Something that has been driving me bonkers in Windows 7 is that apps that used to minimize to the system tray, like Skype and Live Messenger, now have a full taskbar icon. I never could figure out how to get this solved, but I came across a solution today… go to the program’s executable, and bring up the properties. Select compatability mode, and choose “Vista Service Pack 2″. Restart the application, and it will now properly minimize to the system tray. This has been my one major annoyance with W7 so far, which is a pretty good track record in my book.
J.Ja
A few days ago, a vendor gave me a demo using Mikogo (good service, by the way). Like many similar screen sharing systems, it set my system to the “Windows Basic” settings and turned off Aero. Unfortunately, after I quit the application, it was still keeping my system in Windows Basic. A restart didn’t solve it. The Aero troubleshooter said that there was something using a mirror diver, but it wouldn’t say what, and no suspicious apps were running. After doing some research, I found an article about programming with mirror drivers that gave me a clue. On a hunch, I went to Device Manager, and sure enough, two new display devices had been added (bother said “Mirage Driver”, and one was showing an error). After uninstalling both devices and restarting, Aero worked fine.
J.Ja
It’s hard to believe that it was less than a year ago when higher end netbooks still commanded $600 and maybe even above. But if you bought a netbook in the last month or two for $400 or more, this is a good time to kick yourself. Last week a premium netbook should fetch well below $400, but that market just died with the arrival of cheap $400 Acer Aspire AS1410-2285 ultraportable.
The AS1410-2285 has the following notable specifications.
- Dual-core 1.2 GHz SU2300 “CULV” processor
- Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics chipset
- 11.6″ LCD w/LED backlight
- Full size keyboard
- Windows 7 Home Premium x64 edition
- VGA and HDMI port
- 6-cell battery
- Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11 a/b/g/n
- 0.87″ to 1.18″ thick and 3.08 lbs
- 160 GB 2.5″ SATA HDD
- 2 GB RAM
- Two real mouse buttons instead of a cheap imitation MacBook button that works like garbage.
- Did NOT see anything about BlueTooth but you can buy one of those tiny dongles for $10 or less if you get a bargain.
This is the sort of specification that would have probably fetched close to $2000 just two years ago but the “race to the bottom” has been won by Acer. While I’m sure this saddens those in the notebook industry, consumers are rejoicing. I saw an ad over this weekend for a netbook with Windows 7 “Starter Edition” for $368 so I feel for the poor guy/gal who buys it.
It’s worth noting that the HP Mini 311 netbook with NVIDIA Ion still sells for $400. While the NVIDIA Ion LE graphics chipset in the Mini 311 is about 79% faster than the GMA 4500MHD in 3DMark2006, the Atom CPU in the Mini 311 CPU is slower than a dual-core 1.2 GHz SU2300 especially for multi-thread optimized workloads. So which product is better depends on your preferred workload, but I personally don’t take gaming on netbooks too seriously.