Nothing. I just like using Office 2007. I think it's the ribbon. A lot of my teacher's have loved my aesthetic reports since I started using it last year.

I don't need Office, but it just feels like I do.

Vista didn't like my new computer.
All I know is that Microsoft is going to let users download the operating system.

Hm, I'm a LaTeX person, so anything bigger than a letter never sees a conventional word processor anyhow on my box.

Well, they pretty much have to.

I was just quoting what I readoff of slashdot :o

The thing is that between XP and 2k, the eye candy bonus was minimal at best, and highly dependant on the users taste (personally I think the Luna theme of XP is disgustingly ugly). The difference between 2k/XP and Vista however, is quite huge - other then the basic concept, the UI is completely different.

Personally I like Vista. I'm going to test run it with the rc2 key crack once I have some free time. I'm tired of XP and I'm looking for something new, without breaking 99% of my well configured apps in the process (the reason why I don't use Linux - it just can't do what I want it to do).
Based on my experience with Vista RC2, the only thing I'll need is a driver for my mouse that can configure buttons 3 4 and 5 for custom functions (3 and 4 - center click, 5 - CTRL). The previous driver/software I used did not run in Vista RC2. I doubt its fixed in the final version, so I may need to search for a mouse hotkey app. It's kind of annoying that Vista has billions of features even allowing you to use the OS without a physical keyboards, but theres not a damn mouse button config window in it.

Are you a programmer? Have you in-depth knowledge about the system internals of 2K and XP? If not then I regard your post as pure spam. There are no fundamental changes under the hood between 2K and XP, the kernel is almost identical.

The only difference between those two is that XP is somehow 'consumer-friendly' because the administrative tools are better hidden from the dumb user.

These is no such thing as change in the driver model or API changes. Everytime someone tells you that their software runs on XP, BUT not on 2K it's complete bullshit. The reason is that they don't want you to run their software on 2K. Especially MS wants user to migrate from older versions of the OS to the new one, reason: money, market control, etc.

All the new DirectX, .NET, etc. stuff also works on 2K. The only thing both 2K and XP lack is the DRM-ed system components. There lies also the difference between the change from Win98 to 2K, and XP to Vista.

Everything that changed from 98 to 2K was a benefit for the user. Better driver model, more stable core architecture (adopted from NT), etc.

The changes from XP to Vista are only beneficial for the hardware vendors and the music/video industry. Palladium, TPM and such are on their way.

'OK, software and stuff will be cracked anyway' some will say, but if the whole DRM-story becomes true and is implemented in hardware we'll have a hard time doing things that we used to do.

Small and up to date example. The breaking/cracking of the HDDVD, Blu-Ray encryption AACS. We know that there is a tool out there that does the decoding, IF we provide a key (or multiple keys, check the AACS docs) for the content. The problem is not the decryption because the standard is open. The encryption can't be broken, this is because of the use of the AES encryption algo (which is proven to be strong by all means). Hope relies on finding a hole in the AACS system to get the keys.

Now decryption of the content happens on the CPU, so the key used has to appear at least once in one of the processer registers. Fire up your debugger and find it. Even if you don't have software access to the system you can sniff on the processor bus (this is a complicated process, and you need special equipment). The data transferred there is not encryted (maybe interleaved and such, but not crypted in the sense of an asymmetric encryption).

This sniffing process is the last possibility to get your data if anything else fails. Now the problem: If DRM comes and hardware is designed the way the DRM-people want it, also this transfer over bus and all other signals on cables, etc. is encrypted.
You won't have the possibility to sniff on the data.period.

What does that mean for the AACS example:
- Use of debuggers will be forbidden by the OS when a Blu-Ray/HDDVD software is running
- Modified OS won't run on your hardware (so you can't remove the debugger check)
- hardware sniffing isn't possible either

So?

cya
liquid

A recommended 1gb of ram to use the OS is insane, eventually they're going to force everyone to it with needed things like Direct X, which in turn will seem to up the standards on the average PC. Oh well, bound to happen I guess and will again in another few years. I see a lot of people upgrading or buying better PCs soon. Sucks for those who can't so easily go out and just spend money like that. Though if its anything like the 98-2k-XP transition, most people will have a couple of years to get on it.

I fixed it.

I just read this article on Microsofts decision to snub the Audio card developers such as Creative by getting rid of hardware audio support in Windows Vista. I was thinking of getting Vista but now I am not so sure.

I use my audio cards for music composition and I have my own custom sound banks that I have spent months building for this purpose. Now all my work could be potentially ruined by Microsofts decision to do this. Here is the link to the article I read this in.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/759/759538p1.html

Can anyone confirm this that owns Vista?

I am currently using my Audigy 2ZS and the most important functions are the soundfont bank loading utilities. I own one of these cards mainly so I can build soundfont banks and use them in conjunction with my synthesizers and pre-recorded artists. As long as these functionalities still work I will not be completely pissed. Because then I can just keep my audio card in there for the Soundfont functionality and use whatever Vista uses for everything else.

The big question is why do you want Vista? There is no compelling reason to purchase it. Yes, it is the newest OS, but that doesn't mean it is the best. It sounds like you have functionality that you need in XP. Stick with it for a while.

If it ain't broke don't try and fix it.

If creative gets screwed, I'll be a happy man. Their cards are garbage, yet everyone eats up their horseshit features.

The hardware is high quality, the only problem are the drivers.

Well Creative is the only company to have made a card that lets me craft my own set of soundfonts that dwarf thousand dollar keyboard's sounds. So as a composer and performing musician I would be pretty angry to lose that functionality.

My reason for switching is as follows: In XP you are limmited to using 385 or so mb of ram for sound, you can further hack it to make I think near a gig available. So when I load in my enormous banks I am limited to sizes of 380ish mb of ram even though I have far more than that in my computer. I want to expand the size of my soundfont banks beyond a gig but in order to do that I need an operating system that will let me utilize more ram. Plus, the true utilization of dual core CPU's in windows wont hurt either. That is why I was interested in switching, however since the recent anouncment I will hold my judgement till I know soundfonts will work.

Is there another OS that will let me didicate up to 2 gigs of my ram to midi function? I don't even know for sure if Vista will let me dedicate that much but I know it will at least be better than the meager 385.

That has nothing to do with the card. You can also write a driver for some integrated HDA card that does that.

That's no limitation of XP, but of the Creative driver. Any process in (32bit) XP can use as much memory as the virtual address space can give.


The kX Project driver also does soundfont loading, and AFAIK is not limited in size.

To get your 2gig of address space you'll need 64bit OS.

No, it is the limitation of XP I will find a link and send it in a few minutes.

Update:
This sort of describes it, I am looking for the actual link that helps you further extend the size through editing the registy pagepoolsize

http://phorum.sf2midi.com/viewtopic....3db7a3cf9e4a04

I know of the discussion between MS and Creative blaming each other for the problem. It's a problem on both sides but Creative is too lazy to refactor their drivers to avoid the problem (like using multiple memory pools and swapping them). The limitation of the pool for hw soundfont engines is a problem, but if Creative wanted they could easily work around it (doing some more stuff in user space).

I just tried some alternate Soundfont loading programs and they pale in comparison with Creatives. This one distorts my amazing live vibraphone soundfont to the point of uselessness. I sure hope the creative ones work in Vista with a larger chunk of ram to pull from.

Oh and on a side note, I read that KX is limited by the same windows issue that limits the creative soundfonts.

To anyone who has Vista retail (noone), did they fix the logo on startup? Its really annoying just having a progress bar.

Does this also apply to the bleeding-edge beta version? (you can find in the driverheaven forums) The latest stable version is VERY old, maybe thy fixed the problem in the beta?
I really don't know because the largest SF I used was around 200MiBi in size.

I am not sure about the bleeding edge version but I did check their faq and they acknowledged the pagepool size issue was present in the KX drivers also. I will try the beta, but I am pretty sure that the issue alone lies with Windows XP. I tried Sfz which is a soundfont loader and it will load my bank but it limits sound usage to 16 channels from a bank at any given time. So I can only utilize 16 instruments at a time. boooooooooo. Since Vista does allow a significant increase in ram utilized I imagine any limitation that they introduce will be larger also, but I cannot find anything that states the facts on that. I guess I will find out when I try it or someone else does that I am in contact with.

There was this bit about "Decreased Playback Quality" in a DRM-related analysis (LINK) I posted earlier and how it could prevent smaller content producers from creating high quality products (see footnote G). I'm not sure whether this only applies to video or audio as well. You might want to check it out.

All I have to say about that is wow. There were soo many ridiculous descisions made with windows vista, it makes me wanna vom. However, I still could not find anything about the pagepool size for sound. Good read though.

Huh? I have Win2k at home and have no need of upgrading to XP. I have XP at work, for what I do with it, there's no real difference (Except the Start button looks different.)

Nope, but you DO get a pretty logo for a second once the OS is actually started up. The actual loading screen is just an ugly green bar and COPYRIGHT MICROSOFT CORPORATION at the bottom.

Ugly loader aside, I've actually been pleasantly surprised by Vista's performance thus far. The Aero interface seems to run smoothly on my old Dell Inspiron laptop, and I haven't found any real bugginess so far. It still seems a lot like a pretty version of Windows XP, though...I'd be kind of annoyed if I had, like, paid money for a new copy of it.

(Friends with TechNet subscriptions are good friends indeed.)

Does Vista require new device drivers for all hardware?