Posts Tagged “Windows”
Today I installed dd-wrt on my new Linksys E2000 router because of some connectivity issues I was having. Dd-wrt works great and fixed the problem I was having, but an old problem I was having with Windows Vista surfaced again. My parents desktop connects via a wireless adapter and after I updated my router the their desktop would hang on “Identifying Network…”
After eliminating the router as the problem by connecting with two other laptops and my Android phone I decided the problem was Windows Vista. DD-WRT allows you to create virtual wireless devices so I created a Vista only network with no encryption.
Tried to connect and Vista worked fine, identified the network in seconds and asked me to identify the computers location as normal. So I disconnected trued WEP, same thing. Disconnected again and tried WPA worked fine. Then I tried WPA2 and it hung up on “Identifying Network…”
So I dialed it back to just WPA which is decent security but not great, and for some reason that makes the Vista machine happy. I searched all over the net for this problem for ages and never saw this “solution,” if you can calling having to lower your security to accommodate a shitty OS a solution.
In short it seems Vista can not connect properly to WPA2 networks, and if you use WPA you should be ok. Amazing how bad this is, and it galls me to think I have to buy Windows 7 to fix this properly. I think I might just buy them a iMac and get it over with.
There has been a disturbing trend with online PC games recently, they have all been taking on the more console like multi-player model. This model involves matching players together, then on the fly picking one of the players to be the “host” of the game effectively turning them into an impromptu sever. Modern Warfare 2 was the first PC game I have seen to employ this so that is going to be my focus.
Modern Warfare 2 is a great game but their decision to use this model for multi-player gaming creates many problems vs the traditional server client model. I am going to go over some of them here.
Just a quick tip for Windows 7. I was very disappointed with the audio quality after installing Windows 7. I have a 5.1 speaker setup with the rear speakers disconnected and the sub was not being used. I checked all the connections just in case and no luck. The volume levels were very low and just sounded flat.
It seems that the Windows 7 driver defaults to stereo output only, and sounds terrible on 5.1 speakers. So goto the “Manage Audio Devices” control panel and right click on “Speakers” and set them up. This control panel allows you to define your speaker configuration, and disable any speakers you are not using. The sound is now great again.
As a follow up tip, right clicking on the Volume control in the system tray allows you to open up the mixer. The new mixer allows you to set separate volume levels for different apps. Very handy.
This just made my laugh a little. Even in the specs for the upcoming OS X: Snow Leopard release Apple takes a little jab at Windows.
“HFS+ read support in Boot Camp.
Boot Camp now includes HFS+ read support that enables you to access the files on your Mac OS X partition from Windows. It
After the complete disappointment I felt after buying Windows Vista a while back, and then again after installing SP1 I was a little skeptical about all the good first impressions I have been reading of Windows 7 Beta. So this weekend I decided to dust off an old 120GB hard drive and take the Windows 7 Beta for a spin.
After using Windows 7 for just a few hours I am starting to feel that Microsoft has finally started to do something right. I say “something” because I can not quite put my finger on what it is, it’s many little things that make up an intangible feeling of “rightness.”
After watching a short video about how Windows 7 is copying Apple I got a little mad. It seems that when ever Apple does something people think that they just came up with it all by themselves, and its never been done before.
Multitouch has been worked on for many years by several different companies. Microsoft has had the Microsoft Surface prototype in development for years, and showed mature demos in early 2007.
I am not saying that Microsoft is innocent, just that neither is Apple or Linux. The point is that software only improves by taking things that work and improving on them. If no one was allowed to copy anything we would never make any progress in any field.
Can you imagine if you could patent an equation in Mathmatics? Then no one could use your equation to solve more complex problems in the future. Where would we be today? Probably still working with basic algebra.
*End Rant*
When Vista first came out I jumped on-board and decided to give it a try. I bought the Ultimate edition just because it sounded the best, and installed it. After fighting the OS to make it do what it is meant to do out of the box, I decided to go back to XP. I put the problems down to early bugs.
Six month later Vista SP1 is released and I decided to really give vista a try a second time. The install went a bit easier because I remembered most of the tricks I had used before. This time however I was in for the long haul and was determined to make things work the best I could. This decision ended up causing me a lot of headaches.
I am going to go over some of the issues I encountered when getting this to work, some are small and others are show stoppers.
Even though I am trying to make the move from Windows to Linux I am still interested in the happenings at Apple. Even though I disagree with Apple’s philosophies on dealing with copy protection, and online music/tv/movie distribution, I still feel that they are pushing the envelope in user interface design with some of thier OS and some of thier applications. With that in mind when I saw that ITunes 7 had been release I went to download it right away.
Seeing as I no longer use the ITunes Store, due to aversion to DRM’d content, this review will be based more on my impressions of the actual applications design and performance.
