So I went to the Windows 7 launch event they had over here at Nelson Mandela Square, had a look at Windows 7, spoke to some of the sales people of the various vendors (they were all showing off some of their notebooks with Windows 7), Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba were there apart from some 4 Xbox consoles. They also had a "house" inside, with a bar area (nope, no drinks served), a bedroom, a lounge and a kitchen area.
Ok, so about Windows 7 from briefly speaking to the sales people and playing around with it myself...
* There are a few new functional visual effects
- Shake a window to minimize other non-selected windows
- Hover over the minimized icon to see thumbnail track of minimized windows
- You can move a window to the side of the screen and it will take up half of that side of the screen
- If you move the window to the top edge of the screen, it will maximize
- Umm, there's a little button on the bottom right of the screen to hide everything to show the desktop
- Oh yeah, the one guy said that when you plug your devices in, it displays a picture of it where as there was nothing before
* It has XP backwards compatibility! Yay!
* It's supposed to perform faster than Vista (I'll just take all the sales people's words for it, cos the machines I was playing with were shiny, new and powerful)
* They say that there are no problems with drivers now (don't quote me on this :b) or less problems where as there were quite a few in Vista
* Umm yeah, that's it, the tools (Explorer, Notepad, etc.) are still the same, I see they all had an anti-virus installed like McAfee, ehh, I didn't notice anything else fantastic
So Windows 7 aside, what I did find cool there was that some of the vendors had touch screens on their laptops with some multi-gesture support (oooO) and a virtual keyboard. So they had Word open there with the virtual keyboard waiting for me to press the screen, the sales lady had a nice big smile that urged me on to have a go at it, so I did, but as I leaned closer to tap the keys on that beautiful glossy screen, I noticed something just below my hands... a laptop keyboard! *dum dum dum*...
... ...so after a few seconds, the sales lady agreed with me that she wouldn't use it either (typing on the screen), so she closed it and luckily she had Microsoft Virtual Earth installed which I thought was pretty cool that you could swirl and rotate the Earth around, zoom in after a double tap and "unpinch" to zoom out... after that, I thought to myself the following, hmm cool, and:
* This has to be for an infrequent business use where I can have some touch screen app open to show off to clients some cool finger work and tell them to point and move things with their dirty lunch fingers, oh yeah! High... slobby... five!
* How long is this laptop touch screen idea gonna last?
* I actually don't like the idea of people prodding my screen (there is only so much wear and tear the hinges can take)
Oh ja, "Dell's are customizable like Porches says the sales guy" and they have bought over Alienware! Yeah, the guy was explaining how their manufacturing processes were different and how you could order your laptop in different styles to reflect your personality which I thought was pretty neatish and that when you do order one, it can be fitted with the latest spec components unlike the other manufacturers who produce laptops in batches.
In my own opinion, out of all the vendors that were there, I was actually pretty chuffed with Dell and if I weren't an Apple fan, I would consider them. I was however disappointed that Sony wasn't there to strut their stuff, would have liked to have all the PC laptop vendors all there to compare. Toshiba also let me down as I was expecting to have a closer look at that model that was waterproof (I had a glimpse of it at a previous trade show - think coffee spill - come on, you all have done it at least once)
I actually forgot to take some photos of the place, so I decided to quickly go back to take one to share but it looks like they closed up shop (I even went right up to the side tent window thing, I would show you but it is pointless looking at a blank photo) which was around 8:10pm, they officially said until 9pm on their invite but I can understand if sales people get tired of hanging around with no one to sell to (it did feel kinda spacey inside). It was also drizzling, so that could have put people off, there probably will be more tomorrow (Saturday). So instead, I decided to try show y'all a bit of Nelson Mandela Square at night...
[ One of the entrances to the venue ]
[ Statue of Nelson Mandela ]
[ Some of the "awesomeness" that the sales people shared, I would show you the bubblegum Dell gave out but I kinda ate them already :D ]
[ From Left to right - Acer Water, Fujitsu Minihorn, Lenovo container filled with highlighters and HP Stress Ball & Candy Floss.. yum ]
Oh yeah, I almost forgot my summary of Windows 7...
So if you're looking to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 and pay the same uber bucks as you did the year before, then sure, why not, it's always great to be assured that you have the fastest possible running Windows of the lot before you try to clean up your drive(s) and scan for malware, etc.
If you're looking to upgrade from XP to Windows 7, well yeah, it beats Vista, even the sales people say so! And it is XP backwards compatible!
Some of the sales people weren't sure if Windows 7 could run efficiently on an old machine running XP and some were confident that it would be able to handle.
I dunno, so many people (the same people who have been using Windows for many a year) say that its the next best thing to happen to Microsoft, some say that even Mac users applaud it, whilst others even go as far as saying that they will never buy another operating system (OS) again..
Ooo I am so conflicted, do I keep my XP and invest my "OS money" in the bank until "Windows 8" or do I give in to my current awesome experience of the system, all the marketing shpew that has ensued and buy it!
What do I do, no really... what do I do?
I'm just a Mac fan who spends 100% of his Windows time playing games which accounts for 10% of his overall time spent on electronic devices and doesn't touch industry specific applications such as Autodesk tools nor "hectically formulated" Office spreadsheets.
So in order to apparently speed things up on my Windows side of things, I should fork out another R1700-R3000+ ($228-$402+) [my memory is a little hazy from what the sales people said they would expect]... and I thought paying an extra R100 ($13.5) for my ignorance (I thought the sales lady said it was R229($30) instead of R329($44)) for Snow Leopard was bad.
What else can I do with a few extra K in the morning? ...maybe buy something like a gaming console, plane ticket, extra external HDD, some games, some candy, some music, some concert tickets, some shoes, a suit, a Magic Mouse, a local mini holiday, an awesome barbeque with friends, some browser based software, a starter music instrument, some guys would say beer whilst some ladies would say shoes...
Oh yeah, I still gotta take a look at the feature list of Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate to see which one "fits me best". Naturally, I don't wanna feel like a total "noob" user and get Windows 7 Home Premium whilst Windows 7 Professional must be missing the "cool stuff" which for a little bit extra dosh I can get in Windows 7 Ultimate... its settled, I am going to have to get Windows 7 Ultimate when I feel like upgrading. Wikipedia helped ~ http://bit.ly/4zBhdN
...can't imagine how all those businesses who upgraded to Vista a year ago feel right now.
*sigh*, what do I know? I'm just an average consumer who is a "2 year old" Apple Mac fan ~ http://bit.ly/jZ9Ga
TM
"It's only work if somebody makes you do it"
