Pem’s Tech Blog

Windows 7 seems more stable, less annoying, more efficient, and the UI is improved.  The most obvious UI change is to the taskbar, with the application group pin/unpin style (similar to Mac OS X doc, but personally I think better in terms of mouse-over and standard shortcut keys).  It sounds like this time around, Windows 7 is a lot more popular (than Vista).  Personally, I was really never that negative about Vista, but in hindsight I might’ve just gone straight form XP to Windows 7.

On one machine I did a fresh install of 64-bit Windows 7, and I’m keeping a full list of every program I install.  On another, I did an upgrade from 64-bit Vista to 64-it Windows 7 (maybe I should’ve done a fresh install?).  I’m still running 32-bit Windows 7 inside my Mac OS X virtual machine, but other than that it’s all 64-bit for me.  And maybe if I ever need to run (or test) something again in Windows XP, I can use a virtual machine.

I ran into an interesting error with my Windows 7 64-bit upgrade.  Basically, 1 of my 2 cores was always at 100% usage.  Eventually I found the problem was due to a conflict with my graphics card’s audio device (which it has as part of HDMI support) and my system’s local audio.  The fix was to go to Device Manager -> System devices -> High Definition Audio Controller.

Here’s a shot of Windows 7 with the Switcher add-on:

Update 2011/04/10: I used devcon.exe to automate disabling the device on startup, see here

Pem (Admin) :: Oct.10.2009 :: Windows OS :: No Comments »

Trackback this post | Feed on Comments to this post