I've recently acquired what I must say is close to being the best affordable Windows 7 Tablet PC. And now I shall run an experiment, for the next 7 days, starting from yesterday I shall ONLY interface with the system using TOUCH ONLY, I will not type on the physical keyboard or track pad, by doing this I'll be able to then properly experience what's it like using a slate Windows 7 PC and how is the user experience.

This experience will definitely help add some weight to the statement which I've always been saying, that while the Windows 7 OS is quite Touch friendly and capable, the APPS aren't. So stop blaming the OS for not being touch friendly.

First thing I did yesterday after installing Windows 7 Ultimate on the thing (Cause I'm testing driver compatibility as well, so I'm booting from VHD) was to perform my touch optimization settings.

So let's see how long I can last without touching the physical keyboard!

Well well, look at you. You've just picked up a touch enabled Windows 7 PC like the Lenovo S10-3T or the Fujitsu UH900. What's that you say? Windows 7 doesn't feel like it's very touch friendly? Well that's because you need to do a little tweaking so that Windows 7 touch works FOR YOU PERSONALLY. This is a topic I wanted to write about for a long time and I'm glad I finally got around to doing it. So without further ado, here's a little guide on how you can optimize your touch enabled Windows 7 PC to get more out of your investment. Find a nice comfy place to sit down and read this guide because it's a long one!

The Apple iPad was just launched a few days ago and people are constantly comparing it with other touch enabled Windows 7 PCs like the Lenovo S10-3T and constantly saying the Windows 7 pales compared to the iPad even with all it's touch features. Well let me just say it for you in simple terms.

Windows 7 Touch Will NEVER Be Better Than The Apple iPad

The main reason is because while the Apple iPad was DESIGNED (ok.. imported from the iPhone) to be operated exclusively using touch. Windows 7 was not. Windows 7's touch features were added in order to allow both users and system builders to build PCs whose only form of input might be touch only NOT to redesign the entire OS to be operated exclusively by touch.

And even if the OS was redesigned to be fully operated by touch only, one of the main complaints that is heard by users who tried using Windows 7 using a touch interface is that the apps aren't designed for touch operation and Microsoft should have made the apps more touch friendly. The one question to ask those people is that WHERE do they draw the line on which apps Microsoft should work on? This is Windows we're talking about, an OS that has DECADES worth of old applications, and any one of them might be used on these touch only Windows 7 PCs.

The key point to remember is that with the touch enhancements that is present in Windows 7, Microsoft is not trying to make an OS that exclusively works via touch interaction. But rather it's to provide a platform for developers to create apps that are designed for touch interaction, and more importantly to allow users to use as many of their applications as possible even though the apps are NOT MEANT FOR TOUCH OPERATION. And in this area the touch enhancements present in Windows 7 do a pretty good job and I want to show this very least understood area of Windows 7 soon.

So to take a platform that's designed for touch like the iPad and then say that a general purpose OS like Windows 7 will never be as touch friendly as the iPad is just ridiculous. And you're not comparing Apples to Apples... and that always sounds funny when talking about Apple products.

More on this topic soon.

UPDATE If you want to find out how to optmize your Touch Enabled Windows 7 PC, check this page out!

Now that I'm actually running the 64bit version of Windows 7, I can actually answer some of the queries and concerns that people usually have about a 64bit OS.

If I have 4GB RAM or more, I need 64bit?
This is pretty much a straight on yes, a 32bit OS will never be able to fully utilize 4GB or more of RAM. While you can enable PAE or some other fixes on a 32bit OS to work with 4GB of RAM. A 64bit OS is the best  chance of using your RAM to it's full capacity if you have >= 4GB of RAM.

All my old 32bit programs won't work on 64bit?
The answer to this question is a MAYBE. Generally if you ran a 32bit program under 64bit Windows, it should just work thanks to how Windows is designed. BUT... if the 32bit program does something funky with memory or assumes that it's running on a 32bit OS. Well, that's when bad things happen. General rule of thumb is that normal 32bit applications like office, most games, browsers will run normally under 64bit Windows. Anything that's system related like Antivirus, system utilities or certain online game copy protection root kits, will need specific 64bit versions.

All my old hardware won't work on 64bit?
This is a YES, only because in order for any hardware to work on 64bit Windows, you NEED 64bit DRIVERS. Hardware in recent years *should* have 64bit drivers already. But if you had something very very old, like say an old 10 year old Canon scanner. Well... that'd be a problem then. This is generally the biggest hurdle for people to go 64bit.

It's actually quite possible to go 64bit now because there's better driver and program support to make sure the things don't go crazy when running under 64bit. But if you have old hardware, you'll want to check to see if they do support 64bit first.

Well, the consumer launch came and went in Malaysia on 7th November 2009. Didn't manage to capture much pictures or video this time cause I was a bit distracted by other things. I'd say this went down better than the Windows Vista launch a few years back.

Most importantly because.. hey look there's a queue for people to buy Windows 7!

That in it's own made it much better than the Windows Vista launch even if the queue didn't gain much momentum initially.

But then again, most people won't buy Windows 7 on it's own, but rather get the PCs that come with Windows 7.

If we were doing a pure square footage comparison of the event area, the Windows 7 launch in Low Yat is much smaller compared to Windows Vista's launch in Low Yat. All Windows 7 gets is the atrium area in Low Yat.

Where as Windows Vista got the whole front street of Low Yat. But this is a good thing for the Windows 7 launch for 2 reasons. The first being that it's the rainy season now, and boy was there a STORM on the 7th. The 2nd being that Low Yat was not the ONLY place that had a Windows 7 launch event, PJ, Penang and JB all had their own launch shindigs.

To help fuel the live excitement and activity in the launch events, there was also a live twitterboard that was displaying hashtag activity on site.

On one column the results of a Twitter hashtag of #win7my was displayed and refresh roughly every 3 minutes, on the left column photos from the other launch venues were displayed so you could check out what was happening in the other venues even though you weren't there. And the neat little application was powered by Silverlight!

Here's a short video of the launch event that I recorded with my little Creative Vado

But the excitement of the Windows 7 launch still AIN'T OVER YET! There's still one more event for the industry which will launch Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010. The New Efficiency event  happens on the 24th Nov 2009 over at the KL Convention Center.

See you there then!

That's a question that a lot of people are asking. And actually if you're a normal user there are only 3 real choices that you should choose from.

Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate.

You should get Windows 7 Home Premium if you are going to put it on a PC that's more for personal use. Basically if you have no idea what an Active Directory Domain is. This is the one you should get.

You should get Windows 7 Professional if you need the PC to join a Domain, as well as some other business related features like backing up to a network source instead of just an attached harddrive, the ability to use BitLocker to secure your hard drive, etc. etc. Windows 7 Professional also gives you access to Windows XP Mode if that's something that you need.

You should get Windows 7 ULTIMATE if you need access to some extra features that you can't find in the other editions such as Running Windows from a Virtual Hard Disk File or VHD (While this is a nifty feature which allows you to do nifty things like this, it's really a niche feature that not many users will benefit or have a use for), run the Windows UI in 35 other languages. (This is not the same as being able to input languages other than English as mentioned here, what's being refered to here is the ability to change the OPERATING LANGUAGE of Windows to the other languages, ie. You'd want to be able to see the Start button, Control Panel labels, etc. etc. in other languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Again... this is a nifty feature but I can't see a majority of users having a need for it)

There is one feature that I do believe would be quite useful to people but is only included in Windows 7 Ultimate is the ability to CREATE Bitlocker To Go devices. While any other edition of Windows 7 is able to read and write from a Bitlocker To Go encrypted drive, only Ultimate is able to create it. And I do feel that this was a bad decision on Microsoft's part.

Now you might be asking, what about the other editions you've been hearing from on the internet, namely the Starter, Home Basic and Enterprise editions.

I'll start off with the easy one. As an individual user, you will not and should not make a choice to get Windows 7 Enterprise, it's not meant for you. Enterprise edition has features that allows it to be tweaked and managed in an organization. If for some reason you obtain and install Enterprise edition, you might find it interesting how some things don't work the way they do in the other editions. So... as an individual user, DON'T BUY ENTERPRISE (you're not actually supposed to be able to buy it off the shelf anyway) BUY ULTIMATE instead.

You can't actually buy Starter edition off the shelf, and most likely if you were looking for it you'll be given so called OEM copies instead. Starter edition is meant to be preinstalled with low cost netbooks, it lacks a lot of the eye candy and advanced media features. And has what some would say the most errr... interesting feature of all... You can't change the desktop wallpaper... There's NO REASON NOT TO BUY A NETBOOK WITH STARTER EDITION installed, it's still Windows 7, you can still run all your PC applications, play all your games (If they can work on the specs of a netbook), and do all your work. IT BASICALLY WORKS. Just without a lot of eye candy. But.. you should NEVER BUY STARTER EDITION ON IT'S OWN. (Again... you're not supposed to be able to)

And as for Home Basic.... This is the complicated one. It definitely has more features than Starter (you can change the desktop wallpaper!) has more eye candy as well, but not as much as Home Premium. It's true that for most users, Home Basic will be sufficient for them. The complicated part is that... I have no idea wheter or not Home Basic will be available as a retail product here in Malaysia. Home Basic is marked as a product for emerging markets, and Malaysia is definitely on the list. But the last product to be labeled as such (Windows Vista Started Edition... don't worry about the name) Was not available for retail purchase, and only came preinstalled on systems. If you could find it on sale as a retail product, and you're just buying it for use on a PC that would be used by a casual user. Home Basic could work out for you.

Hopefully this clears up the which edition to get question for the people out there. Oh.. and if you want to see a list of features, here's one.

So I've been hearing all the nice things about Windows 7 on old Atom powered netbooks and how well they are running with Windows 7. That's great because I happen to have one.

Or two of these things.

But there's just one little problem... BOTH of my eeePCs have only a 4GB SSD as it's main storage device, the 901 has an additional 8GB secondary storage but that drive is SLOOOOOOWWW. So I figured my chances of running Windows 7 on my eeePCs were pretty slim.

Then I finally figured out how to boot Windows 7 from a VHD on a USB storage device. And now I can do things that shouldn't be possible.

Windows Media Center, running on an 800x480 screen resolution, on a machine with 1GB of RAM that's powered by an underclocked 600Mhz Celeron.

Yes, it's possible to do so. But there's not really any reason to. Cause the video card on the eeePC 701 doesn't even have Vista drivers so it's using the old Windows XP driver model, video performance while attempting video playback is pretty bad. Or it could just be the fact that there's an underclocked 900Mhz Celeron operating on 600Mhz. So.. this little piece of magic is possible due to the fact that the VHD containing the OS is actually running from a USB Hard Disk.

Performance when running from an external hard disk is pretty good considering a few things. First of all Windows 7 was never meant to run off external storage, yes yes I know all you Linux users have been doing that for a while now. But serving the relatively small number of people who want to boot from an external device doesn't seem to be high on Microsoft's list. But there's just one main thing to remember.

You can't unplug the device when the OS is running.

This is the first question you want to ask right? Like I said, Windows was never meant to be run off external storage, it doesn't expect the system drive to disappear into thin air. Oh.. and what happens when the drive goes missing? Weird things.. sometimes Windows will just sit there unable to do anything, sometimes it restarts.

But anyway, you don't want to lug a portable hard disk with your slim netbook! You probably want to know if you can run off something more portable... more slim... something like a USB thumbdrive.

Yes. It is possible to run Windows 7 off a USB thumb drive. But would you want to? Thumbdrives have relatively slow random access speeds, couple with the fact that Windows 7 was never designed to be run off such a slow medium the system stutters and halts when multiple applications demand disk access. At times you might be waiting an eternity for the system to bring up something. But once the system settles down and you're not asking it to do much, well.. it works.

The strangest thing that I can't figure out is why shutting down take an ETERNITY to process.

So if you had a choice, using a USB hard disk is definitely a much better option than a thumb drive. A thumb drive strapped to a netbook is of course much more easier to carry around than any 2.5" hard disk.

For me?  Well let's just say I call this THE DRIP.

It's like an IV drip that helps bring out the full potential of a netbook with a space deficiancy.

Should you do this yourself? Only if you have a really really REALLY GOOD REASON. And that you REALLY REALLY REALLY Want to run Windows 7 on your old netbook. While everything seems to be working for me right now, this is definitely not a supported operation method so don't complain to Microsoft when it doesn't work out for you.

I've already mentioned before that I feel that Windows 7's Boot From VHD feature is the best new feature in Windows. But what I also really wanted to do was to be able to take the VHD, put it on a USB storage device and boot from there.

And after trying and failing for a few times.. finally I've done it! The summarized process is.

1. Install Windows 7 Ultimate on a VHD. (search the net, plenty of ways to do this)
2. Read through this document to prepare Windows 7 and the USB drive for booting.

It's actually quite simple, a bit complicated though. I'll prepare a more detailed report once I finish some more testing.

Almost everyone will be using Windows with a mouse and keyboard. But there are other ways of interacting with Windows. With a touchscreen enabled system, or other peripheral add-ons such as this Wireless Pen set.

You'll be able to have a more direct interface with your system. Since you'll be able to literally reach out and touch your system. A lot of people think that when you use a touchscreen with Windows, the pen just acts like the mouse. This is a huge misconception! When you have a compatible touch system, additional Windows features will come alive to allow you to to achieve ALMOST FULL CONTROL of Windows using ONLY TOUCH.

The first thing you'll see different on a touch based system is this little tab hanging off the side of the screen.

Give the tab a little tap and out pops the Tablet Input Panel

This is what you'll use to perform text input into the system. Just by writing as usual, and the handwriting recognizer excels in cursive recognition!

Of course, the recognizer isn't perfect so you'll need to make corrections and such, and Windows provides you with a number of gestures to do so. You can check out the gestures by just hitting the ? mark on the tablet input panel. And then on the gesture you want to check out, and a short video on how to use it will play.

Of course you shouldn't be expecting to enter you SuP4l33t5 passwords with handwriting recognition, so in those situations you just give the little keyboard icon on the top left of the input panel a click and VIOLA!

You get a nice little keyboard to type in your stuff.

To make it as quick and easy to enter text with a touch screen, you aren't even expected to have to constantly tap the little tab to make it appear. Whenever you get to a situation that requires text input, for example a textbox in a web page.

The highlighted icon appears, and clicking on that will instantly make the input panel appear and once your're done with it you can dismiss it just as quickly.

And of course, whenever we talk about pen input in Asian countries, the main question that pops up is... Is there handwriting recognition for my native language? If you bought a version of Windows in your native language, the recognizer will be there (I think.. it's not like I have seen a native Japanese version of Windows). But if not then you'll only be able to download the recognizer as part of a Windows Language Pack, which is only available to Windows 7 Ultimate Edition through Windows Update.

But once you have to appropriate language pack installed...

And it just works marvellously!

这是一个常有的问题。它的答案是 “根本不是问题” ！从Windows 2000 以来就已经不是问题了。之前是许要另外按装，但在Windows Vista 就已经不需要个别按装了。Windows 7 也理所当然的在初期化也可以看中文了。还不只是中文！日文，泰文，等等都可以看到。

但中文输入呢？

之前已经提到了，早在Windows 2000 时期就可以看中文了，在这情况下中文输入也一样是理所当然的事。

And now I shall switch back to English cause I can't talk technical terms in Chinese, but that must be the largest amount of Chinese I've ever written in a while. To activate the built in Chinese input in Windows 7 is EASY! Just head on over to the Control Panel. And then look for Change Keyboards or other input methods.

On the screen that pops up click on Change Keyboards.

You'll then be presented with a list of active input methods on the system currently. Click on the Add button to bring up a list of input methods you can install and use.

You'll now see a big list of available input languages, of course in this post we're interested in Chinese input so scroll down to that part of the list.

 

The 2 choices that we're interested in is Chinese (Simplified,PRC) and Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) mainly because those are the ones that offer the most useful choices. Personally I have NO IDEA how to use anything other than PinYin for keyboard input so I just select Microsoft PinYin New Experience Input Style (New experience should be better right?) But if the terms QuanPin, ChangJie make sense to you. Then check all that you want and click OK. The keyboards you selected will now appear in the previous screen.

So... how do you write Chinese? Once you added in multiple keyboards to your system, the Language Selector will appear next to your tray. It's the EN word in the picture below.

Clicking on it will allow you to switch the input language of the CURRENT ACTIVE APPLICATION, that's an important thing to note. So let's say you want to enter some chinese text in your browser, just click on the textbox in the browser then click on the Language Selector.

Choose the input language you want to use, and then type away!

Oh, if you're using the PinYin method of input, the [ and ] keys cycle through word choices, and pressing the NUMBER selects the word. Pressing ENTER, DOES NOT select the word. Also if you're using the PinYin Method you might want to adjust the properties of the keyboard.

Ensure that the Candidate Prompt checkbox is checked (It's not checked by default) so that you get to see the word list when you're entering text. So... after reading this you might be asking the question.

那我还需要安装中文之星或类似的程系吗? 答案是 “如果你有需要到它们的功能哪就安装吧！” 因为 Windows 7 只有普通的输入功能，而其它的程系可有更多的功能。

Ok... typing a post in Chinese when all you know is rusty PinYin is not the best experience, luckily... I had help!

And I'll talk more about that in another post.