Words that rang true as the two hits of acid began to sink in, as we were completely involved in the already-trippy artwork that Microsoft had contracted for desktop wallpaper and subsequently used for the playing cards, handbags, puzzle and so forth that they included with their "Party Pack."
On a whim I had signed up for this Windows 7 House Party thing. I didn't really expect to be selected as a host, but the prospect of a free copy of Win7 was enough to spend ten minutes of time signing up for the thing. As it happened, I did get selected, and sometime in mid-October I received the big blue box of party.
Little did Microsoft know, little did I expect, the thing actually kind of
worked.
I asked my housemate Matt if Microsoft was wasting their money with this project. Being an Economics major (or some shit like that), he suggested that if at least one person bought Windows 7 who wouldn't normally have otherwise, it would probably pay for itself.
Now, I don't know about all that. All I do know is that the mere existence of this party pack led to many, many questions about Windows 7. Having used the beta since last December (and totally advocating its usage over Vista, XP, OSX, and even Linux, which I had previously been using) I was more than prepared to tell people about it. Hell, I had already converted two other housemates into using the beta - one of them using it instead of OSX on his new Mac Mini. And he had been an OSX user for years.
Now, we never specifically threw a Windows 7 party... but we did have at least three bake-offs (congregations over double-batches of chocolate chip cookies
and that other kind of baking) and one huge house party that ultimately ended at the arrival of the cops. The balloons and streamers (representing the Windows logo) perfectly complemented the Yellow, Green, Blue and Red of the Twister mat we "artistically" taped to our dance floor. The playing cards withstood their fair share of spilled beer in many a Kings game. The poster... well, the poster never got hung up, because it was kind of lame. Shame, Microsoft.
Anyway, I don't really know if any of the other party packs did squat for selling copies of Windows. For all I know, people installed the free Ultimate edition and threw away the rest. But at this house, more than one person went away with more knowledge of Windows 7, and possibly with hope that they can rectify the cruddy states their computers were in. One person told me last night, in fact, that he had just acquired his copy (for the student price) and couldn't be happier.
And hey, Windows 7
is pretty fucking good. Love the taskbar.
I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.
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Looks like it was a lot of fun.
I gotta go on the campus and score me some hot Windows 7 action soon. I'm hearing way too much good stuff about it.
YEAHHH, Windows 7 parties all around!
Oh, no. I think the interface changes of 7 are hugely important. The taskbar is a substantial upgrade alone: XP and Vista to me are clutter, clutter, clutter. The new method of window grouping, jump lists, a manageable (for once) icon tray... and the coolest thing is more programs will extend support for the taskbar. You can find a Winamp addon that goes above and beyond what WMP does on the taskbar with 'back, pause, and next'. Steam recently added jump list support and also shows progress of game downloads in the icon of the background, similar to copying files with Explorer. The Explorer, by the way, is also a major boon: I liked the direction Vista was heading, but this is leaps and bounds better in terms of organization.
Seriously, organizing is so painless with 7. Before, having like 3 Word documents open would be that much more clutter on your taskbar. Now, it's almost like Word has indirectly gleaned a "tab" interface - sooo much easier to manage multiple files simultaneously. That, coupled with the snapping feature, is fantastic, especially with a widescreen monitor.
I bought an eeePC a few months back that came with XP. I put 7 on that shit, and can't say it's been any more sluggish, but certainly more usable for me. Oh, and my battery life actually improved by 20 minutes or so!
I've never been a big OSX fan, and I've always had complaints about window management with the Dock. There just isn't a great way to access your frequently used programs without putting them ALL on the Dock. In 7, I can put a few of my most-used on the taskbar, and have the rest pinned in the Start Menu for just-as-easy-access. Exposé be damned, I always thought it was strange that if you would have, say, three chat windows open, clicking on Adium or whatever would open ALL of them at once. I don't like that behavior. I also think it's silly that you can only resize windows, generally, by grabbing the lower right corner. (Why not, oh, ANY other side or corner?) I also think that putting the "file bar" or whatever you want to call it, permanently at the top of the screen, and dislocated from windows themselves - in fact, only accessible to windows that are SELECTED - is just stupid.
Sorry for the OSX rant.
I'm sure I'll come back to Linux in due time. I could stand for a lot of bugs to be worked out. It's not cool when your emulated XP Virtual Machine runs Firefox faster than the native Linux client. But I did have a total blast customizing my system, getting things to work (not a plus, exactly), and being able to basically make my interface whatever I want it to be. Docky looks like an awesome up-and-coming thing, and Compiz is sooo cool. Hell, I didn't even have much trouble running a lot of games thru Steam. I'm sure I'll return to Linux, at least to play, in a few year's time, just because I'm huge on open-source ideals.
Whew. Sorry about all that.