Earlier this week Microsoft announced that its Windows XP operating system, probably the most successful version of Windows thus far, and perhaps the most successful operating system of all OSes (to date) was about to reach its official end of life, with all support for it ending in 1000 days – April 6, 2014, to be precise.
To be honest, I think that that’s a very generous date on the part of Microsoft – there’s no good reason why you should continue to struggle with XP – or any earlier version of Windows, when Windows 7 is just so good.
Yes, you may offer the excuse that your hardware is so old and it’s unsupported by Windows 7. Well, yes, that’s exactly what that is: it’s an excuse.
Today you can walk into any of the major stores and buy a brand you laptop PC – not just a netbook, but a laptop – for less than $400. And that system will include a version of Windows 7. Why would you not buy such a system, really?
And if you really must keep the old box running, then install a version of Linux on it; you’ll be safer, and you should be able to perform everything that you can do on your aging XP system, but with a greater level of security, better features, and a more up to date interface to boot.
And yes, it’ll still be supported, which your XP installation will not.
Please don’t come crying to us when your apps fail, or your system has a virus that you can’t remove because the OS is no longer supported. We’ll merely say that we told you so.
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Happy Birthday Windows 7
https://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/happy-birthday-windows-7/
Sun, 24 Oct 2010 10:21:25 +0000http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/?p=1810It’s now been one year since Windows 7 was officially released, in in that first year, they’ve sold about 650000 copies a day. That’s 240 million, over the year.
That translates to about a 17% market share of desktop operating systems, which I don’t think is too bad.
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Parallels 6. Windows on your Mac.
https://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/parallels-6-windows-on-your-mac/
Sun, 17 Oct 2010 11:55:08 +0000http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/?p=1801As good as OS X is, sometimes it just has to be Windows.
For instance, there are applications that have been written for Windows, an for which there is no Mac version. Yes, I know that sounds odd, but there are some applications where there is either no Mac version, or perhaps the Mac version is not quite up to par.
But when that happens, what’s a person to do?
How about firing up Parallels 6, and running your Windows application, right there on your OS X desktop?
Yep. With Parallels 6, that’s what you can do. And by running your applications in what’s called “Coherence” mode, it almost looks and runs as if it’s a native OS X application.
OS X Desktop using Parallels 6
Previous versions of Parallels have provided this functionality, but this latest version offers improved speed and stability, as well as greater functionality.
And it’s with its performance where this latest version really shines: my needs are that I demand a high level of real time performance. Consider for a moment that some of my activities include broadcasting. During my broadcasting, pretty well all of my music comes directly from a computer, and as such, I can’t afford for there to be any lag or skipped segments in terms of how activities such as music and audio playback are handled. For me, these are mission critical applications, and they must be handled correctly and gracefully, first time, every time.
Running a virtual machine of any type places a high demand upon your computer: you’re effectively running more than just the one computer, and if you have high performance demands, then you can be really pushing the performance capabilities of the systems. In this regard, Parallels 6 comes to the party with the horsepower and performance that matches my needs here.
And that’s on my aging Macbook!
I’d really like to have a play on a newer Macbook Pro, where it wouldn’t just shine, but it would positively sparkle.
]]>Parallels 6 Announced
https://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/parallels-6-announced/
Sun, 19 Sep 2010 11:31:24 +0000http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/?p=1710A new version of the OS X virtualisation software, Parallels 6, was announced this week.
Parallels allows you to run your Windows applications on your Mac, and it does so in a very elegant manner, providing you with some sparking performance.
We’re currently evaluating how well it works, and should be able to give you our report in a week or two.
]]>Windows Phone 7 Goes Gold
https://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/windows-phone-7-goes-gold/
Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:30:22 +0000http://www.gadgetgrill.com.au/?p=1645Microsoft’s new mobile phone operating system, Phone 7, went gold this week.
That means that it has now been released to manufacturing, which in turn means that it’s ow up to the various partner handset manufacturers to to complete their integration of the operating system into their handsets’ firmware and bring them into production.
We are looking forward to seeing how this all pans out, and the mobile phone market is about to become very crowded with so many different operating systems available to the consumer.