Posted on 05/06/2009 1:25:03 PM PDT by JoeProBono
If you're feeling adventuresome, you can get a jump on the rest of the world by being one of the first to try out Windows 7, the next version of Windows. I've tested out the beta version for the last few months and, so far, my experience has been quite positive.
Microsoft still hasn't announced the date of the final commercial version of the upcoming operating system, though it's widely expected to be out by the end of this year. But Microsoft is allowing anyone to download and install a free copy of the operating system so it can be tested on a wide range of machines. Windows 7 RC, as it's called, was made available for public testing May 4th and will be available for free "at least through July" to those willing to go through a few hurdles......
This core count was the number of CPU cores on the system. Writing a program parallel for multiple CPU cores increases the programming difficulty, complexity and troubleshooting by an order of magnitude or two. Grand Central (the technology I talked about) is supposed to make leveraging those extra cores much easier. We'll see how it works.
You are correct about the OpenCL/GPU connection. As I said, it's already being done, by Apple and even by Folding@Home. OpenCL will give everyone a consistent language interfact to leverage the GPU. But do remember that while a GPU can crunch numbers incredibly fast, it is also incredibly limited in the kinds of jobs it is good at.
Without DRM, I'd have to pay per son.
DRM makes my life so much better since it allows subscription-based music service.
“I know that, but SO WHAT? If you want to play protected media - such as Blu-Ray - you need DRM. BFD.”
MichiganMan nailed it. There are those of us that don’t like to be constrained by the Microsoft model. Lots of us use open source OSes like Linux and FreeBSD. The DRM restrictions will prevent people that use open source operating systems from being able to use DRM media. For whatever reason, the MPAA refuses to cooperate with the open source community and will not release a compatible media player.
Freedom of choice.
I like W2k Pro and XP Pro.I have XP on dual boot and sometimes I fire it up and play teenytiny freecell
You choose what, exactly? Not to enjoy protected content? You have that choice on any OS, but knock yourself out.
I thought I was the only one who still has an ME machine!
Nine years on this one and still kicking...
bookmark
For most things, the Windows Me machine was still working fine. However, it couldn’t seem to handle websites that had a lot of graphics and other “modern stuff”. Perusing eBay was sheer hell, and I had quite a bit of trouble with news sites, especially Fox News. I got tired of waiting 10 minutes for a page to load, and of having to reboot several times an hour after the thing froze up. I suspect that reinstalling Windows Me and adding more RAM would have helped a lot, but the recovery disk would have wiped out all my files if I didn’t save them somewhere else first, since it doesn’t allow an OS-only reinstall. I found instructions on the Web for making a Windows-only installation disk from a full system recovery disk ( http://www.easydesksoftware.com/recovery.htm ), but felt it was over my head and that it was really time to move on to XP. Some new versions of programs that keep popping up on websites (e.g. Adobe Flash and Acrobat Reader) couldn’t be installed on Windows Me, and that was probably a significant part of the troubles.
In my Web surfings, I did find a couple of mentions that Windows Me really needs to be fully reinstalled once a year or so, to prevent its performance from deteriorating. You might try that if you start to have serious trouble with it and don’t want to move up to XP. I’m very happy with the XP machine though. $175 on eBay, and seems to be good as new. Microsoft can keep its silly Vista junk, but I feel sorry for the hardware manufacturers that are also losing a lot of sales, since Microsoft refuses to let them sell machines with XP (and XP only! — why would I want my computer all cluttered up with Vista crap, and then have the “downgrade” to XP on top of that?).
My ME machine also has trouble with some things, newer
applications and such. For example, my new HP camera will
not work with ME, it needs XP or better. There are some
games I enjoy which will are not supported but that’s
what the laptop is for.
I had an XP laptop, XP was great! Unfortunately it was stolen
and I was forced to replace it with a Vista laptop.
Vista is not as bad as all that once you get past the
inherent gayness of it.
Kind of like Apple's iTunes huh.
You were not “forced” to replace your XP laptop with a Vista laptop; you allowed Microsoft to convince you that you had no other option :-) Seriously, buying a used XP desktop on eBay was the smartest computer-buying decision I’ve ever made. There are reputable, professional dealers selling on eBay, who have top-notch feedback scores that they can’t afford to screw up by selling a computer that isn’t in the condition they advertise. I actually bought mine from a seller who only had about 30 feedbacks, but he had a 100% rating and was very responsive to my series of detailed questions, and he had exactly the machine I wanted at a great price. But there are other sellers of second hand computers who have 1000s of feedbacks, so plenty that you can have full confidence in.
BTW, if you do move up from your Me machine, I recommend the Tornado transfer device www.thetornado.com Only glitch was that on the main info, it said you didn’t need to download a driver for anything by Windows 98 — ready to go for Me, 2000, XP, and Vista. But when that didn’t work, the detailed support info said that with “some” Me machines, you DO have to download the driver (and you download the 98 driver, because there is no Me driver). That process went smoothly and quickly, though, and after that, the gadget worked exactly as advertised — shows contents of both computers on a split screen, and just simple drag and drop to copy files, folders, or even entire batches of folders from one machine to the other, including e-mail folders and program files. I sprung $50 for it, but I’ll use it for other machines, and can lend it to friends, etc — it’s not one of those “licensed to a single computer” deals, it’s a freestanding plug-in gadget.
Helluva testament to Dell, though.. nine years is pretty good I think.
Very much so. Only in Apple's case it actually worked against them, squandering much of their lead in the digital music business. I for one either shopped at Amazon or ripped my own to mp3. However the 80-90% desktop penetration of Windows OS might be sufficiently massive to sustain an OS level DRM system.
There are no more thumbnails. I can’t import a microsoft clip art into any other graphics program. I can’t even use it with word works. All I can see are file names, no thumbnail of the clip art. I can’t copy and paste it into any application. I am officially out of business.
Please tell me how to see my clip art in thumbnails, and how to copy and paste clip art into an application that isn’t Word. Otherwise I’m out of business.
There’s still thumbnails, you just don’t call them out anymore, in the Large or Extra Large Icon views you get thumbnails. But you need to have the appropriate software installed for Windows to know what it is. If your clip art is in any of the normal formats (BMP, JPEG, GIF) you should be fine, if it’s in some sort of proprietary format then you need to figure out what the app is and install it.
I slightly steered you wrong on the thumbnails, here’s the fix:
http://www.appscout.com/2009/06/lost_thumbnails_in_vista_and_w.php
As for the files, wmf (Windows Metafile) was found to be a security risk, so a lot of their automatic function has been shutdown: http://thewinforums.com/topic/25399-wmf-and-vista-thumbnails/ . But there are free things for working with them still http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/free/428426/ .
Thank you so much. Everything I make depended on those WMFs. I can’t afford to lose them.
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