PaulSpoerry.com

A rather silly “trick” ( and really that’s all it is, has been making headlines over the last few days. From what I can tell it was really brought to the forefront by Ina Fried from CNET who says:

“By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard drive partition.”

So somebody decided to call this “God Mode” because to enable this “trick” you make a folder called GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and double-click on it. What you end up with is… drum roll… the control panel; it’s just in a different view than you’d normally see.

First of all, the text ”GodMode” has nothing to do with making the trick work. You can call the folder “IFreakinRawk.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}” and now you’ve discovered the magical “IFreakinRawk” feature hidden in Windows.

In reality all you have discovered is:

A documented feature of the shell. Folders can be easily made into ‘namespace junctions’. The whole thing is described on MSDN. Basically, any folder named <DisplayName>.<CLSID> will show up with just the <DisplayName> portion visible in Explorer, and navigating into the folder will take you to the namespace root defined by the <CLSID> portion of the name. This isn’t for USERS, it’s really more of a developer feature.

The second thing is that it’s really the “All Tasks” folder. This is a special shell folder which is used as the source of the “Control Panel” search results seen in the Start menu. This folder was not designed to be browsed to directly, as the normal Control Panel folder (accessible via Start -> Control Panel) contains all the same items but with a custom view designed to be easier to navigate. The “All Tasks” folder has no custom view, so you just see the standard Explorer list view and little else.

The existence of this folder and its CLSID are implementation details and should not be relied upon by anybody for any purpose.

Whoever does the advertising for Apple is amazing. The commercials keep getting better and better (yes yes yes, I’m still a PC guy… but these are hilarious).

Broken Promises

Teeter Tottering

MaximumPC has an excellent article where they dive in depth in 80+ different benchmarks on Windows 7 versus the other relevant flavors of Windows. The article is long, but worth a read if you’re into this type of thing. Listed below though are snippets from the benchmarks where they show benchmarks and their percentages.

APPLICATION BENCHMARKS

Best scores in bold. Our test rig uses a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9770 Extreme CPU, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 HD, and an ATI 4890 videocard.

Most of our application benchmarks measure either multi-threaded CPU performance (Main Concept, ProShow), hard drive performance (PC Mark Vantage), or a real-world mixture of the two (Photoshop, Premiere). In all of our application benchmarks, Windows 7’s performance was within a stone’s throw of XP.

It’s also worth noting that in several of our tests Vista was actually a big winner, thanks to performance enhancements that hit in Vista Service Pack 2.

Network

One of the main problems with Windows Vista prior to Service Pack 1 was poor network performance. Well, we’re happy to say that the days of waiting for files to copy across a network are done. Check the benchmarks and see for yourself—Windows 7 is stupid-fast at transferring files across a network.

NETWORK BENCHMARKS

Best scores in bold. Our test rig uses a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9770 Extreme CPU, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 HD, and an ATI 4890 videocard.

Games

To test gaming performance, we ran a mix of DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 benchmarks on both ATI and Nvidia hardware. It’s important to remember when checking these scores, you shouldn’t be comparing ATI to Nvidia and vice versa. Instead, you should compare ATI’s and Nvidia’s respective scores on the different platforms to see who has the best drivers for Windows 7.

GAMING BENCHMARKS – ATI

Best scores in bold. Our test rig uses a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9770 Extreme CPU, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 HD, and an ATI 4890 videocard.

In DirectX 10 benchmarks, both ATI and Nvidia chalked up almost identical scores in Vista and Windows 7. That’s to be expected, given that both companies are using a universal driver in Vista and Windows 7. That is, the driver in Windows 7 and Windows Vista are essentially the same.

However, everything changes when you get to DirectX 9 benchmarks. Depending on the benchmark, Windows 7 ranged from about 10% faster to about 10% slower than Windows Vista. What you gain in one benchmark, you lose in another. And, over the entire range of our DirectX 9 tests, everything ended up even.

GAMING BENCHMARKS – NVIDIA

Best scores in bold. Our test rig uses a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9770 Extreme CPU, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 HD, and a Nvidia Geforce GTX 285 videocard.

For gamers, especially those currently using Windows XP, there’s a strong reason to upgrade to Windows 7. You may sacrifice a little performance in some games, but you’ll gain some in others, and you’ll have the ability to run DirectX 10 and 11 apps in their full glory, which will never be possible in Windows XP. We’re also confident that both ATI and Nvidia will continuously work to improve gaming performance in the future, as both companies have for every other new OS Microsoft has released.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always dropped files directly on the quick launch buttons to quickly and easily open them in the application the shortcut points to, but now Windows 7 doesn’t let you do that—by default, at least.

When you try and drag a file onto a taskbar button in Windows 7, you’ll be prompted to “Pin to Application”, instead of opening the file.

If you right-click the taskbar button, you’ll see that now that file has been pinned there.

What you need to do instead, is hold down the Shift key while dragging the file to the taskbar button, and it will change to “Open with Application” instead.

It’s one of those simple tips that can seriously save you some time.

Source: HowToGeek

The bits are available now! WINDOWS 7 versions available for download on TechNet and MSDN download sites no longer carry the Release Candidate (RC) label. While the software will not go on general sale until October 22, the full version of Windows 7 is now available to hundreds of thousands of potential users. There’s still no formal announcement in TechNet’s news area, which still talks about RC, the final files are appearing in the subscribers’ download area.

All flavors area available including Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions, subscribers can even download the Home Basic and Starter editions, which won’t be for sale to US consumers.

I grabbed my copy yesterday and it was the smoothest, fastest Windows install today. So far I’m pretty pleased.

Windows7 Upgrade Chart