Wonderful Wednesdays With Windows 7

I attended a great user group meeting tonight, where fellow MVP Jeff Barnes presented on Windows Azure. I learned quite a bit. I didn’t have much time to work with my Windows 7 install, but do have some link love to pass along. First off though, the apps.

WinAmp – First off was my old standby for ripping CDs (yes, that I legally own) and playing music files is WinAmp. I installed version 5.54 tonight, they player seems to work fine. The only problem I had was getting it to install skins. First, there was no file association setup for them. Easy to fix, first I had to download the skins to another drive, then set the file association for the .wal file to winamp.exe. But even then it did not install. I figured out it’s a permissions issue, by default Windows 7 requires elevated rights in order to write to the program files folder. I figured this out when I was copying the files from my download drive to the WinAmp Skins folder. It prompted me for permission to continue.

After copying the files, I was able to find the skins in the WinAmp Menu. I’m guessing the only thing I would have to do is run WinAmp as admin when I want to install new skins, or fiddle with the folder permissions for winamp.exe. Frankly I’m glad Windows 7 is restricting rights to the program files folder, although apps that write files (like Winamp with it’s skins) to the same folder as the application may run into issues. For me though it’s not a big deal, I generally only use 1 skin (MMD3) so I’m set.

Pismo File Mount – The second tool I installed was a freeware ISO mounter named Pismo File Mounter. One of my Twitter friends (@cfrandall) kindly pointed it out to me. It’s pretty simple, just right click on an ISO and click Mount from the menu and there it is. Seems to work fine, I was able to browse files and what not. Tomorrow I will start installing some applications from ISO and let you know how well it works.

Now for a little link love.

Windows 7 Beta Home – The official Microsoft Windows 7 home page, has links to the beta program so you can get your own copy of Windows 7 and be one of the cool kids. Also has links to the Windows 7 blog, desktop themes, and more.

Tim Senath’s Musings – Tim is a client platform guy form Microsoft. His blog has a great bumper crop of Windows 7 secrets. I picked up several valuable tips that I’m already using. I love the one of double clicking on the upper or lower border of a window and it maximizes the window height wise, but leaves the width alone. Using WIN+SHIFT+LEFTARROW and WIN+SHIFT+RIGHTARROW to move a window back and forth between monitors is also becoming a favorite. Check out his blog post for a lot of other great tips and tricks, some of which even work under Vista.

Marlon Ribunal’s Blog – Marlon has a good post with links to Windows 7 Beta Reviews and other articles.

Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 Beta – If you are doing development specifically for the Windows 7 platform, you will likely want this SDK for Windows 7 and .Net 3.5 SP1. Like Windows 7, this SDK is also in Beta.

And finally, if you are tired of answering the “well what’s new in Windows 7?” question from all your friends, family, and co-workers, point them at Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows. He has a Windows 7 FAQ that answers all sorts of questions and has a nice list of all the new features.