More Thoughts on Windows 7:

We've had a couple more days to mess around with the new Windows 7 release candidate, and have a few more thoughts:

• I've already griped about no flash support with the install (see the previous post), so let me extend that to gripe about no out-of-the-box utility for reading .pdf files. Again, it's certainly no big deal to install something like Adobe Reader, and it takes all of thirty seconds or so, but I don't care. If you own a computer and have no use for a .pdf reader, then your rig is obviously used for nothing but porn, which, as far as I can tell, is probably the only genre of computer use that doesn't ever use .pdfs. For the rest of us, we need something to read these files.
• I've had pains getting my data back from my old linux backup, and I mentioned that I've installed a virtual machine running Linux Mint (my old distro) in order to access the information on my external drive. Using VirtualBox Guests and this post, I've mounted both my external drive and a shared folder to be able to drag and drop files inside the virtual machine onto my Windows desktop. This, I think, is the definition of a Rube Goldberg fix for a dumb-ass thing that I did. Think ahead of time, and you can avoid issues like these.
• Matlab was a problem for me. I had some kind of Java issue related to problems others have had, but I still had to make my own fix from a patchwork of other people's solutions (as is always the case). Because of the Java issue, the installer failed at the registry step with an "unknown exception," so I had to manually retrieve my license file from the Mathworks website. After editing the license file in Matlab's installation directory, the Java issue caused the launcher to crash with a page's worth of errors. The solution for this turned out to be editing the properties of the laucher and changing a "compatibility mode" setting to "Windows Vista." After this, everything seems to be working fine. No fault to Windows on this one.
• Internet Explorer turns out to lag WAY too much for me to use it willingly. I'm not sure why it does that, but it does. New tabs lag by MANY seconds, but this seems to be a general phenomenon when opening anything with the browser. I took the opportunity to try out Google Chrome, but didn't like that either after a days use or so. So, back to Firefox where I can make my settings just as I want them. Namely, deleting history, cookies, and junk when I close the browser, no password storing, no autocomplete, etc. Chrome and Firefox use the same engine, essentially, and are both MUCH faster than IE. Of course, in saying that, I'm implying that those two things are related, but I don't actually know that that is the issue with IE.
• Definitely a plus for Windows over linux is the graphical support for BOINC, through which I like to run Rosetta@home (and have for a couple of years now). I also have had the chance to try out Google Earth again now that it doesn't require me to fiddle with graphical issues between my hardware, openGL, Compiz, and the program itself (damn you ATI drivers!). There are workarounds for these issues, but I'm tired of that shit. No problems now, though. And what's absolutely remarkable is looking at Mars in Google Earth. You navigate the planet in much the same way, but the AMAZING thing is that instead of this "street view" phenomenon you have on Earth, you can zoom down to look through panoramic photos taken by the rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Wow. I had goosebumps.

I think that'll do it for now, but expect more soon. Stay tooned.