Windows 7 Beta Networking tweaks

Image by Senpa via Flickr

If you have been following my Twitter, you would have noticed that I've been spending a bit of time with the Windows 7 Beta.  Overall, I have had a positive experience with the Beta, only having trouble with the normal things when using a Windows box.  One of the normal things is getting a Windows box to talk to the other non-Windows machines, and sometimes even Windows computers on the network.

The first issue I had was getting Win 7 to find the OSX machines on the network.  This was a  pain as all my files and music are on my Powerbook.  So I went looking for a fix.  I found the answer on the TechNet Forums under a question on "Networking with a mac", and here are the details (thanks to dnegrich):

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XBMC a Media Center for the Masses - Part 1

The allure of a Media Center Computer (MCC) in the lounge room is born of fantasy and practicality.  The coolness of having all your music, movies and TV shows at your fingertips/remote is that of having an age old problem solved in the geekiest way possible.

From a practical point of view, having your DVD/Digital collection in a place away from where the young children can use them as ammunition in a battle for the best seat in the living room is always a plus.  The reduction of clutter down to one small box makes the wife happy.

The battle with the MCC is that, in most cases, the old DVD player is a lot easier to use and tends to be more reliable.  For example, I have most of the kids DVD's on the MCC, but my wife still tends to put on the actual DVD, rather than go through the hassle of turning on the MCC, waiting for it to boot up, navigating through to the Hi5 directory, just to have it reboot itself 10 minutes into the show because Windows needed to be updated.

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Vista musings......

Image via Wikipedia

Microsoft's Vista OS has had a rocky existence in the computing world.  There is a hate/hate relationship with the media and the industry, and a long suffering "run from the room screaming" relationship from consumers.

I have always tried to discuss Vista in a less passionate way, mainly because I haven't really played with it.  I use a old Powerbook as my main desktop, and have XP and Ubuntu on other computers at home and work.  I don't see myself as an Apple fanboy, it is just that OSX just works, and after trouble shooting Windows boxes all day, it is nice to come home to something that works.

As mentioned, my exposure to Vista had been minimal until last night when I was asked to sort out a couple of problems on a friend's laptop.  The problems ranged from: the laptop not working on the home wireless point - to email not working - to "Vista isn't compatible with my work email so how do I downgrade to XP?"

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Windows Cloudy

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Back in May I wrote a post on how Microsoft need to revamp their OS products, and one way to do that would be by making an Internet OS, or Cloud OS.  This was, at the time, more a piece of fantasy born from listening to an interview with the CEO of Sun Micro-systems, who said they were busy making lots of hardware for data centers.  And also listening to other people defending Vista.  It seemed to me that the time was right for Microsoft to do something different.

As I was pretty close to the money on this one, I thought that I might comment further.  If you look at the trends, and more importantly where the money is going/coming from, this sort of move by Microsoft is a no-brainer.  I'm sure they have been working on this long before my comments, but the implications of a move such as this for Microsoft, on the whole "cloud computing" argument is pretty big.

If you were worried about Google having all your information, are you going to be more comfortable with Microsoft having it?  If you were worried about the 'net getting gummed up by all the bit torrent traffic, what's it gunna be like getting your emails when you're competing for bandwidth with someone uploading their summer holiday photos?  And how do you recover from an internet "Blue Screen of Death"?

Well it looks like we are going to be finding out, as Microsoft will be announcing both Windows 7 (code named "Windows: A New Hope"), and the fore-mentioned Windows Cloud at the upcoming PDC 2008.

Jason Remnant
..if it's broken, why fix it?

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