My Desktops
Just a quick post showing my three desktops, which I have created.
My Standard Desktop
Windows 98 on Ubuntu
Windows XP on Ubuntu
Please comment, and tell me what you think.
Entries Tagged as 'Windows'
Windows XP SP3 Review
Windows XP Service Pack 3 has finally arrived, possibly the last service pack for this great Windows OS. Today, I will be reviewing SP3.
When SP3 was announced I was very surprised to see that Microsoft was going to release it, due to the terrible state Vista was in. However, I was very pleased with Microsoft’s announcement, I am still using XP. I have a Vista Home Premium disc in my house, but I am not upgrading until 2009 (when XP support ends).
SP3 adds a bunch of new features, mainly security.
- Black hole router detection
- Network Access Protection
- Credentials security service provider
- Descriptive security options control panel
- Enhanced security for Administrator and Service policy entries
- Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module
- Installing without needing a Product Key during Setup
For the end-user, most of these new features are not terribly useful. Most users probably haven’t a clue what they are and how to use them. Although, it does upgrade Internet Explore to version 7 and upgrade Windows Media player to version 11. I had already have done this, early last year, SP3 would offer me nothing new. Although I was going to upgrade anyway, since I like to have the latest and greatest of any piece of software. It wasn’t until a few weeks later, until I was eager to install SP3, Microsoft claimed it had a 20% performance increase. This would be excellent if this is true, my PC was running slow now. As a PC gamer, speed is everything.
At long last, XP SP3 is released. I downloaded and installed it from ‘Windows Update’, it took an hour to do on a multi-user PC. Once restarted, I logged in. No speed change yet, until I reached the desktop. My PC was fast again. Moving through the start menu, browsing through files, loading applications was now far faster. There was no real performance lag anymore. Even shutting down seemed to be faster.
After browsing around my fast PC running SP3, the only end-user change I could see was that desktop users can now Hibernate their PCs. Not totally sure if this was a new feature for desktop users, but it was for me.
Microsoft have done a great job with this service pack, down to the performance increase. Although, there is no FPS increase in games. Even without the performance increase, I would still strongly recommend all XP users to upgrade just for the security updates.
Gfire!
A few weeks ago I took over an open source project with another guy called Laurent. Hes Belgium and we got on well from the start (always a good when working on a project together). The project is called Gfire. It is a plugin for the Pidgin IM client which allows you to connect to the Xfire network.The great thing about this project is that it allows Mac and Linux users to connect to the Xfire network, the Xfire client is only for Windows users.
The Gfire project had stopped since September 2006, but now the project was handed over to the new dev team. Myself and Laurent are now going to further the development of Gfire. We are planning to improve on the current Gfire version, offer support and keep the xfire games list up-to-date. Each time there is a new games list, I will format it for Gfire and post on the Gfire website for everyone to download, this was something which the previous Gfire team didn’t do.
We are currently beta testing the first Gfire version since September 2006, version 0.7.0. This new version will have many bugs fixed and have better support for working on the newer version of Pidgin. You can check out this project at edhewitt.co.uk/gfire
EDIT, I have changed the Gfire link, it now works!
Windows 7 in 2009
Some of you may have heard about Windows 7 (code named, Vienna), its the next Windows operating system to follow after Vista. Today, Bill Gates has announced that Windows 7 may be shipping as early as 2009. Many Windows users may see this as great news, since Vista is in a bad state. However, I believe Microsoft needs to fix problems which they are currently having with Vista. Many users have bought Vista and are having issues. It would be far better if Microsoft released more service packs first before releasing a new version of Windows, instead they are covering up their mistakes with Vista. Vista has great features and still could be a great operating system if they fixed the issues first.
I believe its far too early to be releasing a new version of Windows very soon after they have released Vista, but Microsoft have done it in the past with Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP. But all those were great stable operating systems, Vista is currently not stable. Another problem Microsoft could end up with, is that they would be supporting four operating systems. Windows 2000, XP and Vista will still all be supported by Microsoft, when Windows 7 is out. It would be far better if Microsoft only supported two operating systems, not four. When Windows Vista came out, they should have stopped support of Windows 2000.
If I was Microsoft, I would first end support of Windows 2000. I would put Windows 7 on hold and make Windows Vista a stable operating system. Once Vista is stable, then I would release Windows 7.
What do you think, should Windows 7 be released in 2009?
