IT: Windows 7 hype or the real deal?

Windows 7 was launched worldwide on Oct 22. Its the replacement for vista which unfortunately is a failed product since XP. Vista's heavy memory usage plus security orientated settings though good, failed to win the hearts of many XP users including business like my company.

Despite deployed successfully Vista business on some workstations and desktop in production environment, our testing conclude that Vista business even when locked down, does not provide the stability nor performance of XP Pro. so when Windows 7 Professional (not the RTM version) is available for us 2 months before the Oct 22 launch to test, we decided to test it out.

To my surprise, it's 1) fast to install when compare to Vista business and provided most of the device drivers, more than XP Pro. We tried both a upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 & a fresh installation of Windows 7. both result are the same: good! 2) its memory demands is low, we test on a Core duo machine running on 512MB ram and it performs like XP Pro, stable and fast.

Its interface needs to get use to; users of vista OS should not have any problem with Windows 7. We also tested our existing applications like Sophos AV, SAP, engineering software like UG NX4 etc on windows 7 and do not encounter any issues despite that these applications are designed more for XP Pro.

I like the User Access control (UAC) which was a nightmare in Vista OS. Windows 7's UAC is less noisy and provides the necessary protection we are looking for.

On the whole, I think Microsoft do address the shortcoming of the vista OS with the windows 7 OS. Looks like I have to work out the migration plan to change some if not machines to Windows 7.

Review: Lenvro Thinkpad T61p

A heavy weight, this notebook is probably one of the more expensive notebooks i have seen so far. At 2.8kg, this 15.4" Lenovo T61p is all about size. Power this pictured model is the Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 @ 2.1Ghz. It has 1x1GB DDR2-667 (got another spare slot) and 160Gb hard disk. Its graphics card is the 256MB Nvidia Quadro FX570M. It is one of the models equipped with the Intel 4965 802.11a/g/n wireless adapter.

A DVD+-RW DL optical drive provides the user to record up to 8GB worth of data onto a single piece of DVD DL disc. For expansion, it has VGA out, 3 USB ports, bluetooth and a express card slot. For its price of nearly S$3,300, this overpriced notebook simply does not cut as it does not even have a webcam or firewire slot. Lenovo Thinkpad are known to be very reliable and rugged and this model continued the internal roll cage design. It does have a TPM chip and fingerprint reader. However unless your domain allows/uses biometric, the fingerprint is as good as useless. It was supposed to provide easier access to notebook without the usual username/password combo used in others. For a standalone, it will work great.

It comes with Vista business with option to downgrade to XP pro. It's thinkpad vantage software is one of the best i used so far with the ability to create specific network profile when moving between offices, home and public area. Standard warranty is 3 years labour/parts international. With the dedicated graphics and memory, its vista point is at 4. The keyboard is well spaced and like all lenovo thinkpads, comes with a trackpad and dualpoint mouse

There are better models are there and cheaper on the wallet too. But if you are a IBM thinkpad die heart with lots of $ to spare, you cannot go wrong with this model.