Thanks to a twitter friend I got my hands on a x64 copy of build 7057. This time around I decided on upgrading instead of performing a clean install. It took approximately 2 hrs 10 minutes from I hit enter the last time until the new welcome screen greeted me.

There are a lot of comments out there about the look of the new welcome screen. I have to admit that I like it, but as Rafael Rivera has pointed out in this article this is probably a feature set up for OEMs so that they can change their welcome screen to their liking. In the same article he shows how you can change the background yourself.

This is the desktop that greeted me after the 2 hrs long wait (well worth it!)

Back to the upgrade process. I have to admit that I was a little anxious to see how it all had gone. I started up application after application and everything worked as it should. Actually; It worked better than before. Bugs I had encountered numerous times in build 7000 are gone; iTunes runs smoothly (which implies that I have to extend an apology to Apple for some of my previous rants… it seems to have been due to Win 7 Beta!), IE8 the same – its now faster and it hasn’t crashed any tabs yet and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 works fine, which it didn’t before.

iTunes finally runs smoothly. The previous problems seems to be due to Win 7 beta…

Running IE8 with multiple tabs without any tab crashes. And pages load faster too.

As for the OS itself it looks pretty much the same as before – very well. There are some new icons and some different wording in some dialogue boxes (well covered by Ed Bott and Paul Thurrott) and there seems to be a lot of minor bug fixes.

I thought Win 7 Beta was impressive for a beta. Build 7057 is even better and I think that the Release Candidate (RC) is going to impress people big time. Highly recommended!

Looking forward to the final product later this year!

Apple released iTunes 8.1 yesterday/today. I downloaded and upgraded it as soon as I became aware of the fact. So far it seems to be more stable than the previous version. Apple Insider writes this;

As anticipated, Apple on Wednesday evening delivered iTunes 8.1 with performance enhancements, support for CD imports to iTunes Plus, and new Genius features. Separately, the company also updated its Front Row media application.
iTunes 8.1 (65.4 MB) "is now faster and more responsive," Apple says. "You will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing."
In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides several other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.
• Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.
• Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.
• Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.
• Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.
• Includes many accessibility improvements.
• Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

 

iTunes 8.1 also includes a couple of security enhancements.

 

So far so good. Will come back with an update later as to if it solves some of my previous problems with iTunes on Win 7 Beta.

Live Mesh touts a simple, yet brilliant idea; being able to access my files and folders from anywhere. Whether it is done with syncing the contents between 2 or more computers utilizing peer-to-peer (P2P) technology or via the Live Desktop.

I decided that I should try to sync my music-collection between my laptop and desktop. Given the 5 GB limitation on what goes to the Live Desktop, I had to choose the P2P solution for my approx 120 GB music collection.

I recently went through my collection and fine tuned it, with album art and tags, utilizing iTunes, Zune and MediaMonkey. Time consuming but rewarding in the end when everything was in place.

Then I made the stupid decision to try out the Live Mesh Beta to sync between the two mentioned computers.

Installing Live Mesh and setting it up is fairly easy, but screwing it up is even easier.

When choosing to add a folder to your Live Mesh and then in the sync options choosing which computers to sync to, what happens is that on the “other” computer a destination folder is created on the desktop. Here is my first complaint ; why can I not choose destination folder myself? So that I can make two almost synced folders become synced? If that option is in there it so well hidden that I cannot find it.

Well, Ok I thought. I have enough disk-space on the C-drive of my desktop to add the entire music-collection. The sync started by itself – which is actually my second beef; why can I not force when Live Mesh is to sync or not? Anyway, folder structures were created and the process seemed to go just fine.

After a few days I found that the process of syncing had stopped, but that the desktop only had approximately 95 GB of the 120 GB it should have… I looked everywhere to find info on how to continue the sync process to no avail. Bummer.

Then I double-clicked the shortcut for the Live Mesh “music” folder on my laptops desktop with the unintended result of changing the sync folders location on my laptop – not to where the music was, but to my laptops desktop. AND – for some obscure reason – the result is (either from that clicking mistake or something else altogether) is that ALL my music on my laptop has disappeared! The folder structure is basically there. Album art is there. But not A SINGLE MP.3 or AAC file to be found.

Yes, I have a backup of the collection (unfortunately made before I tuned the collection), but…..

It is my own fault, I know. I did this on a laptop running a Win 7 Beta OS, with Live Mesh which certainly is in beta, but I am still annoyed (understatement). As it is I have to return to tuning my collection once again, but then I will sync it between the laptop and the desktop using an old and proven way: copy the contents to a removable drive and then onto the desktop. And from then on continue to manually sync the two collections. At least I get to control the procedure and the destination location.

So: At the moment I can not in any way, shape or form recommend using Live Mesh for syncing important folder/file structures. I have created a work folder I will use to sync between the beforementioned computers, but always keeping a backup around. I do think that Windows Live Sync might be a better tool for that, but that is a different post!

Edited; 2009-02-12 Typos…