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Laptop recovery underway behind my desk at work.
Not my usual laptop bag – I’m guessing it’s still in a box somewhere.

Last night I helped myself to the Windows 7 Release candidate and I must say I was impressed with the download speed. Within 30 minutes, I’d reached 50% of the download. The only download I think that went faster was an installation of Acrobat Reader. Don’t ask me how long I’ve managed to go without that on my computer, but I needed it, so I downloaded it and was averaging speeds of 250kbps.

That said, this is my first post here on my new domain. Something struck me the other day and I decided that I should have more control over my blog and webpresense etc, so I registered my own domain name and got some hosting! Kudos to Hosting Direct.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love Windows 7. Today I made the decision that I was going to install Windows 7 release candidate on my laptop seeing as its the worst performing computer in this house.

The release candidate is already available for download for TechNet and MSDN members, and will be available to the general public from the 5th May 2009 (PST) through until the end of July. The excellent thing about this release is that unlike the Beta, which starts expiring on July 1st 2009 and will be really dead by August 1st, the release candidate has a life span to June 2010 as reported by The Guardian recently.

Whats the minimum specifications for running Windows 7, well, a 1ghz processor, 1gb of ram among other things. This acer laptop which performs so poorly under Vista should be a slender athlete under Windows 7.

With all that said, I am planning on increasing the ram in the laptop to 4gb as the 1gb it has, is always at least 80% in use by Vista OS on its own and gets so hot sometimes I’m left with a laptop shaped pink spot on my legs, and it makes an excellent heating device in winter.

So why was I disposing of the linux partition? I couldn’t wait to have a little attempt at Windows 7 on the laptop, so I’m installing the original beta just to get a taste. I have no patience, but I do urge people to have some when the release candidate is available. I’m certain every every man and their dog and their fish will want to download it. But if you want a sneak peak at the asthetics, I suggest you go here.

So since I purchased a legitimate copy of Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007, I stumbled on this Office Live Workspace concept Microsoft currently have in Beta. To be honest, I haven’t heard much about it and thought this would be an opportune time to investigate further. You can read the press release here.

Like most people, I carry around a USB flash drive which has my personal files I take between the office and home, a few pictures etc. It’s the convenience of it all really. Lately I had thoughts of using Windows Home Server just to access my files from wherever I might be, but this looks like the next logical step in my data portability wrangle. I’ve had panic attacks when I can’t find my flash drive. It has my household budgets for the next two months at least on it, the same kind of panic attack when you have to go a day without a cellphone. You know what I mean.

But as I delve deeper into this, it’s part of the phenomenon called Cloud Computing – which has industry leaders like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo on its bandwagon. Basically, it’s a virtualisation of services, most well known being Facebook, Flickr and Chrome.

With Microsoft Office Live Workspace, you have 5GB of personal storage space. That’s slightly larger than your average flash drive size. They tout that you don’t need Office installed on your PC and you can access your files from the poolside (Effects of Chlorine on Laptops?) It’s your virtual file cabinet, create workspaces and store and collaborate on school work or personal files. To share files, all you need is an email address and Workspace ensures that you are all collaborating on the most current document, so you don’t risk jeopardizing your project with out of date files or missed emails.

Office Live Workspace

If using a web browser isn’t your thing, and you have Office installed on your PC, I recommend getting the Live Update so that you can access your Workspace from your native Office applications without having to launch a browser. Installing this update can be a small drama. Last night on my Acer Laptop running Vista Home Premium and over a wireless lan connection, it took me about 30 minutes to get there as Vista requires an additional update before it can install the Live Update for Workspace.

How do I rate Office Live Workspace? I think the concept is fantastic, but overall, I haven’t gone head first into this service yet, but I don’t think it will be long before the other average internet users will catch on to this either. Personally, it will take me a while to get everything on my Workspace that I like, but don’t feel limited. You can put PDF files and images on there too. Sayonara Flash Drive.

But in this day and age of computing, we are not limited to Microsoft Products and as I mentioned earlier, the other major player in the dark skies of Cloud Computing is Google. I would hazard a guess and say that everyone knows Google, has considered having a Gmail address at some stage. But Google offers other services too. They have Blogger, Google Apps, Latitude, Docs, Sites, Calendar and Picasa. Of course, whichever cloud you choose to follow to, there is plenty written comparing Microsoft’s Cloud to the Google Cloud. Maybe I will look at Google over the Easter Weekend when I don’t have much planned.