Touch capable Windows 7

I read this blog about Windows 7 multi touch ( not Multi-Touch, as it is patented byApple ) support. It is the extension of borrowed feature from Microsoft Surface Computing include in Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surace is a table like computer with its screen acts as tabletop; where user is able to use their fingers to navigate. Users are able to use multi fingers, hence multi touch, to make gestures which the computer interprets into action. For example moving one’s finger across the surface to move a window from one side of the screen to another, or spreading one’s fingers to  zoom in on a picture. Surface computing is also made popular in CSI:Miami tv series as well as in lates James Bond’s ‘Quantum of Solace’.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will support multi touch. Good feature to be included as the concept is being adopted by some manufacturers such as HP and Dell. Although there are still not many  computers supporting it, I believe that with the release of Win7, many companies would start to produce one. Perhaps as early as 1st quarter next year we might even have a netbook with multi touch screen produced. I wonder if with the next generation e-Book program in Malaysia especially would sport this feature also?

Windows 7 RC : Built-in applications & tools.

Last time I wrote about setting up Windows 7 RC in a virtual environment, namely VMWare. The testing is stil on-going. Now I want to concentrate on the built-in applications and tools within Windows 7.

First of all the Desktop Gadget. A gadget is like a mini apps that placed on the desktop, each programed for a particular task or job. For example a clock gadget; its task is to display the current time. Windows 7  includes several desktop gadget built-in.  Mostly these are the same as those in Vista, but now it is not required to run sidebar to use the gadget.

To put a gadget on the dektop just right click on the dektop and select gadgets. You will get a windows with list of available gadget. The default includes clock, calendar, CPU meter, slide show and a few others. Select the gadget you wish to use and drop it on to the desktop. You can always download more gadgets online. There are a variety of gadget available, system tools, e-mail helper, monitoring gadget etc.

There are several mini tools included in Windows 7. One of them is sticky notes. It is the electronic version of your Post-It-Note. You can change the colors and resize it. To change the color right click on the note and select the color you want. To add sticky note just click on the + icon placed on top-left.

Another tools is math input panel. This tool allows you to write mathematical expression on a writing pad much like a tablet input and convert the handwriting into proper math expression.

 Wordpad is also included in Windows 7, with upgraded interface like in Office 2007. Nice improvement . All other features remain the same. It will work well as a basic word processor.

Windows 7 included a new  tool called snipping tool. It allows you to capture the screen output. You can select from the whole screen, just the selected window, a rectangular area or free-form. Great tool to do documentation. Once you capture the contet, you can edit it by highlighting, send via e-mail, save it or put it into clipboard.

The calculator has been upgraded. It has additional views programmer and statistic; in addition to standard and scientific. Paint has got upgraded interface, with additional features throws in such as brushes and shapes. Pretty decent for a basic drawing program.

With Windows 7 Microsoft has included support for Powershell. As the name imply it is a spruce up shell scripting program. Think of it as an upgraded Windows Shell Script joined with the command line. With Powershell you are able to lots of cool scripting within the command line which otherwise you couldn’t do with the normal command line (CMD). For example, you could select objects such as files or directory, of certain size or type,  sort the display  according to your specified format. With Powershell you could actually automate your routine administrative tasks. But with Windows 7 Microsoft also included Powershell ISE (Integrated Shell Editor). Much like an IDE, it is a GUI program that allows you to program Powershell. Cool.

Many other standard programs sucah as task manager, resource monitor and task scheduler also got upgraded. Most of the upgraded interface are Windows 2008 inspired.

Overall I am satisfied with the improvements in the basic apps included with Windows 7.

CPU clock beat up to 7.0 Ghz : only with AMD

A group named LimitTeam successfully overclocked AMD’s Deneb 45nm Phenom II X4 955 processor (Black Edition) back on April 30, and submitted the results for validation to CPU-Z. During the process, the group used the Asus M4A79T Deluxe motherboard, dubbed as the Asus “multidimensional performance platform” featuring support for an AMD 140W CPU and the AMD 790FX/SB750 chipset. Additionally, the group threw in 4 GB of DDR3 memory from Apacer Technology and a ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics card. As a result, the group reached 7.127 GHz, beating the previous score of 6.7 GHz. However, LimitTeam didn’t reveal any specifics in regards to cooling during the overclocking process.

Late last month, AMD said that it managed to hit 7 GHz in “extreme overclocking tests,” more than doubling the original 3.2 GHz clock speeds enjoyed right out of the box. Apparently the CPU can be safely overclocked at home with speeds up to 3.8 GHz; anything greater will need “exotic cooling materials.” AMD’s product manager Brent Barry was noted saying that liquid nitrogen and liquid helium are best suited for high-overclocking environments, the former bringing the temperature down to about -140 degrees and the latter to around -240 degrees. Unfortunately, both solutions are somewhat dangerous to use. “This is fairly insane, science experiment stuff,” Davis said.

Earlier in February, Team Finland reached 6.7 GHz with an early version of the Phenom II X4 955 chip using a similar configuration. However, neither LimitTeam nor Team Finland has overcome to the world-wide #1 score listed by CPU-Z. Clocking in at 8.1 GHz, a user simply named “duck” overclocked Intel’s 65nm Cedar Mill Pentium 4 631 processor back on July 20, 2007 using the Asus “Commando” motherboard and 2 GB of DDR2 memory.

How to increase your internet speed

A lot of my friends (including myself) keep complaining about their slow internet connection and slow downloading P2P session . It seems that Streamyx has throttled the bandwidth among the users. It may be because of heavy load of P2P connection by other users. As far as I know, every user should get their right for their port. Tmnet should not take this reason as their main point in reducing the speed.

There are 3 tricks in order to get internet much more faster than before:

1. The basic think you need to do is tweak your internet connection is by optimizing the TCP/IP setting. What is TCP/IP? Well, basically it is the suite of communication protocols used to connect host on the internet. If your TCP/IP settings are configured properly, you can achieve good speed with your broadband connection.

2. The second step is to optimize your internet browser. We will make the browser suit the type of your internet connection whether you use 512Kbps package or the 1 Mbps package. Both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer can be optimized using this tweak.

3. The third step is to get avoid from traffic-shaping by applying some tweak for your favourite torrent client. This is very useful for P2P fan. for further info, the article on avoid traffic shaping might help you to make it happen

Well, we have just finished doing some tricks to optimize our internet connection using streamyx. Does your connection improve? If yes, then congratulation. If not, maybe we will have to wait for a few days hoping it will become stable later.