One of the things I have always hated was “Windows Search”. Why the heck would I need “instant results” – instant as in donating countless CPU cycles and disk churns to background indexing operations running all day long on my box? YUK! I am never actually “looking” for something – I know where everything is. It’s right where I put it. Who are these people “looking” for things on their computers all the time? Typical Scenario My typical use case came up again this morning: I downloaded a source distribution...

Why would a company act against its own best interests? A while back, I purchased a Dell Inspiron 6400 from the small business store. My first boot experience can only be described as a nightmare – many minutes of disk crunching craziness only to be left with a useless machine running 79 processes! Seventy-nine! I tried to shut the piece of junk down, but got tired of waiting – killed the power. All I had was the “Dell Recovery DVD”, which promised to restore all 79 processes in their over-bloated...

The reliability manager, introduced in Windows Vista and included in Server 2008, is a great tool. At one glance, I can see installs, windows updates, crashes, etc, all laid out on a graph by date. For example, this machine I am typing on now crashed back on April 9th, an instance of Visual Studio 2005 (devenv.exe) hung when I ran it (April 21), and various updates were installed since then. In Windows 7, the Reliability manager snap-in is gone, and does not appear in the Computer Management console...

What a nice surprise, today. I had been hearing about improvements to the Windows audio stack for Windows 7, but I did not expect them to show up in Vista Service Pack 2. (Maybe I should have?) Connecting a Bluetooth Audio Device I have a Motorola HT820 stereo Bluetooth headset. Great device. When I turn this device on and pair it with the computer, it is logical to assume that I wish it to become my primary audio output device. Right? Previously, I had to use the Bluetooth control panel, connect...

Hey, this windows 7 thing is great! There are glassy, see-through window frames. I can make an image backup and restore to a new disk in 10 minutes flat. I love the DVD Maker capability. What a great screen snipping tool. Search box in the Start Menu! My install experience: I was only asked about 4 questions and took less than 15 minutes total time. I love the “CPU Usage” gadget that floats around the screen. You can see what specific services are running inside “services.exe” (or dllhost.exe etc.)...