My old mouse was developing some annoying left-click habits, so a few months ago I decided to get a new one. I am not a huge fan of wireless mice because the batteries always run out at the most inopportune times, so the new one was definitely going to be wired. I also am a big fan of the old (some would say clunky) Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. So, when I started my research and ran across the Microsoft Habu, my choice was made pretty quickly and painlessly. Of course, I bought it at Newegg, and it was delivered promptly.

I’ve been working with it for a couple of months now and really like the performance of it. The scroll-wheel performs well (no gimmicky “left and right” scrolling here) with a very faint but very satisfactory scrolling tactile feedback, and both buttons have good solid clicking mechanisms.. The color is nice too, and looks great next to my ABS keyboard, Logitech Z-5500 speaker control, and Smilodon case, all of which are blue-neon. The only thing I’d change would be to give it a bit more heft – it’s a nice solid feel, but I’d prefer a bit more mass.

The photo above was taken with our new Canon SX1IS, as was the photo of Rebecca’s first bass. Overall, I’m still struggling with the auto-focus on it, which doesn’t seem to function well at all, and also the graininess of the photos, even with flash. I’ll continue to work with it to see if there are any settings I can adjust, but I’m not impressed, and am afraid this camera might have to be relegated to occasional snap-shot use only. I definitely don’t want to have to use a tripod to take quality shots.

I’m a few hours into my first exploration of Windows 7. So far, it’s actually not that bad. It installed relatively cleanly, downloaded a surprisingly small set of drivers, and is generally operable.

A few installation notables:

1. Windows Media Player can’t be installed without participating in Microsoft’s "Help us Improve our User Interface, and we promise not to do anything with your data unless someone forces us or pays us to" program. So… no WMP for now.
2. There are no native Creative (Soundblaster) drivers. This is remedied by downloading the latest set from Creative, and running it in Compatibility mode, but even then, 5.1 Surround Sound doesn’t work for any program I could find, except for the Audio setup utility.
3. Daemon tools doesn’t work, and, thus far, I have not found a Virtual ISO mounter.
4. I installed Windows 7 on a test partition as a clean installation. All good, but it wiped out my BCD (Boot Configuration Data), and for awhile there, my Vista 64 O/S entry was nowhere to be seen. OOPS. I fixed this with VistaBootPro, and things are back to normal.

I really like the new taskbar approach. I’m not going to bore you with the details here, but it seems really intuitive, and took me about 10 seconds to get used to.

I do not like the new Program Manager launching mechanism. There’s probably a setting for this somewhere, but as it stands, you have to explicitly click on folders to open them instead of just hovering. I’ll keep playing with this.

I used IE for all of 30 seconds (to install Firefox), but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing new here. It’s IE7, as opposed to IE8.

Even the dreaded UAC seems to have been dramatically improved. Rather than turn it off completely, as was my initial impulse, I decided to mess around with the settings. It looks like you can tune it to your preferences (warn me on THESE actions, but not THOSE) and also seems to be much less intrusive and needy than the Vista version. If you decide to turn it off completely, you don’t have to live with a permanent reminder of Microsoft’s disapproval (yes, I know you can turn it off, but you HAVE to turn it off).

Speaking of which, notifications and reminders are now handled via a nice little facility called "Actions". If Windows wants to talk to you, it puts a reminder there and leaves you alone otherwise. No more flashing red "Danger, Will Robinson" shield. I’m not going to miss it.

More as I feel like it.

As if I should have expected something else??

I have to admit to being a Vista (64) user on my main PC. I’ve gotten over many of the hurdles associated with Vista (UI, drivers, &^%DJH’ing useless UAC), and it allows me to run all the stuff I want with as much memory as I want. So when I saw that MS was going to be offering an Open Beta of Windows 7 (aka Vista SP2), I figured I’d give it a whirl.

It was supposed to have been downloadable on January 9th to a limited number of users. However, Microsoft’s release and the subsquent downloading didn’t go all that well for most users. If this is a publicity stunt by MS, it’s a bad one, and if not, it’s just plain stupid. Or, as some people think, Microsoft has been so bashed over Vista that they themselves didn’t think anyone would be interested. Anyway, the experience was SO bad that Microsoft had to issue an apology, fix their servers, and offer it for publid downloading again.

Fast forward to this morning. The site is up, and I can log in. I can select the version I want, and get a product key generated. The only thing I CAN’T DO is download the frickin’ software. In Firefox, it does –nothing–, in IE 64, it bombs out (I even tried installing Silverlight… but nooooo…), and in IE 32, I have to install an ActiveX control.  Even after doing so, and trying to download, it was going painfully slow.

As an aside, one good byproduct of this process is that every time you load a new version of the download page, it generates a new key. So, now I have a bunch of ‘em. Email me if you want one. There are 5 keys. For everyone. Hrm… could it be that the Key Generation process was so complex that that’s what was causing the servers to bomb? Must be a .net process!

The Answer? BitTorrent. I’m happily downloading at a great speed right now. I can see how Microsoft would be reluctant to use BitTorrent for standard users, and expose them to the "free warez" underside of the web, but everyone with a technical bent knows about it and uses it on occasion.

TTFN! I’ll probably post about my experience with installation.

I tuned into Gameday today to keep up with the stats on Boston’s exciting win over the Reds (Yoooouk!), and noticed something odd… the ‘new’ Gameday for 2008 seems to have gone back to the classic look and technology stack. This is good for several reasons: 1. the Flash-based interface was (and is again) excellent and; 2. it looks like Gameday quietly dumped Silverlight.

Hrm. I wonder what the back story is here.

Supposedly, MS offered MLB a bunch of moola to switch to Silverlight, which they really had to do because Flash has a well-deserved strangle-hold on web multimedia. Go figure.. something that works, very well, on all platforms. Yeah, that must drive MS nuts – a standard that they don’t control.. and Adobe is just too big for MS to swallow.

Anyway, for fun, I uninstalled Silverlight (having had it forced on me earlier in the season) and took a tour of the MLB site. Even though the system FAQ still states the Silverlight is needed, at no point during my browsing was I forced to install it. Even the ‘Premium video’ demo clearly indicates that it’s using Flash..

I have to wonder if whatever original “considerations” MLB was given to adopt Silverlight are now being added to in order to avoid an embarrassing disclosure that it didn’t work out after all.

Microsoft gave a few tidbits about Windows 7. It’s scheduled to be released in 2009, and it’s based largely on the Vista kernel, which they’re not modifying. The biggest change is… ready?… multi-touch. Wonderful. Take something that someone else mastered, for an entirely different purpose, and hack it into your OS that only your apps will probably be able to use.

But don’t give up hope… there will likely be some new games included.. multi-touch Pinball? Oooh… maybe Mahjongg that you can ONLY play with 2 fingers because that’s the way Microsoft has decided it should be, of course – screw "legacy interfaces".

My guess is it’ll cost $300 for the entry package, and there’ll still be 5+ versions ranging from "stupidly crippled version that’s bundled with low-end PCs" to "wickedly overhyped with a techy color-scheme".

/sigh