Maudlin ruminations of a mind bit by wanderlust.

I've beem playing around with my new rig this week (which you can find in spirit here). It's one hell of a machine if I say so myself, as you would know if you were able to decode those specifications.

Like all good computer users, the first thing I did after putting it together was to install Windows, in this case, Vista. Don't get me wrong, as far as I can see, Vista is great. Although it's not a step up for me from linux on the productivity scale (Something I plan to rectify presently), it's definitely a step up graphically from ratpoison.

But my main problem with windows, is drivers. It's probably not windows' fault, but I'll be unforgiving. The computer goes blank every 3 minutes or so, which becomes for frequent if you play a video. The reason for this is the nVidia Driver, or so I'm told. The fact that nobody with an 8 series graphics card from nVidia can run Vista properly, despite the fact that they were Vista Ready (TM), has even prompted a law suit. Until then, we've just got to keep downloading the drivers. Blech.

Another little something I found, was that IE7 is actually quite fast. I made this observation as I can't user Opera (ntlmaps isn't working on windows), and I was pleasantly surprised that IE7 beats Firefox hands down, almost all the time. I know it's because its libs are already loaded, but still...

And then there's Vista Media Center. This is awesome, even though it doesn't work for me for more than a few minutes at a time (see bug above). It's the perfect way to run kiosk mode at a party. It looks awesome, and presents a fairly easy way to get to all your media, be it video, music or pictures. However it only plays non-windows media (read : divx) if you've installed ffdshow, which, as you would suppose, is a pain.

The visual effects are quite good. They execute seamlessly, although that's probably just my roaring hardware talking.

My Vista Experience Index Rating is 5.3, putting me in the Highest range for all hardware :



This is only a minor comfort, as if the drivers don't work, it's as good as a coaster.

In the meanwhile, I'm off to do the second thing that all good computer users do -- Use IE to download linux ISOs, and install them. I'll be back for the games though, which currently don't work, becuase of the driver problem.

During this post, my graphics driver crashed 27 times.