"Hey Bill."

"It's Brad."

"Yea, whatever. Hey, how you doing?"

"Actually, my back has..."

"That's great, here let me introduce you to Susan, this is Bill."

"Brad."

"Whatever."

In the software world, we always make fun of ourselves by calling it "Starduck". "Yea, those StarDuck guys are making that need Window blind thing." 

Who would have ever thought that the Vista install would make it official...

Good old WindowBlind.  While the spelling being wrong is annoying, it's more annoying that this was on the WindowBlinds Vista build. The compatibility check on it is just looking at the most generic info.  This is on a release candidate so it can still be fixed. But I tell ya, OUCH.

 

I decided to post my Vista Demo Videos after beeing inspired by Brad's Demo. I used CamStudio for screen recording which by the way is free so I recommend it to everyone. I used Windows Movie Maker for mixing videos up together with sound and music and export to 1024px by 576px WMV.* I also posted some full-size 1680px by 1050 px screenshots to accompany the demo.

*Technical Note: My screen has a resolution 1680px by 1050px so some details in the demos might appear small as the video was resized down a bit to reduce its size.

Please let me know if there is any other feature that you wish me to include in the future.

My Vista Demo: Part 01 - Application Switching Size: 4.68 MB / Duration: 01:17 Part 02 - Explorer Size: 17.1 MB / Duration: 05:57 Part 03 - Games Size: 17.8 MB / Duration: 05:08 Part 04 - Windows Media Player 11 Size: 7.76 MB / Duration: 02:19 Part 05 - Snipping Tool Size: 5.58 MB / Duration: 01:36 Part 06 - Volume Mixer Size: 5.81 MB / Duration: 02:03 Part 07 - User Folder Size: 9.13 MB / Duration: 03:16

My Vista Screenshots: My Current Desktop Intenet Explorer Windows Media Player 11 My System Ratings

Greetings!

This forum has been created so that Object Desktop users from around the world can get together and tell us what they'd like to see in Object Desktop.

A lot of changes are coming to Windows in the next several months with Windows Vista in development. And we want to make sure we're here to serve your needs as users of Windows XP and eventually users of Windows Vista.

So if you have a new program, a tweak, a change, or anything else for that matter, let us know.

Thanks!

I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars. I downloaded Vista and was able to run "Ultimate" without many problems at all. I had to do 0 (yes zero) driver updates and, short of a lack of compatibility with MSN Premium (go figure), everything worked great.

But I assume that MS is counting on the third parties to sell this. There is little, if anything, that I cannot do already. From security to eye-candy, it's soooooo yesterday (as my daughter might say)

I watched the video that Brad put out. It showed me a couple of things that I didn't know. (I would expect this as he very well should know more than I). But I haven't seen any reason to upgrade. The hardware expectations are extreme for the average home user. Frankly, I would council them to spend $50 on OD and get some free programs I know of.....they would be set for the most part.

If the Vista Basic is "Crap" as was said in the video, why bother? At the prices they are talking about? I can't justify that kind of money to anyone. What would I say?

I like the new security features...but I can easily accomplish the same with the programs I already own...(many free)... and a little common sense.

Microsoft has done a fantastic job of getting rid of many of the problems of Vista. But at what cost? There is really nothing new or special here for me. I haven't seen the possibilities...granted. But this is going to fall flat on it's face if they are counting on the general public to be visionary.

I remain amazed at how well it installed and ran. But disappointed at the outcome. I disconnected my hdd in less than 24 hours and went back to enjoying XP. (Which friggin' flew with this setup)

Without big changes...added features...OR SOMETHING, I wouldn't bother to chalk up the hefty amount they want. No way.

Pounce


PC

Today I made a short demo of using Windows Vista. Nothing fancy and admittedly, my live talking to myself demo skills are not particularly impressive. But hopefully you'll be able to get a general overview of Windows Vista.

Click the link below to view it.

The next video in the series will get into more of the meat.  Windows Vista isn't just Windows XP with new eye candy and some new utilities, so stay tuned to see some of the benefits of Windows Vista.

Also, if you want to make your experiences of Windows Vista public, you can read this post.

Screenshots:

 My Vista default desktop

Power Users will be happy with the resource monitor.

Now a universal benchmark for Vista machines. This will become a big deal I predict.

Personalization is both more and less powerful than Vista. We'll talk about more in the coming weeks.

No "skinning" this time around in Vista by default but users can change both the opacity and color of glass in Vista which most will likely prefer.

The new Start menu is a big improvement in most ways over XP's. Easier to find things, better organized, more professional looking.

...and now the video demo...

 

A question that I often ask myself. I didn't seem to meet any female computer/games geek out there so I'm asking does she/them exist in the real world or only she/they are only a fantasy. For example when my coworker got a new computer (P4 2.4 Ghz, 1024 MB memory) I asked her if it's faster then the old one (P3 600 Mhz, 256 MB memory) she replied: "I didn't notice any difference". The second example is I just started with playing the new Heroes of Might and Magic V and when I asked another my friend what she thinks about it when she was watching me playing it she said: "Colors are nice". How about this example. Another coworker got an OS upgrade from win2000 to winXP and she didn't even notice that I upgraded her OS?!

OK I admit those examples are a 'bit' extreme but it made me thinking about females and computers. Is it that computers are made by male for male that there are a lot more male computer geeks out there or is it just that generally females are not that attracted by technology. Shouldn't someone make computers and games that would appeal more to female users.

Please if they are any female computer geeks out there reply to this article just that I will know that female computer geeks exist in the real world as well and not just in my fantasies. Also can you write what kind of computers and games do you like. Me for example like laptops with big screens 17"-20" and good speakers. The most I like playing turn-based strategies (Civilization and Heroes of Might & Magic) and Sci-Fi RPGs (Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic) and NBA Live series.

Comments much appreciated.

Plymouth, MI- (August 31, 2006) – Stardock Entertainment is pleased to

ObjectBar 2.0 is finally complete. Stardock will be releasing ObjectBar 2.0 on September 12th.  So what is ObjectBar and what has taken so long to go from 1.6 to 2.0?

What is ObjectBar

ObjectBar is essentially a GUI construction kit. With it, users can create their own alternative interfaces of Windows XP (and soon Windows Vista).  After all, Apple and Microsoft aren't the only ones with ideas on how the desktop interface should be done. 

ObjectBar can pretty much emulate virtually any existing desktop interface out there as well as add new twists to them or enable users to create their own.  Creations can be exported as actual programs that others can use (or the bar theme itself can be exported for those who want to trade and modify each other's designs).

ObjectBar: Two groups of users

ObjectBar content is much more involved than what is the norm in skinning.  ObjectBar content can be split up in two pieces: The actual bar theme and then the skin for the bar.  One could imagine the Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista or the Start Bar or the Mac finder as being examples of bar themes.  But beyond that, those themes can also be skinned independently.

ObjectBar skins are best when designed for the bar in question but ObjectBar can also automatically inherit your WindowBlinds skin.  The bar themes themselves are very customizeable. If the person who creates the bar theme exports it as an EXE, the user of the EXE (as long as they have ObjectBar installed) can use that bar theme as a stand alone program with a much simplified interface for adding content and tweaking what's there.  It's powerful and yet simple.

 

ObjectBar 2: Years in the making

For a long time, ObjectBar 1.x was quite popular with power users.  The problem Stardock ran into was one of support and expanding its market and deciding where it should go.  It seemed to be stuck between worlds.  Google, Microsoft, and tons of other companies have gotten into the "sidebar" business.  That is, having a vertical bar on the right side of the screen that users can insert various things into (clocks, gadgets, RSS feeds, short cuts, etc.). 

Such specialized programs tended to do what they did very well.  ObjectBar, by contrast, has been a generalist -- you could create a Sidebar with it. A fully skinnable sidebar at that.  And since ObjectBar 2 supports embedding DesktopX widgets, you could create some pretty spectacular sidebars.  But here's the problem with that -- the widgets and skins would have to be made with that particular sidebar theme in mind.

So what Stardock has done is re-imagine how ObjectBar is likely to be used.  First off, it made it so that the people who spend the time to create the bars can export them as programs.  Secondly, it has begun to try to separate the skinning from the bar creation part.  To that end, Stardock has made creating new bars somewhat more technically challenging but resulting in far more powerful and interesting bars.  On the other hand, customizing and modifying those bars has been made much easier.  Before, it was just somewhat hard to do most things but  never easy to do anything. 

 

The ObjectBar 2 Strategy

With ObjectBar 2, Stardock intends to provide a series of high quality template bar themes created by Jeff Bargmann and Treetog.  Then make it relatively easy for users to create skins for those bars.  The WinCustomize gallery will be set up so that users can upload skins that are distinct from bars.  A skinning guide has been developed and will be made available.

Since ObjectBar is a super-set of anything that any sidebar or similar program can do, it is our hope that by focusing initial effort on a handful of bar themes and then branch out from there as others create new bar themes that we can build a strong customization community for ObjectBar 2.

The key is for users to recognize that there are two elements at work here: Bar themes and skins. And while a bar theme will include a skin (by default) that users can create skins on their own.  So picture dozens of Sidebar skins or Finder bar skins or other types.

ObjectBar 2.0 on September 12th. Stay tuned!

As the developer in charge of Stardock's Vista labs, I'm one of the few who gets to "play" with the new builds right away. Up until now this has meant several hours of reinstalling software over the top of a fresh install. This time I tried an upgrade from 5472 to 5536, and as it's the way many of you will be introduced to Vista I thought I'd share the results with you. I also wanted to see whether or not I agreed with blogger Robert McLaws, one of those who has been playing around with the interim builds and who has been predicting great improvements ( http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archive/2006/08/24/Windows_Vista_Pre_RC1_Is_Available_Now.aspx ). Is he right? Read on for my take . . .

Impressions of 5536...

The setup has started to include the "info cards" - in this case, little messages promising that you, too, can be a great director, famous (PowerPoint) presenter, or maybe even pilot the space shuttle with Windows Vista. Again, Microsoft is trying to push the "experience" on you - and giving you something to look at while you wait for its performance ratings to complete. I'm told a clean install is not that bad, but you have to wonder how many end users are going to be doing a clean install. In truth, the upgrade didn't take more than around 45 minutes for me, though I've had others say it took them over an hour. I could see upgrading from XP taking longer, if only because most upgrade candidates will have big registries and more cruft for the installer to sort through.

So what's the score once you're upgraded? On my dual-core E1505 laptop (labeled "Windows Vista Capable" by Dell, though that's pushing it for their lower models), it takes about 30 seconds from the start of the Windows booting process, 50 to the desktop and 1:00 to the Welcome screen . . . and after that it's hard to tell because other things kick in, but you can start working straight away. It's not slow, though I suspect this relies significantly on having half a gig of memory around to throw at the boot process. My total boot load was a shade over 550Mb, which compares less-than-favourably with the 230Mb of XP on the same laptop. Admittedly, I'm not running the Tablet PC service on that (nor will regular Vista users have to), and it trimmed about 50Mb off the working set over time. Still, I wouldn't want to actually use Vista in less than 1Gb, particularly since every single open window carries the cost of the DWM's buffering.

One of the things that really does keep going is Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall. They appear to make significant disk accesses totaling (on various boots) 50-100Mb by the first five minutes just after loading up the desktop. Security! The joke that the second core was added to check up on the first one is getting a little too close to truth, though the real cost is waiting for the disk. Good thing I got a 7200 rpm disk. On the whole, though, performance is definitely far closer to that which I'd expect from an operating system that's meant to be released in, yes, two months.

There's a few nice little user interface tweaks that make things just a little bit more friendly; for example, the way the "other logoff options" button is actually large enough to hit this time around. Progress remains to be made: on my laptop's high-DPI screen (an upgrade which I readily recommend) all the column headers in were incorrectly sized, making it harder to see what was actually being displayed. If Microsoft expects its ISVs to expend the effort to solve such problems, it needs to get its own software following best practices first. And yes, Windows Media Center looked great - except I didn't have a cursor!

Some things seem set to remain obscure to most users with Vista, like how badly your disk is defragmented (requires use of a command-line tool in administrator mode), and exactly how much help that USB key is as a ReadyBoost device. Perhaps that's for the best, considering Vista's main target market, but "you don't need to know" still rankles to a techie like myself. Worse, I've heard they want to make the logon sound mandatory ( http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/the-startup-sound-in-vista/ ). Guess what, Microsoft? It's our computer, and you're the guest. Learn to live with that restriction on your branding efforts, and put in a usable "off" switch, or we'll do it for you.

Drivers remain an issue, too. At least now there are drivers for most components, though some features are lacking (including Vista-compatible help for Device Manager itself). OpenGL still isn't all the way there, even though my X1400 drivers were built just 10 days ago. This is partly Microsoft's fault, because they didn't finalize a high-performance interface for OpenGL until it was almost too late to have one at all. Maybe they were concentrating too closely on DirectX 10, overlooking all the great consumer applications that make use of the competition - like, oh, Second Life, which still bombs out in this build.

That wasn't the worst flaw. On a hunch, I shut the lid. 7 seconds to sleep - not bad, though it could be better. I opened it back up, and . . . whoops. The screen powers up, but it's not showing anything, and the system is non-responsive. Scratch one for the RC - this is a laptop, it needs to be able to sleep. Others here at Stardock have had other serious problems that appear to be linked with display drivers, and it's clear we're going to continue to need to see significant improvement in this area. I'm sure the driver crews are working flat-out at NVIDIA and ATI AMD.
Edit: As of 2 September, ATI has released drivers that fix this problem.

The company has been dragging its heels for a while, pushing little features into the product to make up for all the big names (remember WinFS?) that didn't quite make the cut. It seems they've mostly gotten past that, though you know they're going to want to spring a feature or two on us for the RC (Virtual PC Express, for a start - http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=2649 ). Speaking on behalf of the development community, I'm glad to be entering the finishing straight. We need a stable set of features to build our own programs on.

The Verdict

So are the latest builds really any better? Despite the problems, a I'd have to say a qualified yes. It's about time - there's precious little of it left to fix the very real bugs that remain, let alone the "features" being forced in by Microsoft Marketing. We're going to need a release candidate out soon in order to find all the niggling little compatibility issues. That requires Vista to be solid enough for beta testers to want to use it as their main OS, and from my experiences it's not quite there yet.

Microsoft's developers have a little over two months to deliver on what they've promised - a next-generation operating system that can provide a solid base for years to come. This build is a sign that they may finally be in gear: but I worry that it may be too little, too late. Will they rise to the challenge, and deliver something they can be proud of? For all our sakes, I hope so.

Hardware dies.  It's a fact of life that at some point, your beloved gizmo will give up the ghost and go off to that great big CompUSA in the sky to forever rest comfortably in cushioned boxes with all of its fallen comrades.  Some hardware lasts longer than others, as is evidenced by the Macintosh Powerbook (original) that still runs weather data tools in my dad's lab.  Some hardware however has a short lifespan and can sputter and die sooner than one would expect, and typically just a day or two after the warranty expires.

When the latter happens, we grow frustrated, and even though we may be a day or two past that magical 90 day timeframe, we still try and call tech support.  However, for the past several years, it's been very common to encounter a know-nothing tech support worker in India when calling for help in bringing back to life that card, drive, monitor etc that you shelled out hundreds of dollars for and feel should have lasted perhaps a bit longer than three months.  Now from time to time you'll be (un)lucky and the equipment will die before the warranty expires.  Unfortunately, that does not make the support experience any more bearable as you'll struggle to get your far off friend to understand even the most rudimentary description of your problem.  It only gets worse if you actually KNOW what's wrong and needs to be fixed since you'll still be forced to go through the inane checklist of common problems that tier 1 support is required to go through before transferring you to someone who actually has a clue.  Yes, I have tried rebooting, cycling the power, reseating all the connections, sacrificed the chicken, spun around three times and spit over my shoulder... I work in IT, this is all SOP to me, THE DAMN THING IS BROKEN NOW FIX IT! 

So it was with the dark memories of dealing with support lines from Dell, Gateway, HP, and any cable company I've ever had, that I took to assess my recent situation...

My video card was dying.

In March, I bought an eVGA GeForce 7800GS OC 256MB AGP card from Newegg.com to coincide with the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (I also picked up an extra two gigs of RAM... I wanted to make sure the game ran as good as it could on my system).  It's a phenomenal card and performs as well as I can possibly expect any AGP card to.  It's essentially the top line card I can get for my aging AGP based system.  So, for five months I was in relative gaming bliss as I was able to get some of the best graphics out of all the latest games and all was good with the world.  Then, shortly after moving to Michigan last month, things started to go awry.  I noticed weird "stuck" pixels on my monitor when playing any 3D game.  This was strange because I have an old CRT monitor and those don't get stuck pixels.  But it was very consistent with which pixels were fried so at first I thought it was my monitor, but no tests I ran showed any issues, and I saw the same problems with my spare LCD monitor.  Additionally, I was seeing odd geometry drawing issues where polygons would have one vertex suddenly stretch off into the distance, and strange colored splotches appeared on more complex textured surfaces.  This brought me to the remaining possible culprit, my video card.

I've had video cards die on me in the past, fans went out, the ability for the card to draw enough power went away etc.  However, my cards typically tend to last a year or two before shuffling off their mortal coil.  I ran power tests to make sure all my rails were pushing the right amount, and that came clean.  I even went so far as to toss in my aging ATI 9800XT 256MB card I had sitting in a box to make sure it wasn't a board or power issue.  That card worked like a charm (though MUCH slower in new games since it's so old).  Now, with my options exhausted, it was time to face the music, pay the piper, bite the bullet, confront my demons and.... CALL SUPPORT!

The dread and fear were palpable, it was like a thick fog that clung all around me, ethereal and slimy all at the same time.  Would it just be easier to go out and buy a completely new card, forsaking this one?  Surely the frustration and agony of dealing with phone support wasn't worth $300.  Well, I don't have any cash at the moment, so I had to suck it up and pick up the phone.

So, since I bought the part through a reseller, I had to call the manufacturer, eVGA.

I call... press my way through the automated option system until I reach the "speak to a goddamn human" option and get into the hold queue.

And wait...

About a minute.  Wow, that was fast.  A cheerful voice greets me in a perfectly normal and understandable accent.  This guy is a native English speaker!  Oh dear sweet lord, surely I have somehow died while waiting on hold and passed on to heaven, this being but part of my eternal reward for endlessly enduring the stupidity of users and the rivaling stupidity of outsourced tech support.  I check my pulse, pinch my arm and determine that I am in fact still alive, my time to pass from this realm had not yet come... and that meant that I had actually gotten a real English-speaking support rep on the line after virtually no wait on hold.

For the sake of this article, lets say the rep's name is John (I don't remember what it was, I didn't think to write it down at the time) and he was very polite, cheerful, and responsive.  He asked me if I had registered my video card on the eVGA website.  I had.  He then asked for a description of my issues, which I supplied.  Then came the question I was dreading the most "When did you buy your card and from who?"  to which I said "March" fearing for the standard 90 day warranty to bite me in the arse.  Nope, no problem, he informs me that eVGA cards have lifetime warranties.  If the card dies for any reason short of being the result of stupid human tricks, eVGA will replace the card no problem.  Only catch is, they don't cross-ship, meaning I have to ship my card to them before they'll process it and send me a replacement.  This means I'd have to be without my beloved 3D card for a full week or so... of course it's not like it was giving me much performance at this point anyway with the rainbow colored randomly expanding polygons in most of my games.  So I send in an RMA request, a day later it's approved and I ship my card off to eVGA in California.

And a week later, the replacement card lands on my desk, all packed up in a nice little plastic protective bubble.  It's a newer build of my same card so hopefully the old issues won't come back.  I get the card home, plug it in, and I'm getting performance in games I haven't seen for several months!  Implying that the card had been on a steady decline for quite some time now.  I've had the card in my system now for a day and I'm back up to speed playing all my favorite games, and even loaded the Battlefield 2142 beta which is running without a glitch!

Despite the card dieing so soon after purchase, which I'm given to believe is an anomalous glitch, the support from eVGA was so responsive, and easy to understand (yay English!), coupled with the lifetime replacement policy, eVGA has won my graphics card business for a long time to come.  This is especially good for them considering I am building out a new system come next spring and will be considering going SLI and PCIe.  I will recommend them to anyone who asks for a good reliable card manufacturer.