For those of you who haven’t heard, Microsoft plans on releasing the next version of Windows, Windows 7, on October 22 of 2009.

This is going to be very exciting. Simply Googling the phrase “Windows 7″ will return countless rave reviews, and as a tester, I can back up every last one of them. Windows 7 runs faster than Windows XP on my 2004 Dell Dimension testing machine. It’s quick, pretty, and easy to use. It’s clean, and smooth. If you haven’t had a chance to try it, you may want to scuffle on over to Microsoft.com soon and give it a shot before the Release Candidate is no longer publicly available.

As for me, I will be purchasing it the day it is released. I have never been this excited about a Windows release before. Actually, I don’t think I’ve been this excited about ANY software release. For serious!

One of the primary reasons I am so excited about Windows 7 is that it is Microsoft’s chance to slap Apple in the face just as equally as Apple did to them with the Apple Switch commercials of 2006-2009. Windows Vista was not a bad operating system. I promise. I have been using it since a few weeks after it was released, and I have never experienced a single one of the problems that everyone says it has. Granted, I bought a computer that met the damned hardware requirements. Apparently those mean nothing to some people, and running a brand new OS on a 6yr old computer should be no problem at all.

I mean, look at it this way: You can’t drive a Ferarri on a dirt road. Well, I guess you can, but it’s not going to be fun. Unless it’s someone else’s Ferrari, of course. Then it’ll be a blast! Am I losing the point here?

Seriously. When you upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows XP, you needed more RAM (and a faster processor helped significantly as well). When you upgraded from OS9 to OSX Tiger, you needed a whole new friggin computer! Snow Leopard will not work on any computer built before 2006 (Yeah, I know. It’s ridiculous.). How is this any different from needing a computer with a 1Ghz processor and 2GB of RAM for an upgrade to Vista? it’s not.

Windows 7, however, has the same hardware requirements as Vista did. That’s what it says on the box anyway. For those of us that have tried it, we know better. It runs just fine on a computer that’s not half as good as the “required” hardware. This is where Microsoft will win. While Apple is dropping older hardware, Microsoft is actually picking it up. A computer that wouldn’t run Vista will, in many cases, run Windows 7 just fine.

Kudos, Microsoft. You’ve done us well. Please please please please keep this philosophy. I’d like to see what you ahve in store for future versions of Internet Explorer and Windows Mobile 7. I’m really getting tired of my iPhone.

Looks like the Wordpress 2.8 uprade went smoothly. All of my plugins worked with no problems, and my theme didn’t need any modifications!

I’ve been putting it off for months, because I didn’t want to deal with the possible issues of upgrading to 2.8 from 2.0 (there were several versions in the middle that I missed). Looks like I could have done it a long time ago and been fine.

Anyway, let me know if you encounter any issues or oddities with the site. Thanks!

Only a day after Google’s first beta release of their upcoming Chrome browser, people are already road-testing it.

Have a look at this Lifehacker post, where the current beta of Chrome, the current beta of the upcoming Firefox 3.1, and the current beta of Internet Explorer 8 are compared for Javascript & CSS performance, startup times, and memory usage.

From what I’ve seen across the web and in my own experience, the new Google Chrome sits right next to Firefox 3. Take that, Microsoft.

http://lifehacker.com/5044668/beta-browser-speed-tests-which-is-fastest

So, in preparation for the release of the iPhone 3G (which comes out tomorrow, July 11, 2008), Apple has released an update to iTunes to add support for the new features, and some more.

At the leaast, they’ve added the App Store and a new feature that allows you to control your iTunes remotely from anywhere with a wi-fi connection.  That’s cool and all (okay, so it’s REALLY cool), but I still use Windows Vista, and Apple still hasn’t been able to make iTunes work correctly with the Vista Aero interface…

Since Windows Vista came out over a year and a half ago, iTunes has had this problem (see screenshot below).  C’mon Apple, will you fix it?  Pretty please?  With a cherry on top?

Okay guys…  IE6 has been out for about 7 years.  It’s time to retire it, no?  I don’t think I need to explain why.

Who wants to help me start a petition to Microsoft to force an upgrade to at least IE7, and IE8 when it is released?

I think with Service Pack 3, a newer version of Internet Explorer should be part of the package.  Internet Explorer 6 still being used by about a third of the web population is really starting to hold back the rest of the internet.  It’s time to put this beast to a rest!