Here are the links for: Monday, January 19th 2008…

15 Stunning Examples of Long Exposure Photography
35 Beautiful Examples Of ‘Urban Decay Photography
A Quick Look at the 10-Inch Aspire One 103 [NetBooks]
Acer announces small form factor PC, 23-inch LCD
Apple Desktop Keyboard with iPhone Dock Concept Makes Perfect Sense [Concept]
Belkin Employee Sheds Light On Belkin’s Supposedly Dirty Practices [Belkin]
ChaChaputer has eight screens, the sweet stink of obsession
Circuit City closings begin, lines form, bargains await
Circuit City Liquidation FAQ: Gift Cards, Warranties and Repairs [Circuit City]
Continuing with Windows XP
EC Considering Removing Internet Explorer From Windows
Farewell, iPhone-optimized iGoogle
IMPOSSIBLE’s on a mission to revive Polaroid film
Incandescent Light Bulb On The Way Out
Intel intros new models, cuts prices
iPhone gains two new TV Out utilities
Is a 15-inch MacBook Air In the Works? [Rumor]
Judge: 17,000 illegal downloads don’t equal 17,000 lost sale
Kana micro: New, cute and inexpensive DAPs from Greenhouse
Laserdisc is dead
Linux Advocates Question Silverlight’s Use in Inaguration
Microsoft accused of anti-competitive web browser bundling
New Infineon 4G chip possible choice for future iPhone
News: YouTube offering iPod-ready video downloads
Palm Pre “Oops I’m Late” Feature Sounds Kind of Horrible [Palm Pre]
Seagate offers fix, free data recovery for disks affected by firmware bug
Share iPhone Applications Just Like iTunes Songs
Single Drive Wipe Protects Data
SkyBox: Microsoft’s MobileMe, But for All Phones? [Unconfirmed]
Steve Jobs - Why is my Health So Important?!
TechCrunch Tablet Update: Prototype B
The Top Windows 7 Tips and Tricks List
Tiny company accuses RIM, Nokia of violating patents, wants their products banned in the U.S.
Travelmate USB Power Adapter does just what its name implies
Users affected by Windows worm is ’skyrocketing’
Valve speaks out about piracy
Video demo: iControlPad iPhone gaming controller
What’s New in Windows 7: User Account Control (UAC)
Why You Should Go 64-Bit With Windows 7 [Windows 7]
Win 7 Tip: WordPad Opens Word 2007 Docs [Windows 7]
Win32/Conficker.B/Downadup Infection Prevention and Removal
Wireless touchpad controls your computer and media center
You’ve been Steve’d!

Tags: 10", 4g, 64 bit, Acer, anti-competitive, Apple, bargans, Belkin, Browser, Bulb, bundle, cheap, Circuit City, Closing, Concept, cuts, DAP, Dead, Decay, Demo, devices, Dirty, Dock, download, Downloads, Drive, employee, Farewell, Film, Fix, health, iCOntrolPad, iGoogle, illegal, Inaguration, Incandescent, Intel, iPhone, iPod, Judge, keyboard, Laserdisc, Light, Linux, live mesh, lost, MacBook Air, Mission, Mobile, Netbook, New, Nokia, office 2007, out, Palm, Patent, Photography, Piracy, power, pre, price, RIM, sales, Segate, share, silverlight, single, Steve Jobs, tablet, TechCrunc, tips, touchpad, Travelmate, TV, UAC, Urban, usb, Valve, video, Web, whipe, WIndows, Windows 7, Windows XP, Wireless, Wordpad, Worm, Youtube

I’ve lost count of how many times I have installed Windows Vista for a day or less. I don’t know why I keep running back to XP. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hate Microsoft. I am taking part in quite a few beta projects via Microsoft Connect I was even in the Windows Live Mail beta. Let me break this down into categories so it’s easier to follow.

Speed and Performance: I just don’t find it as responsive as XP. Vista eats 50% of my 2gb RAM - it’s supposed to be a new caching routine that does that. I don’t see much advantage to that. Ready Boost is another one of the new supposed speed boosters in Vista. It uses USB flash drives and card readers for another level of caching. The only catch is you need a new modern expensive flash drive/card reader for it to even work. Idle, it would be using almost 1gb of RAM. On XP, it idles a lot lower than 50% memory.

Eye Candy: Sure, the new Aero Glass makes things look WOW… but it does slow things down most older software turns off Glass, so what’s the point of it? Do we have to buy all new software just so Glass stays activated? All that eye candy is available on XP via a program called Stardock WindowBlinds and one of many Aero Glass like skins.

Drivers and Hardware: Drivers are still a major issue and probably will be for another year or so. My driver problem devices are: DLink DSB-C110 USB Webcam, Gadmei USB TV BOx UTV-310 PVR and a Umax Astra 3400 USB scanner. There was a built-in driver in XP; why not in Vista? Sure, I found a way to force it to use the official XP driver, but I shouldn’t have had to. Oddly enough, my discontinued Samsung ML-4500 laser printer has a Vista driver. I was able to force the install of the nforce2 XP sound driver to make my onboard sound work… the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 value has hollow sound compared to XP.

Games: Even though I am not a hardcore gamer, I found Vista to be a real pain. For me, I get a major framerate drop in Half-Life 2 and other Source based games via Steam. The old goldsource games work like a charm. I monitor my game hours with and Xfire for in-game chat but that doesn’t work on Vista unless I turn off User account Control, and that defeats the benefits of UAC.

Legacy Software: I use many older programs that you can’t even buy anymore. Many of them would not even launch until I turned off UAC. I understand that it’s the older software that’s at fault. My issue is that many people are buying new PCs to replace old ones and still have many older registered programs they will want to use but will be surprised when they try to use them on their new Vista PC. It’s hard to find a store that still sells retail XP/ XP preinstalled PCs… even in the small center near where I live.

Give Windows Vista a year or so before considering upgrading to it… or at least until Vista SP1.

~Kevin

Tags: Microsoft, Steam, UAC, Vista, WIndows, wow