[brainwash]

Passive happiness is using Windows 7. It pleases you because you’re using the latest Windows operating system available today. It tickles inspiration and pushes you to fulfillment in work, play or study.

[/brainwash]

I love Windows 7; that’s passive. Actively, I get a kick out of showing people the new features and conversing on how its making things better for them; whether their prayers have been answered, issues lifted, or found something so useful that shocked them on how’d they ever live without it.

I’m at an internet cafe on a bad machine by my standards. I am a hard person to please when it comes to hardware, I always prefer the best possible experience when using a computer. I play and work hard. The machine I’m using right now to post this is laughable: Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.20GHz), 1GB DDR2@333Mhz and a GeForce 7300 GT. A little notch above entry leve l, mediocre and similar to what most people who “just need a computer” have.

Yet you would be surprised how good Windows 7 makes this computer feel. It’s responsive for one and everything else you expect in higher end computers. Already installed in this computer are your typical performance hungry 3D games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Ware 2, Left4Dead 2, etc.

You would think these games would crawl at this poor, underpowered system. You would be wrong.

Staggeringly, they run decent, wait… better than decent. The games mentioned above and all other games run on the highest available resolution as well as up to a 2x level of anti-aliasing (smoothens jagged edges) and some higher levels of model details/texture. It might be magic working under the core, but really there’s technical jabber that rationalizes all that which I’m trying to avoid for this post. A partly and short explaination is that graphics priority to foreground applications play a large part in Windows 7: video memory is ony allocated to active (onscreen) applications rather than split to everything running even if most don’t actually appear onscreen. As a proof of result… while running Left4Dead 2…Aero Flip works just fine, at some points delaying for a second but that’s understandable. There maybe lots more to mention, maybe some I don’t even know about, but as mentioned in another post: an operating system with the functionality of Windows Vista and greater while performing as it would as if it was on XP is magic enough.

It’s naive, misinformative and inaccurate if I give all the trophies to Windows 7 though, the hardware have done their part as well. It was entirely in my own opinion that I didn’t give them enough credit.

What Windows 7 was responsible for was the optimizations and the overall user experience to make this all possible. That my friends, will make anyone happy.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A HIGHLY OFFENSIVE POST, I WROTE THIS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF INSOMNIA AND NATURAL HIGHS THAT FOLLOW. PLEASE TAKE THE OBVIOUSLY VULGAR PARTS WITH TONGUE-IN-CHEEK. IF IT OFFENDS YOU AND SPITES YOU WITH ANGER AGAINST ME, BETTER FUCKING BITE THAT TONGUE OFF BECAUSE I’M ON A ROLL, BITCH.

If there’s one complaint I hear too often and which I’m downright furious about is “Windows memory hogging”. If you’re confident that you’re leaning into the more techy side of things, I would recommend that you do a search engine for this topic because honestly I’m really going to dumb it down just to please the lowest end of the intellectual chain. Still here? Alright dumbass let me spit some insight to your rotting shitbowl of a brain.

Have you ever tried the elliptical cardiovascular trainer? It looks something like this:

Let me make a quick assumption that cardio is the most boring type of workout possible. No one likes the routine of repeatedly doing the same damn thing in the course of an hour or so, this leads to the conclusion that you want to get to fat burning as fast as you downed your last piece of mud pie. You aim for performance. Recently I realized a “cheat” to the machine, I can opt to let my arms rest in the non-moving bars in the middle for the rest of the workout. Therefore leaving my arms to do nothing; effectively not getting the most out of my time because I got lazy.

Generally, you’d want your computer to be performing at it’s best when you need it to. Let’s set aside green/power saving features as we’re currently focusing on the time you’re actively using it. People have fucked up misconceptions on how memory should be utilized, this is drawn from a very bad imagination that main memory like your secondary memory (hard drives) should avoid being “filled up”. This is only true for the latter as secondary memory often needs defragmenting for optimization. Shit did that bleed you out a bit? I meant don’t porn up your hard drives because the more pious files are finding it more difficult to squeeze in between. Okay fine, just maintain 15-20% free space and run a defragmenter from time to time.

See how I epicly got off topic there? I might end up explaining the whole fucking universe before I get to you, but I am your friend and I understand you’re stupid so I am here to inform!

As I obscenely stated, remove that misconception that main memory should be running as conservatively as your hard drives. Let me visualize it to someone you can relate to… main memory is just like you, or your bestfriend…possibly your mom or dad before they even thought (or lack of) when they conceived you.. YES, main memory is a drug junkie. A different kind of drug junkie. Main memory gets high on electricity, without it… it forgets everything that happened, like a bad hangover except it’s dead. Like a true blue on speed, it can run like a motherfucker too. It can do operations within itself in a fragment of a second.

Let’s say your applications are your heroine, cocaine, marijuana, whateverthefuck.. main memory’s job is to store that for your convenient smoking, snorting or anal insertion needs. So whenever you run anything in your computer, it is passed from the memory it currently is residing on (your hard drives, etc.) to main memory where it is ran by the all great processor.

If it’s still not making sense to you, at this point you should know that main memory is your wrapper, without it.. you can’t smoke your fine shit! Now that you know what it does, let’s go back to the elliptical trainer so you can stop scratching your head on why I had to bring it up. Your resting arms are similar to poor memory utilization. Again, aiming for performance, you should consider doing as much as possible in little time, therefore you INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY. Before Vista, memory is only to be used when an application is running which is pretty logical considering it needs to be in memory to be able to run in the first place.

This poses a problem! Yes it does.

Applying what used to be ‘working’ which is the process of only using memory when it is needed results in a large surplus of memory in today’s computers which are owned by morons who mindlessly add more and more without realizing their operating system isn’t utilizing it at all. This is the exact opposite of the ‘problem’ cited earlier when Windows apparently hogs all your memory.

I realized that I haven’t added anything vulgar for quite a few sentences now… so….. NOOOOOOOOOOO DUMBFUCK YOU GOT IT WRONG, BITCH! I still won’t tell you why Windows using up your memory isn’t a bad thing, no I’ll save it for the end.

First let us grasp the concept of caching. To understand caching, let me tell you about the small, tiny, itty bitty, microscopic memory that’s inside every processor. The level 1 & 2 caches! …moving ahead.. to explain that bit, imagine a library! In the library there is a librarian and in this current era, Harry Potter is still hot stuff. Now normally, the librarian would put the books under fiction as per the Dewey Decimal classification. There’s an exception though as these books are often read and borrowed therefore it only gives more work to the librarian to be pointing out or grabbing the books personally.

THERE IS A SOLUTION! A mini shelf for the librarian. In this case, the librarian is the processor. No matter how fast the librarian may be, if the data to be accessed is far away it would always take some time to retrieve. Therefore with the use of a nearby shelf, the frequently accessed information, in this case the Harry Potter books can be placed where they can easily be retrieved. The shelf is the cache, now is this making any sense to you already? GOOD, you dumbass.

Now back to high level stuff. At this point you should have already grasped the concept of what takes place when you run an application and as recently explained, caching. Let me reiterate: Wiindows XP and lower will only use memory when it needs to, That’s a gray area: It sounds good to you because it removes the intrusion feel that you’re not directly in charge of your computer’s resources.

Now… the question has already been answered if you read up, but Windows using up your memory isn’t a bad thing because of… CACHING TECHNOLOGIES! There’s something called Superfetch that takes note of the applications you use frequently and puts these items into memory automatically! What does that mean? The time spent moving the data from your hard drives to main memory is non-existent!

You might be thinking what happens when you launch an unfamiliar program that the memory could not accommodate … right? Well, that’s easy! Memory is so fast it can wipe all that data in no time. In fact it can wipe it faster than your monitor is able to display the free space. AMAZING!

Actually, all I really needed to tell you was Superfetch, but we both had a good run right?

In summary:

Don’t fucking complain that Windows is a memory hog because you don’t understand the process involved and what’s happening the background. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND..but now you do. Now you know that it’s a good thing…you can praise the good gods of technology for shining down on Microsoft for implementing such awesome shit so you can be productive, making the most out of your computer!

Oh how I love sounding like I’m paid for this!

It was a great trip.

How can I begin to tell you the awesome? Food was heart stopping, beautiful women and sights to see. It felt like a ‘provincey’ version of Manila while keeping the things you get from a big city: business, convenience and leisure. Cebu was clean and orderly, I only expect the best from a renowned name in tourism.

I especially loved the convenience of pulling over a taxi, quoting a driver –“there are more taxis than passengers”, this essentially means not only is it easy to get a cab at any hour, they don’t even require you to pay extra or haggle for fixed priced rides.

Had the lost in translation situations where other would usually come up to me and just flood me with Cebuano (their local dialect) which gave me the benefit of the doubt that they were reassuring me of my near fit figure as the only good reply I had was a shrugged nod. Of course.. there’s always people who would offer concubines having noticed my Japanese blood. Mabuhay!

I had friends guess where this photo was taken after each one got a quick glimpse. Not surprisingly, they all said Greenbelt. You would be fooled too if you saw it for yourself –the Terraces at Ayala Center Cebu. It’s gorgeous to see and hang out at night where bars stay up ‘til late.

One of the few places we got to visit on a very tight schedule for anything other than work was Sto. Nino Church while is conveniently just beside Magellan’s Cross.

I may have pissed off a group of people when I forgot to disable the flash from my camera and ….fired a very mean beam inside the hall where the actual Sto. Nino was. To make things worse there was this sign conveniently placed outside:

Yeah I got an instant +1 to the many things I need forgiveness for.

For lunch we dined at the Tinderbox, which I found to be your run-of-the-mill semi-classy restaurant from the outside as I walked in. I was wrong, upon seating I got around and noticed a house made entirely out of what seems to be……. graham biscuits! After much sniffing curiosity got the best of me and while no one was looking I had executed a quick lick.. yes they’re real graham cookies! It would be shallow to judge the overall quality and status of an establishment entirely on the material they picked to make their Christmas festive decoration, but that’s the kind of guy I am and I say graham is a classy choice.

Oh yes, the food was great too.

Pictures to follow; above the Tinderbox restaurant is the coveted Z-Bar by Kenneth Cobonpue, a popular name in interior design. We arrived in the late afternoon and it doesn’t open until 6PM but a friendly staff showed us around. I wasn’t able to take pictures as my camera is highly unreliable without proper lighting therefore let me just recommend this blog post: http://experiencedelux.blogspot.com/2009/05/kenneth-cobonpues-z-bar-cebu.html

The next stop was the Taoist temple in Beverly Hills where this panorama was taken. We were greeted by a hard ass guard who “timed” our stay at thirty minutes and warned us to be extra quiet. It seemed as if he knew I was trouble! He stayed at the entrance where we didn’t expect him to come look for us once we got in but not long he got around and sent us on our way out.

Cebu was just the trip I needed, wait…. that’s bullshit travel talk. Cebu was fucking awesome!

These are my top picks:

1. It means the keyboard is Windows compatible.

2. Microsoft’s evil marketing plan.

3. Shortcut key for the Windows start menu.

Pretty good insight if I might say, but hey.. Windows 7 is giving that key the empowerment it needs! Below is a handy cheatsheet which is ready for printing and sticking!

Windows XP was great for its time and it still is..until..  Windows Vista, which may surprise a lot of people, but is actually groundbreaking in terms of the tons of features introduced and how it changed the way you use your computer.

Windows 7 is the best of both worlds.

An honest yet somewhat inaccurate claim is that Vista is actually a lot slower than XP. This is quite true when you install it on a computer running XP and expect it to run just as fast without the need of hardware upgrades. Let’s be fair, since XP was released sometime in 2002, most computers running it are dated and they’ve probably only received minimal hardware upgrades since then. Modern games require another investment in hardware, why shouldn’t it be any different with a new operating system?

I’ve been using Vista since last year and I have no real complains as its obvious to me on why some things just dont work at all. I partly blame most customer hardware compatibility issues with Vista to poor understanding on the part of the users as to why some devices just don’t work on it like it did with XP. Not at all do I expect a 1999 HP scanner to work with Vista or 7 the same way parts of an older model of a car I have shouldn’t fit.

Vista brought the much needed change that adopted much from our own user feedback on how we use and should use our computer. In fact just focusing on usage improvements over XP alone should be enough reason for anyone to go through the necessary upgrades for their computer to run Vista.

This is all speaking from someone who’s at a neutral standpoint when it comes to Vista’s performance. From personal experience.. Vista runs fine, but just to keep myself honest, it has its moments and it does require a heavier hardware budget. I’ve had my share of disappointments as some software (mostly games) I used to run on XP sadly does fail on Vista. I can do with sacrifices as it did bring about more convenience than it brought headaches.

So what am I really saying here!? Windows 7 is awesome, but it was made awesome because it adoptedly heavily from a very misunderstood OS! Everything we love in Vista has been made better in 7!