I really don't intend to do a daily blog. Maybe not even weekly. However, every so often the mood strikes me or events occur that I really want to record. That stuff doesn't fit anywhere else on this site, to here it goes. Enjoy
Posted May 15, 2010
First off, I just realized it's been months since I posted anything here. It's not that hasn't been anything to blog about. I blame Valve and Steam. They had a huge sale of really good games the week between Christmas and New Years, and I went crazy. Between that sale and a couple others before and after it, I got Grand Theft Auto IV, Crysis (including Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis Wars), Max Payne, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Mirror's Edge, Psychonauts, Red Faction: Guerrilla, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and Torchlight. Every one of them was on sale. How was I to know that GTA IV alone would take hours and hours to play? I also managed to squeeze in Batman: Arkham Asylum that came free with a new video card. I've been busy.
I played a lot of those games to "clear the calendar" for playing Dragon Age: Origins (DA:O), which I also picked up on sale. I had read the glowing reviews. I knew it was long and involved, and I wanted to have the time to devote to it because I'd read it was worth it. I really expected to get sucked in and get lost. I just started it a few weeks ago, and I have to say ... I really don't like it. That really, really bothered me. Everyone likes this game. Everyone. Well, everyone minus one I guess. It's not that I hate the game, either. It's not buggy. It looks fine. Not great, but not bad. The dialog between the characters is amusing, and the story is decent. I just couldn't seem to make myself play the game more than a couple hours at a time before I wanted to do something else.
I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I mean, look at the scores at MetaCritic. The game has got many perfect 100s. A number of the gaming/PC podcasts I listen to have hosts that have played through the game 2, 3 or even 4 times. I love RPGs and love action games. I went through Fallout 3 four full times (plus most of the DLC) just to try the different karmas and sexes of the characters. More recently, I had no problem getting through Batman: Arkham Asylum. So what the heck is wrong with me and this game? It took me a while before I could put my finger on the cause.
I simply find the game too tedious to enjoy. I don't like micromanagement-centric games. I avoid most RTS games for that reason. The last RTS game I finished is Warcraft II. (Not even Warcraft III.) I've never played a single game of Starcraft nor am I likely to buy Starcraft II. (Diablo III is another story. I played through Diablo and Diablo II plus expansions more times than I can remember.) Turned-based strategy games are even lower on my like list. I'll never play Civ <any number> even if I could get it for free. The thing is, I didn't realize that DA:O was a nearly turn-based, micromanagement style game for a while. It doesn't look like one for sure. What I came to realize is that if I didn't take control of the various characters during anything more than a brief battle, they would die. That in turn would get me killed.
That's because my party members are apparently partially brain-damaged. I expect my party members to do a better job at managing themselves than they seem to be able to do. Hey warrior, dude! You're almost dead! Maybe you ought to try one of the 31 different health potions we're lugging around! Quite often, I have to move them out of harms way. Hey, healer-person! You don't need to stand right next to the warrior-person; you're getting hit, too! Move, you idiot! Hang on, I'll move you. Hey rogue-like, bard, chick! You've got 18 vials of various poisons! Why don't you use them once in a while? Nope. I gotta do that manually, too. It's a wonder these people remembered to get dressed. Having to keep after them so much made it hard for me to feel a connection to any of them. I really didn't care if they lived or died or stayed with me or not.
Yes, I know that I can set up multiple strategies for each character and then switch between them for different battles if I want to. I don't want to. Their default strategies apparently aren't extensive enough. I figured out how to set up a rule for taking health potions, but it takes up one of the precious few slots for strategies. Yes, I found out that I can add more slots to some members, but I'd rather add skills. So, instead, I have to watch each party member and either heal them (I played a mage) or take control and swallow down a vial of something. There's probably a way to set up a rule for having the rogue apply poison, too, but I don't care. I don't want to spend all my time coercing the other members do what they should just do automatically. I just want to play my character and get on with it.
That brings me to the next thing I don't like. I really just want to get good at my class. The problem is, I have to manage all the other classes, too. I barely have time to figure out the best use of my main character's skills as it was. I certainly don't have time (or inclination) to learn the skill tree for every one of the potential members of my party. This gets untenable after five or six members (from which I pick a working party of four). I played through Mass Effect and had no problem with that party system. That said, those party members seemed to have sense enough to know when to attack, when to defend and even when take cover. In short, they weren't annoying like the ones in DA:O
I suppose it's possible I just picked a bad starting class by picking the mage. The beginning story isn't bad, but I've heard that the elves and both dwarven character types have better stories. Since I found myself having to take over the warrior so much to try to get aggro off the other characters, maybe I should have just had a warrior as my main character. At times, I got the feeling that's what BioWare expected me to do. Instead of doing that, I think I'll just try a different game.
Posted February 14, 2010
I used to fill out site surveys all the time. You know the ones the various e-tailers have. The survey presents a little pop-up and asks if you'd be willing to fill out a survey after you've finished shopping. I like to think that even if I had a mediocre time, I can let them know what I thought was good or bad. Very rarely is my shopping experience great or terrible - usually just good, bad or entirely unremarkable. Unremarkable is fine, by the way; even preferable. I needed to buy X. I found X in 3-4 clicks. I bought X in 2-3 more clicks. End of experience. That's why I shop online. Even so, I can often suggest something that might have made the experience better or mention something good that helped me narrow down a selection quickly. I used to think surveys were good things to do. That is until recently.
I was just checking out Best Buy for keyboards. (The space bar, left control and left and right shift keys are dying on this one. Gaming kills keyboards.) A pop-up came up and asked if I'd fill out a survey. I clicked OK or whatever the affirmative button was labeled. After I finished shopping (and buying a keyboard from Newegg, instead), I looked at the survey. It consisted of 28 questions. Let me write that out: twenty-eight questions. Most were pick a number between 1 and something (7? 9? I don't remember). Some near the end were write-in essay or short answer. Let me give you a hint (about me at least), survey makers. You get a maximum of 15 questions if they are all of the click-the-rating-from-1-to-5 type. If you ask one essay ("What would you like to see us add?", "Additional Comments", etc.), you get a maximum of ten questions including the essay. If I have to pick a range from 1 to 9, make it seven or eight questions. No more than ten. Not twenty. And most certainly not twenty-eight. I wanted to write into the "What could we do to make the site better?" question at the end (or however it was phrased), "Don't ask 28 questions on your surveys." I couldn't do that, of course. All the questions had to be answered. In order to complain about the length of the survey, I would have had to fill out the entire survey. I just closed it instead. I don't mean to single out Best Buy. They are just the latest one to do this. Lately, all the surveys I've seen are just about as bad.
Does that sound shallow? It probably takes me about 15-20 minutes to answer a survey of that length assuming I actually read each question, think about it and answer. Sorry, survey makers, but I have better uses for my time. (Like bemoaning long surveys.) When will I take the time to fill out a 28-question survey? When the site has either a) done something really spectacular that saved me money or guided me to a better choice than what I had in mind to start with or b) the site did something that really, really pissed me off. Here's another hint, survey makers. Most often, if I answer a 28-question survey, it's because of b). I don't think I'm alone in this. I believe that the only answers that the company is likely to get from this survey is from those that really loved the site or those that really hated it (and most likely, the latter). The majority of us that fall in the middle just won't answer. That's too bad since those are the people most likely to appreciate an improvement where something was lacking. Those that hated the site aren't coming back. Those that loved it will come back regardless. Remember, survey makers. Ten questions max. Period.
Posted January 03, 2010
Yes, why? OK. That's a bit harsh and broad. Let me at least narrow it down. HP, why are your printer driver developers evil? They weren't always that way. I have an old HP4000N from the end of the 1990s that's still going strong. It's drivers are the epitome of simple. I define a network port, pick the model (HP4000N) and the driver type (PCL5, PS or PCL6). That's it. I've installed them dozens of times by now. I feed it a ream of paper every now and then and change the toner every year or two and we're happy. I realize that it's really my fault. I wanted more. Like scanning .. and faxing .. and color printing - at least, sometimes. I just couldn't stay happy with the simple life I had.
I've actually owned a number of color ink jets over the years, but when I was trying to save some space a few years ago, I decided to get rid of my old ink jet, fax machine and scanner and get an all-in-one HP PSC 2610 (where "PSC" stands for printer, scanner, copier [and fax in this case]). I was using XP at the time. I don't think Vista was even out yet. I loaded the megabytes upon megabytes of drivers onto my computers and laptops. In the beginning, all seemed well. It was only later that I learned the evil had gotten in - invited in, by me as it were. The evil's name then was "HPZipm12.exe." I started getting out of virtual memory errors on my main desktop. Preposterous! That machine has an entire 2GB of RAM! Looking in the task manager, I found HPZipm12.exe using 1.5 GB of RAM! After some searching, I found that HPZipm12.exe "[...] handles non-printing related two-way communications between the PC and the HP printer. Typically, on DeskJet and InkJet printers it will handle status-type communications such as ink levels, paper-empty conditions, [...], and will feed that information back to an HP icon in the System Tray. In the case of more advanced printers, such as All-in-One printers or PhotoSmart printers, it handles additional non-printing related communications such as scanning and photocopying events, access to the card reader."
I exorcised it. Or at least I tried to. I couldn't uninstall it as the installer wouldn't let me. So, I used the holy hand grenade of RegEdit to eradicate all traces of it. But HP driver writers - being the evil doers that they are - kept bringing it back with driver updates. These driver updates tricked me by purporting to contain security fixes, but in reality, I think they just used that ploy in order to get back in. Over the course of a few years, I had to repeat the exorcism a number of times.
I actually think during the year that was Vista, I may not have had an issue with the drivers. Perhaps, the evil doers at HP thought Vista was evil enough on it's own right. I don't know. I just don't recall having to do anything to make the HP drivers behave. They were still large and bloated, but at least, they did as I asked.
Again, curse me for not being satisfied with what I have. I upgraded to Windows 7, which meant new drivers to get the scanning and faxing functions to work. (The printer drivers installed as part of the Windows 7 install.) I downloaded the drivers - all 362.68 megabytes of them - and blindly proceeded to install them. I thought perhaps the HP driver developers had basked in the light of Windows 7 and been purged, but I was wrong to think so. I started the drivers and choose to do a network install. My printer is hooked only to the network because most of my computers aren't close to the printer and I didn't want to have a computer on all the time just to act as a print server. That's sort of the reason why one buys a network printer, eh? Why is this important, you ask. Read on.
The install reached a certain point, stopped and said to attach the printer to the computer with a USB cable. Thinking I must have somehow accidentally chosen a USB install, I canceled the install (which is itself a dangerous act with HP driver installs) and started over. Being very careful to make sure I chose a network printer, I started again. Again, the installation stopped and said to attach the USB cable to the printer. I hadn't chosen incorrectly the first time after all. Deciding that must be an erroneous message, I hit "Next" and hoped for the best. After some bitching and moaning, the install completed.
After the installation, I tried to open the HP Digital Imaging Monitor, which is the central app for getting to the scanning and other functions. I got some message to the effect that the app could not be opened because the installation did not complete. It told me to attach a USB cable and re-run the installation for a network install. OK. So sometimes, evil can't reach across the heavens. It needs to touch the other directly. It mentioned to do so for a "network install," so I thought maybe it just needed to be connected during the install, and I could disconnect the USB afterward. So I connected my new Windows 7 machine to the printer with the longest USB cable I own. Did I mention this is a network printer? The HP printer driver developers - being evil as they are - ignored the idiom that they should never force their customers to use a USB cable to install drivers for a network printer. The computers may not be physically close. The Windows 7 machine is the closest one. Thankfully, it has a front USB port that gets it a couple feet closer.
As soon as I connected the USB cable, an app popped up saying it was completing the installation and after a few minutes declared the printer was ready. Indeed, I could open up the HP Digital Imaging Monitor and scan and all the other functions were there in all their glory. Had the HP printer driver developers relented? Should I be joyful? Oh, woe is me. Being done with the installation, I disconnected the USB cable. The printer disappeared. HP Digital Imaging Monitor declared the printer was offline. All knowledge that the printer was connected by a network had been erased. HP had done it do me again. I'm sorry. The evil HP printer driver developers had done it to me again. How could I have been so experienced in their ways yet so hopeful in their competence?
My salvation came in noticing that under the All Programs -> HP -> Photosmart All-In-One 2600 series menu there is an entry called innocently, "Add A Device." Choosing that, then telling it to find a network printer (as I had already done in the initial install) allowed it to (again) find my networked PSC 2610. I then went on to install it. Lo and behold, the HP Digital Imaging Monitor opened, found the network connection to the PSC 2610 and declared it was ready to be used. And it was good. It was now the default printer - which is not something I had asked for or was asked about. Even as they accept their defeat as I solved their maze of installation trials, they still needed to impart one last evil, I guess. I reset the default back to the HP 4000N.
I then proceeded to delete the USB printer from the list of devices since the USB version wouldn't ever be used. The USB connection shouldn't have been needed in the first place, actually. (It never was before.) However, that USB device entry just won't die. I delete it from Devices and Printers only to have it reappear - grayed out because it's not connected - on the next reboot. I have a ghost in the machine. An evil ghost.
The Evil Continues: Part of the new (Windows 7) install includes the "HP Customer Participation Program." Except they forgot to ask the customer if said customer wanted to participate. The only reason I'm aware of it was the Internet Explorer 8 (but not Firefox) asked me if it was OK to send all my personal information to HP at all times including everything I've ever done on the Internet. All right. It wasn't that . In fact, it just asked if it could send data to HP. It didn't say what data or how often, why they wanted it or what they would do with it. The name for this type of software is called "spyware." I went into the control panel for Programs and Features to remove it. It's listed there, but when I try to uninstall it, it claims that the rest of the install will be affected. I uninstalled it anyway. Guess what?!? The rest of the software runs just fine without the HP-authored spyware.
Posted October 14, 2009
Let's say you've got a fairly late model computer with a decent 64-bit processor (which includes most of them in the last few years), a decent video card and 2 GB of RAM, but avoided Windows Vista like the plague because of all the bad press. (Although I couldn't say why; I had no problems with Vista 64-bit myself.) Now, you found out that you're going to have to do a full install of Windows to go to Windows 7. The retail versions of Windows 7 (appear to) include both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the new OS. (That's not true of the OEM versions which come in either 32 or 64-bit versions.) Here's a good question: Should you install the 64-bit or 32-bit version when you only have 2GB of RAM? Is there any real advantage to the 64-bit version here? Will any "bad" things happen if you use the 64-bit version?
First, I'll explain the typical reason why a 64-bit system is even considered. A 32-bit OS can support a maximum of 4 GB of addressable space. However, in the case of Windows OSes (XP, Vista and Windows 7 anyway), the OS uses memory-mapped device drivers. That is, devices like the memory on your video card, registers on your Ethernet chip/card, and registers on your sound card are all mapped into locations in memory. Devices overlay the very topmost memory addresses starting at the 4GB limit and work their way down. Your RAM starts at 0 (not quite, but close enough for this discussion) and starts using addresses going up. When you have enough RAM (around 3 or 4 GB) the devices in most PCs will start to collide with and overlay the RAM at the higher addresses.
This is where that video card with 1 GB of RAM starts to bite back. Two of them in SLI mode take 2GB of address space right off the top. The 64-bit addressing limit is much higher than 32-bit. It's much larger theoretically than going from 4GB to 16GB or 24GB as seen on new motherboards. (The addressing space is 2^64 instead of 2^32.) The theoretical maximum is 16 Exabytes or about 17.2 billion GB. The arbitrary limits imposed by Windows for their various OSes are listed here. As you can see, Windows 7 Ultimate has a limit of 192GB. Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise has a limit of 2 TB. Microsoft isn't being a bad guy here. Every extra power of two factor of RAM allowed for on a motherboard means more physical address lines must be included. It makes little sense to include traces on densely packed motherboards for address lines that would never or rarely be used. Since we are asking this question about a 2GB system rather than a 4GB system, we're not going to gain back any RAM that was formerly masked by device drivers. The question then is what other beneficial or detrimental things might happen if we use Windows 7 64-bit software? First, the beneficial parts.
Increased Security: Windows 64-bit systems generally can use hardware-backed Data Execution Protection (DEP). DEP let's the OS mark parts of the memory as "data only" such that code will not be allowed to execute in that region. This helps thwart buffer overflow exploits from viruses/trojans. 32-bit versions still have DEP, but it's implemented by software, which is less secure and potentially slower. Windows 64-bit systems also implement Kernel Patch Protection (aka Microsoft Patch Guard) that "helps prevent a malicious program from updating the Windows Vista [and Windows 7] kernel[s]" according to the article cited in the resources below. This prevents malicious drivers from replacing those found in the kernel. Finally, Windows Vista and 7 64-bit versions require that only digitally signed drivers be installed.
Faster Apps: 64-bit applications can be written to have faster function calls. Without going into great detail, 64-bit processors have double the number of registers, which can be used to pass arguments to functions (as opposed to a stack in memory). Additionally, those registers are 64-bits wide rather than 32 effectively quadrupling the theoretic amount of data that can be passed that way. It is also true that programs with intensive computations can run faster due to having 64-bit-wide registers for arithmetic (if they are recompiled and optimized to take advantage of it). For us gamers, however, this is not a real win since most existing games are still 32-bit apps. It will pertain to games in time, however. It should be stated: applications can be, not will be, faster. It does take some work on the part of the developer. One thing that is more effortless to capitalize on is the overall gain in I/O efficiency and throughput of having 64-bit data paths. This should speed up data transfer to devices such as graphics cards on the PCI express bus.
No Longer the Red-Headed Stepchild: Windows XP 64-bit never really got a foothold outside of the server room, and there, Windows Server was the common OS. Mostly, it was a matter of timing. When Windows XP was released, most home and enthusiast computers came with a maximum of 2GB of RAM. When 4GB became common, Windows XP should have been replaced by Vista on most systems - especially the new 64-bit processor ones. Vista 64-bit finally did start coming delivered on systems with 4GB of RAM in the last year or two. This meant that hardware manufacturers had to support 64-bit versions of their drivers or not play in the high-end space. Vista 64-bit is supported by most manufacturers of new peripherals. Most vendors have made a reasonable effort to go back and provide support for their late-model devices as well. The exception seems to be printer and scanner manufactures. (Yes, I mean you HP and Epson. I guess those ink jet printers were pretty cheap to begin with, so they'll be pretty cheap to replace.)
Future Proofing: Having 4GB or more of RAM really isn't necessary .. today. On the other hand, 2GB of RAM is becoming increasingly tight. Even World of Warcraft doesn't get to run all by itself any more. There's Ventrilo (or Teamspeak), a web browser pointed at the guild's DKP chart and maybe the WoW armory and maybe the WoWhead database and .... Oh, and don't forget to run FRAPS if tonight's the night for that first boss kill in that new instance. Even just doing office-related items can be demanding on memory. A busy day can find Outlook, Word, Internet Explorer (with 11 tabs on three windows), a PowerPoint presentation and a few Excel spreadsheets open at the same time. Installing the 64-bit version of the OS today can obviate the need to reformat and reinstall when that 4GB or 8GB of RAM becomes a requirement.
Increased Program Size: Programs written for (all) 64-bit OSes are larger on disk and in memory than their 32-bit counterparts. With Windows Vista, that increase can be from 20% - 40% according to testing performed by Tom's Hardware. This makes sense because any location in the program that compiles into a reference for a memory location will now need to be 8 bytes rather than 4 bytes long. The article went on to point out that if you have just 4GB of RAM on a 32-bit OS and currently see on the order of 3.5 GB of RAM, the increase in available memory you would gain (.5GB) from "unmasking" when going the a 64-bit OS will likely be wiped out by the increased size of the programs. (Remember that the OS itself is a set of programs or at least large portions of it act as programs.) This is likely true, however on gaming systems with 4GB of RAM and two 1GB video cards in SLI will likely benefit from going from 32 to 64-bits as the system would have had only about 2.5GB of the 4GB available. Even those with a single graphics card with 1GB of RAM would likely do better than break even.
Support: Although the situation is much better for the 64-bit versions Vista and Windows 7 than it was for Windows XP, 64-bit drivers are not available for all peripherals (esp. older printers and scanners). No 32-bit drivers can be used with Vista 64-bit or Windows 7 64-bit. Old 16-bit applications (circa Windows 3.1) aren't supported at all. Honestly, if you're still holding onto 16-bit Windows apps, it's served you well. You need to find something new.
Compatibility and Slower Apps: Wait. Didn't we just say that apps run faster under a 64-bit OS? Actually, 64-bit apps run faster. 32-bit apps - which includes most games out there - may run slower since they run in Windows on Windows 64 (WOW64) emulation. This emulates a 32-bit machine within the 64-bit environment. Some 32-bit apps may not run at all - even in XP compatibility mode. If those apps are not supported and a new version released, they user may be force to stay with the 32-bit OS (or dual boot the 32 and 64-bit versions). Even a couple years after Vista's release, there are some hardware incompatibilities, but that seems to be fairly rare. Most of those pieces of hardware have just disappeared given it's been a couple year since Vista was introduced.
Microsoft has some articles on this topic such as A description of the differences between 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista, which is still relevant for Windows 7. A (MS Word) white paper titled Benefits of Microsoft Windows x64 Editions also goes into some of the pluses (and minuses). There's also a Microsoft article on 32-bit Vista and how much of 4GB of RAM you can expect to see (and why).
Posted September 5, 2009
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In my ongoing saga of working with Windows 7, I have run into one issue, and that is the sound that comes out of my Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series audio card. Given that the card is a few years old, I guess I should be happy that Creative is supporting it at all, but this kit was expensive, and I still think its sound quality is better than I get with onboard sound. I should first mention that the issues don't happen every time, but if they do, it's after I bring Windows 7 out of sleep mode. (I've really come to love sleep mode - other than this problem. From off to ready-to-go in about 15 seconds.) So here goes.
The sound of silence: Occasionally when I bring my system out of sleep mode, I get absolutely no sound at all. Nothing. Nada. I have found a quick workaround is to open the Creative SB X-Fi Control (from the task bar icon), switch the speakers from 4.1 to 2.1 and then switch them back. This usually works, and I have my normal sound back. All in all, this is just slightly annoying. However, ....
No sound is better than this sound: Very, very occasionally .. thankfully, the result of coming out of sleep mode are sounds that are really loud and obnoxious. The correct sound will start to play, but devolve into the loudest screeching, gear gnashing, warning-buzzer buzzing sound you could ever imagine. Imagine, if you can, the sound of an old fashioned record player with the needle repeatedly being scraped across the record with the volume - on a 1 to 10 scale - set to 11. Combine that with .. well, do you remember the old brrrrt sound they used to play on the radio during those Emergency Broadcast System tests? Imagine that loud enough that your neighbors a block away think the nukes are on their way. Prior to this happening, I had no idea that my speakers could play (and survive) anything as loud as this. To say it scared the bejesus out of me doesn't begin to cover it. The only way to make this quit was to turn the computer off as not even rebooting seemed to fix this.
I'm currently using the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series driver 2.18.0013 with a release date of 26 June 2009. It is not marked as "beta." That seems to be the latest. A note to anyone else installing this driver over an older one. You will need to reinstall the Creative Console Launcher (latest is version 2.61.09 from 20 Mar 2009) in order to get the Creative Volume Panel to run and appear in the system tray again. I'm hoping that Creative comes out with a new driver before the October 22nd official release of Windows 7. The Creative Software Auto Update tool does not seem to work for Windows 7 (or at least it doesn't for me). If I try the browser-based version, I get that my OS is not supported. (It doesn't work under Firefox for any OS either.) If I run the one installed on my system along with the driver/control software, I get "Creative Software AutoUpdate was unable to detect any Creative products attached to your computer." (I did run it as administrator, too.) Hopefully, this gets fixed in the future.
Picture credits: Windows 7 logo is a owned and copyrighted by Microsoft. The Creative X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series picture is owned and copyrighted by Creative Labs, Inc. The screaming cat picture was posted on Flickr (and I assume owned and copyrighted by) by David Gambaro. The wood chipper picture is owned and copyrighted by US Praxis Corp.
Posted August 29, 2009; Updated September 5, 2009
I keep hearing people tout that one of the reasons to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 is that it is faster than Vista. Given how much of core of Win 7 is shared or very similar to Vista, I really couldn't see how. It does seem to boot faster in that it offers a login prompt faster than Vista. It also seems to take less memory right after boot. However, I think at least some of that comes down to Win 7 just postponing how soon some items are started up. After about ten minutes of logging in, Win 7 seems to be taking close to if not just about the same as my Vista install did. It does seem to be somewhat smaller, but not so much that I would call it extraordinary. It may be that Win 7 takes an inventory of the system upon which it was running and starts up more than it would say if I only had 1.5 GB of RAM and integrated graphics. Vista may well have done the same, but just not as well. On a fairly high-end system with 4GB of RAM, that sort of thing isn't necessary, and I'm not seeing a difference.
I did run the Futuremark 3DMark Vantage Performance benchmark scores before and after upgrading. There is a slight increase in the Windows 7 score, but it's also using a newer Nvidia driver (version 8.16.11.9062 for Win 7 and 8.15.11.9038 for Vista). The difference is less than 200 3DMarks, so really, it's negligible and quite probably is due to the new driver. In the charts below, the Windows 7 score is on top and the Vista score is directly below.
Update: September 5, 2009 While looking for something completely different, I ran across this article at Guru of 3D, which ran a much more exhaustive test between Windows 7 and Vista for gaming. Their conclusion was that the two are nearly the same, but in the 3DMark Vantage scores, Windows 7 did consistently score a little better than Vista. In actual game benchmarks, there wasn't a clear difference, but Win 7 did often seem to score a couple percent higher. Maybe there is something to the notion that Windows 7 is faster after all. If so, it's not much - a few percent at best - but I'll take it.
Posted August 26, 2009
This is not YAW7R (Yet Another Windows 7 Review.) There's going to be a thousand of those. I just wanted to spew out my first impressions on the final product. I'm a subscriber to the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS) program along with thousands of other software developers. As such, we got access to the Released To Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 Ultimate on the 23rd. I assume they started it on a Sunday in hopes of spreading out the demand. Didn't work. I wasn't able to even get the main page for the download section to come up all day. I was able to get it on Monday the 24th .. somewhat slowly. I managed to hold off until Tuesday to install it.
I did what I always tell people not to do .. I did an upgrade installation rather than a clean install. The reason being is that every time I've tried an upgrade install (since the upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 anyway), the result was always a quirky little system that never quite worked right. In this case, I knew that the underlying differences between Vista and Windows 7 aren't that great (as compared to those between Windows XP and Vista). I figured I had nothing to loose (but time as it turned out), and I could always go back and do a clean install. The upgrade took about three hours to run. After that, I had to install the Windows 7 drivers and software for my Creative Labs X-Fi audio card. The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor[sic] had already clued me into that and sure enough after the upgrade, I had no sound.
I have to say, I'm not seeing any of the expected quirkiness at all. In fact, the upgrade did a fairly good job of preserving my settings. I assume that the upgrade internally uses the Windows Easy Transfer utility that's available for those doing a clean install who want to preserve their settings. (There's a nice article at Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows that talks about the utility.) So far, I've noticed only that it didn't manage to keep the items from my Quick Launch bar. All my previously-installed software has run just as before.
I'm still trying it out really. I had previously used the beta and release candidate running on Sun's VirtualBox, but I didn't take those very far. I didn't commit. Now, I have. I've tried it out in the "normal" stuff: Word, Outlook, Firefox (3.5.2), Internet Explorer 8, Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. I didn't even loose a save file, bookmark or email. (I did a backup of my data before I started the upgrade just in case.) I have no complaints, so far. In fact, they brought back control-clicking a folder in the Windows Explorer opening a new window in that folder. I missed that. Still no up arrow to take you up one level though. I should mention, that I had no complaints with Windows Vista 64-bit either. I've been using it for over a year. It has always been rock steady for me. I'm sure there was a time it really sucked, and it earned it's reputation. I think I skipped by that. With Windows XP, a BSOD was rare enough. With Vista, it was so rare that when I did get one, I sat back in momentary disbelief. I think I got maybe three or four BSODs I got the entire time I used it
Posted August 22, 2009
While doing some research today on the Nvidia GTX 295 series graphics cards for one of the bang for the buck systems, I came across the following ad as part of the page at Nvidia.com. The ad read, "How fast would your PC be with a GeForce GTX 295?" Having just upgraded to an (albeit overclocked) MSI TwinFrozr Nvidia GTX 275, I thought that was an interesting question. The GTX 295 is essentially a pair of GTX 275-like graphics cards mated together into a single package using one PCI-Express slot external while also having an SLI connection under the hood.
I know that two cards in SLI mode don't yield 200% of a performance increase over a single, similar card, but I really would expect a GTX 295 to take a sound lead in 3DMark compared to my GTX 275 - overclocked or not. Curious as to how bad it would be, I pressed the scan button, let it install the Java applet and run the scanner and waited for the results.
Now, I'm not sure about this, but I expect that showing that I could "upgrade" from my $210 (with rebate) GTX 275 card to a $470 (with rebate) GTX 295 and only lose 1,600 on my 3DMark score is probably not what Nvidia was striving for. I assume that scanner is seriously broken. In fact, since the 16,600 score is about what I got in a 3DMark run, I believe the 15,000 score for the GTX 295 is really just way too low. Made me laugh though. Also, probably not what Nvidia was hoping for.
