Anyway, after reading some interesting reports, with some trepidation I decided to sacrifice all of my fiddling around and fine tuning XP and give Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 a spin. Microsoft are currently offering it free for a year’s use, after which time it will die and users will have to either buy the retail Windows 7 or switch back to something else.

First impressions:

• Installation was terrifyingly easy.  You literally select a language and region, where you want to install it, and about 20 minutes later Windows is installed.  The installer also included actual information about what your options are and looked decent, both of which are novel for Microsoft.  I would go so far as to say this is the easiest installer I’ve used, including Linux and all previous versions of Windows.
• The installer was smart enough to fire up wireless networking and join my local network during the install process, which was impressive.
• Setting up user accounts was similarly streamlined – username, password, done.
• Out of the box, Windows 7 managed the feat of detecting and installing drivers for all of the weird gizmos in my laptop save 3 (the fingerprint reader and two media card readers).  Given that Dell uses an ungodly collection of random technology in their laptops this was pretty amazing.  Even more amazing, when I ran Windows update it managed to correctly identify those outstanding items, plus the latest drivers for my video card, and install them all in one go.  Result: after one reboot, Windows had every single driver it needed working correctly.  If you’ve ever installed any previous version of Windows you will know that this is basically a miracle.
• Initial impressions of using it are that it looks good; boots up and runs about as quickly as Windows XP (or maybe even a tad more quickly, although that might just be the shiny-ness); has some nice themes and wallpapers included (although the people at Microsoft are clearly on acid, some of the wallpapers are… interesting.  Like, crazed giant animals lumbering around with weird manga-style backgrounds behind them).
• More goodness is that HDMI and a second screen (my TV) seem to work well without much configuration at all, although sound over HDMI is not working for me at the moment.
• Windows Media Centre seems really nice – this is an integrated media playback program designed to run on your TV.  It is also the first time I have ever been able to actually use the mini-remote control that came with my Dell laptop.  Basically you just tell it where your media is and it sorts through it then displays it in nice big menus that are designed to be navigated with a remote.  It also has the capacity to get information about your media from the Internet (album covers, movie synopses, reviews etc) and integrate it much like MythTV would.  It also includes a few really sensible tools like sample videos designed to let you calibrate your television properly (uncalibrated TVs being a hidden epidemic in our society… turn your brightness down, damn it).
• Interestingly, the OS seems capable of playing xvid and divx videos without the installation of any special drivers.
• “My Documents” and indeed “My” anything appears to be dead!  Huzzahs.  You now have a document ‘library’ (why can’t it just be “Documents”?).
• The dreaded User Account Control from Vista still exists, but so far I have had to enter my password twice, and both times it was appropriate that Windows check whether I actually wanted to do the thing that was about to happen.

Of course, it’s not all happy psychadelic animals and flowers:

• Microsoft continues on their crusade to not actually let you know what’s happening on your computer.  In other words – the file system is hidden from you as much as possible, just as it was in Vista.  You can find it if you want to, but Windows assumes you’d rather use their abstraction of the “document library”.
• Many of the system options are still hidden away in a series of confusing nested menus.  For example, to turn off System Restore was an exercise in digging about 5 menus deep in a variety of places which might have been the right one.  The fact that many of the system configuration menus seem to appear in more than one place actually makes things more confusing, not more convenient.
• At the moment I can’t figure out how to get a network icon to show me when there’s activity on the network, although I assume/hope this is possible.
• The Start Menu is, to my eye, a jumbled mess of crap with no real order or logic to it.

None of that really conveys “the vibe” of this thing though, which is good.  Very good, so far.  Nothing happened which made no sense, or was pointlessly annoying, or just weird.  Unlike Vista it didn’t sit there grinding its gears for no apparent reason for minutes on end, nor did the screen randomly go black while I entered my password 20 times to prove I am who I say I am.  Unlike XP, it actually looks like it was written since the invention of electricity, and has drivers and integration for modern devices and media.

Of course the only real point to computers is games.  I haven’t tried any yet, but so far signs are good that Windows 7 is slick and streamlined enough to be a decent gaming OS.  More on that if I can be bothered later.

Finally, another important lesson I learnt during this process: deleting your girlfriend’s documents in your haste to install a new operating system is a health hazard.

(Apologies for the geeky post.  I like computers.)

It’s actually a mobile phone – you just stick a sim card into it and you’re set.  It even supports international roaming and has 5 days battery life (I guess minimising size and weight were not issues).

However, as this article suggests, as is also the case with most Google services there are hidden catches which most users should, but probably won’t, be aware of.  I’ve written about EULAs before, and the Chrome EULA is a cracker.  The main issue is this clause:

7.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service. For some of the Services, Google may provide tools to filter out explicit sexual content. These tools include the SafeSearch preference settings (see http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#safe). In addition, there are commercially available services and software to limit access to material that you may find objectionable.

To understand what this clause is saying, we need to understand what “Services” and “Content” are in this agreement. Services are defined in clause 1.1 to include:

Google’s products, software, services and web sites

So Services would include Google’s web search, Picasa, Google Maps, and the Chrome browser itself.

Content is defined in clause 7.1 as follows:

all information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images) which you may have access to as part of, or through your use of, the Services

Content would arguably include any websites or images you access via Google search, and anything at all that you access using Chrome as your browser.

Let’s assume, as seems to be the case, that the purpose of the majority of Google’s “Services” is to provide access to information in the form of “Content”.  The sting of clause 7.3 is in the following: Google “reserves the right … to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service.“  This is an extremely broad clause, and legitimises any number of actions Google might elect (at its discretion) to take with respect to “Content”.  In particular:

• “pre-screen” suggests that Content may be subjected to certain criteria before it is provided;
• “review” suggests that Content may be scrutinised after it has been accessed by a user;
• “flag” is one of the more disturbing words used, and is clearly not limited to flagging particular issues to the user – it could also quite reasonably be said to include flagging certain content to Google or to the authorities;
• “modify” suggests that Content may be manipulated from its original state (without the user necessarily being aware of that fact) before being provided to the user;
• “refuse” suggests that Content may simply not be provided in some circumstances; and
• “remove” indicates a degree of intervention in Content which has already been accessed.

On a generous reading of the intention behind this clause, it might be concluded that Google wishes to protect itself from lawsuits in circumstances where it, for example, does not transmit viruses or other malicious software to users, or where it automatically provides optional content filtering against porn and the like (e.g. “moderate safesearch”, which is turned on by default in Google Image Search).

However, a generous reading of intention does not limit the rights that you confer on Google when you agree to the EULA.  If you use Chrome as your web browser, then based on the clear terms of the agreement, you have agreed that Google has the right to:

• monitor what you are or have been looking at on the web and store that information (‘review’ or ‘pre-screen’);
• transparently alter websites or other information you access using Chrome so that you are in fact viewing a modified version without knowing it (‘modify’);
• report you to the authorities if you access specific content, identified solely according to Google’s own policies or arrangements with said authorities (‘flag’);
• make it appear that websites or other information is unavailable when in fact it is being filtered (‘refuse’); and
• delete information from your web browser (e.g. cookies, bookmarks, history) or arguably even from your computer (content downloaded via Chrome) at its discretion (‘remove’).

So, to put the foregoing in the form of tangible (but purely hypothetical) examples, by agreeing to the EULA you have agreed that if Google wanted to, and so long as you are using Chrome, it could:

• prevent you from accessing information about euthanasia or abortions;
• prevent you from accessing the websites of specific political or social organisations;
• report you to the police if you access particular kinds of pornography;
• report you to anti-terrorism authorities if you are doing research into islamic terrorism;
• silently modify statistical or factual data on a website you are accessing;
• silently doctor photographs or maps;
• prevent you from accessing websites critical of Google (like this one, I suppose!);
• store everything you look at and mine it for commercial or personal data at a later date; or
• delete bookmarks of websites of Google’s competitors from your browser .

I am happy to admit that Google probably won’t do any of those things, at least in the West.  It would be commercially foolish at best.  But Google already has a track record of cooperating with nasty totalitarian governments in censoring the Internet.  So it should at least be assumed that Google might do some or all of the above.  It is also known that Google stores and mines all of your email sent or received via Gmail (don’t email me from Gmail addresses, god damn you) for its own commercial purposes, as well as storing it in random places where it may be subject to warrants or government spying.

There’s a simple solution, of course: don’t use Google Chrome.  When you have the choice of using a web browser which definitely won’t do any of the above, it would be insane to use one which exposes you to even a slight possibility of any of those things occurring.  Ideally, therefore, you should use Firefox or even Internet Explorer in preference to Chrome.

If you care about your privacy and having unfettered access to information, I would suggest that steering clear of Gmail, Google Web Albums and any other service where you actually upload or download data using Google products is a good idea.  If you use Firefox, you may also like to use the excellent CustomizeGoogle plugin to control how much information about you Google is actually collecting.

Until Google learns to totally respect its users freedom to access and use third party information anyway they see fit and without corporate oversight, they do not deserve your business, even with respect to their “free” browser.

By the end of the year, consumers are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge and are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards.

A friend (Karloskar, who has written here before) has had one of these for a while now.  I find it a tad too small, but it’s at the small end of the scale – the slightly larger ones are easy enough to type on, but small enough to throw into a small bag and take anywhere with you.  My favourite use for it now is as an argument-settler – whenever a ridiculous claim is made which requires immediate and brutal correction, you can whip this thing out and settle it the old fashioned way (i.e. with Google).

Using it is also pleasantly low-risk – somehow it feels like a tough little plastic toy which can be used casually, not a fragile glass-and-plastic artefact which must be used with due reverence to avoid inflicting any catastrophic damage.

These are going to be everywhere soon – if all you need a PC for is a little bit of web browsing and email then it’s hard to go past something that costs a few hundred bucks and fits in a handbag, briefcase or glovebox.

We’re probably going shopping for one soon.  I’ll report on the results – there are a bewildering array of them on the market already (how the hell to computer companies crank out highly complex devices with a few months’ lead-in when other industries take years or even decades to introduce new products?  Anyway…).  Even so, I don’t think I’ll be giving up my nice, heavy Real Man’s Laptop TM any time soon.