Windows 7 and Dell Adamo XPS All Coming This Week

It looks like the end of October is going to be busy in the tech world. It is my guess that even the most casual technology fan knows that this week sees the release of Microsoft next version of Windows, Windows 7. Also Dell has just announced that the new super thin Adamo XPS laptop will fully revealed on the same day as the Windows launch.

Dell Adamo XPS: My guess is there will be lots of launches, announcements and presentations of new products this week and next (especially as vendors start to present their hardware working with Windows 7). Once such announcement is the new Dell Adamo Laptop. Initial announced on 9/9/09 it is an ultra thin laptop (thiner than the Macbook Air) but until now details have been sketchy. Now Dell has announced that all will be revealed on October 22nd.

What little is known about the less than 1cm thick laptop comes from a recent article in Business week. The article reveals that the Adamo XPS will contain a “heat-sensing strip on the lip that, when swiped with a finger, glows white and automatically opens the aluminium lid”.

The Dell Adamo brand represents premium craftsmanship and design and it also looks like the price will reflect that. Initial pricing information says that the Adamo XPS will cost $2000 in the USA.

Windows 7: Windows 7 is only a few days away and it is predicted to be BIG. Windows XP was released in 2002 and ignoring Vista, which many (including me) see as painful to use, 7 years is a long time in technology terms. Think of all the things that have happened in technology since 2002. Blu-ray, HD TV, multi core processors, 64 bits becoming more mainstream and supercomputing power in your graphics card. And that is just to name a few.

The next version of Windows contains many improvements and here is a summary of just a few:

• Windows 7 has a new taskbar. It is no longer just a place to see which applications are running but, taking a leaf from Apple’s OS X, now you can “pin” and arrange frequently used programs anywhere along it.
  Also by hovering over the icon of a running program you get a preview showing a thumbnail of that program.
• On the window management front there is a new feature called Snap which allows you to expand windows to full-screen size by just dragging them to the top of the screen, or to half-screen size by dragging them to the left or right edges of the screen. Another called Shake allows you to make all other windows, but the one you're working on, disappear by simply grabbing its title bar with the mouse and shaking it several times.
• The Networking user interface has been improved from the unfriendly UI in Vista. It still isn’t as easy to use as the Mac (but hey, what is) but it is much improved. Now in Windows 7 for example, you can see all available wireless networks by just clicking on an icon in the taskbar.
• One of the most anticipated improvements of Windows 7 is its speed. Windows 7 should run quicker and with far fewer dead moments when youe PC doesn’t respond and your mouse just shows that spinning circle, like I have on Vista almost everyday.
• The very annoying User Account Control (UAC) that asks for confirmation when system level changes occurr has been improved in Windows 7. The redesigned UAC now has the option for the users to select the level of UAC notifications and it also has an improved user interface.

So my advise is to stay tuned and see what announcements are coming in the week that Windows 7 is released!