Search results matching tag 'vista'

RE: The Top Windows 7 Features That Vista Should Have Had

3vi1 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:32:18 GMT

That reminds me... did they get around to fixing this in the final release so that it says 7.0 instead of letting people know that internally it's Vista-point-one?

RE: Windows XP Availability Now Ending In 2011

3vi1 — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:12:39 GMT

The love of XP is a result of people that have never used an operating system other that the released versions of Windows (i.e. everything up to and including Vista). I doubt that many people who have tried a modern Win7 beta, OSX, or Linux distro are clinging to XP.

Then again... Vista got slow and incorporated DRM. Win7 gets fast again, but still incorporates PVP/PUMA to protect us from accidentally making fair use of our copyrighted content. So, I could see where some hippies testing Win7 might still prefer XP. :p

It's mostly dormant right now; content producers won't use the capabilities until all the users are locked in (Which Vista failed to do). Only the EFF and American Gladiators fans have felt the sting so far. http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9946050-7.html

RE: Windows 7 prices should come out mid-June

3vi1 — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:09:01 GMT

I can believe the full versions might cost more: It sounds like a calculated plan to get extra money from businesses that skipped Vista, and to gouge OEMs for more per PC.

But, I expect upgrade versions to remain the same cost. They might even be cheaper.

There simply won't be any "killer apps" available that require Win7 at the time of release. So, it makes more sense for them to keep the upgrade cost down and get revenue from more people that otherwise wouldn't have upgraded.

Feature-wise, their desktop already looks less impressive than KDE4.2 and by October they'll be competing with KDE4.3. If they charge more for upgrades, I'd recommend everyone try dual-booting their current versions of Windows with Kubuntu. Heck, I recommend that anyway. :)

CyberPower Gamer Xtreme 1003 (and Wubi!)

3vi1 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:35:57 GMT

In case you missed the original article, this system was recently mentioned on HHW: http://hothardware.com/News/CyberPower-Introduces-Gamer-Xtreme-1003 I've only had this out of the box for a couple of days now, so these are just my initial impressions/experiences.

Looks:

Pro - Looks nice. The wiring is all nicely bundled and tucked away. Looks like they spent more time on it than when I do it myself. :) Pretty blue case light, if you're into that kind of thing.

Con - I'm not a big fan faceplates that cover the drives. This one uses a magnetic latch, and it swung shut while I wasn't looking. When the CD I was recording finished, you could hear the eject mechanisms gears slipping loudly as it struggled vainly to force the front door open.

Performance:

I've not run prerequisite benchmarks, but it responds very nicely. I've spent most of my time (like right now) in Ubuntu on it, but Vista seemed to boot quickly and perform well... I installed Steam under Vista, so I will check out some games later and post some stats..

I have it hooked to a Samsung 22" 2232bw running at 1680x1050 (I used this as an excuse to by me a 23" <g>), and the Compiz effects run smooth as silk.

Temps are lower than I expected for this processor (40 degrees and below)... we'll see if that holds once I start stressing it.

Software Configuration:

Nice: The Vista pre-load was very clean, exactly as I wanted it. That's important, when the only install media you get these days are recovery CDs.

So, since I obviously havent' been stress-testing it yet, what have I been doing?

Fun thing #1: Since this PC's nowhere near an ethernet jack, I moved the (LinkSys WMP54Gv4) card from my old system to it and booted up.

Vista had no idea what to do with the card. The manufacturers CD had no compatible drivers

Okay... booted the system from a Linux LiveCD (Knoppix), clicked on networkmanager, chose my wireless access point and put in the WPA info, and started surfing the internet to LinkSys's site for Vista 64-bit drivers.

They never released any.

Okay... Since Linux identifies (sudo lspci) the manufacturer and chipset as being Ralink and rt2500 respectively, I decided to look for reference drivers on their site. They had them! Downloaded them, saved them to the thumbdrive I was running Knoppix from, then rebooted into Vista and installed them.

Success! The configuration utility's kind of ugly, but it works 100%

Fun thing #2: Wubi!

What's Wubi? Wubi is a way to install Linux to the same drive as your existing Windows install without repartitioning. It installs Linux within a single folder on your existing Windows partition. In fact, the majority is written within virtual partitions that exist as single files inside of c:\ubuntu\disks. You can access the full Windows host partition from within Linux if you want to (it gets mounted as /host), making it easy to transfer files back and forth as necessary.

Wubi does not run Linux inside of Windows; it's not an emulator or virtual machine. What it does is add a new boot option to the Windows boot menu that let's you choose to boot Linux at startup instead of Windows. And, you can easily remove it from the add/remove programs menu within Windows should you later choose to do so. Anyway, see the Wubi site (http://wubi-installer.org/) for more info.

I figured that if I was going to keep the Vista install on this box (the kids are always getting little electronic gifts that include Windows-only CDs, some with drivers that just can't be made to work under Wine), this would be the perfect time to be a Wubi for Jaunty alpha-tester. So I downloaded the latest Ubuntu Jaunty daily-live cd (http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/). I'm mostly a KDE guy and use Kubuntu, but I figured the Gnome interface might be easier for the kids to manage.

The install time was amazingly fast. Five minutes, a reboot, super quick partitioning (of a virtual disk that exists as a file inside your c:\ubuntu\ directory), another reboot, and Ubuntu was ready! If anyone want's an easy way to get the full-Linux experience without going through partioning pains, I highly recommend it - at the very least as a backup way to get on the Internet and download a fix in the event a virus cripples an important Windows system file.

I'm installing a gig or so of Linux free games right now (Nexuiz, Sauerbraten, SMC, OpenArena, Extreme Tux Racer, World of Padman, etc), but after that's done I'll see about some benchmarks on both the Windows and Ubuntu side of things!

Re: Windows 7 Beta Now Available

3vi1 — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:30:35 GMT

Re: Ballmer Calls Vista A Work In Progress

Dev — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:09:39 GMT

For me, it's a testament to how good XP is. Probably the best thing to come out of Redmond.

-Dev

Re: Dell XPS 710 H2C Performance Gaming System

chesbrougha — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:55:56 GMT

I am moving and am looking to sell a fully loaded, four month old Dell XPS 720 H2C with the following specs and buy something for portable:

Intel Core2 Duo QX6850 (3.00 GHZ overclocked to 3.67 GHZ) with quad core tech----
4GB RAM----
2x BLU-RAY, DVD+R/RW----
Dual: 768 NVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra----
Dual: 1 TB harddrives----
Windows Vista Ultimate (32bit)----
Windows Side Cover, Black (see picture)----
Aegia Physx Processor----
1 killowatt power supply----
Dual: 1 TB harddrives----
19-:1 Media Card reader----
3 year in home dell premium support----
Lycosa Gaming Keyboard----
Razer death addler gaming mouse----
Microsoft office standard 2007 suite----
Logitech Quickcam Fusion----
Samsung 2232BW monitor (22 inch)----
"World in Conflict"----

Total Package Price: $5,800 (buying everything new costs around $8K)

See the craigslist posting: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/ele/651633448.html

Re: Is there a way to fix performance issues with Vista?

Marco C — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:57:47 GMT

Provided there's nothing actually wrong with your installation, there are quite a few things you can do to bring your Vista machine's performance up to, or close to XP's...

1) Install the latest DirectX redist. This won't show up on Windows Update, but is important for Vista gaming.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=9&p=4&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=&u=%2fdownloads%2fdetails.aspx%3fFamilyID%3dcb7397f3-0949-487b-9247-8fee451bf952%26displaylang%3den

2) Make sure you have these updates installed:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html

3) Use NVIDIA's latest drivers. They address many Vista / SLI related features:

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_rel70betadriver.html

Do all that, and your Vista machine's gaming performance will be as close as it can be as of today. By the time SP1 rolls out, I expect Vista will be on parity, but for now I think its great. Been using 64-bit Vista for a few months and have had almost no issues.

SLI Under The Microscope: Vista vs. XP

Marco C — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:45:34 GMT

Hello Everyone,

We thought it might be interesting to see what the numbers looked like for the extreme performance junkies in our midst, running dual-graphics SLI setups with high-end DX10 capable GeForce 8800 graphics cards. Is SLI mode on Vista still two steps behind in performance in comparison to XP? In this article we offer a quick-take assessment of NVIDIA's latest ForceWare driver release, running on Windows XP and Windows Vista installations in SLI mode. NVIDIA seems to have closed the gap a bit and we set out to explore this in some of the most exciting and new game engines on the market.

SLI Under The Microscope: Vista vs. XP

Enabling PAE in Windows? -- workaround for 32-bit OS's for more RAM support

ice91785 — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 17:54:31 GMT

What is your positions on enabling PAE within Windows? I have read bits and pieces about how its dangerous especially for drivers as they are only meant to address the normal 32-bit addressing....but do you think that enablnig PAE (for an increase to 36-bit) for support for 64GB (i think it was?) of physical memory is truely dangerous or worth doing? I realize its not really something most people want to do but I just like to experiment and learn :)

Again, I would like just some really in-depth explanation if possible from anyone -- Davo? BigWop?