Thursday 29 October 2009
Sunday 25 October 2009
Windows 7
I made a decison and I invested in Windows 7 Professional 2 days ago. Now, I am a Vista hater and an XP lover. So what are my thoughts? I love it! Ok, so it visually looks and feels like Vista that I hate so much but it just seems to work, and its very fast, faster then my performance in XP too.
I did have a few issues though. When I first installed it I used a newly formatted hard drive and disconnected my others. This ment I could still boot up on my XP drive if needed. When trying to install it though, it kept on asking for drivers for my DVD-RW drive which I didnt have. Now I have never been asked before for drivers for an optical drive upon an OS installation. I used my 2nd DVD drive which was also already connected up and it worked perfectly first time. The installation took about 15minutes....thats fast considering XP takes about 30minutes for me usually.
I started to play with Windows 7, installing updates, anti-virus, drivers etc and then I thought I would install something from DVD-Rom. This is where I started to loose my hair for the next few hours. My DVD-RW drive that gave me issues with the install process, after a few hours seemed not to be compatible with Windows 7. I knew it wasnt the drive or cables due to it working fine on XP when I booted it up to test. My other DVD drive doesnt like me at all, well it is about 9years old bless it, so that gave me issues too. It just doesnt like reading big DVDs.
I bought a new SATA DVD-RW drive the next day which I replaced both my drives with and suddenly my system came to life. Everything seems to be working (except games which ill explain in a sec) and working VERY fast. Photoshop, Maya and even office applications work and run smoothly and fast. Weird to think that just by changing my OS it would speed up my PC so much. I thought I would be hooked on the easy and cleaness of XP for years to come yet but I have been proved wrong.
Games. Well, this is where I have been having some issues. Games that I have bought recently like Wolfenstein work faultlessly, but older games like Age of Empires II seem to still have issues. I know that AoE2 hated Vista and it actually poped up on Vista saying "I cannot play on this OS" (not like that obviously but you understand). On Windows 7 it works but all the colours are distorted. A little research later I discovered that its due to the explorer.exe process of Windows 7 uses a colour process or something like that that AoE2 wants to use at the same time and the OS wins. Disable explorer.exe and it works fine. Im yet to try out many more games, Civilization 4 has my attention yet again and that seems to work fine at present. Ill blog back another time if I find any annoying games that refuse to work.
I keep saying that the speed of the OS is faster and I know its becuase I ran 32bit Xp and this is 64bit Windows 7 and its finally using my Quadcore 64bit CPU to its fullest and actually seeing my 4gb of RAM (when XP only sees 3gb, never understood that though...), but I didnt know it would be this good. The amount of applications now im downloading in 64bit versions is insane, 64bit iTunes doesnt crash at all when 32bit always did for me. I just want them to make 64bit Winamp then ill really be smiling, Winamp is my "Media-player love of my Life".
The XP mode im a little cofused about though. Basically its a virtual machine that runs XP on it. I have used VMs before with Linux and such on them and they work well but I have read that this VM doesnt allow XP to use my graphics card to its fullest nor my RAM...so ill have to investigate a little I think. Not really that bothered though as its not top of my list.
So overall, yes I had to buy a new DVD-RW drive to make Windows 7 work and yes for a small time there will be drivers and applications that probably will refuse to work and so forth but if this is the face of Windows to come, sign me up!
I did have a few issues though. When I first installed it I used a newly formatted hard drive and disconnected my others. This ment I could still boot up on my XP drive if needed. When trying to install it though, it kept on asking for drivers for my DVD-RW drive which I didnt have. Now I have never been asked before for drivers for an optical drive upon an OS installation. I used my 2nd DVD drive which was also already connected up and it worked perfectly first time. The installation took about 15minutes....thats fast considering XP takes about 30minutes for me usually.
I started to play with Windows 7, installing updates, anti-virus, drivers etc and then I thought I would install something from DVD-Rom. This is where I started to loose my hair for the next few hours. My DVD-RW drive that gave me issues with the install process, after a few hours seemed not to be compatible with Windows 7. I knew it wasnt the drive or cables due to it working fine on XP when I booted it up to test. My other DVD drive doesnt like me at all, well it is about 9years old bless it, so that gave me issues too. It just doesnt like reading big DVDs.
I bought a new SATA DVD-RW drive the next day which I replaced both my drives with and suddenly my system came to life. Everything seems to be working (except games which ill explain in a sec) and working VERY fast. Photoshop, Maya and even office applications work and run smoothly and fast. Weird to think that just by changing my OS it would speed up my PC so much. I thought I would be hooked on the easy and cleaness of XP for years to come yet but I have been proved wrong.
Games. Well, this is where I have been having some issues. Games that I have bought recently like Wolfenstein work faultlessly, but older games like Age of Empires II seem to still have issues. I know that AoE2 hated Vista and it actually poped up on Vista saying "I cannot play on this OS" (not like that obviously but you understand). On Windows 7 it works but all the colours are distorted. A little research later I discovered that its due to the explorer.exe process of Windows 7 uses a colour process or something like that that AoE2 wants to use at the same time and the OS wins. Disable explorer.exe and it works fine. Im yet to try out many more games, Civilization 4 has my attention yet again and that seems to work fine at present. Ill blog back another time if I find any annoying games that refuse to work.
I keep saying that the speed of the OS is faster and I know its becuase I ran 32bit Xp and this is 64bit Windows 7 and its finally using my Quadcore 64bit CPU to its fullest and actually seeing my 4gb of RAM (when XP only sees 3gb, never understood that though...), but I didnt know it would be this good. The amount of applications now im downloading in 64bit versions is insane, 64bit iTunes doesnt crash at all when 32bit always did for me. I just want them to make 64bit Winamp then ill really be smiling, Winamp is my "Media-player love of my Life".
The XP mode im a little cofused about though. Basically its a virtual machine that runs XP on it. I have used VMs before with Linux and such on them and they work well but I have read that this VM doesnt allow XP to use my graphics card to its fullest nor my RAM...so ill have to investigate a little I think. Not really that bothered though as its not top of my list.
So overall, yes I had to buy a new DVD-RW drive to make Windows 7 work and yes for a small time there will be drivers and applications that probably will refuse to work and so forth but if this is the face of Windows to come, sign me up!
Tuesday 20 October 2009
Just blog it!
I have been trying to decide how to make my blog flow, and I have come to the conclusion that if i keep trying to make my blog flow im never really going to get it started.
So now im just going to blog my thoughts as they happen.
So now im just going to blog my thoughts as they happen.
Monday 12 October 2009
First post of a new blog
Well I assume this post should be really eyecatching and should get you hooked so I can reel you in when I really get setup.
Well, it's not...
I really don't know how people can just break into a blog and suddenly it's a hit, I'm expecting to have to put some effort into this blog to make it work, stand out maybe?
So being a 2nd year student, i'll explain last year. Last year was for me a test to see if uni was actually my thing, it very quickly answered itself and I couldn't wait to come back for my 2nd year. I learnt so much more then I could type here, but I have a view now, maybe even a valid opinion on games, the industry and almost feel like I'm beginning to be a part of it all. I may not have any feats of strength (in a manner of speaking) to write about yet, but i'll enthusiastically work on them.
I'll have a think now about what to type about next and ill get some of the other areas of this blog setup too. I'll look into updates from my iPhone too just in case I get inspired as I wait for something in my life to catch up to me.
Scott
Well, it's not...
I really don't know how people can just break into a blog and suddenly it's a hit, I'm expecting to have to put some effort into this blog to make it work, stand out maybe?
So being a 2nd year student, i'll explain last year. Last year was for me a test to see if uni was actually my thing, it very quickly answered itself and I couldn't wait to come back for my 2nd year. I learnt so much more then I could type here, but I have a view now, maybe even a valid opinion on games, the industry and almost feel like I'm beginning to be a part of it all. I may not have any feats of strength (in a manner of speaking) to write about yet, but i'll enthusiastically work on them.
I'll have a think now about what to type about next and ill get some of the other areas of this blog setup too. I'll look into updates from my iPhone too just in case I get inspired as I wait for something in my life to catch up to me.
Scott
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