4 posts tagged “vista”
Hmmmm....
When I plug my USB keyboard into my Windows PC, it takes roughly 5-10 seconds for Windows XP to recognize the keyboard, and then boot up the drivers for it. When I plug my USB keyboard into my Xbox 360, the integrated verison of Windows CE instantly recognizes it, and I can start typing right away.
Shouldn't the fully functioning verison of Windows let me use the keyboard faster? Oh well. Has are the mysteries of life.
Paul Thurrott has posted pictures of what the boxes for Vista will look like on his Windows Super Site. Here are some shots.
The Ultimate edition is black, sleek and sexy looking. I've got back and forth over Ultimate edition. When I get my crummy part-time job and get my new PC, I've been going between Home Premium or Ultimate. Ultimate has ALL the features of ALL the editions, including some cool game benchmarking software and other tools. It'll also offer "extra" downloadables that won't be offered to non-Ultimate folks.
However, the only fault (has always) is the price. $400 for a brand new copy? Is that too much? Well, today, a retail version of 3-license version of XP Pro is $299, so Ultimate, which include all the features, including the business-only Enterprise edition, isn't that bad, me thinks. I would charge maybe $350 for it, but $400 is horrible.
I'll probably get the Home Premium edition, but I'll dream about the Ultimate edition.
Well, let me just make a short note, ATI and AMD announced they're working on a CPU/GPU hyrid, called Fusion. Fusion, is one of my favorite words. For English class, we had to do a creative writing thing, and I wrote this 100-page SAGA where I was the CEO of a video game/internet property/media company called Fusion. I think AMD should pay me royalties.
Yeah, right. Well, I have no idea how this Fusion thing will work, they'll have to have some special chipset on the motherboard, or have their own motherboard. If they have the GPU PCI based or something, then they'll need some kind of chipset, if its integrated into the motherboard, they'll need their own motherboard which AMD isn't into. It'll be interesting to see what they'll do. I'm a bit of a NVIDA and Intel fanboy, so I hope these AMD and ATI... or AMD/ATI... or just AMD goes bankrupt, but whatever, the unbiased part of me wants to see how, technically, they pull this "Fusion" off.
This wasn't the point of my post. The point is, Sony's Playstation 3, Microsoft Vista Home Premium or Apple's iTV? Which will become THE way to watch computer based content on the television?
Faults? The Playstation 3 will only stream off of the PSP, if I'm right, and thats bad. For Vista, you need a whole computer set up to your TV, which isn't a good deal. iTV? Well, no one knows how it'll work at this point. Steve Jobs' keynote, while it was "revolutionary" because Apple announced it this far out (very un-Apple), was very cryptic.
My pick? Well, the Media Center will do the most, basically because its a whole PC connected to your TV. The one that'll do it the easiest simplest? The iTV? The one that most people will have in their homes and most likely use in this fashion? The Playstation 3.
Now, I'm a Xbox fanboy, so I dislike the PS3, but the Playstation brand is insanely popular. The name "Playstation" is what "Nintendo" was in the 90's. My grandma doesn't say "Do you want a new Nintendo game for Christmas?" like she did with my cousins, she says , "Do you want a new Playstation game for Christmas?". The odd thing is, my cousins didn't own a Nintendo (Sega Genesis all the way) and I don't own a Playstation.
The two names are buzzwords with a generic gaming console with non-gamers. Not to mention the following that the PS brand has. I remember when the PS2 came out. Friends of my dad, who weren't really big gamers, they had Madden and few other games on their PS1, but were excited for the PS2.
Despite all its flaws, the high-price, the janky controller, the blu-ray format (which WILL fail, mark my words. I'd promise a future blog on the subject, but I don't seem to be keeping up on those promises.), the PS3 will sell like hot cakes, and some people will use their PS3 in a media... convergence... thing?
Me? Why would you want to watch YouTube clips on a TV? Sure, if you buy a movie, then it'll be cool, but I don't... and if I did, I'd settle for my 21" Samsung LCD monitor. Sigh, I don't understand people.
Robert Heron over at Ziff-Davis predicted that one day, we won't have a PC, we'll have 10 computers, in various different household items, including a car. I don't like the idea. Don't get me wrong, I like having little computers in TV's, Cars, whatever, but no base computer? How will you surf the net? Through your TV? On a tablet on your nightstand or near your sofa? Meh, we'll have to see.
Nevertheless, today, we are enjoying technology today that was not even being DREAMED up 20 years ago. I'm not fond of the "free thinkers" who say we're living in the second Renaissance, but honestly, aren't we? The first Renaissance brought about new ideas in modern science, medicine, architecture, art and music. In 500 years, will my relatives talk about how this era brought in new ideas in computing? Will they look upon men like Jobs, Gates, Laporte, Ellison and Kildall in the same light has da Vinci, Shakespeare, Copernicus, Clouet and others?
Its a radical idea, but I think we're there.
Congratulations, my friends. We're Renaissance men.
The one on the left is famous painting of a early Greek library, an iconic picture of the Renaissance. The other is a computer lab in a college. One day, will they present the same message?
The "power user" community has been set on fire the past week by the official release of Firefox 2. Personally, I don't see the big deal.
I used IE until 2003, when on a bet I tried Firefox and feel in love with it. Now, I'm not an open-source guy. I DISLIKE most open-source products for various reasons, but Firefox and Thunderbird are ones that really just click with me.
Now, I think most Firefox users are smarter than the rest, if only by a small bit, but, honestly, they are overreacting. I tried the IE7 beta just a few weeks before I tried Firefox 2 RC1, and honestly, it seems like they copied each other.
The Twitosphere said that Firefox 2 seems "Vista-like" and not having tried Vista, and only checked a few screenshots, I can't say, but I've got this hunching suspicious that Firefox 2 is very IE7-like. No idea why I think IE7 was first, maybe because I tried it first, but they are VERY similar, except for the IE7 rendering engine.
That rendering engine is the reason that I'll be sticking with Firefox 2. The new engine is BEAUTIFUL. Web pages look great. I don't know what it is, but the font just looks brillant. The IE7 internet looks better than the Firefox 2 internet. That being said, it still renders slower. A LOT slower to this broadband Firefox user. The reason I use Firefox is not because its customizable, it does a billion things, or because its powered by the "infinite power of community." Its simply because my favorite web pages load faster.
I run no plugins on Firefox 2 (now, Thunderbird I do, but I digress). and I just surf. Even Opera seems a bit slow for my tastes. We all are a little ADD, and me, if it takes 10 seconds or 3 seconds to load Wookiepedia matters to me.
So, until the IE team overhauls their rendering engine and makes it faster, I'm riding the Firefox bandwagon.
