Windows 7 Review

The first thing you'll notice about Windows 7 is that it looks like Vista. It also works like Vista, in the sense that it has the same plumbing underneath, except for a very welcome graphics upgrade to DX11. However, it works much better than Vista, and most of Vista's annoyances have either been removed, or (mostly) can be changed so the system works the way you like. It takes personalisation to extremes.

Microsoft has analysed the data from millions of user computing sessions to find out exactly what people do with their computers, then attacked the "pain points" to make Windows 7 quicker and smoother. (About 15m people used the Windows 7 beta.)

The most obvious difference is that Windows 7 doesn't keep annoying you with prompts — though it's also true that the latest version of Vista is much less annoying than the original. In fact, you can set the degree of annoyance on a sliding scale, though reducing it increases the risk of security breaches. However, Windows 7 is vastly more secure than XP and, in any case, the threat landscape has changed since XP was trashed by worms such as Blaster and Slammer. Today, the more important security changes are in the Internet Explorer 8 browser which, uniquely, defends against cross-site scripting.

Another obvious difference is that Windows 7 uses fewer resources.

Where Vista really needed 2GB of memory, Windows 7 will run quite happily in 1GB on a slow dual-core Intel processor, though I'd still recommend 2GB or, for preference, 4GB with the speedy 64-bit version of Windows 7.

The reduced footprint and some optimisation means Windows 7 sleeps and wakes up faster (though it's still not in the same class as Mac OS X).

And laptop batteries should last longer. I've been running Windows 7 on an Asus UL30 laptop with a claimed battery life of around 11 hours with Vista: it now does more than 12 hours.

Any PC that currently runs Vista will be better at running Windows 7 – a first for Microsoft – and it should also run on most PCs that will run XP SP2. (Search YouTube and you will find users showing off by loading it on unsuitable systems, including antiques with Pentium III chips.) The catch is that upgrading a PC running Windows XP requires a clean installation of Windows 7: you can't do an in-place upgrade. This has been a source of complaints, because it means reinstalling all your applications as well.

However, we've known for a dozen years that a clean installation of Windows usually works better, and geeks have generally recommended it.

Indeed, people used to reinstall Windows 95, 98 or Me just to clean up their systems, so it's silly to get hysterical about it now.

The Windows 7 interface has a few noticeable changes. First, the Vista sidebar has gone, but you can still use the clock and other gadgets, and you can position them wherever you like. Second, the QuickLaunch area and the TaskBar have been replaced by a sort of combo-pack.

Instead of putting applications in the QuickLaunch area, you can now right-click and pin them to the new-style Taskbar, alongside running applications.

As in Vista, hovering over a Taskbar icon shows one or more mini-previews, depending on how many windows you're using, except now they're interactive. Hovering over a mini-preview shows it full size on the desktop, while right-clicking provides a Jump List of options.

It makes it dramatically easier to see what you are doing. However, if you an inveterate Alt-Tabber, that shows the same mini-previews. And if you liked Vista's Flip 3D feature, that's still an option.

Incidentally, you can now move TaskBar icons around to change the order, like browser tabs. As I always try to keep XP TaskBar items in the same order, I find this useful. It's a small point, but Windows 7 has lots of small points, and they add up.

There are a few party tricks that Windows 7 users can show their friends, such as Aero Snaps, Aero Peek, and Aero Shake. Aero Snaps lets you put two applications side by side for easy comparison and copy-and-paste. Aero Peek makes open windows temporarily transparent so you can see what's on your desktop. Aero Shake means that if you shake a window, all the other windows will disappear. All are both useful and fun.

The My Documents section has been reorganised under one heading, Libraries. This includes Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos, with Windows 7 sorting things into these "shell folders". Each of these has two subfolders, such as My Music and Public Music. This makes it easier to keep stuff you want to share away from stuff you want to keep to yourself.

Sharing is an important part of Windows 7. It has a HomeGroup feature that makes it very easy to set up a home network and share things. It only works with Windows 7 machines, which I expect will sell a few Family Packs of Windows 7 (three copies of Home Premium for £149.99).

Right click a photo, for example, select Share, and this gives you four options: Nobody; HomeGroup (Read), HomeGroup (Read/Write), and Specific People. "Plays to" lets you display a video, for example, on a different PC.

Support for the consumer electronics industry's DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard should help Windows 7 PCs work with other devices, though I've yet to see an example.

There are also some "location awareness" features where Windows 7 figures out where you are — on a home network or an office network, for example — and selects the appropriate printer. There's a section of the control panel, Location and Other Sensors, where sensors can be installed and controlled. One example is "adaptive brightness": if your PC has a light sensor, Windows 7 will adjust the screen brightness to match.

Multi-touch is also supported, if you have the hardware to take advantage of it. There is an emerging flood of laptops with multi-touch pads and new all-in-ones with multi-touch screens, but it remains to be seen whether these will be successful.

When it comes to Windows applications, the very old ones have been dramatically improved. Paint and WordPad now have "ribbon interfaces" like Office 2007, and both the Calculator and command shell (PowerShell) are much more powerful than before. Technically, several standard applications have also been removed from the operating system, though I expect most PC manufacturers will install them.

What Microsoft has done is decouple the Windows Live Essentials suite of applications — Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, etc --from the operating system. It means the Live programs can be updated from the web every six or nine months, or whatever, instead of on a three-year operating system development cycle. It also reduces the attack area for anti-trust complaints.

But one thing that's missing from Windows 7 is the Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus program, formerly codenamed Morro. You get Windows Defender and an improved firewall, but Microsoft appears to be too scared of the European Commission to do what would be best for users and include anti-virus software as well. As it is, specialist anti-virus companies install trial versions on new PCs, and pay PC manufacturers very handsomely for the distribution. If Microsoft did the right thing and defended users for nothing, it would upset the financial applecart.

All round, then, Windows 7 is generally good, and some Windows fans reckon it's better than Apple's Mac OS X. It's certainly easier to use than Mac OS X if you are already familiar with the Windows way of doing things. Also, Windows 7 – released to companies on August 6 – has so far proved to be a lot less buggy than Apple's Snow Leopard, which has even lost users' data.

If you dig into Windows 7 then you will, of course, find numerous relics from the past, going right back through Windows 95 to DOS.

There are lots of inconsistencies that still need cleaning up.

However, Microsoft's business depends on running millions of programs that stretch back decades, supporting vast numbers of peripherals, and providing a platform for thousands of competing manufacturers who make everything from handhelds and tablet PCs to racks of data-centre mainframes. That's just the baggage Windows carries.

But with luck you will not see too many of these relics, and on the surface, Windows 7 is impressively smooth.

I'm a full-time Windows XP user who didn't upgrade to Vista on my two main PCs, but I can't see a good reason for sticking with XP now that it looks doomed. I've bought a cut-price Amazon Windows 7 Pro upgrade for my desktop, and I'm planning to buy a new Windows 7 laptop to replace my very old ThinkPad X31.

Windows 7 is a long way from being perfect, and it's not an essential upgrade if you're happy with XP. But nor is there a real reason to avoid it. Windows 7 is simply the best version of Windows you can get.

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Wesson Massacre Family Story

In 2004, Marcus Wesson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of nine of his female family victims; in addition he was sentenced to 102 years in prison sexual abuse of daughters and nieces. Wesson molested, abused and controlled the female members of his family, impregnated some of them, and then murdered nine of his children.

Today on Dr. Phil the victims of the family spoke out. Kiani, Gypsy, Serafino, and their mother, Elizabeth spoke out for the first time. They spoke out about their terrible history with a man who was an abusive head of the family. They spoke about their relationship since their father has been in jail, and the emotional turmoil left behind. One of the women said that they had two children by their father and never realized that was wrong.
Dr. Phil helped them to understand that they have a lot of work to do, and that they are not to blame for what happened. And that now is the time to work on those issues. Tomorrow Dr. Phil will speak to the men in the family and try to help them deal with what has happened to them.
Dr. Phil compared the stories of Jaycee Dugard from California and Elizabeth Smart from Salt Lake City as other people held captive and abused against their will. The Wesson family has had some time to deal with their situation since Marcus Wesson has been in jail for over five years, and Jaycee Dugard is just now beginning her journey of recovery.
By Their Father's Hand, The True Story of the Wesson Family Massacre book description:
Neighbors were unaware of what went on behind the tightly closed doors of a house in Fresno, California-the home of an imposing, 300-pound Marcus Wesson, his wife, children, nieces, and grandchildren. But on March 12, 2004, gunshots were heard inside the Wesson home, and police officers responding to what they believed was a routine domestic disturbance were horrified by the senseless carnage they discovered when they entered.
By Their Father's Hand is a chilling true story of incest, abuse, madness, and murder, and one family's terrible and ultimately fatal ordeal at the hands of a powerful, manipulative man-a cultist who envisioned vengeful gods and vampires, and totally controlled those closest to him before their world came to a brutal and bloody halt.

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AH1N1 vaccine delay

SWIFTWATER, Pa. – The federal government originally promised 120 million doses of swine flu vaccine by now. Only 13 million have come through.

As nervous Americans clamor for the vaccine, production is running several weeks behind schedule, and health officials blame the pressure on pharmaceutical companies to crank it out along with the ordinary flu vaccine, and a slow and antiquated process that relies on millions of chicken eggs.
There have been other bottlenecks, too: Factories that put the precious liquid into syringes have become backed up. And the government itself ran into a delay in developing the tests required to assess each batch before it is cleared for use.
What effect the delays will have on the course of the outbreak is unclear, in part because scientists cannot say with any certainty just how dangerous the virus is, how easily it spreads, or whether it will mutate into a more lethal form.
Since April, swine flu has killed more than 800 people in the U.S., including 86 children, 39 of them in the past month and a half, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of all hospitalizations since the beginning of September were people 24 and under.
"We're in this race against the virus, and only Mother Nature knows how many cases are going to occur over the next six to 10 weeks," said Michael Osterholm, a vaccine expert at the University of Minnesota.
In the meantime, many states have had to postpone mass vaccinations. Clinics around the country that managed to obtain doses of the vaccine have been swamped. And doctors are getting bombarded with calls from worried and angry parents.
"Nobody has it," said AnnMarie O'Connor, who waited more than four hours for the vaccine in Rockville, Md., standing in line with her two young children and about 1,000 other people. Health officials "said the shots would be here in early October. But where are they?"
Federal officials counsel patience, saying that eventually there should be enough of both vaccines for everyone who wants them.
"We wish we had better ways to produce vaccines perfectly predictably, but this is how influenza vaccine production often goes," Dr. Anne Schuchat, who heads the CDC's immunization and respiratory disease section, said last week.
The delays have led to renewed demands for a quicker, more reliable way of producing vaccines than the chicken-egg method, which is 50-year-old technology and involves injecting the virus into eggs and allowing it to feed on the nutrients in the egg white.
Federal officials initially projected that as many as 120 million doses of the vaccine would be ready to dispense by mid-October. They later reduced their estimate to 45 million. As of Tuesday, only 12.8 million were available. (Health officials say a single dose will protect adults, while children under 10 will need two doses.)
In a sign of how rapidly the virus is spreading, education officials said 198 schools in 15 states were closed Wednesday because of swine flu, with more than 65,000 students affected. That was up from 88 school closings the day before.
"Right now, the vaccine is in a race against the virus, and the virus is winning," Osterholm said.
The government now hopes to have about 50 million doses out by mid-November and 150 million in December, Dr. Nicole Lurie, assistant health and human services secretary for preparedness, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
"By the end of November, I think we're going to be pretty well back on track," she said.
However, a study by Purdue University researchers said the vaccinations will probably come too late to significantly reduce the number of infections. The study, published last week, predicted that infections would peak in late October and that by the end of the year, 63 percent of the U.S. population will have caught the virus.
The blame for the delays has been placed in part on the chicken-egg technology. It is a slow process, and the pressure on manufacturers to produce two vaccines at the same time — for both swine flu and ordinary flu — has made it even slower.
Also, the virus on which the swine flu vaccine is based was found to reproduce very slowly in eggs — much more slowly than the ordinary flu virus. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who on Wednesday was grilled about the delays by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the problem has been fixed.
The U.S. government is funding newer technologies that hold the promise of a more reliable and expandable vaccine supply.
"We need a man-to-the-moon effort for flu vaccine if we don't want to find ourselves in the same position in the future," Osterholm said.
Flu vaccines are not nearly as profitable as other kinds of drugs, and most of the biggest vaccine makers have little incentive to switch from a method with which they are familiar.
At its two plants in the Pocono Mountains town of Swiftwater, Sanofi Pasteur, the top U.S. supplier of seasonal vaccine, is churning out more than 75 million doses of swine flu vaccine and 50 million doses of the winter flu variety.
Sanofi spokeswoman Donna Cary said egg-based production of flu vaccine is "tried and true" and will probably remain the dominant method for years to come.
"If it weren't for the egg-based process, we wouldn't be able to respond to this pandemic," she said.
More than 30 farms in the eastern United States are under long-term contract to provide eggs for vaccines, tending 9 million to 12 million chickens.
Once the fertilized eggs arrive at the vaccine plant, the flu virus is injected into them and allowed to multiply for several days. Then the eggshells are cracked; the virus-laden fluid is extracted, the flu virus is killed and the substance is purified. The inactivated strain is tested to determine purity, potency and yield.
From start to finish, the process takes about six months. In normal years, that is usually enough time to get the vaccine to anyone who wants it. But in an all-out epidemic, egg-based production is incapable of producing huge batches quickly.
The government has awarded a $487 million contract to Novartis for a plant in North Carolina that will make flu vaccine by growing the virus inside animal cells, preferably from mammals. The plant is expected to be up and running by 2011 or 2012.
Also, Protein Sciences Corp. of Meriden, Conn., landed a five-year, $147 million contract to develop a vaccine using its recombinant technology — flu proteins grown in insect cells. The hope is that the first doses would be available within 12 weeks of the beginning of a pandemic. That is about twice as fast as flu vaccine produced from eggs.
"I think you're going to see these new technologies come on board rapidly, especially given what's happened this year," said Paul Radspinner, president and chief executive of FluGen Inc., a Madison, Wis., company working on several new vaccine technologies of its own.


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Honda CR-Z 2011

This spiritual successor to the venerable Honda CR-X originally made its debut as a concept car two years ago at the Tokyo Motor Show. And now, at this year’s show, Honda has revealed a new CR-Z, a 2-seat hybrid sports coupe that looks very much like the final production version scheduled to go on sale in the U.S. in the second half of 2010.

"Beyond great styling and features, the CR-Z will bring new levels of engagement and fun to customers interested in a small car or a hybrid vehicle," says Eric Berkman, Honda’s vice president of planning.

Fitted with a 6-speed manual transmission and sport-tuned suspension, the upcoming CR-Z certainly will be engaging for the driver, the first hybrid sports coupe on the market. Although the car on display at Tokyo has a tiny back seat, the production CR-Z (which makes its worldwide debut at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January) is a sporty 2-seater, one with the added practicality of a hatchback.

Conveying its fun-to-drive nature, the CR-Z boasts a bold grille, slit openings for the headlamps and strong character lines that give this Honda an aggressive, angular look. It’s taller and less rounded that the original concept, making it much more practical and ready for production.

One styling cue that connects the CR-Z to the highly entertaining original CR-X is the shape of the rear quarter glass. Beneath the hood, the front-wheel-drive CR-Z is powered by a stronger version of the Insight's 1.5-liter 4-cylinder hybrid powertrain. Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist works like an electric supercharger, effectively boosting both off-the-line response and fuel economy.

The CR-Z concept's interior features more glitz than the production model will, but the layout will remain the same, with the main instrument bezel positioned behind a 3-spoke steering wheel flanked by pods for the auxiliary controls. With the CR-Z—which goes into production at Honda’s Suzuka factory in February—it appears that we will now be able to mix a healthy dose of driving fun with environmental consciousness.

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