This is a screencast of Office Word 2007. It takes you through a scenario of editing a document through to publishing it. Features explored include: live zoom, live style preview, cover page, quick formatting, context spelling, picture tools, SmartArt, keyboard navigation, watermarking, academic referencing, reviewing, and native PDF support. There’s also a bug with the full page reading feature with SmartArt objects, you can’t miss it.

Recorded on Toshiba M400 tablet PC with a reduced resolution of 1024×768 for optimal capturing performance. This does not reflect the actual performance of Office Word 2007 or Windows Vista.


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In addition, I missed the demonstration of collapsible tabs and enhanced tooltips, so here are these two features in screenshot format.

Enhanced tooltips are really useful because they allow you to discover more easily, functions you either previously did not know existed or were too afraid to try it.

After the popularity of the first bunch of Vista screencasts, here’s some additional screencasts of Windows Vista that includes: Windows Update, Vista games, parental controls and date/time management.

Again, these were recorded on the Toshiba M400 tablet PC at a reduced resolution of 1024×768 for capturing performance. This does not reflect the actual performance of Vista. Encoded with Quicktime H.264.

Windows Update

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Better management of updates through the Windows Update control panel. Ability to manually request updates and manage existing updates. Also features better restart management that prevents loss of work.

Vista games

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New and improved games bundled with Windows Vista include: Chess Titans, Freecell, Hearts, InkBall, Mahjong Titans, Minesweeper, Purple Place, Solitare and Spider Solitare. Maybe this is what will cause the great depression of 2008 Dvorak has been talking about.

Parental controls

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Better management of allowed and blocked content through time curfews, rating and classifications, application limitations and activity reports. Supports regional ratings and content specifications. Activity reports also feature detailed analysis of computer usage including web surfing history and instant messaging logs.

Date and time

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Better date and time management with the ability to manage multiple timezones.

Be sure to also check out the Office Word 2007 screencast!

The Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation has an interesting perspective on the risk of nuclear science. They’ve published a series of posters named ‘Living with Risk’ which focuses on all the other risks with life that is comparable to nuclear science. But is it?

Caveman

First up is our good friends, the caveman, who’s been extinct for a good time.

• As you can see, on the bottom left, caveman versus the T-Rex.
• Potential accidents, “Inadvertently speared by tribal member”? Obviously teamkill was popular back then.
• Protection & damage limitation, “If he turns on you, run man run”? I never knew doctors were so vicious.
• This is good. “How bad, injury or death” with a picture of being eaten by a herbivorous dinosaur. That’s bad!
• Benefits, the purpose of life is food.

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Never fear young-Luke! With the help of Digg, a few Chinese websites and countless trackbacks and links from some very respectable bloggers from around the world (I thank you all), I’m happy announce we have pushed over 77GB of bandwidth in just 7 hours alone today. Nearly matching the 90GB+ we pushed over last night.

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Here’s several Windows Vista screencasts focusing on various important new features: Aero Glass, file management, guided help, tablet PC functionality, sidebar, improved search indexing and Media Center. These are just a taste of some of the new features you will find in Windows Vista. These screencast was done in quite a hurry, so I apologise for the lack of depth and variety, had a bit more time so there’s a bit of variety now.

These were all recorded on the Toshiba Portege M400 tablet PC. You might notice the resolution is quite low at 1024×768, but it wouldn’t record fluidly at the native resolution of 1400×1050. Encoded to Quicktime H.264 format.

Added: Windows Sidebar and Search and Media Center videos!

Windows Aero Glass

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This looks at the key aspects of Aero Glass: windows translucency – which helps reduce Windows clutter and orients attention towards application content, live previewing – ability to manage windows with the help of an actual preview of the window content, and general performance and fidelity enhancements.

File copying

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Managing multiple versions of the same file is no longer guesswork, with clear indications of the differences between two file variations including a live preview, document size and attributed dates and time.

Guided help

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There are two major improvements in this area. Help is no longer for the inexperienced. And help is no longer long pages of text. Not only if help going to offer support to the computer novice, it also offers advanced tips and tricks that caters to all users. Guided help introduces interactivity and assistance to the knowledge-base, kind of like having a virtual wiz-kid, visual cues will assist users in completing many help tasks. Interestingly, if you notice the arrow in the ‘compass’ always points to where you need to look at. Also the window moves around pretty fluidly placing itself around the focused area.

Tablet PC

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There are a wide range of enhancements to the tablet experience in Vista. From better navigation to pen flicks, personalisations handwriting recognition and an improved tablet input panel.

Windows Sidebar

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Vista Search

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A common-day scenario of how an information slave worker can utilise Vista search to improve productivity.

Media Center

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Note: The Aero Glass UI has been disabled as it causes problems when the video recorder was in use with Media Center. In actual use, Aero Glass + Media Center is very fluid and does not have any issues.

There’s a lot of undocumented but exciting new features in Windows Vista that puts up a lot of competition towards OS X and Linux. Anyone that says Vista is only XP with a new skin should not only read reviews or view screenshots, but install it and check it out for themselves.

Also check out

Watch additional screencasts of Windows Update, Vista games, parental controls and date/time management in the part 2 of Vista screencasts.

Be sure to also check out the Office Word 2007 screencast!

The previous bug with Windows XP machines running a dual-core processor where USB2.0 devices would sometimes drain additional power has now been fixed. If you own a laptop with a dual-core processor, this is a MUST download!

This was an important issue to fix because even few may attach USB2.0 devices (flash drives, mouse) whilst on-the-go, internal hardware such as fingerprint readers and touchpads may utilise the USB 2.0 controller which would trigger unnecessary power loss.