Windows 7 TalkZ

Windows 7 is unusual as a Windows version as, out of the box, it needs less tweaking than any previous version.  However there’s still an awful lot you can tweak and finding the right place to do it can be annoying because the settings panels for the OS are scattered all over the place.

Enter Windows 7 in a Box, a small utility that doesn’t even need to be installed.  Just run it and it does only one job.  It aggregates all the different configuration options into one place with handy menus and shortcuts for them.

As a tool this is one of the best I’ve seen, especially for novice users or people who might be wary of installing third party software on their PC.  There’s no installer as I said, but also no UAC box to check through.

The menus themselves are simply and logically laid out and make it simple to find whatever you need so you can change settings, modify options or even change a password or hibernate your machine.

One of the biggest advantages of this software is that because it doesn’t need to be installed, there’s no additional start-up entry, no more bloat in your registry and no more pointless files scattered across your hard drive.  All these things can slow down your PC, especially if you have a few of these utilities installed along-side your regular software.

For me Windows 7 in a Box is a winner, and I’d suggest you try it out.  You can download it here.

With the advent of Windows 7, many users have been scrambling to compare the OS to Apple’s leading product, OS X Snow Leopard. However, in the midst of the competition concerning the two products, Google’s new Chrome OS has been relatively ignored. Even so, this new player in the market may very well follow the same path as the netbook itself, the platform that Google is aiming for with the Chrome OS, set to be finished and released in the second half of 2010.

So, in the wake of the battle between Apple and Microsoft, what exactly is Google’s Chrome OS? It’s a new, lightweight, open source OS produced by Google which is almost entirely dependent on the cloud, to the point where the entire OS is composed of almost nothing but the Chrome browser. Instead of attempting to produce a fully fledged OS (operating system), Google and the free software community are working to produce an OS that focuses on being as lightweight as possible, yet can handle all of the basic needs of the average user, relying on the growing success of web applications such as Google Apps, YouTube, Facebook, Gmail, and much more.

It’s already been shown that convenience, simplicity, and instant access can easily trump alternatives in the computer industry, demonstrated by the striking popularity of the smartphone, netbook, Craigslist, and similar products. This is where Chrome OS shines and where Windows 7 and Snow Leopard do not: providing a cheap, small, fast alternative to Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, potentially even overcoming the two with an always-on, lasting, secure, and cheap computer that is more than capable of handling quick computer tasks.

Why wait for your MacBook or laptop to boot up and finish loading when you can press a button on your netbook and be almost instantly greeted with a login screen, or, depending on your security settings, a browser? Although you may not be able to play Crysis or run Visual Studio, the average user tends to access social networking or business applications far more often and for shorter periods of time than the previous two. And the user did meet a need to access such applications, then they can turn to their occasionally more powerful alternative to satisfy that need.

With this in mind, that’s also another one of the powerful benefits of the OS: it’s not meant to become your primary PC, similar to a smartphone. For those of you that own a device such as the iPhone, Droid, or the Palm Pre, how many times have you decided to simply reach for your phone to update your Twitter status or your MySpace/Facebook instead of getting up and walking over to your computer? What if you also had a device with the same ease of access that could also edit photos, produce videos, manage passwords, access the Bittorrent network, provide a complete office suite, transfer large files, convert files, or do just about anything else?

Google Chrome OS may finally provide something similar to a smartphone 2.0, a more powerful and feature complete sister product that is just a little larger in size. Just as the iPhone completely redefined the market, Google’s Chrome OS may turn out to achieve a similar milestone in the personal computer industry. Not only that, but if the OS is popular among the general population, then it will only help to strengthen Google’s status as a major player in the market, all the way from a basic search engine to a powerful threat to Microsoft and its Windows products, while also helping to spread the success and familiarity of the Linux kernel that the Google Chrome OS is based on.

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