Geek Tested:

Windows News, Friday the 13th Edition

Posted 06/13/08 at 08:55:14 PM by Mark Soper

WoW! Pro Photo Tools Are Not Just for 32-bit Windows Anymore

32-bit Windows XP and Vista photo fans have been enjoying Pro Photo Tools' combination of metadata editing, mapping and GPS support since early May, but now, thanks to WoW64 (Windows on Windows 64, which enables 32-bit Windows apps to run on 64-bit Windows), 64-bit users can use it too, as reported by the MSDN Pro Photo Community Blog.

Hotmail Gets Faster, Adds More Features

If you're a Hotmail user, you're not just imagining greater speed. As reported by the Windows Live Mailcall blog, Hotmail's classic mode is now much faster and no longer reloads the entire page when the screen updates. If you have a paid version of Hotmail, you can now use its "Add an email account" feature to add many POP3 accounts, even if you don't know your POP email server settings.

CastleCops' Loss is Microsoft's Gain

I first encountered CastleCops, one of the most effective antiphishing websites, while writing my book, Maximum PC Microsoft Windows Vista Exposed. Wednesday, InfoWorld reported that CastleCops founder Paul Laudanski has become a Microsoftie, and will be working as part of Microsoft's Internet Safety Investigator for the Live Consumer Services team. Laudanski's new job started May 16th, but CastleCops is still on duty.

Still looking for a PC with Windows XP? The 'Last Chance' Is Coming

InfoWorld reports that HP, Acer, and Lenovo will be accepting orders for systems with Windows XP installed all the way through June 30, while Dell has announced its "last chance" date is this coming Wednesday, June 18th. Check with vendors to see what models offer Windows XP (hint: you'll probably need to order from the "Small Business" menu).

There's no need to panic, though, if you want an XP-based PC from a major vendor but don't want to order it until the second half of the year. What you'll need to do then is to use the "downgrade to XP" option when you order a system with Windows Vista. The details of the downgrade option vary by vendor, though, so make sure the model you want offers the option, and don't wait too long to make your order.

COMMENTS:10

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COMMENTS

Vista
Submitted by jbcava on Thu, 06/19/2008 - 12:09pm

I've been running vista since its release on beta. Initially it sucked and even the first retail release was buggy. Driver support sucked, it just wasn't well supported for a good 4 months. Now its great. I didn't hate vista initially, I just knew it was new to the industry and people were still making drivers for it. For those of you complaining that vista sucks, then you must have a crappy machine to run it on. Its no secret vista is a resource hog and is a bit bloated with useless crap. If you don't want all the useless features then get Vista Business edition in either of its platforms (32bit or 64 bit). If you have anything less than a 6800GT video card then don't bother even posting a reply! lol. With todays technology you should be running vista with plenty of resources to spare, especially if you are a gamer! If you don't upgrade often then stick with what works best for a older machine.. XP is your platform! I don't recommend vista with anything less than 4 gig of ram and a C2D CPU or AMD socket 939 class processor. I'm running todays latest and greatest which is a C2D E6850 with 4 gig corsair DDR2 800, EVGA 780I motherboard and EVGA 8800GTS (G92) video and have no problems what so ever. I have Vista on a AMD skt 939 4800+ x2 with 4 gig of ram system and it runs flawless. Vista 64bit ultimate edition is flawless with the exception of some lingering driver issues. Wish 32bit was a good as its 64bit counter part. Its smooth as butter and in most cases & its far better then XP. As reviewed by Maximum PC some vista features are annoying like defrag and security pop-ups. XP in its first couple years was annoying too and this is no different.

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Vista
Submitted by xs0u1x on Wed, 06/18/2008 - 3:45am

I almost cried when I saw an old machine with 16mb of ram and win95 start up faster than my vista machine......maybe if vista was alil more slimmer and actually WORKED it would be ok. yeah all the new features are nice.......but who actually uses all of them. they did make file sharing alittle more simpler with vista....but who actually uses that media center add on? I have yet to meet anybody that takes the sluggish start time for it to play their dvd's or listen to music when media player 11 can do the exact same thing. and who watches tv on their pc anymore......again ive yet to meet anybody that has done that. windows defender? annoying but alil bit useful.UAC? annoying. windows firewall randomly locking up and not working on configurations that have worked for a month or so before it? rediculous. 10gb of space to install? rediculous. a GUI that uses up close to 70mb of gpu memory? rediculous. windows sidebar? cool but useless........I could go on forever.

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I use Vista Ultimate x64,
Submitted by natehamill on Mon, 06/16/2008 - 12:26pm

I use Vista Ultimate x64, and I love it! Using 8GB of RAM (not that expensive these days) makes everything better!

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because
Submitted by hogkill on Sat, 06/14/2008 - 11:56pm

It's new yet it doesn't improve on xp, it just adds more fat. It's like a hooker charged you $1000 dollars six years, then you go back to the same street corner today and find that not only has the hooker become morbidly obese but shes now charging $2000 dollars and you have no choice but to pay for it.

It's more sluggish, they should have made a simpler OS, not more complicated one.

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well I know I don't
Submitted by hogkill on Sat, 06/14/2008 - 5:46pm

My laptop has Vista and besides the 1gig of ram used from startup and the OS failure that occured even before I installed any third party software I'd say it's not that it's not that bad.

In all seriousness though, fancy apple-esque features aside it really sux (actually i hate those features too). XP runs much smoother and I just want a dx10 hack for XP.

Really though someone tell my why Vista is an improvement, cuz all I see is failure. There should be an article about it somewhere on this site proving that it doesn't suck.

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I find it funny...
Submitted by Caboose on Sat, 06/14/2008 - 6:13pm

Can you tell me why Vista is such a failure? I find it funny that lots of people say that Vista sucks, and is so terrible, yet they don't back up their claims. Or the excuses are poor.

I'm running Vista on my laptop, my desktop, my fiancee's desktop and my roomate's desktop and we don't have any problems. After upgrading the HDD in my laptop from a 4200rpm drive to a 7200 rpm drive, the performance has been great. I'm pleased with the OS so far.

And yes, we all know that Microsoft steals ideas from Apple. Bill Gates bought DOS and never wrote it. Let's get over it and move on.

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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no more XP
Submitted by pellier on Sat, 06/14/2008 - 4:42pm

Im happy because Vista isn't really that bad. It was just future proofed for faster hardware.jk
but I really do think that Vista is an improvement

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64bit Windows Love
Submitted by Caboose on Fri, 06/13/2008 - 6:15pm

Props to the 64bit Windows Love!

I wish there were more 64bit apps, and more developers would write for 64bit windows. 64bit Windows users are a minority just like Linux users...

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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Well, I know im going to use
Submitted by Strongbad536 on Sat, 06/14/2008 - 2:42am

Well, I know im going to use Vista 64 when I get my processor (single core right now). But yeah, how come so few people use 64bit? app support?

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"A combination of ingredients..."
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Sat, 06/14/2008 - 4:52am

...as they used to say on TV, is why Vista 64 adoption lags.

Part of the story is, indeed, a lack of application support, but part of the problem has also been driver support.

There are officially unsupported ways to tweak 32-bit apps that "don't run on x64" and 32-bit drivers to use them on x64 which you can discover with a bit of searching on Google, but it's frustrating that these limitations are preventing most of us from leaving the 4GB 32-bit barrier behind.

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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.

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