Tagged: microsoft RSS

  • Dave 1:40 pm on May 25, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: microsoft, ,   

    Back to Windows 

    For the last month I’ve been using OpenSuse Linux as my main operating system on my home computer. I have now switched back to using Windows Vista Home Premium (64bit).

    During the month I tried to just use Linux and not switch back to Windows for anything. In theory, anything I needed Windows for, I should make the effort and search out a useable alternative in Linux. This was usually possible, even if I wasn’t entirely happy with what I could find.

    General desktop and office type tasks were fine. Browsing the Internet was perfectly pleasant except for the fact that I used the 64 bit version of OpenSuse and there isn’t an official version of the Flash player for 64 bit versions of Linux. It was possible to get it working using a bit of jiggery pokery but this wasn’t quite right. There were still places that used Flash that just didn’t work properly. It didn’t seem that stable either and Flash playback would stutter if you tried to do anything else at the same time.

    My biggest problems though were trying to process photographs. I tried a number of free programs, the best of which was called DigiKam, but after using Lightroom, it felt like very basic. Comparing Digikam against a commercial product isn’t really fair though. I had a look at some of the commercial offerings for Linux and found Bibble Pro and Lightzone. Lightzone seemed very basic as well. Bibble Pro seemed to be quite good, but it didn’t have any support for my Ricoh GX100’s RAW format (which is DNG format, but standards aren’t really standards I guess).

    The end result of trying to use all of this software for processing photographs was that it slowed me right down and I just couldn’t process my photos nicely, easily or quickly.

    Using Linux full time seems a lot more plausible this time than any time before when I’ve tried it, but there are still problems. Not having a standard installation mechanism seems to be a huge problem that needs to be sorted out. Some of the installation instructions I followed seemed downright bizarre. Some software installed and didn’t let you know it had completed correctly, or even give you a choice or tell you where it had installed to. On a couple of occasions I found myself browsing the file system looking for clues to where something had gone. There were plenty of other foibles, but one of the most irritating occurred after I plugged in a USB hard disk. An icon appeared on the desktop and it just worked – so that was nice. When I had done with it, I right clicked on the icon and told it to unmount, then switched the drive off. The next time I booted up the computer, I found myself at a command prompt with some disk and partition mounting errors listed. No GUI to play with. From that point on I discovered that I had to switch on my USB drive, then boot up so that the error wouldn’t prevent booting up. I could turn the drive off afterwards without later problems. Trying to geotag photos with data from my Gisteq Phototrackr probably wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t easy. I had to download some Perl scripts to get the data and then trying to get something to edit the metadata. It’s all such a painful process that just worked when I used Windows – it definitely wasn’t worth all of the extra effort.

    There were things I did like though. Even though I use two monitors, I started using virtual desktops to switch between. I had never considered using virtual desktops, because I thought two actual monitors would be enough. In practice though, I could fill the two monitors with windows relating to the task at hand – processing photos for example, and quickly switch to another virtual desktop where all of my music playing and info was. This is only really worthwhile if it’s fast and easy (instant and easy really) – which it was thanks to a few keyboard shortcuts to flip around.

    The other thing I found useful also wasn’t Linux specific. It was a feature in the Opera browser called Speed Dial. Thankfully there’s a plugin for Firefox that does the same thing. Basically you get a grid of thumbnails showing your most used sites (you set them up manually) when you open your browser or a new tab (lots of options). I find using this faster than my old approach of having several tabs open right at the start when I open my browser.

    Maybe I’ll try Linux again one day, but there would have to be a good reason for it and I’d have to be sure that I stood a fighting chance of being able to process photos at least as easily as I can already with Windows and Lightroom.

     

    • Joe Lencioni 7:32 pm on May 25, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      There’s http://www.codeplex.com/vdm“ rel=”nofollow”>a vista application for virtual desktops that I’ve been using for a while. It’s been pretty nice. It’s pretty fast and is definitely easy (Windows Key + Desktop Number to switch, for example). Give it a try, maybe you’ll like it.

    • Rick Harrison 1:59 pm on June 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Did you look into the Wine stuff for linux? the other year Google invested quite a bit into it under the Google Summer Of Code specifically into getting photoshop to run nicely under it (im guessing they want to ditch windows completely), aparently CS2 ran very well under it, im guesing cs3 might do too. bit fiddly – you need to export your registry settings having first installed it on windows, but im quite keen on giving it a try with ubuntu.

    • publicenergy 7:20 pm on June 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      I did try Wine to get some apps running which were maked ‘Platinum’ in the compatibility list but it wasn’t really that good.

      For the time being my life is easier with Windows.

  • Dave 3:05 pm on February 20, 2008 Permalink
    Tags: , microsoft,   

    Microsoft Yahoo Flickr 

    The video below has been around for nearly a year. It has some very impressive technology on show for browsing and viewing images. All of it acquired my Microsoft.

    Currently there are people worrying on Flickr that if Microsoft buy Yahoo, Flickr will be doomed. That doesn’t seem at all likely. Flickr is already owned by one large corporation, changing ownership to another will probably make no difference to the average Flickr user at all.

    What excites me about the possible marriage is that Microsoft have the resources to move things forward. Yeah, it’s nice when small companies do well and manage to keep their independence and if possible I’d use an underdog rather than a big corporate beast. But, being small in the photo sharing world gives you things like Zooomr which has looked like a building site for the last year, or Smugmug that makes you feel like the Omega Man when you wander around in there, not meeting anyone else. For all it’s faults, Flickr is vibrant, there is lots of interaction and it actually works very well.

    I think a lot of the Flickr users who are objecting to Microsoft ownership, just hate Microsoft and probably can’t even remember the reason why they’re supposed to do it. It’s fashionable to hate the big guys. It’s funny that a lot of the so called little guys are really quite big themselves and have no moral highground to look across at Microsoft from (*cough* Apple *cough*).

    So, I hope it happens.

    PS. If Flickr looks like hotmail does in a few years time, I reserve the right to delete this post and pretend I never posted it ;)

     

    • Nick P 4:54 pm on February 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      I’d agree with the comments you raise. I was aware of the Group set up against a potential take-over of Flickr by Microsoft through an acquisition of Yahoo! but its difficult to see from the comments and images posted what real issue those people have with that scenario apart from the fact its Microsoft.

      Flickr has stagnated for a while now. There have been a few small additions and developments but pretty much since the Yahoo! take-over there’s been no real features added. There’s been a continual rumour, often confirmed by Yahoo! that it plans to add video upload to Flickr, but thankfully that’s not come to light (yet).

      I would hope that if Flickr did come under the control of Microsoft that some of the technology shown in the video above gets integrated. I’d far rather see Photosynth features in Flickr than the ability to upload videos. There’s already enough YouTube clones out there.

    • publicenergy 6:51 pm on February 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Well, regarding Flickr adding video, I don’t really mind that. Currently there are millions of photos uploaded every day and I see a very small proportion of them. People seem to arrange themselves in to sub-communities and make more of an effort keeping track of the efforts of those people rather than just random Flickr users in general.

      I think if video was added, you’d know which of your contacts will use it sensibly, and in the same way that I ignore hundreds of thousands of photographs every day, I can ignore a lot of the video too. Sometimes though, a contact or a friend could use it to upload something worth sharing.

      Having said that, I’ve lived without it up to now so I’m in no rush for the feature, but I could see it being useful if you want to keep all of your stuff in one place. If the feature is added, I’d like to see viewing preferences, options for separating feeds and either have video restricted to pro users or a new higher-priced user category in order to put off casual use like YouTube.

      SmugMug supports video on their more expensive account types, and I’ve not seen many SmugMug happy slapping videos doing the rounds!

    • Nils Geylen 7:54 pm on February 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Last weekend, in the pub, a friend of mine had one of his friends over who… turned out to work for MS. Right in the lion’s den, wretched Richmond, at that! When I told one of my colleagues on Monday, they were half-expecting me to say I’d at least beaten up the guy or something — being known as somewhat of an Apple fan. Nothing of the kind happened. I even liked the guy.

      This has little to do with Flickr perhaps, but I guess what I want to say is I understand what you’re aiming at. I don’t “hate” MS. I prefer working on another OS and with other software, that’s all. And I suppose Flickr will stay okay. If not, feel free to delete my comment too of course ;)

  • Dave 10:34 am on January 28, 2007 Permalink
    Tags: microsoft, ,   

    Windows Vista 

    Vista Desktop

    I recently upgraded to Windows Vista Home Premium Edition (64bit). I actually started clean and have my machine able to boot in to my existing Windows XP setup or this new clear Vista environment. So I’m slowly putting back all of the clutter I use all of the time.

    After getting the Zune and loving it so much, another post that is going to read pro-Microsoft might be an unwelcome addition but I am really impressed with it so far. There will be plenty of in depth analysis to read all over the web along with plenty of people sticking the boot in, so this is just going to be a list of things I’ve found that have impressed me.

    For the record, I’ve not been back in to XP since installing it and have no plans to now.

    Pros:-

    • It’s fast and it feels quicker while you’re navigating around. The new fancy graphics take advantage of your hardware and actually seem to speed things up rather than slow things down. Downgrading them to the basic look will probably speed things up, but it’s fast as it is so I’ll stick with the pretty version.

    • The start menu is great if you’re a keyboard junkie like me. Being able to press a key to make it appear and start typing what you’re looking for is great. Not only does it list matching programs, it lists matching files. Very impressive (you can still use the mouse of course!).

    • A lot of work seems to have gone in to the power saving modes – my machine will now wake near instantly and everything works straight away – XP was a bit clunky here and some devices didn’t always play nice.

    • Real Player refused to install on a 64 bit operating system – it gave that as the reason. That’s listed in the Pros section? Too right – I hate that nasty piece of bloated crap. I discovered Real Alternative that works beautifully and I’m so happy to be free of the Real Player (iTunes seems to be heading in the bloated crapware direction as well which isn’t good).

    • The installation was fast and painless – the best Windows installation I’ve ever been through

    Cons:-

    • It would have been the Real Player thing as much as I hate it I need it. Real Alternative has sorted me out though.

    • There are a few drivers that haven’t been released yet – mainly the 64 bit versions which are the ones I need. The only thing that is affecting me personally is not having a driver for my Canon scanner. Vista isn’t officially released until Tuesday though so I think I’m just paying the early adopter price there. I hardly ever use it anyway so it’s not killing me. Also, I was warned about it when I ran the Vista Upgrade Advisor so I knew it would be an issue even before I decided to upgrade.

    That’s it really. I love it, it’s lean and mean (well, as lean as it gets for Windows), but it feel fast and nice to use and I’m happy with it. For the record, I bought the OEM version from Overclockers UK at a significant saving over the retail price.

    See also: Paul Stamatiou’s Vista Challenge which was one of things things that prompted me to write this post [Caution: May contain Apples ;)]

     

    • greywulf 1:16 am on January 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      S’good. I’m reserving judgement until I’ve taken a long, hard look at Vista with my own eyes, and that won’t be until later in the year when the rest of the world have had a chance to iron it out first :)

      I stand in awe at it’s hardware requirements, but they’re well within reach by a sub-£1,000 desktop system, so the numbers aren’t quite as frightening as they could be. I’ll be interested to see if Vista’s much-criticised licensing and DRM restrictions have much of an implication in the real world. I doubt it, really.

      I guess Vista is going to be the best release of Windows to date (just as XP was in it’s day), and evolution and improvements are always a good thing. Hopefully it’ll bring more stability and security to a platform that desperately needs both.

      I’ll still stick to Linux though :)

    • Lee 1:47 am on February 26, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      There is now 64 bit vista drivers on the canon site as i got them for my 3200f

    • Nafcom 12:27 am on March 7, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Yesm I agree, Vista X64 is great! However the driver issues is what sucks

      My experience: When I am installing Nvidia’s nforce4 driver, I get a slow system if I use Opera. (100% CPU load). If I use the one before the latest ATI Catalyst & driver package, the ATI Tray icons often won’t show up and the Communications_Helper.exe causes 100% CPU load if when any application is playing sound. With the latest Catalyst, this only happens when using the microphone.

      Bluetooth is also an issue: The Windows Vista stack is the same/similar to the one in Windows XP SP2, and does not currently support “expensive” stuff like bluetooth headsets. But BlueSoil is working on Vista version and Widcomm released a Vista update.

      Also realtek drivers have issues when playing MIDI (100% CPU load).

      Do you have any driver issues with 100% CPU load like me? Would be interesting to know.

    • publicenergy 7:32 am on March 7, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      No, I’ve not had any problems like that. My only remaining driver problem is the lack of a driver for a USB to serial port adaptor. Some vendors seem a bit slow sorting them out – especially the 64 bit versions.

    • Nafcom 9:44 pm on March 8, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      publicenergy: Sadly, some will never release and Vista and/or X64 versions., But I am glad you got no problems like me. Good luck on getting the driver(s) you are looking for! :)

    • Titus Barik 5:03 pm on March 24, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for the post. It appears that the link to “Real Alternative” is broken, though I was able to get it off of Google.

    • publicenergy 5:49 pm on March 24, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      @Titus – thanks for pointing that out, I’ve fixed the link now – there were some rogue characters on the end of it :(

  • Dave 11:03 am on January 23, 2007 Permalink
    Tags: microsoft, , zune   

    Zune Loving Sicko 

    . Perpetuum Mobile

    You don’t have to travel far down the Internet to find countless Microsoft bashing happening on various web sites and blogs. Most of it ignores the actual facts and is just people perpetuating their fixed opinion. Some of it is factual, accurate and fair, but most of it isn’t. Apple on the other hand seems to have the underdog appeal with, on the whole, the reverse happening and people loving everything they do. There are exceptions of course, this is generalising the overall picture. Typically the reviews on the Amazon product page have just become a battle ground of people saying Ipods are better than Zunes or vice versa. Most of them read like kids arguing in the school yard about who’s console it’s best though.

    I’ve used a 3rd generation 40GB Ipod since 2003 and I have really liked it. It’s quick and easy to use and of a reasonable size and it sounds quite nice once you’ve put the supplied earphones in the bin and bought some proper ones. The battery has degraded in that time – not that much really, but the battery meter doesn’t seem as accurate now as it did when it was new.

    So, 2007 is here and I’m looking for a portable device that will play video as well as audio. There are several available and I wasn’t just going to pick the current video Ipod without doing some research first, although I suspected my research would point to that choice anyway, I had to convince myself.

    I had a play with a current Ipod in a store and it was very nice – it was smaller and sleeker than my old one and felt very nice. If Apple do anything right, it’s make things look nice. It seemed like this was still an audio Ipod but now it could play video as a tacked on feature, rather than, lets design a player to do video and audio well. I’m sure it would have done the job though. 

    So, I started reading a number of reviews on the Internet of the Microsoft Zune and discovered lots of negative reviews, but when I read what they were complaining about, they were all things that wouldn’t affect me in the slightest. The features that mattered to me were the ones getting lots of praise. A lot of the criticism was about different stores using different DRM so that songs bought in various online shops wouldn’t play in the device. I really didn’t care about that – I have no intention of ever buying music that is crippled from the iTunes Music Store, the Zune Market Place or anywhere else for that matter. I use MP3 files because they’re flexible and I can listen to them anywhere – primarily using my Squeezebox.

    The next criticism was that the wi-fi was crippled so that you could only send particular DRM protected files to other Zune users with time restrictions on them. I really had no interest in using that feature anyway. If I was still at school it might be fun for a day or two, but really, all I want to do is listen to music and watch video.

    The final criticism was that it doesn’t look as nice as an Ipod. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when it comes down to it, what I needed to compare was how nice it was to use, listen to music and watch video. The practical aspect of using it was the most important thing. It definitely doesn’t look hideous anyway. Zune’s screen looked like a killer feature. That seemed like a more pleasant way of watching a film than the Ipod screen.

    So, I bought a Zune. Have I made the right choice? Time will tell. I’ve already made a journey and used it to listen to music and even watch some video (Family Guy) and the screen seems as good as watching TV, very fluid and clear and easy on the eye.

    The software that manages the Zune on the computer isn’t as feature rich as Itunes yet, but it’s also not as slow and bloated as Itunes either which was a massive relief. I do like how the Itunes software works, but boy does that thing need to go on a diet. The Zune software is very fast but it is lacking at the moment. The main thing that is missing is a dedicated Podcast handler. That was easy to get around though. I started using Juice to download Podcasts in to a folder that Zune monitors. The funny thing is that when Juice downloads podcasts it does it without complaint and without eating a lot of resources – I’ve noticed when Itunes is downloading podcasts it really eats the power for no apparent reason – and the downloads don’t seem that fast either – it’s a good job they’re on timers. Zune desktop software doesn’t have smart playlists and it doesn’t talk to Last.fm, but it’s barely past version 1 at the moment.

    Overall it’s a lovely device that is pleasant to use. If you don’t use DRM crippled music files then you’re laughing. If you do then the Zune is the least of your problems! ;)

     

     

    • Alday 12:51 am on January 24, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      I love my Zune, you made a good choice. I watched last night’s episode of 24 on mine today at work :)

    • publicenergy .:. Windows Vista 10:39 am on January 28, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      [...] After getting the Zune and loving it so much, another post that is going to read pro-Microsoft might be an unwelcome addition but I am really impressed with it so far. There will be plenty of in depth analysis to read all over the web along with plenty of people sticking the boot in, so this is just going to be a list of things I’ve found that have impressed me. [...]

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
esc
cancel