LA.NET [EN] : Windows 7

Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts

luisabreu — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:47:27 GMT

I’ve just found this list in the windows 7 docs.

Windows API Code Pack for .NET

luisabreu — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:06:09 GMT

Just noticed this package that should be useful for all .NET developers that want to use the new Windows 7 features.

Windows 7: aero shake

luisabreu — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:44:30 GMT

Ok, this is something that I’ve found a few days ago while I was watching a presentation on Windows 7, but forgot to blog about it.Nothing explains it better than a video..

Windows 7 dual monitor support

luisabreu — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:31:16 GMT

Update: after all, it seems like this was also supported in vista…interesting :)

I’ve been so busy that I’ve neglected my windows 7 series…oh well….what can I say? :)

Back to the important stuff…one of the things I really love in windows 7 is that it lets me put one monitor in top of the other, like you can see next.

I do love this because this arrangement is really good for when I’m using my netbook and have it connected to an external monitor on a small desk and move the mouse in a natural way (with this configuration, going to to top monitor is accomplished by moving the mouse up, not to the side!). Just take a look at my current configuration:

Isn’t this nice?

Some windows 7 shortcuts

luisabreu — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:43:14 GMT

Ok, I’m putting this here under windows 7 category, but I really don’t know if some of this stuff didn’t already exist in previous versions of windows (since I’m only running 7 now, I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to see if it works or not). As you know, you can drag a window to the side of the screen and it will automatically resize to fit that half of the screen. In other words, if you drag a window to the right you’ll notice that when the mouse icon reaches the right border of the screen you’ll have some feedback that indicates that the window will be resized to fill that right half.

What I didn’t know is that you can achieve the same result by using the shortcut win+left/right arrow (depending on which side you which to “anchor” or window). Btw, you make maximize window by using win+up arrow and you can restore or minimize by using the win+down arrow shortcut.

Windows 7: Action Center

luisabreu — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:59:59 GMT

Today I had some more time to play with Windows 7 and one of the interesting new things I’ve noticed is the Action Center. You’ll be able to open action center by clicking on icon that exists on your notification area (if you haven’t changed it) or by searching it on the items on the control panel. The action center is the place to go to find all the problems detected in your PC and for getting possible answers to those problems. Here’s snapshot of the problems detected on my pc:

As you can see, I’m missing an antivirus…I really need to take care of that, but I’ll leave it for a future day :)

As you might expect, you can configure the messages that are shown there. Here’s a snapshot of the available configuration options:

In this tool you can also configure the maintenance settings. Probably, the most important one is system backup (which, as you might have guessed, I still haven’t configured :)).

Now, there really is an important feature here which you’ll love: User Account Control settings. This option gives you access to a slide which lets you configure the notification level you want to get whenever you’re doing administration operations. The current default has been working well for me but I know a couple of guys which will quickly push the slide to “Never notify”.

And that’s all for today.

Windows 7 first impressions

luisabreu — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:03:37 GMT

It’s been three days since I’ve installed Windows 7 on my Asus 1000h. Until now, the experience has been really good. I’ve managed to install everything I had on my previous OS and everything is working without any compatibility problems. Ok, not everything. The chipset software installation program refuses to install, but everything else worked perfectly. In fact, this time I was able to get the correct definition for my video card (which is in board) without having to install the drivers from Intel.

I do look the new UI and the idea of getting rid of taskbars and merging everything into a single taskbar seems good. I still haven’t tested the new network stuff (where you’re able to configure several networks and save them so that you can automatically get the devices on each network whenever you reconnect) and it looks like I won’t be doing that because it requires Windows 7 on all the pcs.

One thing I’ve noticed is the new calculator program.Besides the features we’re used to, now you can convert from one unit to another (lots of different things to convert to/from there), make some basic operations between dates (ex.: add/subtract days to a date) and even run some basic calculations on your mortgage or gas mileage! Ok, nothing really astonishing, but at least this time they’ve added something useful (the conversions have just made my day!).

I’ll keep blogging about Windows 7 on future posts. Keep tuned!

P.S.: some guys asked about the rest of my posts on MVC. Well, I’ll finished them in the next days too so if that is important to you, don’t forget to keep an eye on this space.