{"id":34,"date":"2007-02-28T14:18:47","date_gmt":"2007-02-28T19:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ngc2632.com\/blog\/?p=34"},"modified":"2007-02-28T14:18:47","modified_gmt":"2007-02-28T19:18:47","slug":"no-vista-for-me-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/reviews\/no-vista-for-me-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"No Vista for me yet."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;I&#8217;m having enough trouble getting XP drivers that are happy with my 2GHz Intel Centrino Core Duo. It&#8217;s a Dell notebook, for Chrissakes. Bluescreens from video drivers? Why did you sell it if it wasn&#8217;t ready? It&#8217;s been months and I&#8217;m fairly religious about updates and patches&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, I haven&#8217;t heard many good things about Vista yet. The bad things I&#8217;ve heard include &#8220;it&#8217;s slower&#8221; and &#8220;some shit doesn&#8217;t work&#8221;. That&#8217;s bad, since I use a lot of stuff (i.e., &#8220;shit&#8221;) that might not be rewritten for Vista anytime soon.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, I use:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.otakusoftware.com\/topdesk\/\"><strong>Otaku Software&#8217;s TopDesk 1.4.2<\/strong><\/a> ($15, free 30-day trial)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stardock.com\/products\/windowblinds\/\"><strong>Stardock WindowBlinds 5.01<\/strong><\/a> ($20, not just eye-candy. Has a few extra controls for windows. Free version sucks quite a bit. Love that per-pixel alpha blend.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.r2d2-software.com\/\"><strong>R2d2 Software&#8217;s Virtual Desktop Toolbox 2.72<\/strong><\/a> (free, keeps me from paying for whole $50 Stardock Object Desktop, which includes virtual screens, WindowBlinds, and a thousand other things)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So hey, $35US for Vista-like eye candy without the software crashes and slowdown? Extra usability, too? And, for you lucky goobs with extra monitors, all of the above supports multiple monitors.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ngc2632.com\/imghost\/topdesk_ss.JPG\" alt=\"Zoomy Flip3D goodness\" title=\"Zoomy Flip3D goodness\" border=\"0\" height=\"450\" width=\"720\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ngc2632.com\/imghost\/flat_ss.JPG\" alt=\"Note the tabs across the top for the virtual screens\" title=\"Note the tabs across the top for the virtual screens\" border=\"0\" height=\"450\" width=\"720\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>And since <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vmware.com\/\"><strong>VMWARE server<\/strong><\/a> is now free also (Yes, I&#8217;ve enabled the virtualization stuff in BIOS), I can flip over to a virtual screen where a VNC session is open to my free <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centos.org\/\"><strong>CentOS 4.4<\/strong><\/a> install (XFCE, why do you ask?), where I have access to my true hack-o-matic tools.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ngc2632.com\/imghost\/centos_ss.JPG\" alt=\"Zoomy Flip3D goodness\" title=\"Zoomy Flip3D goodness\" border=\"0\" height=\"450\" width=\"720\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, sure, whatever. If I can&#8217;t smell my CPU sweating, it&#8217;s not working.<\/p>\n<p>[*]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;I&#8217;m having enough trouble getting XP drivers that are happy with my 2GHz Intel Centrino Core Duo. It&#8217;s a Dell notebook, for Chrissakes. Bluescreens from video drivers? Why did you sell it if it wasn&#8217;t ready? It&#8217;s been months and I&#8217;m fairly religious about updates and patches&#8230;. In any case, I haven&#8217;t heard many good [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rL5j-y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}