USA: Character's Overexposed

I watch television. Not enough to feed Hulu's alien army but enough to keep myself entertained. I watch a handful of networks these days... TNT, USA, NESN, and Adult Swim. I spend the most time watching USA.

Generally speaking USA broadcasts terrific shows. Sure they have Criminal Intent, but we can't hold that against them. They have Special Victims Unit to balance that out. They also have House and NCIS... and a problem on their hands.

There was a time when all I watched was the original Law and Order. I did this because it was entertaining and constantly on TNT. Then I discovered Law and Order: SVU on the USA Network (also constantly on) and become addicted to that. Then one afternoon I switched on my TV to watch me some SVU.

It wasn't on. Some dude name House was.

I had seen House before on Fox and found it entertaining, but only if I were in the mood for it. Now USA was pushing him on me in place of all those sex offenders and pedophiles. Day after day he's on, episode after episode, constantly in the forefront of USA's programming.

I watched all of them. Feverishly. I had no choice... USA told me to.

At the peak of House addiction USA slid yet another one under my nose. This time a gentlemen named Mark Harmon was leading a cast in this program called NCIS. I resisted... oh how I resisted. How dare they take my House from me?!? I'm not watching this crap, who the hell is Mark Har...

Wow, the brunette is kinda cute. The sidekick, he almost reminds me of myself. The Italian guy is downright funny as hell. OK, I'll watch for a few minutes. But only until something else comes on.

Bringing me to my point. Nothing else has come on. I love NCIS now, I truly do. However because of the heavy broadcast schedule I've seen every episode from the first 5 seasons at least three times now. Maybe more.

Yet I keep watching. USA tells me to. That is, of course, until they have a new license to prostitute on my screen. Then a new addiction will be forced on me.

Am I the only one that sees this a major flaw in their broadcasting schedule? I mean, all of the shows I've mentioned so far are very successful and have shown long term resiliency. Wouldn't it make more sense to spread it out a little bit? Like, I don't know, maybe only show two episodes of NCIS an evening, followed by something we haven't had pounded into our skulls repeatedly?

Now if you'll excuse me there is a Law and Order: SVU marathon on today on USA. It's a great way to end my long weekend. Saturday's NCIS marathon and Sunday's House marathon wore me out.

I'll leave with you that.

Windows 7: My first impressions

Every now and then I traipse over to Microsoft's website to see what's new in the download section. Usually there isn't much, although in the past month I've procured from them Virtual PC and Visual C++ Express. Last week, however, I found something that really perked my interest... Windows 7 Release Candidate.

Since late 2007 I've been running Windows Vista Ultimate. Many (most) people hated Vista and completely passed over it. I personally found it to be a solid, though slightly heavy, OS. The interface of Vista was a more stylized version of the Windows XP look. Menus and Control Panel options were condensed down a bit, the handy Sidebar let me load the right side of monitor with fun gadgets that tell me the time, stock quotes, weather, even my network and system usage.

System usage... there in lies the fault of Windows Vista. For all of its pretty bells and whistles, for all of its "streamlined" interface changes, the damned thing was remarkably slower than Windows XP. System resources disappeared right before your very eyes when you performed simple tasks like opening Internet Explorer. It wasn't intolerable mind you, just slower than the previous generation. Added to the slower performance were issues with legacy hardware drivers, annoying prompts from the User Access Control, and an arbitrary issue of programs not responding, and you end up with a recipe for a failed Windows product.

Think of Vista like Windows ME. It worked but no one was interested in taking the bad that came with the good.

Microsoft, never one to go down without a fight, quickly went back to the drawing board and began work on Windows 7. This is notable for a very good reason: the gap between Windows 95 and Windows 98 was just over 3 years (see, I am good at math), Windows 98 and Windows XP were also separated by roughly 3 years (Windows ME and Windows 2000* came sooner but never found commercial success), and Windows XP to Windows Vista was near a whooping 6 years. Windows 7 will come less than 2 years after Vista.

There, enough back story. On with the meat and potatoes of this piece. I downloaded the newest Release Candidate last week (Windows 7 Build 7100 for those keeping score) and deployed it the same day.

It is very important that you keep in mind when you are reading this that I performed an Upgrade installation, not a clean installation, of Windows 7. My DVD burner failed me, ergo I couldn't back up my documents or burn the Windows 7 image file to a disc.

Installation
I extracted the ISO file to a folder on my desktop and ran the Setup program. After a few minutes and a handful of prompts installation of Windows 7 began. Now because this was an Upgrade not a clean install, setup had to migrate my personal files and programs into the new OS. I only mention this because it took 3 and a half hours to install this beast on my computer. NCIS was on so I'll give Microsoft a free pass on the install time. However, given how Windows 7 is built to closely mimic the Windows Vista environment (files management, memory allocations, etc.) I find it hard to believe that migration was that time consuming.

Using Windows 7
So now I have a full version of Windows 7 on my computer and activated. Legally activated too. See, there is a first time for everything. Anyway I plop myself down and fire up my computer. The loading screen is prettier now... an animated Windows logo floats together and gleams with the hope and promise of a better OS.

It does this for a while actually. It seems as though my Windows 7 is taking longer to boot than Vista. Eventually I come to the Welcome screen... not as pretty, which is shame because I'm staring at this for a while too.

Windows 7 is booting slower than Vista. Oh well, its a RC, not a final version. I'm sure Microsoft will be correcting this issue (hint, hint).

My desktop is now loaded. The sidebar of Vista is gone, but the gadgets remain. Instead of using two programs worth of system resources the Windows team simply made the gadgets stand-alone applets that sit in the old sidebar space (movable to any spot on your desktop) and easily changed out whenever you grow tired of them.

Clicking the Start button I see the familiar Windows Vista-esque menu, only for some reason the pinned programs I had before the upgrade are gone. All I see is a blank white space. Not a big deal, it is easy enough to pin them again, though I have found that this gets a little glitchy at times when changing the order of pinned programs (another bug I'm sure will be worked out in the final RTM (Release To Manufacture)). The rest of the Start panel is identical to Vista with the exception of the Shut Down button. Instead of Vista's easily confused icon system Windows 7 simply uses a button than says "Shut Down."



Brilliant really. It says what it does.

Jumping to the Control Panel I see that, like previous versions of Windows, I have a Category view and an all items view. The all items list is much more expansive than it has been in previous versions. Microsoft did a good job of giving the user a clean and complete way of changing virtually every minor setting that might need changing.



This pleases me.

The rest of the interface is very Vista with a few minor changes. The Quick Launch toolbar next to the Start button is more versatile now. Pinned and running programs have icons that let you view snapshots of the application (handy if you minimize everything or have multiple windows open), control Media Player 12 on the fly, even choose which Internet Explorer tab you want to view (handier than it sounds, trust me).

Summation
Assuming that Microsoft irons out the slow boot (perhaps an issue with the Upgrade installation, perhaps a universal issue) then Windows 7 will do what Microsoft hopes... be a successful Vista. I should mention that despite the slow booting Windows 7 does run faster than Vista once the OS is loaded. Programs launch smoothly, multitasking doesn't hinder the system's performance, and the overall resource usage is much lower. This should entice people who avoided Vista to consider Windows 7... you won't need a super computer to run it.

If you've used Windows Vista then Windows 7 will feel very familiar. If you haven't you'll still find it easy to work with. The interface is friendly enough and clean enough to make even the Mac folks jealous.

I'm looking forward to the final build of Windows 7, and with any hope the better performance and lower hardware demand will encourage people to take a strong look at what Vista should have been in the first place.





*Windows 2000 didn't suck, mind you. It wasn't marketed as a consumer's OS. It was a follow up to Windows NT 4.0, ergo it was geared towards businesses and network gurus. However, the Windows 2000 kernel (NT5) become the foundation of Windows XP, so really Windows 2000 was the gateway to this current generation of OS's.

Windows ME, however, did suck.