Windows 7 ... finally (part 2)

There are many changes made to Windows 7. It is like a reincarnation of Vista, just that, this time around, it is lighter, fitter and faster. Many key functions are easily available, well, may be one or two levels of menu down, but definitely not Vista that you will need an excavator to dig it out, burying those key functions deep down. In short, user ergonomic is a plus.

My usual applications like Firefox, Chrome, Office 2007 Professional, etc. even the Lotus Notes 8.5 survive in this migration effort. I would say that my experience so far being great and running the x64 version on this DELL E6400 hardware has been satisfying. Next up, I will be installing the Windows 7 starter edition into my daughter's Eee PC 900 running Celeron with 16GB + 4GB SSD and 1GB RAM.

Windows 7 ... finally

I was disappointed when I can't get the Lotus Notes running on the RC1 of Windows 7 as per my previous posting. Well, not anymore. I had been running Win7 with Lotus Notes 8.5 flawlessly for almost 4 weeks (August 13, 2009) since Win7 first available as RTM on MSDN. Lucky me :) have access to MSDN subscription!

I had changed from DELL D630 to a soup up E6400 with all the bells and whistles. Having 4GB RAM gives you the peace you need whenever you fire up multiple apps all the same time. Interestingly, it is not as resource hungry as its predecessor.

Nevertheless, I still face some challenges with the IE8. It keeps giving the application error whenever it feels like it and frankly, I have no clue at all of what causes these errors. But, I have to admit, MS had done a greater job this time. Although the error dialog box appears, it has never even once, closes the IE or a tab or restarting the app. This is a vast improvement from the past.

Symantec EndPoint 12, on the other hand, was barely working as it is not fully updated to support Win7. Win7 keeps alerting the status of SEP although it is working. I can't recall which messsage, but it was reported that ...

...cont'd

Greenview, August '2009

又是学校假期，几位钓友就开始手痒。如无意外，这个星期六就会相约去GreenView 一游。
届时，必定有照片分享。

House is ready for handover ... September 2009

Visited the house today with a real estate agent. The sales office lady told me that the house is almost completed and currently in progress of connecting the power utility.

I had a visit to the lower unit of the show house. What a transformation! I was so impressed to see the interior designer had done quite an amazing work in transforming the ugly duckling. Well, to be honest, the lower unit although is a beauty in its own right but not my cup of tea especially after I set eyes on the upper unit. My wife was the one that insisted that we should take up the lower unit. Probably her profession as interior designer, she saw what I didn't see.

Anyway, with the tentatively hand over date looming on the horizon, we are getting excited about it and at the same time, was in a dilema of whether to stay, rent or sell. Only time will tell.

Lotus Notes 7.02 & 8.0 on Windows 7

I managed to get Windows 7 RC1 running successfully on my DELL D630. It recognized all the devices of the laptop with ease and I only need to perform a windows update to iron out the driver issues. It was up and running in less than 40 minutes (including time for me to grab a cup of coffeee, take a peek at the magazines, etc.).

However, I had my first stumbling block when I try to install Lotus Notes 7.02 (later 8.5) mail client. The installer just unable to complete the installation with an error message (will get that message again to share). I had tried almost all the tricks and tips that I can find on the internet but to no avail.

Finally, I had decided to download the Virtual PC and work on the XP mode. I was hoping that the issue only happens in a native Windows 7 environment, but, to my disappointment, it also takes place in the XP mode. Well, I assume that running the Lotus Notes installation in XP mode would shield me from whatever bugs/issues that I may have with Windows 7 since XP is being tested and proven working well with Lotus Notes.

I am still searching for an answer to that although I had read some postings on the internet that cited success attempts in getting Lotus Notes to run on Windows 7, I am suspecting that probably my copy (downloaded from MSDN) is not the same as those who had managed to get it up and running.

Anyway, I would appreciate if anyone can shed some lights on this and help me out!

Thanks a million.

The house is almost ready....

There are significant progress on site with regards to the construction of the property. Looks like it is going to be ready for hand over way ahead of the scheduled date of '2010. All the fixtures & fittings being installed and we can see the workers cleaning up all the units. It has been 3 weeks since I last visited the site and would definitely do so this weekend. We shall post more photographs after the visits.

Wakeboarding @ Tasik Prima

This is a video from YouTube.com that shows wakeboard activity in Tasik Prima where this house is located