Windows Phone 7 in the horizon... sooner than later

I had a first-hand experience with a prototype of the (it seems to be) fabulous new Windows Phone 7, slated to be released this coming holiday season. The prototypes, which are circulating in developers users groups here in New York and anywhere else in the country, are mostly intended to showcase the sort of new UI (named Metro and loosely based on the Zune interface).  And, no, this is not exactly an update to the Windows Mobile 6.5, this is a new product designed from the ground up, with a totally new OS and it will also bring, among a number of cool features, console-like gaming experience with XBox Live. Developers will receive the final Windows Phone Developer Tools on September 16th. If you want to know more go here...

Google Chrome running in Windows 7

It's nimble. It's neat. Will I "switch" from Firefox or IE? Why? This is just another tool in my Web design arsenal. And speaking of tools, I like the Google Chrome right-click "Inspect element" developer tool, very similar to my favorite Firebug, in Firefox, which, in turn, resembles the Developer Tools in IE 8 (press F12 when installed) and the great Dragonfly in Opera. All of them wonderful, well thought out, and above all, USEFUL assistants in creating and analyzing web pages and Web sites. In Google Chrome, I also like the Task Manager and even more the Stats for nerds. Interestingly enough, in the options set up dialog box, for the default search engine you get to choose between Google, Yahoo! and Bing (!) I like choices. Vive la difference!

Watch free Internet TV with Windows 7

Windows Media Center, a powerful home entertainment hub, gives you also the ability to watch free Internet TV and that's full episodes of the major TV broadcasters in the US (just when I thought I could do that only with the great hulu website). To start this great feature open the Media Center and go to the TV menu, past Pictures + Videos, Music and Movies, and explore how to get started...

Does a bugcheck 0x7F merit sending your PC for repair?

Well, that's what the Dell agent, via chat, told me: "I will be requesting for your system to be sent to depot for repair", 22 minutes after the chat started and after explaining to him to no avail all what I've done (testing, driver updates, etc.) after getting these blue screens. Apparently, not having straight answers to concrete questions prompt these agents to make this (ludicrous?) offer. After 35 minutes of not getting anywhere the "technical" chat came to an end. I made up my mind: I won't send my new laptop for "repair", not if I can help it. Mind you, I have used this system, as explained before, for running simultaneously several virtual machines, for watching movies, Internet TV, programming, etc. I believe there's is a driver (wish I knew which one) misbehaving and producing a kernel stack overflow specifically, in my computer, a stop error 0x7F: UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP with Parameter 1 set to EXCEPTION_DOUBLE_FAULT ((0x0000000000000008)... This incident reminds me when I took my first computer (some 20 years ago) back to the dealer because it was "not working properly", when in fact it was in perfect shape, not knowing, by that time, all the tricks and traps of the start up files (autoexec.bat and config.sys). You don't send a computer for repair, just because is not well configured. I've heard, in addition, that they may send you back a refurbished computer... Please note: after my previous post, when I declared no more blue screens, I got three of them in the same day, ten days later. Venue: a public library, as usual. Never in cafés, bookshops. Interesting...