As time pases, I find operating systems less and less relevant. A couple of weeks back I upgraded to Windows 7, to follow are my observations.

I experiment heavily with my computers. As a result, every 6 months or so, my personal machine become becomes so unstable I need to rebuild. A couple of weeks a go I decided to use Windows 7 on my latest rebuild.

As I have observed before, everytime I rebuild I need less and less applications. Long a go I moved to web mail and as time has progressed I use more and more web applications. For example, for music I use Pandora, for documents I user Google docs, for RSS feeds I use Google reader, and so on.

Although I have only been using Windows 7 for a couple of weeks, I am pretty happy with the OS. Windows 7 uses less resources and has a number of UI improvements. I really like the navigation and windows explorer changes, they are intuitive and work well. Vista was a dog and most of the time it just got in my way.

I wonder what the international version of Windows 7 is like, the one for developing countries. If the "light version" has the same UI improvements and uses even less resources, I imagine the OS will be a big winner.

I have not used traditional “bookmarks” since the early days of Netscape. I switch machines too often. I have used synchronization services but that has never worked that well, I have tried many over the years. I have also tried services like “delicious” but somehow they did not integrate well into my work style.

Today Google Chrome announced “bookmark synch”. As soon as I saw it, I could tell this was the service I had been waiting for. 

As of today's dev channel build, we're adding a brand new feature to Google Chrome: bookmark sync. Many users have several machines, one at home and one at work for example. This new feature makes it easy to keep the same set of bookmarks on all your machines, and stores them alongside your Google Docs for easy web access.

I wish the feature was in the browser as opposed to Google docs but I can compromise. The feature is only available on the dev build for now.

Insurance companies are starting to cover Doctor’s “Web Visits”. Think of all the time you spend on a doctor’s visit. Not the time with the actual doctor but all the rest:

1. Drive to doctor’s office (20 minutes)
2. Sign in (5 minutes)
3. Waiting room (15 minutes)
4. Waiting in examining room (15 minutes)
5. Drive home (20 minutes)

That is 1 hour and 15 minutes (70 minutes). As many of you know, this time is quite conservative. The time can easily double. Imagine just getting a fraction of this time back all over the country.

Interestingly enough the cost is pretty low, $25 to $45, less if insured. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB124977187174117097.html

Imagine this:

"You get to choose your doctor. If you don’t like him, you can go elsewhere, that very day if necessary. Any doctor will see you straight away, there is no delay in such investigations as you may need, and treatment is immediate. There are no waiting lists, no operations postponed because something more important has come up, no appalling stories of patients being made to wait because other patients come first."

I modified the paragraph, it was originally written for a dog. Theodore Dalrymple writes "Man vs. Mutt". He writes:

"In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to compare the human and veterinary health services of Great Britain, and on the whole it is better to be a dog."

I am not sure I agree with him. However, I as far as my lab goes, in the USA, it is far easier to take care of her health care than mine.

The new Nikon Coolpix S1000pj has a built in projector. How cool is that? A projector on a point and shoot camera. Here is a video (demo starts at 1:24), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXlKWbTLXAw

Over the years I have tried many email approaches. In the early days I used Pine (Program for Internet News & Email). Pine was ok.

Later I used Eudora. I liked Eudora. I especially liked that the content was written in plain text files to the application directory. Years later when I no longer used Eudora I could still search the files with a text editor.

At the tail end of my Eudora days, I was getting a lot of peer pressure to use Outlook. I finally gave in. Over two years, I tried to make Outlook work for me. It never did. 

I started using Gmail while I searched for a new email client. I soon found that Gmail reminded me of the early Eudora clients, no bells or whistles, it just worked. As an added benefit I had all the advantages and reach of the web. Eventually I stopped looking for a substitute client and moved to webmail 100%. 

I really like Gmail. 

That being said, I often wished I could send email without the “on behalf of user@domain.com” and simply send as “user@domain.com”. This week I got my wish.

I am in mail nirvana.

Here are the instructions if you are interested http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/send-mail-from-another-address-without.html

Update: the idea is solid and long awaited. However, in my case, my organization uses my main identity password for SMTP. Even though the connection is using SSL, I did not feel comfortable using my password. 

Instead I setup my own SMPT server. This was OK. However, I soon began to deal with the common issues of running your own server. I really want to be using “user@domain.com” but due to time constraints I have gone back to “on behalf of user@domain.com” for now.