The Cutting Edge of Microsoft

[James Lehman]

I think I'm starting to understand what happened.

I had everything working very well in XP with the Layla 24/96 and Media Player. I had ADAT LightPipe pass through too.

Then one day. It stopped working. At SELEM, I opened wave files to the message box of "you need a codec!"

I'm pretty sure it has to do with hardware and device driver "security" signatures. In one big swoop, all of my Media Player codecs are NFG!

Terry now tells me he had the same issue with his DVD playback. It just quit. He had to pay like $12 to some third party company on the web for a codec pack.

BS. I'm not going there.

Fortunately I found a pro audio editing program that can talk directly to the sound card.

I'm pretty sure portaudio will too!

As far as I know Windows XP no longer knows how to play a wave file!

Smashing!

James.

[steve-o]

I recently installed SP3 and havent noticed any difference, but I have a theory that in order for ms to push vista thru, XP will have to be obsoleted; therein would be the mission and the function of SP3... I'm thinking of un-installing it...
BTW- any of you experts can tell me why my secondary machine (win2000) can only send packets thru the internet and not receive any..?
(after halfway installing a bug and ad-ridden logitech webcam software disk)..
Thanx-
-S

[buffo]

too bad Amiga went the way of the dodo because of corrupt top management.

Bless you, Steve. I thought no one else remembered!

In the 90s I had a windows style GUI, a cool hybrid of linux and dos at the system level, awesome graphics when a PC was still 640x480 ega plus scsi plus true multitasking, I was running a low end machine, too.

yep. All true. In fact, in 1988 you could have had all those things (and more) on an Amiga. If it weren't for Medi Ali and his band of croony's running the company into the ground, we might all be enjoying our Amiga 9000's running Workbench 8.0 by now.

a high end amiga would still give a modern 3 ghz windows box a run for its money

I had an Amiga 4000 with a Warp Engine '040 board in it and a Cybervision 64 frame bufffer. We're talking 1600x1200 in 24-bit color, full pre-emptive multitasking (not task switching), On-board SCSI II (fast/wide), and the awesome power of the Arexx scripting language. This was in 1994 mind you. The thing *never* lagged.

I switched to the PC in 1997, because I couldn't run the software I needed for school on the Amiga. But I used to love to show people how I could print a document, format a floppy, and render a 3-d animation all at the same time, and STILL USE A WORD PROCESSOR in the foreground. Try that on a PC - even one running Vista - and see what happens. (Hell, as soon as you try to format the floppy, things grind to a halt. Assuming that floppies are even supported anymore, that is...)

As for the hype surrounding Vista, yeah - I agree that if you have a very fast machine with tons of ram and you only run a limited set of software and only have certain hardware connected, it runs fine. But what the hell is the point then? Why spend extra money on processing power and ram that I don't need? Just so I can have the aero shell? You're kidding, right?

Fuck Vista. I'm sticking with XP for as long as I can.

Adam

[James Lehman]

You make some good points about how the PC hardware is different than other computers. That's for sure.

One of the neatest things about Linux is that it can run on just about any computer hardware.

You can load it on a first generation Compaq iPaq PDA (and many others).

SGI switched over to Linux instead of their own Irix when they came out with their totally new server platform, that can run 2048 CPU cores all together as one!

James.

[steve-o]

I dont understand any of this, but I just wish the f*#k somebody would come up with something that WORKS .. I guess then, nobody would be able to sell the new product when the old one fails and is obsolete /... arrgghhh... no money to be made there then, ehhh?.. Yahhhh...
The PC & windoze now that are new become obsolete in what...< 6 months?.. or less? S.O.B..

[White-Light]

As for the hype surrounding Vista, yeah - I agree that if you have a very fast machine with tons of ram and you only run a limited set of software and only have certain hardware connected, it runs fine. But what the hell is the point then? Why spend extra money on processing power and ram that I don't need?
Adam

TBH Adam, whilst the bit about needing a powerful pc is correct, the software bit isn't. There's actually very little software that doesn't run on Vista - mostly DVD authoring or photographic editing programs whose editions were pre-vista eg Nero 6 or below. Most software runs with complete functionality these days and even on 64 bit, the software that isn't 64 bit, installs and runs fine in x86 emulation automatically. You really can't tell whats running in x86 and whats running in 64 bit as it all happens unseen in the background.

I wouldn't switch back to XP for anything, Vista is by far the most stable Windows platform ever.

[buffo]

TBH Adam, whilst the bit about needing a powerful pc is correct, the software bit isn't. There's actually very little software that doesn't run on Vista - mostly DVD authoring or photographic editing programs whose editions were pre-vista eg Nero 6 or below.

Isn't it? You proved exactly my point with your example. I currently run Nero 6 (ultra). It runs just fine under XP and meets *all* of my needs - at least when it comes to CD's and DVD's. Why should I upgrade to version 7 or above? Oh, right, because otherwise it won't run under Vista... So just avoid Vista and we're golden!

Same thing with other, older software I use. Why upgrade if my needs are already met very well? (I suspect that the vast majority of PC users fall into this camp.) More to the point, why upgrade if it's going to cost me lots of money in *hardware* improvements as well as software upgrades? (Especially when most of those hardware improvements will be nullified by the bloated resource hog that is Vista.)

I wouldn't switch back to XP for anything, Vista is by far the most stable Windows platform ever.

The only thing that has ever crashed on me when running XP has been games. The main reason for this is sloppy programming by the game companies. Thus, I don't think they'll be any more stable under Vista. (Arguably less, in fact, given the newness of the video drivers and all.)

In my opinion the stability arguement is a wash. (Mainstream applications don't crash under either operating system, and games will always crash until the drivers are tweaked a bit.) And yes, I've had some experience with Vista on other people's machines, so I'm not merely speculating.

The only real advantage to Vista (if you can call it that) is that it looks different (and maybe cool, if you're into that sort of thing), and it has some protections in place to try to protect stupid users. But the eye candy doesn't appeal to me, and I don't need the lame "security advisor" protection either.

Adam

[mixedgas]

I've had to revert out of xp SP3 twice on my laptop. SP3 is NOT coming back here. I frequently lost audio and periodicallythe mouse would freeze and ctrl-alt-del would not unlock the system, in fact on the laptop it was control-alt-remove battery to get a restart. After using Vista at work with its many "protections for idiots" or "protections for graduates of American School Systems" depending on your on of view, I see my future as Linux.

Steve Roberts

[frank_1257]

Is it just me or did the whole universe of XP just get screwed with SP3?

I don't even want to know about Vista. I lost that when I tried to dual-boot-install XP.

I have not seen a working Echo Layla 24/96 since!

(This is since before SELEM! I felt quite defeated. I had nothing but the USB thing to demo. No 96KHz for me. )

Back to Linux for me, where it is well supported!

I need a solid platform to develop the portaudio additions to LaserBoy!

James.

James I am an avid Windows XP Professional X64 user, quicktime and windows internet explorer has totally screwed me. Now every time that I go to the uspto.gov (patent office to search old patents for schematics diagrams etc for old equipment the TIFF file diagrams will not display. I have been told to remove ie explorer 7 and go to 5.5 a 32 bit version of IE when I tried this I ended up in 6 with no way to uninstall it??? What gives I am screaming bill gates and buddies names and imagining burning someones eyes from sockets with my soon to be 20 watt 532nm laser. That not christian of me but it has crossed my mind once or twice, do you know how to exorcise IE 6? any advice greatly appreciated great laser guru god I once heard you liked such accolades from ah oh you! Regards from David Rouse AKA id frank_1257

[frank_1257]

Isn't it? You proved exactly my point with your example. I currently run Nero 6 (ultra). It runs just fine under XP and meets *all* of my needs - at least when it comes to CD's and DVD's. Why should I upgrade to version 7 or above? Oh, right, because otherwise it won't run under Vista... So just avoid Vista and we're golden!

Same thing with other, older software I use. Why upgrade if my needs are already met very well? (I suspect that the vast majority of PC users fall into this camp.) More to the point, why upgrade if it's going to cost me lots of money in *hardware* improvements as well as software upgrades? (Especially when most of those hardware improvements will be nullified by the bloated resource hog that is Vista.)

The only thing that has ever crashed on me when running XP has been games. The main reason for this is sloppy programming by the game companies. Thus, I don't think they'll be any more stable under Vista. (Arguably less, in fact, given the newness of the video drivers and all.)

In my opinion the stability arguement is a wash. (Mainstream applications don't crash under either operating system, and games will always crash until the drivers are tweaked a bit.) And yes, I've had some experience with Vista on other people's machines, so I'm not merely speculating.

The only real advantage to Vista (if you can call it that) is that it looks different (and maybe cool, if you're into that sort of thing), and it has some protections in place to try to protect stupid users. But the eye candy doesn't appeal to me, and I don't need the lame "security advisor" protection either.

Adam

Adam I ran a computer retail store for years and years and I can tell you that Vista even home is the biggest G DamX resource hog known to mankind, it sucks a RAW EGG ROYALLY!