I’m using Windows 7 for about a month now and would like to give you an impression of how it feels to me.

Windows 7 is Microsoft’s new weapon of choice. They went back from implementing in C# (–> Vista) to pure old C, as the performance losses of this political descision were accepted with the thought that “hardware becomes faster anyways”. They didn’t think about smartphones and netbooks back then. And got hit by really bad sales. Well, I’m using this platform for about one month now, therefore I thought I should share my experiences with you.

Image by nick see via Flickr

Speed: Its not as fast as XP, but MUCH faster than Vista. The boot process is faster, though a bug slows it down for my machine at the moment. Glad you can hibernate. You should.

Its New!: It looks shinyer than Vista. Well, its REALLY shiny. It has all the drivers. If it hasn’t got the drivers you need, you usually get an URL where you’ll find it. But a system thats new also has some few bugs. But the approximately 50 updates I got so far made everything run very stable. Atm my boot process is very slow due to a bug, and sometimes I don’t have the “txt-file” in the “create new”-context-menu, but thats about it. And as its new, it also supports features that you won’t use now, but that you may want to use in the future, such as multitouch. Homegroups make easier network-sharing possible, even if it won’t help much till other devices use the feature.

It has a good search: As I didn’t use Vista, I’m not sure if Vistas search features were good, but 7’s search is really nice and was officially stolen adaped from OSX‘es spotlight. Just type and you’ll have what you were looking for really fast. If you need something from a not-indexed location, you can declare the location as indexed and will find everything there faster next time.

Taskbar: The taskbar is now merged with the quick launch-bar. This means, you can have quick-launch-links and “open-programs” in the same bar. Well this wouldn’t be a good thing, but if you have a quick launch-program open, you just have a rectangle drawn around it. This also prevents opening programs that are already open accidentally. While you hover over open program-rectangles, you get a small preview of the windows. Shiny. O, besides, the tray: You can define which tray-icon-programs may bug you with annoying messages, and which may not. That a nice feature.

Good feeling: I especially like the gesture-stuff you can do with open windows. Especially dragging a window to the upper border of the screen to maximize it and being able to un-maximize it by dragging the window away from there is a feature I use everyday without even thinking about maximization anymore. I don’t use the “shake-window-to-minimize-all-others” and only seldomly find a use for the drag of a window to the left or right border of the screen, which makes it maximize to that half of the screen. That might be a usable feature when you don’t have two monitors, but you can’t use it on the left side of the right monitor for example - which should be fixed.

Good overview: The system-properties are pretty cleaned up and you can find everything pretty fast. Smart guesses help you finding something you might have looked for that is related to the settings you’re just seeing. Hovering taskbar items gives previews of the respective window. If you have place at the right from the windows explorer, content of chosen files gets previewed (as long as its text, pictures or microsoft-stuff like wordfiles). All pictures and music get shown up in virtual folders called libraries. The desktop widgets now can be dragged around on the desktop, as I have found out just today, when I firstly used a yellow sticky note as ToDo-list. Or am I mistaken and this is an office 2007-feature? Well, perhaps my overview here is blurred.

All in all, Windows 7 doesn’t make me freak out. Its nice, futuristic, and has got a lot of nice new stuff. Thinking about what I don’t like I only can mention that I like to define myself, which are my “my pictures” folders and such, but I don’t have any really negative points to say. Well. Make it cheaper, but I guess that doesn’t count. That said, I would definitely advise EVERYONE running Vista to upgrade. XP users who like their interface don’t need to switch by all means, but eventually, XP will be outdated some time, so wrap you head around something new. Something shiny.

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About a software - and what you would need it to do so you think it would be useful for you

After trying out many different ToDo tools, I found that none of them makes using these tools fun. I don’t have a mac, otherwise I would certainly use something like “Things“, as the introduction movies look pretty nice and simplicity defines the software.

Nothing on the PC? Well, not entirely: we have A LOT of REALLY BAD solutions for Windows. Firstly, Outlook. This one is too simple, and office is high priced. You cannot organize ToDos with Outlook. Then an unlimited number of applications that fill your screen and give you 1 million buttons. Require about 10 hours to use first time. Missing a good PC-ToDo-tool, I looked for web applications. Toodledo is a nice service, but the interface just sucks. And you won’t use a bad interface anymore, as we’re living in modern times where usability engineeriing is reality … sometimes. Additionally, the web-software needs me to keep an eye on the browser everytime, which I just don’t like. If I want to get things done, I shouldn’t need the browser for that as we all know where that leads (youtube).

Therefore, I only depend on the iPhone-”Todo”-app, the only one thats pretty much usable. Sadly, I don’t have a 3GS, and the 3G needs about 5-8 seconds till I can see the screen and the app is started, so thats not perfect too. I often let this app run at work, but seeing the screen still takes 3 seconds.

So, what would you do? Usually, if you want a certain software-tool that exactly fits your needs, you just try out some, and after you didn’t find what you were looking for, you just use the next best thing OR just decide to throw away the idea completely. Well, that is, if you’re not programming software. So I decided to write down some requirements and asked at Abelssoft (the company I work at) if we could do something like this. Well, we could try :-)

So I’m asking you: What is the most important requirement, a todo-tool should fullfill, so that it would help YOU? What we found out is that it needs to fullfill the following:

• easy to use, intuitive to use
• small, compact interface thats in the background, popping up from time to time to ask if you still do <this>
• tells me what I should do next
• rapid way of adding new todos (and a rapid way of setting importance, due dates and stuff)
• only necessary properties of todos (some want projects, some categories, everyone contexts, some tags, some planned time…)
• good organisation of todos (projects? recurring todos? inbox?)
• good filtering (if I search something, I need to find it instantly)

We had another giantic list of things that COULD be nice, but we’ll be trying to keep it sleek. And we found out that most people have very different ideas, what a todo tool should do more than the above. My boss wants project planning stuff like how much hours will this item take (I won’t want this). I want it to be able to synch to my iPhone (others don’t use iPhones). Some want dependencies between single todo-items (like this one can only be ready after another one), but how can you build this in without blowing the tool up to one of the complex tools already available? Some want projects while others find them confusing. Some want time-management-functions inclused. Some want further project-planning stuff like delegating ToDos or connectors to projectmanagement solutions like JIRA included. Choose and divide, young jedi.

Also, the GTD-philosophy seems to get in the way sometimes. For example, “Folders” don’t make any sense to me when you have contexts. They’re some kind of tags gone worse. That said, I like tags more. For these and some more reasons, I’m not sure if we should follow a certain philosophy (like the 30-year old GTD), as these were born in times when computers were not that essential in people’s everyday lives.

What do you think? Which feature would let you use a ToDo-organizer?

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Just a short note about an error I resolved lately.

(This is kindof a double post, as I’ve not posted real stuff for some time)

Its very impressive how our life shapes with all the little things we learn. And its all those little things we change in our lives that makes everything a whole new experience. You think I’m on drugs? Nope, I ain’t!

The most time of my life, I’ve been a logical person who had difficulties in understanding human nature and human behaviour. As a logical person, I advocated that no man should ever lie in no situation, and the world would be a better place. Teachers laughted, schoolmates laughted, some tried to persuade me that this just isn’t true. I only trusted upon my logical view of things and nobody could change my perception. Guess what? The human race would be long eradicated by a nuclear war if no man could lie.

These were the times when I trusted my own beliefs most, even when people told me something else. It was a very long stage of my life, but I finally made the next level: trying to understand, why people have another opinion, “try out” for some time if this opinion works for me and then accepting or rejecting that opinion/position/view.

For example: I have always had long hair and split ends. Guess that I didn’t understand that I need to use conditioner to make that go away. My opinion was: chemical stuff can’t help my health or the health of my hair. And I was wrong. When I began using conditioner, the split ends were getting better.

So many things just seem like utter nonsense when you see how people behave sometimes. Like watching casting shows in TV. Like smoking. Like going drinking and dancing in a discotheque. Like making music. I even thought listening to music was a strange behaviour when I was about 14 years old. But after some time, you try things out, and some work for you while others don’t. I began liking music and going out to parties for example, but I never liked smoking even if I tried. Well and then after some time, you even try to understand women - a hopeless attempt, some men might think - but even there you can make progress if you really try to understand their point of view.

What I changed this year

Its just that I have a little bit of free time for the first time in about one year - therefore I’m writing this post. And I’m reflecting on what I changed this very year. Change is usually something people don’t like, because their instincts tell them that change is dangerous and that they should just keep everything as it is, because it won’t get worse that way - that is good for survival, the instinct implies. This instinct is called fear. A small interlude from Dune:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

If you understand that you can choose what you want to change, if you conquer this instinct, you’ll recognize that every change that you do is a positive change in the end. Otherwise you wouldn’t have accepted it … or you just undo it and change back.

And I changed a lot of little things this year. My dear. I hope you my dear reader can reflect the changes you went through this year too. If you want, you should also make a small blog post about what happend this year in your life, because I’d really like to read that. I came to the point where I can say that I love changes - and hearing about them. So this year:

• I began my diploma thesis on 01.01.2009 and over the course of the year, I needed to unclutter my life to be able to get it done. Some would call this lifehacking. I just stopped playing computer games. Boom. 30% more time. I stopped organizing my week and began organizing my day. Boom. 100% more things got done. I began struturing my online information-digestion through feeds and twitter. Boom. Learning stuff while keeping yourself informed in the shortest time possible. All impressive changes, and needed ones, if you want to use time more effectively.
• I found a job at the local software company Abelssoft. My salary is fine and didn’t need a car to get to work - again a lot of money saved. My colleagues are very nice and I like working with them - and I also like the work itself, which is a very important matter in being happy, I believe. I also just learned a new programming language (C# .NET) and Abelssoft paid a certificate that measures this skill. Thanks again! You can follow @Abelssoft on Twitter, and this is the website (german verison here).
• I bought a flat with my girlfriend. A big one. In the times of economic crisis and a drop in (bank) interests, it seemed the smartest thing from a economic perspective. But if you think about the non-economic perspective, its a way more binding statement towards my girlfriend, than a marriage would be. And I’m very happy about my decision. Believe me, the flat is completely new, big and I feel superb when I’m there.
• I left the church. That means approximately +400€ per year. Nice. I never really believes in god anyways, and if I did, I don’t think Jesus would love me more if I paid the church’s fees.
• Now for some more little things which changed in my information-digestion: Feedly. After learning what feeds are and how to use them via the Firefox-addon Brief, I just switched to Google Reader to be able to synchronize my feeds (and mainly let those that I have already read not show up anymore) with my iPhone feed-reader. Now that I use Google Reader which in my opinion has a cluttered and unintuitive interface, I found the Feedly-firefox plugin, that lets my feeds look like a newspaper. Hooray, the times of dead paper are gone - and with this kind of interface, maybe I can teach my girlfriend to use feeds someday too.
• I began listening to podcasts on the bike. Used music before, but riding bike is pretty boring, and I more like listening to music while I’m cleaning up or doing the dishes or something. Fould the following podcasts (both german) to be very interesting: Z and Bitsundso.
• Another small thing that impact my personal life more than I would have ever imagined: the iPhone. I learned how to use this device as personal organizer (respectively main calendar), ToDo-list, shopping list, feedreader, client for all social networks I use (Twitter, Facebook, Xing, StudiVZ), TV-guide, online-banking-client (damn, I can do bank transfers everywhere with this thing!), (video) camera, instant messenger, radio, podcast-player, music player, navigation-device, pdf-document-reader, voice recorder, gaming device (did you know we have Command and Conquer, Duke Nukem, Need for Speed and many more really good things?), weather information service, eBay-client (which works better and more intuitive than the actual ebay-website), wireless USB-stick, translator, YouTube-client and even TV-reciever (okay, I don’t get too many channels with it). And I can use it as telephone too. You wouldn’t believe it! In one tiny device. All very usable. Thats definitely an upgrade for my personal management.

So I hope your lives got some upgrades too, I’m very pleased with mine this year. For the next year, I’ll have a small list of goals that I want to get done (and that I just entered in my ToDo’s goals section):

• Try getting more professional at my job.
• Buy some stuff, so the new flat isn’t all that empty.
• Write some more blog posts.
• Main point: I’ll try meeting more friends - I kinda lost sight of them this year and definitely have to change that. But from now on, I’ll have at least my weekends free to tackle that.
• Play more pen and paper role-playing-games. I miss that, was always fun.
• Go on vacation with my girl.
• Get a private server-machine running 24/7. Needs to be low-energy-comsuming and not too expensive. And needs to be silent.
• Set up a new blog. This wordpress thingy here is too slow, the design isn’t what I want now, and I plain hate PHP. Whats your pick for another blogging platform?
• Buy a playstation 3 - the Wii has too many bad games, I want more good stuff. And a blueray player too.
• Pay back the money my parents borrowed me.
• Upgrade iPhone when there’s time. If you’ll jailbreak, its more time investment, so you gotta plan wisely.

Feel free to answer with your own changes from this year or your plans for next year. Expect to hear more from me more regularly, like every week. Or something like that. Over and out for this week.