If Vista's Media Centre isn't picking up your random video files such as MKV, TS, MP4, etc but you've already got the codecs installed, a small registry patch can fix this by changing the PerceivedType to video.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.file-extension]
"PerceivedType"="video"
(Emphasis is what you need to change for your desired extension)
Copy the above text (modified of course), into a text file, save as .REG, double click on the REG file, and restart VMC. All done!
For me, I needed MP4 and TS, so [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ts] and [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp4]
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If you haven't been lucky enough to have had access to Vista SP1 through Technet or MSDN, Microsoft have released SP1 to the general public today. Wondering why you'd bother upgrading? Apart from security roll ups and whatnot, APC discovered that Vista with SP1 is up to 86% faster in certain tasks than without SP1 (metrics via Nick Hodge) - very very cool.
Vista SP1 32bit (434.5 MB)
Vista SP1 64bit (726.5 MB)
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After installing Vista, I thought "Some sort of Vista specific Anti-Virus software might be a good idea.
I decided to try Computer Associates (CA) AntiVirus (AKA VET, AKA EZTrust)
I strongly suggest against it, as under Vista, I'd randomly get up to 60% usage of both my CPU cores, as well as only having 40mb (out of 2048mb!) RAM free.
Explorer will show up as having 50->60% CPU usage, but its actually CA's AV.
For now, I'm trying NOD32.
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nVIDIA have released some new graphics drivers (32bit can be found here), which include support for the 8800GTS/GTX cards, for Vista. (via Guru3D)
This is amusing, because DirectX 10 is only supported in Vista, and only on the 8xxx series cards from nVIDIA. Can you say oops?
Although not signed and beta drivers, they are more of a resemblence to real drivers than the previous version.
On my computer, the performance increased from 4141 to 4330 in 3DMark06 - small, but I'll take it.
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Maybe you represent the Mac, Linux, or Windows XP Evangelists, or are part of the Holy Crusade Against Microsoft, but Windows Vista just isn't as evil as you'd like it to be.
I've heard plenty of reasons not to convert to Vista, but the sad thing is, none of them are even close to rational.
Some of the great yarns somebody is spinning include
Continue Reading »
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A few days ago I blogged about Paul Thurrots article on about how to extend the life of Windows XP.
Now that I have a new system on my hands, I've played with a few of his suggestions.
Photo management
In the red corner, we have Picasa2 from Google, and in the Redmond corner, we have Windows Photo Gallery, which will be introduced in Vista - perhaps as an answer to iPhoto on the mac, or even to Picasa.
Hands down, Picasa is the winner.
Its faster, its neater, it has cooler transition effects
Searching
Windows desktop search is…well… crap.
It needs to completely replace the standard Windows search to have good integration.
It was much less accurate than Vista's search, which is disappointing
Browser, Spyware, MediaPlayer, Calendar
Firefox (V2 RC2 is nice), Adaware, Winamp and Google Calendar are all great applications that I was already using.
So, summary? A few good applications were thrown in. Other things I haven't 'evaluated' due to the lack of requirements on my behalf (TV tuner), or the fact I wouldn't use them (moviemaker)
Picasa is certainly a nice program, and the rest, well, I was already using them
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Paul Thurrott has written an intersting article about prolonging the life of Windows XP, by showing off many applications (or alternatives to) that ship with Windows Vista.
To me, the bundled applications made Vista almost worth it. Almost.
Well worth a read - I know I'll be installing some of those applications once I get justice
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Microsoft is reportedly telling it's gaming industry associates that games will run 10-15% slower on their new operating system due to the new GUI implemented.
This is inline with my own experiences with the operating system.
Microsoft are already going to have a hard timeselling Vista to the Generic Gamer.
Everywhere I turn, I see misinformation about how DRM will effect it, or how 'evil' it is (Apple virus marketting perhaps? ;)) for copying xyz feature from xyz company (when Microsoft actually came up with it, just they were beaten to the punch), etc etc.
This won't help matters, and until performance is 5->10% worse than XP (which could happen by the time Vista is released to the general public), I doubt many gamers - informed or not about the common mistruths - will want to convert.
(Via Neowin)
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Well, RC2 is going to be released.
Originally, there wasn't going to be an RC2, it was going to be RC1, a few interim builds, then RTM.
Then RC2 wasn't going to be released to CPP.
Now the RC2 CPP site is leaked, but not active.
Apparently, RC2 isn't 'actually an RC, its just another interim build'. I don't know who or what to believe on the matter now.
Some of the expected updates in this build include:
I don't know what else they can include, I guess general performance increases, but mostly that'd be to do with drivers…so they could be in trouble.
We'll see soon enough I guess
Update: Looks like the changes have gone through, which a screenshot from ShellRevealed (see below). Frankly, its a welcome change. Previously, although you could customise the colours at certain times, maximising a window would result in 'black' appearing (akin to the Graphite theme below).
There was little/no point being able to customise it, if it went black when the window was maximised!
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AnandTech, one of my favourite hardware review sites, have decided to give Vista a review.
The reason I like AnandTech, is it seems like biased/has less 'sponsered' reviews than TomsHardware, and is more legible than sites like HardOcp.
However, AnandTech have done a horrible review.
They start off with an okay introduction, but then it goes horribly wrong.
"This is the first time that we can say without flinching that Vista is in an acceptable state for general use. Compatibility on the x86 version is remarkably improved over what we saw earlier, and in our testing we only managed to come up with a single program - non-commercial at that - that simply wouldn't function correctly under Vista no matter what. "
If they could only find one application, they've obviously done very little testing.
They go on to say that everything works if you put enough effort into making it work. How does that translate into an acceptable state for general use?
Next, they go on and on about how UAC is going to stop enthusaists.
Start -> Control Panel -> UAC -> Turn off UAC -> Reboot.
Gee, that was hard, good thing you have to be a guru, not enthusiast, to turn that off.
Okay, I admit, they make some good points about UAC (about pre-approval), but they also overly demonise it.
They do other silly things like testing game performance of 5728 (which I believe has some debugging information turned on, slowing the performance. And they don't compare it to RC1 at all) saying its not good at the moment…for ATI. Why not test nVidia? Don't have the hardware? You're a freaking hardware review site!
They finish up with this gem
"At this point most of Vista is perfectly fine. Everything works, all functionality is enabled, and driver support is looking good".
Yeah. Do some finer testing of your soundcard boys. Sure, Intel HDA will be supported, but what about the rest of us?
This is more a 'review of a review' than focusing on the subject of the review.
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