Well, my birthday was a few days ago. So let me just note down what I did for record keeping sake.

For my birthday this year I got myself a nice little notebook, the ViliV S5 as I did before with the U1010. I guess I like rewarding myself with small ass notebooks.

And that was it. Much less exciting things happen on your birthday when you have to keep an eye on a toddler.

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.

How does a 2 year old figure out that putting his feet up on the table while playing games is relaxing?

Ok.. he doesn't actually PLAY yet, but more of watching the game demos.

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!

Spotted in the Windows 7 Malaysia launch, a live Twitter hashtag display. Powered by Silverlight.