7 posts tagged “microsoft”
This humorous spoof video played during what has been reported as Bill Gates actual last keynote speech as Chief Software Architect at Microsoft. It's rumored he'll retire for the company he co-founded at the end of this year.
With all the excitement of building a new workstation from the ground up comes a lot of
anxiety of weather or not various components will continue to operate and if drivers for will be accessible. The decision last year to move my primary system to Vista faced problems from both software and hardware that found itself made obsolete by manufacturers that wanted end users to addie up more cash for their newer products. Vista compatibility is no longer a issue as I've made adjustments but with a new workstation in the wing I've made a even more draughting decision to install the 64 bit version of Windows Vista.
64 bit operating systems has been been an enigma reserved for hyper high-end scientific workstations and users who need high memory allocations to crunch large amounts of data, something the typical computer user wouldn't benefit from. As shown by the vast lack of applications that take advantage of 64 bit programing architecture. However, for the video designer the choice is more simple, even though we're likely several years away from Adobe & Co. releasing 64 bit version of their creative suite applications the digital creator can still benefit from the availability of additional memory resources that a 64 bit workstation can provide with the understanding that the typical 32 bit OS can only utilize 3.75GB of RAM regardless of how much you install in your workstation.
Let's look a Adobe Photoshop for example, still a 32 bit application meaning it's memory allocation maxes out at 3GB. However, if you design a workstation with 8GB of RAM running on a 64 bit operating system the computer can then allocate to Photoshop the maximal amount of RAM the program is built to handle (3GB) and still have 5GBs of RAM available for other processes and applications. The computer will never have to write and read a page file so the system remains responsive. The same goes with all other memory intensive programs for 3D rendering, video, and sound editing. The more RAM you have available on a 64 bit system the happier the 32 bit applications are when multitasking.
Perhaps I was too quick to blame Vista for all the problems I was having with various software applications. While it's truly a major inconvenience to have to replace a large number of hardware components that worked perfectly fine under XP and Vista's RAM resource usage is undeniable more hungry than it's aging sibling I can't totally write off Redmond's new operating system. It appears device drivers still are a problem plaguing Vista. It's a reoccurring problem for every major OS released as manufacturers must rewrite their drivers for their hardware to continue to communicate with the new code.
It's been six years since we've seen a new operating system on the PC and in that time scores of thousands of devices have been released and it's imposable for manufacturers to continue to support products for over half a decade about, regardless of how well they continue to work... which is why so many people are having problems converting their older XP units to Vista.
I was able to track down the device driver that was giving me so much grief running my production software. Turned out to be another Microsoft product oddly enough. The Intellimouse 6,1 drivers which were crafted for Vista and XP have a severe bugs which cause instability with Adobe products which lead me to give up on Vista last time. With the drivers removed I'm able to run Creative Suite 3 with minimal problems (Vista still drinks RAM like water) but it's stable which is most important. While the mouse becomes somewhat handicapped by not having proper drivers installed. Plans are in the works for new Frankenstein workstation PC for the home studio that'll tame Vista once and for all, or at least for the next couple of years but I'll share those plans in a later post.
A group of Scottish programs have quite a gem on their hands with the highly sought after Picsel Browser for mobile devices. With the ability to render full web pages as they were originally designed to be viewed, and while that's not exactly a new trick among mobile browsers Picsel is the first to do it with style and grace as it allows users to smoothly navigate pages with a flowing UI as users pan and zoom across pages. Simple put, Picsel currently stands as the best mobile option for surfing on the go.
As an added bonus the software is also able to view a plethora of document file types besides your run of the mill images. Picsel lends it's same gracefully scrolling and zooming capability to viewing Word, Excel, and even Acrobat PDFs, and even PowerPoint presentations.
Hopefully both Opera and Microsoft are taking notes and twinkling their upcoming Opera Mobile 9 & Deepfish Client release to better compete.
As a side note, the Picsel Browser is currently not available for sale or download for end users. The company decided to instead profit from licensing the browser direct to device manufacturers,
meaning if you don't have it installed on your device when you purchase it you're not (legally) able to obtain it.
Hell no, to put it bluntly. Over the last two weeks I've embarked on a journey into the dark murky waters of Microsoft Vista and after numerous hassles and the replace of several hardware components unsupported but the OS i.e. the Netgear network adapter and a Creative Labs Soundblaster Live sound card. I've learned that NO ONE that requires reliability and performance from their equipment should be running Windows Vista for any mission critical task. After installing a trial version of Adobe Creative Suite 3 and noticing the delay in screen redraw from simply attempting to access menus I knew we had a serious problem. However the last straw was when Photoshop CS3 Extended crashed from the drawing of a single paint stoke. NO LIE I immediately formated the drive and restored Windows XP into service. After running Vista for a while and going back to XP the system has never felt speeder.
Perhaps after Vista service pack 1 is released and a system upgrade on my end I'll reconsider Vista for post-production but for now I agree with the mainstream coverage. Vista simply has too much bloat to carry out the heavy demands of power users. Sorry Microsoft maybe next year.
Right now I doubt any company has considered using Microsoft's newest operating system Windows Vista for any mission critical applications as of now, but one has to keep in my technological advancements as time marches on so I feel now is the time for getting the feet wet running my own production suite in the new operating environment. After debating for weeks now whether or not to return to Windows XP to complete the upcoming changes for warrenfx.com and my show reel.
