I just installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 RC on my Lenoto T60 laptop and almost everything worked like a charm.
It really is faster than Vista, boots up faster, eats up less memory etc. Most software works just fine, drivers downloaded automatically, but…
But there’s just one small glitch – my Option GT Max has no drivers for it. The 64-bit drivers from Option website also don’t work – I can install them but then modem just replies that it’s currently busy and I cannot make a connection.
Hope it gets solved, I really like my mobile Internet.
One annoying thing in listening to audio / video streams on computer is that almost every stream, application or site has its own loudness. For some music files you might need to turn the volume up, but then your favorite video channel will just scream out loud.
It’s because with the volume setting you set the maximum possible volume for audio output. And not every source uses the full scale – sometimes there are poorly encoded MP3s, sometimes commercials want to be louder than everything else, and sometimes a ballad will be simply played quietly.
For a regular user it means he/she has to turn the volume up and down constantly. Luckily, in Vista, there’s a feature that will put and end to it: Loudness equalization. It will make all sounds sound with a similar volume. It will always run in teh background monitoring everything you play and adjusting itself. Just turn it on, set your desired volume level and Vista will take care of the rest. And since it’s on the OS level, all sources are equal.
How to do it? Go to Control Panel | Sound | Playback | Properties | Enhancements and turn on Loudness Equalization. That’s it.
If you’ve ever asked yourself those questions, Mark Russinovich wrote an article on virtual memory management in Windows.
It’s, as usual, very deep and informative, yet quite easy to understand. I suggest you spend those 15 minutes of your life and give it a read – it’s worth it.
Microsoft has recently made their Live Mesh Beta availble to all countries. I couldn’t help myself, I had to test it.
It seems it’s a fancy and reliable feature. You can store up to 5 gig of files on a virtual file store with desktop-like interface. You can make those files sync between your computers (only on desktop right now, full sync is yet to come).
However, the best thing about Live Mesh is the ability to create a remote desktop session to any of your computers currently connected to the Internet. You don’t have to install any VNC / RDP server, you don’t need to have a public IP address or an open port. You just have to install the client software (available for 32/64 bit Windows XP and Vista or MacOS) and make sure the other computer is powered up – Mesh installs itself as a service so you don’t have to be logged on.
It seems to be secure – you have to login to your Live account, then to your computer with your local account there.
Also, you can transfer files from/to that remote host by simply copying and pasting them between two computers.
What’s even more – a Windows Mobile client is supposed to be released to the whole world soon.
I was curious – is Windows still using the services file for determining which port to use when connecting with a specific protocol, or is it hardcoded in the OS?
I mean, if we type http://test.com/ into Start->Run dialog, will it check the standard IANA services file to check which TCP port to use or will it just assume it’s port 80?
Let’s find out!
I created a standard Windows XP Professional SP2 virtual machine. I downloaded Microsoft Network Monitor for capturing TCP/IP traffic.
I did a simple test, by Going to google.com with IE 7 to check if Network Monitor is working fine – it was:
Then I edited the standard services file and added an extra dummy service with port number 77:
Then I tried accessing the newly created protocol, both by Start->Run and by typing it into IE’s address bar.
Unfortunately, in both cases, there was no TCP traffic initiated.
Conclusion
Windows doesn’t use the standard services file when determining if it knows the protocol, and how to connect to it. This has been verified for Windows XP SP2, but I assume newer version would not switch to the “old” method.
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