Category Archives: Previews

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7

Hello again, thought it was about time I posted on here again.

Ok so next month is Microsoft’s BUILD developer conference in which they will be showing many of the new features in the upcoming Windows 8 and they will be also be handing out a developer preview build to people attending much like they did at PDC in 2008 with Windows 7, Inevitably this build will be leaked and I’ll be sure to install it onto one of my PC’s to try it out.

Now earlier this year Microsoft demoed the new home screen which will be in Windows 8 which uses the METRO interface from Windows Phone and Zune which is a Beautiful interface in my opinion, now from the looks of things at the moment its primly focused towards touch interface but of course will be perfectly useable with a mouse and keyboard, I’m not sure how well this will work but I’m going to reserve my judgement until I ACTUALLY BLOODY USE IT unlike a bunch of tech” journalists” who have been WHINEING on and on about how it’s going to use up too much RAM and it won’t be practical and “it’s another Vista” (Vista was bloody good ok FAR better than XP, Windows 7 was built on top of Vista and you all like that now don’t you?) In all likelihood Windows 8 will have the same or lower memory footprint than Windows 7 and if you’re still only using 1GB of RAM for god sake buy some more!! Its dirt cheap now you have absolutely no excuse not to and if you don’t like it well bloody well turn it off and stop your bitching no one will force you to use it, but of course if your system is low spec it will be turned off by default. The new home screen in windows 8 is just another layer to the OS it’s not removing the UI that was in Windows 7, it’s all still there. Ok maybe to you it’s a step in the wrong direction but here’s why it think it’s not.
I’ve been running Windows Phone 7 now for the past three months after upgrading from my HTC HD2 (which I had running Android) to a HD7. The METRO interface is just superb it so fluid, clean and runs lightning fast!

It is by far the best phone OS I have used in my mind WP7 is a joy to use and I would strongly recommend it anyone else , it just works and without messing about trying to get things to work or set up correctly, though I have to say I do miss some of the customizability and complicatedness that came with Android and Windows Mobile 6.5.3. When I first got the phone I was on the first build of WP7 which wasn’t without its failings, there was not cut and paste which drove me mad and there were a few bugs which could be a problem for me from time to time but this is all expected when dealing with a new OS it’s going to be rough around the edges at first and that’s part of the fun. Since then Microsoft have updated WP7 quite often and latest of which is being pushed out next month Mango (build 7.10.7720) which is a major update bringing over 500 new features (sorry but can’t be aresed to find them all) I’ve been running the Mango beta on my phone for the past month without a single hitch and last week I updated to the RTM build which leaked on the 12th. After using WP7 with its tile based home screen which is pretty similar to what the Windows 8 home screen will be I think it will be fantastic to use on tablets but I’m not too sure about using it with a mouse and keyboard but we will see next month hopefully.

Peace and love,

 

Samson

Good Morning Good Morning!

WHAT!!! I’m writing a blog post and it’s not stupid o clock at night =O that can’t be right. My new hard drive came yesterday to replace my slowly dying C drive which has not been sounding healthy for a while now (CLICK CLICK CRUNCH!!), so yesterday evening I unplugged my secondly drive just to be sure my C drive was the one clicking and it was, so I plugged the drive back in and booted my PC one last time before cloning the hard drive and BANG! “BOOTMGR is missing” oh great so I had to fix that and well it managed to boot into windows once before coming up again and again! *Sigh* so seeing how this drive has an almost 3 year old windows installation on it anyways and it’s not really stable enough to clone safely I might as well just do a fresh install on my new hard drive and plonk my old C drive in to copy files off later. The timing was great though to purchase a new hard drive.

Also yesterday evening I had a lovely Spaghetti Bolognese which Martin cooked and I helped lol was mountains of the stuff and we ate it all, I was very manly and brought some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream which we had (yeah I like Baileys and Ben & Jerry’s, quiet you) I would recommend Martins Spaghetti Bolognese very nice indeed, I guess I better cook something tonight I’m thinking curry as its been ages since I’ve made a curry. Star Wars marathon night is coming together slowly now going to do some baking with Alice on Friday and possibly bake some Star Wars related items SO WIZARD!!! Now I better get back to installing Windows before I go off volunteering.

Peace and love,

Samson

Sneaky Peek

Hello there! Today I have been working on a preview of the new website/blog. One way or another this will happen! I’m hoping to find someone who doesn’t mind doing some coding and such for me as I’m not brilliant at coding, but I get along. Put it this way, the thought of me trying to do the site and the blog frightens me like a bunny caught in a high-powered pneumatic trap…

Anyway without further ado, let’s have a look-see:

Design of the New Website

This is the design - Version 1 - Questions and Comments to: martin@pillowmint.co.uk

There we have it people. The new design. Any questions or comments please email them to me at martin@pillowmint.co.uk

I’m wanting this theme to run across the website and it’s pages and the WordPress blog. I like WP and I can’t see the reasoning behind being bothered to code your own blog when there is perfectly good blogging tools out there anyway… I’ll be providing a WP theme preview very shortly but for now, I need to make a high resolution PSD of the website so that we can get the ball rolling!

Hope ye all like it,

Cheers,

Martin :D