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November 19, 2006

Vista thoughts and such...

So, Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing.

I've been part of the beta testing of Vista and haven't exactly been thrilled about it since the day I received the first disc from Microsoft. The first copy was extremely slow and buggy ... but that was to be expected. The second was a bit faster but still buggy ... and that was to be expected. I downloaded RC1 and yet again wasn't too impressed. RC2 arrived in the mail and yet again ... nothing to write home about. All of these installations were removed after a few days worth of use.

Yesterday I decided to take the plunge and format the laptop, installing Vista to see how well it would take to my somewhat limited hardware. While the laptop is running a Celeron mobile processor, it came with a Radeon Xpress GPU and has received a memory upgrade to 1.5GB. While I figured the processor would be able to push Vista along well enough ... I knew that the real limitation would be how much memory the computer had. Since I have plenty available, I didn't think it would be that much of a problem.

After backing up my hard drive I began the installation. I must admit that Microsoft really has made installing Windows much easier with this round of software. It's simply a matter of a few clicks and you're ready to go. I basically sat the laptop down on the table and went about my business while it did its thing.

After I came back, Windows was ready to go. I immediately noticed a dramatic speed improvement since the last release client. I even felt that there was a vast improvement over the speed of my XP installation.

If you were unfortunate enough not to install any of the betas and release-candidates, then you will most likely find that navigating Vista will be a bit of a hassle. Locations hadn't changed much since my last RC install, so navigation through the system wasn't too bad. I do like the wording that's used throughout the system now as compared to previous versions of Windows. It's almost like your computer is telling you what's going on in terms that Joe Blow can understand.

That's the good stuff.

One of the things that I think that Microsoft really dropped the ball on was the authorization permissions when installing programs or making major system changes. In Linux, Unix and Mac OS ... whenever something needs to be installed or a major change happens to the operating system, you are prompted to enter a password. In Vista, on the other hand, you only receive a notice saying "Hey, somethings happening. Do you want it to happen, Yes or No?" There's no password authentication going on here what-so-ever. As a direct result, it is *STILL* waaaaaay too easy for users to screw up their systems.

Damnit Microsoft ... why didn't you include administrator authentication in Vista??

And my second complaint? While I'm sure there were quite a few things that were re-tooled in Vista to make it superior compared to Windows XP, it really seems and feels that the only thing that has really changed is cosmetic. I really feel that when I'm using Vista that I could've had the same thing with Windows XP and a copy of Object Desktop. A window theme does not make this operating system upgrade seem worthwhile. There's nothing on the backend of this operating system that makes me go "WOW, now that's impressive".

Third, and last complaint ... there's nothing in this upgrade that can be considered innovative. Everything that you can find in Vista has been done before by either Microsoft themselves (and not really improved upon), by Apple (which they're notorious for copying) or Linux (XGL anyone).

I will be keeping Vista on my laptop since it is the only machine in my home that I am required to keep Windows on (by threat of bodily harm from my dear wife). But for the rest of the machines here at home? They will remain on Linux which I can get for free and get just as much use out of.

...out~

Posted by ed at 01:26 AM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2006

Big Black Horse

My friend, Dave, introduced me to a video on YouTube last week that just completely blew me out of the water. The artist's name is KT Tunstall. I would go more into what makes her so unique ... but I think I would rather the video speak for itself. Enjoy!

Posted by ed at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2006

This is only a test...

I received my new work cell today. It's a T-Mobile MDA. I'm actually entering this post from the unit using my home wireless network connection. The phone has a sliding top portion that reveals a key pad similar to what you might find on a blackberry wireless device.

The screen starts off verticle when the unit is in phone mode, but when you slide the top over, the screen automatically adjusts to a verticle layout. It's something else to see in action.

The camera that's built into the unit is also impressive. It's 1.3 megapixels and is very clear on the screen. I only wish I has it handy when I was taking pictures of the IT tech room instead of the razor.

`out...

Posted by ed at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)