microsoft
By now I’m sure you’ve at least heard of, if not already seen, the new Windows Vista advertisements featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. They haven’t been well received, to put it mildly, but the latest commercial is actually not bad in its longer 4 minute version:
ui design
Although I rather like Windows Vista – I think the amount of Vista nerd rage out there is completely unwarranted – there are areas of Vista I find hugely disappointing. And for my money, nothing is more disappointing than the overall fit and finish of Vista, which is truly abysmal. It’s
file copy
If you’ve used Windows Vista, you’ve probably noticed that Vista’s file copy performance is noticeably worse than Windows XP. I know it’s one of the first things I noticed. Here’s the irony – Vista’s file copy is based on an improved algorithm and actually performs
file management
What is user space? User space is the location in the filesystem where users put their personal files – their “stuff.” Here’s the user space folder structure in the Windows XP operating system: Documents and SettingsUser Application Data Cookies Desktop Favorites Local Settings My Documents My Music My Pictures My
user experience
I’m one of the rare people who actually likes Windows Vista. Sure, it’s far from what was originally promised in terms of features, but it’s still a solid quality of life improvement from the crusty old 2001 version of Windows XP. Or at least it will be,
windows vista
Now that Windows Vista has been available for almost a month, the comparative performance benchmarks are in. * Windows XP vs. Vista: The Benchmark Rundown (Tom’s Hardware) * Windows Vista Performance Guide (Anandtech) It’s about what I expected; rough parity with the performance of Windows XP. Vista’s a bit
.net
As far as I’m concerned, Windows Media Center is one of the best – if not the best – applications Microsoft has ever created. And it was written in .NET to boot. I’ve been a huge MCE enthusiast since the original version was released in 2003, so I was greatly
search
Windows Vista gets criticized a lot in the press, mostly for not being OS X. Some of the criticisms are valid. It is terribly late. And the feature list has grown less and less impressive as the development process has worn on over the years. But Vista has one killer
operating systems
Windows Vista has a radically different approach to memory management. Check out the “Physical Memory, Free” column in my Task Manager: At the time this screenshot was taken, this machine had a few instances of IE7 running, plus one remote desktop. I’m hardly doing anything at all, yet I
user experience
Is it really necessary to qualify everything in Windows Vista with the “Windows” namespace? Hey, guess what operating system this is! At least the Vista start menu lets me do a containing search, so if I start typing ‘fax,’ the menu dynamically filters itself to show only items containing what
flash memory
In my recent Windows Vista performance investigation, I discovered the new ReadyBoost feature. ReadyBoost allows you to augment your PC’s performance using a USB flash memory drive. It’s very easy to use; just plug in a USB flash drive that’s 256 megabytes or larger, then navigate to
windows vista
Now that Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 is sorta-kinda available to everyone, let’s see what it takes to run it. Here's a comparison of the Vista hardware requirements with the hardware requirements of Windows XP: Windows XP (2001)Windows Vista (2007)CPU233 MHz800 MHz (1 GHz recommended)