Posts Tagged ‘windows’
Hands On with Windows 7’s XP Mode
April 30th, 2009
The Windows 7 Release Candidate ships with a feature called Windows XP Mode (XPM) that has left longtime Windows users excited. XPM is designed to let users continue to run older XP-compatible applications, mostly special-purpose business programs, that won’t run smoothly (or won’t run at all) with Vista or Windows 7.
XPM sounds like the feature that finally kills off XP by persuading XP users to switch to Windows 7 without fear of incompatibilities.
In reality, the beta of XPM is a mixed bag of clever programming, appalling kludges, missed opportunities, and challenges to the ingenuity of even the most experienced Windows user. To be fair, however, this is indeed a beta, and we would hope quite a lot will change between now and the final release.
The Hard Disk
March 21st, 2008
All of the information that’s “in your computer”, so to speak, is stored on your computer’s hard disk. You never see that actual hard disk because it’s sealed inside a special housing and needs to stay that way. Unlike RAM, which is volatile, the hard disk can hold information forever — with or without electricity. Most modern hard disks have tens of billions of bytes of storage space on them. Which, in English, means that you can create, save, and download files for months or years without using up all the storage space it provides.
In the unlikely event that you do manage to fill up your hard disk, Windows will start showing a little message on the screen that reads “You are running low on disk space” well in advance of any problems. In fact, if that message appears, it won’t until you’re down to about 800 MB of free space. And 800 MB of empty space is equal to about 600 blank floppy disks. That’s still plenty of room!
