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Posts Tagged ‘Windows 7’

I guess if you’re used to Vista then the way you import photos in Windows 7 is nothing new, but coming from XP I have to say the way 7 downloads photos from a camera is pure crap.

I hated the feature from the moment I used it a few months back. You get this minimalist dialog box that wants you to enter a tag but doesn’t give any other information about what’s going on (is this metadata or the filename?). You can’t tell anything about where the files will end up. Then if you click Advanced, you can make changes, but then have to start the import process over again for them to take effect.

The major problem I have with this is that there is no way to selectively import photos; it’s an all or nothing proposition. For example if you take pictures at one location, then take another batch somewhere else, when you download them you can’t separate them out into individual folders. What the hell kind of thinking is that? And what really goads me is that this functionality was available and worked perfectly fine in XP!

I mean seriously, you take something that worked pretty well in the previous version, then strip everything down, remove most of the features and functions then package it up as a new and improved edition? What are you thinking? The only thing the XP photo import needed was a way to remove the trailing space before it appended the number to the end of the file. Other than that it was just fine.

But this photo downloader sucks. I hate it. I can barely tell how it’s going to work, I can’t move my photos around, it STILL puts a space then appends the number (which I then have to use another program to remove that damnable space), and I can’t tell it not to import a picture. The feature is useless to me. I guess I’ll either use Lightroom or Paint Shop Pro to import the photos now. The way Windows 7 does it is just too annoying. I guess I just need to shoot RAW all the time and just bypass this feature altogether, but I don’t believe most photos need to be shot in RAW so even that is a little overkill. Once again, Windows 7 just adds another layer of frustration.

And as a final thought, since this feature is identical to the one in Vista it still makes me wonder why everything feels Windows 7 is so much better than Vista. Microsoft recycled the same code all over the place; they’re basically the same OS. I think people are fooling themselves into liking Windows 7.

Just for the record, I don’t like Vista or Windows 7.

All I wanted to do was load up my virtual machines from Virtual PC 2007 into Virtual PC for Windows 7. No my friends, it’s not that simple.

What used to be a simple install of VPC additions to get copy/paste and other functionality to work is now multiple steps and has to be done for each VM you decide to work with. Maybe I wouldn’t have to do this if I built the images from scratch, but I don’t see a reason not to use my existing VMs. And no , I can’t just use the XP mode, I need a custom built VM. As stupid as it sounds I need IE6.

So here’s my latest frustration with Windows 7 and trying to get something simple to work.

Even though VPC 2007 doesn’t need it, Windows 7 requires hardware virtualization. That was annoying since you have to download a separate tool to get Windows to tell you it needs to be turned on. Clearly putting it into the actual installer escaped their minds. This kind of stupidity is a reason not to upgrade to Win7.

But moving on…

We had a slew of problems getting our old VMs to load correctly under Win7. We kept getting errors that Win7 couldn’t write to the disk even though we could copy files into all the directories we listed in the UI. This happened on two machines with identical hardware. On a third machine (mine) we didn’t run into that problem. That issue still exists, we just moved forward using different hardware.

The VMs actually loaded correctly on my machine and surprisingly started without incident. I thought we were in the clear. I was so terribly mistaken. Starting them is one thing, using them is another.

You need to install the new Virtual PC Integration Features for Windows 7. That’s no problem, I expected that. But it’s not quite that simple.

Here’s what I ended up doing…

Upgrade the Integration Features and reboot

The next time the machine comes up, it asks to install them again (did I miss an option somewhere?)

After the 2nd install don’t reboot, there is a little dialog box saying you need to go to website to download yet more components. (Maybe I missed it the first time, but I’ve since done it again and haven’t seen it at the end of the first install).

Download this RDP feature and reboot again.

Funny thing, after doing all this you don’t actually have the full functionality of Win7 VPC. Nothing is enabled yet. I find this all very annoying and very much the reverse of VPC 2007.

You have to enable the Integration Features and that means you have to be using a machine which has a username and password. This isn’t how I set up my machine since it’s a test box. I don’t want to have to mess with password in this environment. So you have to add a password for your sandbox environment and then you can actually use the copy and paste functions. Good Lord.

Finally, make sure you actually save the VM with these new settings in place or else you’ll have to do it all over again (which happened to me). None of this is tied to VPC, it’s all a part of the VM itself.

I’m sorry, but this is a hell of a lot of work for something that used to work without issue in the previous Virtual PC version. For VPC 2007 it was just install the extensions and everything worked. You could resize the window, copy and paste, and move between the host and guest machine. Now, there’s just too many damn hoops. Windows 7 Virtual PC is NOT better than the previous version.

So you could go through all that mess

OR

You could follow the steps in this article (make sure to read the comments for some clarifications on what to remove) to get rid of Win 7 VPC and install VPC 2007 onto Windows 7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2009/08/19/running-virtual-pc-2007-on-windows-7.aspx

I suppose the best course of action is to make a copy of the VHD file before tinkering with it, since I am damn sure once you save it with these changes there is no way in hell it will open in VPC 2007 again.

This is a whole lot of bullshit to get some USB support.

And we only have this working on one machine, two out of the three machines can’t load the previous VHD files. 66% failure rate, nice.

Windows 7, why do you disappoint me so?

I upgraded my machine to Windows 7 and I have to say I am completely underwhelmed by it. Based on all the hype I was expecting bells and whistles, clowns and balloons. From where I sit, Windows 7 is the same as Vista with all those same annoying dialogs and poor design issues. Since it’s nearly 2010 the fact you can’t stretch the taskbar across multiple monitors is, well, stupid. Why is it Windows can’t actually open an ISO file? I believe I have more cause to open it to see the files than I do to burn it to a disc. And in what year will MS actually make a Windows Explorer that’s actually worth using? Yet again, the built-in file manager is pitiful!

Just for the record, breadcrumbs really aren’t that cool.

Maybe Win 7 is better with resources and memory management. Right now I can’t say its better at rendering the desktop. Maybe my videocard is weak, but it’s just a desktop I shouldn’t have to have a gaming card just to render some icons on it.

So you may ask if I don’t like it why did I upgrade? Well, after being stuck on other bastard child of the operating system world, Window XP 64-bit, I just couldn’t stand it anymore and even the problematic Win 7 seemed like Nirvana comparatively. Nothing runs on XP64 and it was abandoned right after launch, just like that troubled teen Windows Me. Apps complain relentlessly that they aren’t compatible and finding 64-bit drivers for XP is like finding an honest politician, they just don’t exist.

The only bright spot so far has been the setup, which I will admit is very impressive. It was very quick and all the components were recognized. Of course installing 300+MB of patches right after install was less than thrilling, especially since Win 7 has only been out two months, but I would rather have the patches than my ass hanging out on the web for all to see.

It took less than half the business day to install the OS and reinstall all the apps. That alone is pretty striking. It’s still Vista, but that’s a step up from where I’ve been. However, there is no way this OS is worth the $150 upgrade price.