Speedfan in Windows 7

One of the cool things about Windows 7 (henceforth referred to as Win7, because it's full of win) is the cleaned up system tray. That's the group of icons in the lower right hand corner that indicate various programs that are running in the background, as well as some system functions. In previous versions of Windows, this area could get a little crowded. Even with 'hide inactive icons' enabled, programs tended to make themselves visible most of the time.

Win7 is very protective of the system tray. As such you can tell most program icons to take a hike. Extra icons are stored in a pop-up menu. In this menu is the link to customize what icons are allowed in the tray and when. For most programs the 'Only Show Notifications' options is good. This means the icon will only show up if it has a notification for you. By selecting 'Show Icon and Notifications', you keep an icon always visible in the tray.

Other than the default icons, I only allow one app to show an icon there. What is it? I spoiled the surprise by putting it in the title. Speedfan is a application that lets you monitor the sensors in your computer. Things like CPU temp, fan speeds, and even GPU temp are logged by Speedfan. You can set it to display in the tray whatever stats you want. I have it set up to display my CPU temp to keep an eye on a questionable heatsink.

So what makes it so cool in Win7? The color scheme for the system icons is all white. It looks very nice in the Aero Glass interface. Speedfan lets you set the tray icon stats to plain white text, and it looks like it was meant to be there. Have a look:

Cool, right? It's the little things in Win7 that warm my geeky heart. You can get Speedfan here. Works perfectly fine in past versions of Windows as well.

My Windows 7 upgrade.

The time finally came to do something about the copy of Windows 7 RC that's been staring me in the face for a week now. I burned the disk last weekend and just couldn't decide if I should install it. Tonight I decided to go for it. At least if everything broke I'd have the weekend to fix it. Nothing has, as of yet, gone terribly wrong. I'm writing this on my Windows 7 install, but there's nothing to say it won't blue-screen any minute now. I haven't used it long enough to give you a real analysis of how it performs, but I can tell you about the upgrade process.

I'd usually not bother with a pre-release OS, but the buzz around Win7 got to me. If you're a geek like me, you probably get a bit stressed doing major updates to your main system. There are always those moments when it look like the install may have frozen, or the PC has had to restart one too many times. So here's the rundown of the upgrade process...

I decided to do an in-place upgrade from Vista 64-bit SP1, to Win7 64-bit. You can't go between the 32 and 64-bit versions in an in-place. My reason for this was two-fold. First, I'm just not feeling like reinstalling all my junk right now. Secondly, the final version will not support an upgrade from the RC (so I'd have to format in a few months anyway).

I launched the installer from within Windows Vista and it chugged away for a few minutes. I was informed that NOD32 antivirus and my printer would not function under Win7. Nifty trick. I obtained updated drivers for the printer and the new version of NOD32. Setup copied files; this proceeded quite quickly. In the next step all current settings are gathered. This was the first speed bump. It hung at 18% for a few minutes. There was a restart, then it continued.

The previously copied Win7 files were expanded. No surprises here, went smoothly. The next step installs the new OS files. In this step it seemed to hang twice and there were two more restarts. The first start-up was lengthy... very lengthy. I was getting a little worried, but everything seemed to work out.

So it works... nothing seems broken. I ran Fallout 3 a bit and it ran beautifully. My fingers remain crossed.

What gives with AT&Ts 3G?

AT&T seems to be trying hard to become a cyberpunk-style evil mega-corporation. The iPhone has effectively given them dominion over the smartphone market, and they know it. Seedy things continue to happen, but could it be they're just hiding behind a big tough facade? I think that AT&Ts 3G data network is more stressed than they're letting on.

The iPhone has resulted in a massive increase in cell data traffic. There are a few little tweaks in the phone's settings that are clearly geared towards reducing the use of cell data. Some functions like downloading podcasts or apps over 10MB are not allowed on cell data (though, some of this may change in the 3.0 software). Skype is also wifi only. Now, here we see a new bandwidth intensive app with 3G limitations. Slingbox is releasing an app that will only work on a wifi connection.

For the uninitiated, a Slingbox is a set-top box that allows you to stream your TV signal over the internet to wherever you like. The iPhone app allows you to view the stream on the phone. It seems unlikely that this is much different than watching youtube videos on the phone, so why the limitation? I think that AT&T is worried about the possibility that their network is reaching the breaking point. They were unprepared for the number of data-using iPhone customers they now have to contend with.

In some areas, the 3G network is already becoming saturated. In the great barbaric northlands, where I live, I rarely see people using smartphones. If I do, they're not usually big data users. I went on a trip to Orlando recently, and I must have seen an iPhone every 5 minutes. The 3G access was also considerably more touch and go. I can only imagine how bad it is in bigger metro areas like Chicago or New York.

They want to limit any bandwidth intensive app they can, to keep ahead of the curve. AT&T will do anything to lock Apple into an extended exclusivity agreement. Their network has to at least appear to be up to the task.

The Kindle DX means Jeff Bezos hates you.

Did you drop $360 on the Kindle 2 a few months ago? If so, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos hates you. Why? He's just announced a new Kindle. A cooler kindle, you might say. Big screen, lots of storage, all that crap... also it's super expensive at nearly $500. Pricey to say the least.

Above: Still not as practical as dead trees.

I'm going to just say this: as big a nerd as I am, I just can't grok the whole e-book thing. I'm very skeptical of introducing another expensive piece of technology into my life to fill a niche that dead trees fill quite well. I'm already terrified of breaking of losing my phone while out. Why have to worry about spilling something something on my e-book reader? I'm still not happy with the crispness either. Every time I've looked at a Kindle it seems too muddy. E-ink isn't there yet.

There was all this hubbub about a Kindle DX trial run on university campuses. On the face of it, this seems like a good idea. If you can get a big discount on the Kindle version of a text book (and the school is providing a Kindle DX), it could really be appealing. If students had to buy their own Kindles, not so much. Can you imagine how big a target Kindles would be for theft? Much like a laptop, they are very portable (i.e. portable by someone other than the owner).

So lets say you buy a pricey Kindle DX and get all your text books on it. Maybe when all is said and done you only spent a bit more than you would have on all the dead tree versions. Sure, you can't really doodle in the margins, but look how portable! At the local coffee shop someone steals your Kindle, because lets face it, people are dicks. Mid-terms are coming up and you now have no books at all. Time to buy another Kindle? Jeff Bezos sure hopes so.