New Job, Old Operating System

You really don't know how good something is until you don't have it any longer. This is a statement that is very much the truth. I started a new graduate assistant position this week at Illinois State University. I will be doing a variety of tasks in this position and some of them involve work on the computer.

The operating system on the computer I will be working on? You guessed it - Windows 7.

The last time I used Windows full time XP was still still the latest stable Windows release (cause lets be honest, I don't consider Vista a stable release). Kubuntu 7.04 was the first Linux LiveCD I ever burned and I haven't looked back since. Its amazing all the little things you miss when you don't have them any longer.

I was working in two applications at once, so instinctively I went to move the second application to a different workspace...

Only to realize I couldn't. 

I went to find a copy and paste manager, there wasn't one installed. So naturally I sought out the package manager to install one...

Wait, there isn't a package manager?

Comon - even the smart phones most people carry around have a "App Store" which is really just a front end for package management! Sure, I could just search for whatever application I wanted on Google - but installing applications that have access to system data from random internet sources just doesn't seem terribly safe.

The biggest annoyance I ran into (and someone please let me know if I can make Windows 7 do this)? alt+left click to move a window. I didn't realize how often I used that when pushing applications around on my screen. It just feels terribly inefficient to have to move the mouse all the way to the top of an application to relocate it on the screen.

It's really funny the things you don't realize you have gotten used to having. Needless to say the 20 hours a week I will be working on campus for this next year will be a trail in patience with technology for sure.

~Jeff Hoogland