11 posts tagged “vista”

 The last few days have been very interesting. I've been getting some things worked out in Vista. Yesterday, Joost 0.9.2 was released which doesn't studder as much. Only problem was, that when I went to open the client, it said it couldn't connect to the network. So after hunting around for a solution,  I reinstalled it and it worked fine. Better than before as a matter of fact. Then something strange happened. I was trying to buy a song off of the iTunes store when it wouldn't connect. Even Apple.com wasn't working right. I un-installed, restarted and then reinstalled iTunes and it worked fine, but it's just another example of how iTunes isn't exactly ready for Prime time on Vista. Democracy doesn't work right without turing off Aero, which is a minor pain, but I live with it. I've been looking at the price of some parts lately. Things have dropped dramatically. The cheapest AMD Processor (3600+, 1.9 Ghz, 2 x512 KM L2) is only $95. The 4200 + (2.2 Ghz 2x 512 KB L2) is only $133. The X1650, the ATI midrange GPU, is only $148. 2 GB of Kingston Valuram is only $156. Mind you all these prices come with 0.14% tax tacked onto them, so it's not as great a deal as it appears. But it's still a good deal. I think once I pay for education and my trip to Germany, I'll go get me some upgrades.
Off to Youth Exec. I'll post more in the next few days.

    So now that I've got my copy of Vista up and running, I spend some of the day getting some of my stuff working. I've figured out that Democracy Player doesn't work, which is not a big problem, but I wish it would. I went over to Kevin's for a game day. That was a lot of fun. We had a grand 'ol time gaming and I enjoyed myself quite a bit. Came home and started to try and repartition my disk. I got rid of my Ubuntu partition as I wasn't using it a whole lot, so I wanted my 20 GB back. I spent the better part of 2 hours looking for a decent program to partition with. But then I realized it was all there anyway. Vista has it's own partitioning tools, which run quite well, thank you very much. After messing with it for a good 30 minutes I finally reclaimed my 20 GB of lost space. So now I'm all happy with my Vista install. No more dashing to the computer to scroll down a list of operating systems either. At least that's over with.
Back to school tomorrow :-( More work to do.

    So I got Windows Vista running today. And thanks to a hack from good 'ol BitTorrent, I don't have to drop over $150 for a copy of Home Premium. But don't tell Microsoft that. I'm enjoying it so far. I mean besides the improved UI, it's the small things like the Instant Search and the improved Window Management. The Iive Tabs feature is also nice. For all the bashing I've done to Vista, I still like it. I don't expect to bumb into the DRM wall yet, as I'm not planning on playing an HD content. With all that said, there are some things that I don't like. It takes forever to both Shut Down and start up as well as the fact that certain app's don't behave well. iTunes is the major culprit here. It works well enough, but it has it's glitches. Logitech Setpoint was another sticking point, but I managed to get it to work after a while. Driver support is pretty good. Considering the disk includes over 15,000 device drivers, it'd better be! My flash drive works fine. I've yet to test my iPod though, though I think it should work fine. I'll give you guys an update in a few days.  

 

 Windows Vista was released 4 weeks ago. It was Microsoft's major release in 5 years. Needless to say, it's packed full of features. With the shiny Aero glass, Bitlocker drive encryption, a redesigned media center, there is definitely some incentive to upgrade. But is it worth it? Let's take a look at this?
 4. Hardware Unless you have a machine that's been made in the last year, to year in a half, your going to need a hardware upgrade of some kind. And even if you have a new system, your going to need a hardware upg

rade of some kind. I have 1 GB of RAM in this new system, but in order to get decent performance out of any app (like Audition, Photoshop, etc.) you need 2 GB of RAM. And on top of this, if you invested in a new shiny DX 10 graphics card, you have to wait for Nvidia to get off it's but and write proper drivers.
    In comparrison, Mac OS X can run on a G3 (366 Mhz) 128 of RAM and a Radeon 7xxx to 9xxx  with most of the shiny Aqua based effects. What does that tel you? Mac. If your just a casual computer user,  go to your friendly Apple Store or Authorized Apple Reseller and get yourself a Mac Mini or iMac. Considering the amount you have to spend on hardware, plus a copy of Vista, a new mac is looking pretty good.
3. Software: Currently there are around 900 "Vista Certified" applications which is just a fancy of saying that the companies that make the software payed Microsoft a few thousand bucks to say "Yep, we'll make sure it works with Vista". Many of the apps that previously worked with XP no longer work Vista. It's only a matter of time, but it's still a pain in the butt. Adding to the misery, to get apps like Photoshop and Audition to perform decently you need 2+ GB of Memory. In contrast you can run most apps on Mac OS X with 1 GB of memory. Some apps require a bit more, but in the grand scheme of things, you don't need much memory
2.Virtulization: Here's where Microsoft screws you over big time.If anyone likes to use virtualization, stick with your copy of XP Pro. If you like to virtualize Linux or any other operating system, you need to go out and buy a copy of Vista Bussiness or Ultimate. Guess what? You can get Parrallel's for Mac to virtualize Windows, Linux, OS/2 (why?) and other opearating system. And it only costs you $79 and an Intel based Mac.
1. Next Release: Windows Vista is the lastest release and matches the features of OS X Tiger. But Tiger is reaching new of Life and the next release is on the way. OS X 10.5 Leopard promises to have updated Spolight, Dashboard, and new features included Spaces,Time Machine, iCal, iChat and many others. Apple will probably release Leopard in the next few months with 10.6 coming in early or late 2008. So once again, Microsoft is going to go play catch up.
    That's my take on Vista vs. OS X. What you buy is your business, but I urge casual computer users and non-gamers to swtich to Mac to avoid the deathtrap that is Vista.

    So I got the results back from that rewrite that I did yesterday. 53. Not bad considering my other marks in the course. Teacher called all of us over to his desk during class today so he could chat with us about our marks. I'm marching into exam with a 52ish. Which means I have to come out of this exam with a 50 at least in order to pass this course. That shouldn't be to bad. Got the revised results of my C. History test back as well. 92%. My top mark in that class was a 97% on the economics test. I have a test on sovereignty which I'm going to study for in a few minutes. when Mom get's home we have to finish icing that cake and such. I finished my Powerpoint for one of my last Soc. assignments for the semester. Made some models that I placed under CC to share with people. I've decided to put all of my paper's and such under CC for people to use and to give me some recognition. I'll put some of them up on a site somewhere.
    Just saw an article on Ars (Technica) about Windows Home Server. One of the first lines in the article is "remember when you had XP home for home, XP Pro for work and Windows 2003 Server for Server?" He then goes on about the fact that Microsoft has muddied the water with numerous versions of Vista. I think that they did this  reason. No more one size fits all  Microsoft has given up on all the "one size fits all" model. They're targeting specific groups of consumers with specific versions of Vista. Home Basic for the granny that only does word processing and email. Home

Premium for the  people who enjoy lots of  multi-media. Business for well,  business. Enterprise for small  business and Ultimate for the power user/enthusiest/I want everything-all-the-shiny-stuff group. I think they learned over the past few years that people use computers for different things and they need specific programs and features for a specific user groups. It may be frustrating for me and you, but it makes sense-well kinda.
    I don't like all of the DRM in Vista. I don't like the fact that Microsoft bent over backwards for the RIAA and the MPAA again. These are all reason to not get Vista. Will I get Vista? Maybe. Maybe not. Right now I'm thinking not. Why? Well first of all money. I have much better things to spend my money on. Second of all you never never ever by the product the first six months that it's out. It took them 2 service packs to get XP somewhat secure. I don't even want to know how long it's going to take them to get Vista secure and working properly. Finally, the only reason I would consider Vista is if I can get a recently priced DirectX10 graphics card. I'm waiting for the midrange nvidea cards as well as ATI's initial offerings to come out this march. I'm heading down the Florida in march, so I might pick up one on the cheap. We'll see. Anyway back to the books.

     Today was the first day of the Consumer Electronics show in (VIVA!) Las Vegas. Needless to say, there is some pretty cool stuff. Having watch both the DL.tv and Lab Rats podcasts, it's clear that on day one,there was tonnes of stuff announced, with tonnes more to come in the next few days. Last night, Bill Gates gave a keynote and demo'd some really cool, never before seen features in Vista. One of these features is the ability of use the Windows Search to search not only the PC you are currently using, but also all of the PC's on your network that are using Vista. But wait there More! You can even use an Xbox 360 controller to play games on your PC. And the final feature demo'd at Bill Gates' keynote? Full HD motion desktop in Vista. I can't recall the name right now but it looks awsome.
    Final thing. Tomorrow is the Stevenote at Macworld Expo. It's sure to be a great time and as I have last period off, I'll be home early and blogging about it as developments roll in. It's sure to be a blast
This is just the beginging, it'll be fun to see what the rest of the week brings.

Well I'm here at my cousins house in Bridgeawater and posting to you from there Dell Computer. We arrived this morning and Dad is now outside taking down some tree's. Well be staying here until a bit after supper time then we'll be heading back home.
    This morning I got a chance to take a shot at Windows Vista. My cousin got his hands on a copy of RC1 and he's been running it for a few weeks now. After a few hours of playing around with it I have a few things to say about it. For one thing, there are still some bugs to be ironed out. For example, when my cousin was trying to install iTunes this morning the all new an

d very annoying "Do you want to Run......? screen came up. Some of the stuff that came up in that dialog box was just stupid. My cousin was showing me some of the programs including Windows Defender, Microsoft's anti-spyware software. I mean, yes I want a more secure Windows OS, but what I don't want is it asking me "Do you want to run this?" every five seconds. Along with the diolog box, Vista closes everything when it comes across code that you don't want it to execute. That's the annoying part of the OS. My cousin, who is running a very nice system is also able to run the AERO glass effects. They are quite nice and give you much more of a tactile feel than XP or ME ever did. I also tried out the new Flip 3D which is Microsoft's competitor to Apple's Expose. It's not as great in that it does give you the chance but Expose does have a feature more features in terms of what you can see. For example, you can see all the Windows either open or closed, in Flip 3D. In Expose, you can either all the windows that are open, or all the windows that are closed. Which is nice, because sometimes you don't want to see all your windows if you have a download running or something like that. So the AERO effects and Flip 3D are pretty cool but I still prefer Expose and Aqua. It does come with a few more under the hood feature like Bit-Locker and a new games explorer, but it's still Windows. And what's with the "everything needs to look like Windows 95" thing? For pete's sake, why couldn't Microsoft design redesign the entire UI like Apple did for OS X? You don't need use the taskbar and the "Start" button anymore! I know they got rid of the start button but still. And as for the "Windows Sidebar". Argh! You'd think Microsoft could just admit that they're going to use Widgets and then do something like Dashboard. I'd rather they admit it then say "There not Widgets, there Gadgets".
People are getting home so I better get off and  let them have a turn.

hehe. Last night I did some checking around for the specifications for Windows Vista. Apperently all I need is another stick of RAM to get it up to 1 GB. I was kind of worried that the video card I was using (FX 5200) wouldn't be good enough to the the coveted AERO glass effects. See, the thing is this, Microsoft has designed the entire "Aero Glass" thing in such a way where it relies heavily on the hardware. I mean you can't run the glass effects with anything less than a ATI Radeon 9250.I thought I might have to upgrade to another graphics chip to get AERO to run however, it doesn't appear I have to do that. All I have to do is run down to Robotnik or some other dealer and get myself a stick of RAM. This brings up a good point in the Apple vs. Microsoft debate. For one thing, Apple has designed OS X in such as way that the very impressive graphics transitions rely more on the Core Technology ( Audio, Image, and in Leopard Animation.)  instead of relying so heavily on the hardware side of things. This is known as Aqua (it hides all the UNIX ugliness.) Take for example the Mac Mini. It has an integrated GPU, which I find extremely annoying. It's an Intel GMA 950, which subtracts 64 MB of RAM for the graphics processor. With such a low amount of resources to work with, I'd say that the Mac Mini does a pretty good job doing what's is supposed to with the graphics transitions and such within OS X. On the other hand with Microsoft, there is no way in hell your going to run AERO glass on an integrated GPU. See Microsoft designed Vista in such a way that rely's heavily on the hardware side of things. Unlike  in Mac OS X  where you can run  the fancy graphics transitions on a  integrated GPU it's impossible to do that with Windows.  The technology built into OS X makes it possible. It's the same thing with Open XGL and Compiz. You can run really cool effects using hardware.
    And here's something else that's interesting. Apparently the core's in the Mac Mini's are not soldered into the socket so it is possible to upgrade then, as many people have done.
Anyway,  I have to be getting to school in a little while, so I'll blog when I get home tonight, providing I don't have a mountain of homework.

    My parents have had this Dell box for what will be coming up on 5 years this March. The box is decent with a 1.6 Ghz processor, 512 RAM and a decent graphics card that's been upgraded. However it's a pain sharing the computer with 5 other people. Mom and Dad bought a laptop this past march with a slightly faster processor (1.83 Ghz) more RAM (1 GB) and a so-so graphics card. Again, it's not the greatest computer in the world. Then a month later Kaleigh went out and bought a Dell Budget system. Um Okay, it runs decently. It's got a 2.6 Ghz Celeron (need a say anymore?) 512 RAM and a larger HD, but no AGP or PCI-E graphics ports which suck And in the middle of this I've been saving up for a computer.  I've being eyeing an iMac or a Macbook. However they're a bit pricey so I've decided to go with a Windows Box for now that has a decent amount of Hardware in it. A friend of mine who has an old box know's a guy who can get insane deals on parts. That's where she's getting her new box. Granted it's an Intel box, but it runs better than 400 Mhz, 128 MB of RAM, an 6 GB Hard Drive and a CD-ROM drive.
    So I threw out a bunch of specs to the friend of mine to see what I could get. Here's my desired specs.
2.0 Ghz AMD Processor
1 GB RAM
PCI-E capable mobo and Video Card
160 GB Hard Drive
DVD Burner
LCD Monitor 17"
If I get those specs is up to the guy. If I get this box I will be soooo happy. I'm tired of being told that I can't put things on this computer. I want to install Ubuntu on a box, but Mom is scared out of her mind of anything but Windows. I might even install Vista, if I can convince Mom and Dad to pay for an upgrade to Vista.  She doesn't realize that I know what I'm doing. If I get my own box, I can do to it what I want. If I screw up, it's fault and I've the one who has to fix the problem. So we'll see how this pans out over the next few weeks.

Well I'm back from camping. and I.Hate.Rain. Yesterday's weather was nice and sunny and mildy warm. That was no problem. However the problem was the fact that when we went to bed it started to rain. Hard. When we got up today it was still raining. We decided to forgo breakfeast and just head home. But in the meantime we all got soaked. My priced MHS sweater, which has seen it's fair share of wear and tear, got pushed out of the trailer last night. It made my mad, however it should be washable. And hey, if it's not, I can always throttle my little brother.
  
     Read an interesting post on Neowin about how Microsoft will transition from Windows 2000/XP to Vista. They use the OS 9/OS X transition which took place back in 2001 as an example. Apple, in my opinion did a great job in the way they transitioned from OS 9 into OS X, althogh I wish our school had waited for the OS X disks. See back in Grade 7, we had a class called Tech Ed. When we came to the school they had just recieved a shipment of Macintosh Computers. This was back in the days when Mac's where o-so-evil. They ran OS 9 which I don't know how the Macheads could've standed it. But Apple did a good job in the way that they transitioned out of the classic OS era. Will Leopard come out on top or will Vista prevail.
   
    WTF? Another Canadian Soldier was killed today by friendly fire. Ok, this is what you would call deja vu. Back in 2002 there where they two idiot pilots decided that they would bomb a squad of Canadian Soldiers. The result?

4 Canadian soldiers dead, 8 wounded or maimed. In the end the pilot who dropped the bomb, Major Harry Schmidt got 30 days house arrest and 2 months of his pay revoked. So what's going to happen now? What will this pilot get? A tap on the wrist, as apposed a slap? If they waive the court martial (again) it'll be the second time in 4 years an American Pilot has been let off for killing Canadian soldiers in Afganistan. Argh! If your going to send pilots for CAS (close air support) to troops, send people that now how to aim and figure out what's a Canadian soldier and Taliban figheter damn it! Mr. Bush, you you expect us to fight "side by side" with your American troops, give your pilots some decent target training.
Anyway that's my rant for tonight.