolness of Apple’s products.
My experience with Windows 7 has been mixed. I upgraded from Vista and the main problem with that was that Windows 7 requires 16GB free hard disk space to upgrade. It seems it’s a common problem. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution besides uninstalling apps. In the end the Windows 7 installer was happy with 12 GB free space and after the upgrade the winsxs folder was cleared and I had over 20GB free.
Windows 7 comes with a bunch of new goodies, most of them quite useful, but the taskbar has been changed to be just a tad too much like Mac OS X and it’s missing the good old Quick Launch bar. Luckily it turns out it’s still there, though just a bit hidden. Now that my Quick Launch bar is back I feel at home again and the rest feels much like Vista.
If you work on more than one computer (e.g. home and work) then chances are that you have needed to transfer files or documents from one to the other. If you need to do it frequently then Dropbox makes this really easy by seamlessly synchronizing folders between computers and you can also access your files online. All you need to do is signup for a free Dropbox account.
Combining Dropbox with portable apps makes the ultimate portable solution, for instance as a password syncer. Another very nice feature of Dropbox is a “public” folder that makes files available online – all you need to do is to copy or save a file to that folder on your computer and it becomes publicly available link on the Web.
Their wiki also has a useful list of tips and tricks for using Dropbox.
Link: Dropbox
In the online marketing world, research tools like comScore Media Metrix, Nielsen Net Ratings and Hitwise are considered the authority for competitive metrics. But their measurement methods have been challenged and new and interesting competition has been booming. Significantly Google, the uber online force, has entered the space which means that the premium services are under pressure to reduce prices and deliver better products – great for us consumers!
No one market research tool is perfect and often it is best to look at more than one to get the information that you need. It is so much easier when they’re free! So here are four of the best free tools that you can use for competitive analysis. More »
People have remarked on how fast Chrome seems to be and so I put it to the test on slickspeed, a speed tester for JavaScript frameworks, against Firefox and IE. Each PC is different and extensions or add-ons to Firefox and IE probably make them slower, but it is interesting how much faster Chrome is on my PC than IE and Firefox:
(The number shown is time in milliseconds to perform certain tasks.)
Chrome was much faster than Firefox which was much faster than IE. Of the frameworks, JQuery was generally fastest, with MooTools and Dojo a close second with Prototype and Yahoo! UI Selector a distant third. Note that it is a MooTools developed test so it may be biased, but it seems like an honestly objective test.
Google released it’s own Web browser today called Chrome. It’s clean, simple and light weight and at first glance seems to be developer friendly. The announcement was made via a comic book, quite entertaining 
UPDATE: Matt Cutts has some interesting facts about their new browser. In particular I found it interesting that “Google Chrome uses WebKit for rendering, which is the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari browser”. Considering that Google has been pro Firefox, I wonder what that means…?
