Cloud 9 IDE

I spent some time testing Cloud 9 IDE today, and I must say that I was blown away. It easy to use, quick and responsive. It is well laid out and integrates very nicely to bitbucket. I will definitely be using it on my next project and will share my findings here. Give it a try out!!!

Windows 8 - First Impressions!!!

I recently installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview and was very very disappointed. Other than the new tiled look and feel (Metro style) I could not differentiate it from previous versions, what exactly has changed? So, I did what I do best - got out my browser (chrome browser) and searched for what's new in Windows 8 and this is what I found:

1. Desktop/Home Screen - So the start button transformed into its own screen. Maybe it is just me but what is the big deal....One click to an app, but hang on, before I had shortcuts on my desktop for that. Wait, the icons are tiles now... phew this is serious progress. +/- R800 bucks later I have tiles instead of icons!
2. Performance increases - Unfortunately, I did no heavy lifting with it so I can't tell whether this is really true or not, but what I can say is that its previous performance compared to its competitors was so bad that it can only get better.
3. The Windows Store - Now here is a novel idea. I wonder where they got that from. This is really what the new release is all about isn't it. They want us idiot consumers to actually pay them to open a Microsoft Store in our home rent free.  
4. Windows Cloud Synch - Another novel idea, useful nonetheless. But with so many good competitors out there like DropBox, Ubuntu One which are also multi-platform, I am not so sure it's a great plus.
5. Other odds and ends - You can finalyl mount an iso file and there has been an update to task manager. It also has native support for has USB 3.0, integration to XBox Live, anti-virus capabilities and a couple of other odds and ends not worth mentioning.
6. Tablet Functionality - This is where the new OS shines a bit. Unfortunately I don't have a tablet running Windows 8 so I will reserve comment on this for a later time.

On the desktop, it seems like there is nothing worth getting excited about in this new release of windows. The company that integrated the desktop has fallen far behind its competitors when all they have to offer us is an App Store.

I am looking forward to trying it on a tablet though, since I love my HP TC1100 running Windows XP tablet edition of 10 years ago. I still use it today and am yet to find a replacement for it especially One Note. I hope Windows 8 would be that replacement.

In short, if you want a tablet, Windows 8 may be worth the money. On the desktop I would stick to Windows 7.