I've been working with Vista almost every day now for nearly 6 months and my impressions of the newest OS from Microsoft haven't deviated much from my initial impressions. I continue to be plagued by problems and anomalies which seem to have no concrete origin.

Where it works

I particularly enjoy how it handles the various sounds emanating from my machine. Having the ability to control audio levels from every device connected to it, as well as individual applications is a bonus. This keeps me from being blasted out of my chair while wearing headphones when someone logs in on Google Talk or Messenger.

I would say it is just as fast as my XP desktop too. With a 4 gb thumbdrive installed as RAM Boost, the machine sails right through large Photoshop files and plays all of my favorite games (except one, Halo 2). If the rumors about SP 1 having a performance and memory management gain, Vista will be quite fast. All of the built-in tools I have used perform well, and there seems to be genuine improvements within the operating system itself. I have run into many fewer inherent glitches within the OS; in fact I can't really think of any. All of my USB devices hook right up and are easily accessible, save one - my Western Digital 500 gb drive. Every now and again it falls off the world and I have to unplug it and turn it off to get it back; something it has never done on XP.

The majority of the applications I use work just fine under Vista as well. WS-FTP hates Vista, and will not run. I initially had trouble with the entire Adobe CS3 suite on an install of Vista Business Ultimate, as well as Flex Builder 2 not working. Those are the only ones I have had trouble with though.

Where it fails

Driver compatibility. Probably 80% or more of the trouble, headaches, and unplanned rebuilds have been due to drivers that flat-out do not work in Vista. I recently made the rookie mistake of updating my audio device drivers through Windows Update - boy that was just dumb. Even though device manager said the device was "working properly", I had no sound. So I rolled back the drivers, and then had to unplug the plugs and rearrange them to get the 5.1 surround to function again. I had to do this originally too, when I first installed it so it shouldn't have come as a surprise....

I still have no RAID support, but that's more on ASUS than Microsoft.

Then we come to Halo 2. WTF!? Microsoft sells this game under their own moniker and it hardly works right. Half the time I would get an error message that some Halo app was running and the game would need to be reinstalled; and the other half would work fine 80% of the time or just randomly quit. The I tried to use a LIVE account and hehehe... yeah right. What a joke. Halo dies every time I try and login in to any real or fictional account. After installing the latest patch, the game doesn't run at all. Way to go guys!

The biggest disappointment is how many incompatibilities in general there are, and when it comes right down to it there is enough blame to go around. It' snot completely fair to blame Microsoft because every Tom, Dick and Harry is incapable of writing solid drivers for their new OS. Especially an OS so plagued with set-backs and postponed releases; it's hard to believe that all of these other guys didn't have adequate time and resources to get their code solid before release time. What lands squarely in their lap is when their own products don't act right, and fail. Halo is one example, Office 2007 is another. I have fought with Office 2007 and Visual Studio in particular throughout my recent life as a developer. Both products are top notch unless you have trouble. My advice? Clean install. Period. Don't ever upgrade anything.

All of this garbage combined has led me down the path of deciding if I really want to switch to the Mac platform entirely. I so very seldom have problems on my laptop it's almost non-existent. The stopping point is the price, but what I guess I have to decide is Microsoft and Windows worth the trouble?

:: side note ::
Maybe your Vista woes are actually nVidia's fault?

Considered by many to be the Father of role playing, Gary Gygax was known and admired worldwide for the game that sparked movies, TV series, cartoons, hundreds of knock-off type games, convention centers full of people in garb, and probably more black eyes than any other person in the history of gaming. At the age of 69, Gary died this morning at his home outside of Milwaukie.

I'm still not completely able to grok the situation, this man was a legend among the gaming community, and through his creations and ideas my imagination took me, my brother, and a great number of our friends into strange worlds of monsters and adventure where fierce battles raged (not to mention gallons of soda pop, and hundreds of slices of pizza consumed). It's been many years since I even thought of playing the game, but every time I see the books, I stop and pick one up.

With the 4th edition of Dungeon & Dragons almost ready for release, the newest version will likely be met with a quiet excitement, tempered by the loss of the games founder. From everything that I ever heard and read, he was generous and giving; he even still hosted a weekly D&D party at his home. My brother actually wrote him a letter back in... man it had to be like '85... about a dispute he and Dime were having about homemade weapons (probably that damned Sun Sword), and received a personal response back from him. At the time we were all totally amazed and floored - now it seems that's just the way he was.

God speed Gary.

:: Wired article ::

:: Yahoo News ::

One of my left coast friends, Kent turned me onto the game Portal - which is included in The Orange Box, which you should definitely go out and buy. The game is really fun and totally different from any other game I have ever played. Unlike most of what I spend my gaming time with, this is not a FPS, and fragging and gib have nothing to do with it - although it's pretty easy to find yourself dead; a lot.

The screenshot posted is of me getting my achievement award for falling 35,000 feet or more. This could easily be seizure inducing, but basically you open a portal above you - then another directly below you, then enjoy the endless fall from ceiling to floor. The person below me in the shot is me. If you look up, you see yourself falling with you....

It's a nice change of pace from the mind-numbing games I usually play to have something on my computer that actually encourages and requires thought in order to complete. There are other puzzle games I like to play, but this is by far the most unique, and has the coolest graphics.

Now for my 300 foot jump and I will be all set......

Santa was extraordinarily good to the DeCoster family this year, and we woke to find a Nintendo Wii snuggled with care under the tree. I have read the reviews, watched people play, heard the media drone on about how they are being used, watched the prices on eBay go ridiculously high then back to normal, and yet I was totally unprepared for how much fun playing it is.

I have found myself playing everyday either just in short burst or at length, but daily and usually multiple times throughout the day. Granted I am still on vacation, but it's a lot of fun. Wii Sports is a great set of games and mini games with the training and fitness modes - so it provides a lot of variation considering it's only really 5 games total. My favorites are bowling, boxing then baseball. I'm getting used to the golf game, but I don't really like the tennis game much. Donovan is really good at the boxing and bowling games, while Dylan just like to drive over everything in Monster 4X4: World Circuit. This is a pretty good game too, and I like the fact that it came with a steering wheel, plus it's not too hard right off the bat and it's pretty easy to get into and start playing and have fun. We also bought Wii Play, which as it turns out, is my least favorite of the games we bought. To be fair, I have only played it for a very short amount of time, so it will be a good game for the kids - but I don't think I will be playing it much.

AWe played for a good amount of time on Christmas day we all wondered how many times across America the exact same scene was unfolding, and judging by how difficult they are to get still; I would have to say hundreds of thousands of times. The Wal-mart in town (Bradford) hasn't had them in stock for any length of time yet, they always seem to sell out the second they get them in. Granted, Bradford is not a big town, or a high volume type of community so they get very few - but the stores in Buffalo didn't have any either, we finally found them out here in Oregon. We even got Grandpa in on the action, and he was kicking some serious rump at bowling, but unfortunately, I didn't have a SD card in the console yet - so sadly there is no proof....

The only downside is that the games are very expensive, $50.00 each, so I will be doing research and renting the game before I go and buy anything. I bought Monster 4x4 on a whim and luckily, it worked out. We all have our own Mii's and Donovan can't seem to make up his mind to what he wants to look like, but he has a lot of fun playing it; and that's the point.

I picked up a copy of Parallels a couple of weeks ago at the Apple Store up in Buffalo at Walden Galleria, so that I could play my PC games when I go left for Christmas. I was excited about getting Vista up and running and playing Halo 2 against my bro. The excitement soon faded into pure, unadulterated disappointment.

Parallels was a walk in the park to get running, no problems at all save one - it didn't play nice with ShapeShifter, so I ignored this app and don't skin it. After that, it was running in no time. This didn't really come as a shocker, since ShapeShifter doesn't play nice with other apps; like iTunes for one. Any way, I get Vista installed, updated and churning right along. Halo 2 went onto the machine just as easy and I had no problems during install. The specs wizrds tossed out a couple of warnings, but I forged ahead. This is where the good feelings get gone.

Right off the bat Halo will not run. At all. Nothing. Initially I figured it was a Direct X thing, and checked around and saw some posts saying that Parallels supports only DX 8.x, but that's not true - after running dxdiag, I discover I have version 10 installed. Some additional poking around leads me to the answer in that Parallels doesn't support the 3D video drivers the same way that they are supported natively, and they have their own special video driver. This is what kills me. I can run Quake II Arena, but nothing else so far. I have tried Delta Force Xtreme, and it bombs out saying the video driver is incompatible. So I tried an older version of Delta Force; Black Hawk Down and it won't start either; even though it only requires Direct X 8. So I figure it might be Vista, and since I can't run Halo 2 any way - I ace the Virtual HD for Vista and now I am installing XP Pro. Right now in fact.

Games are always a real pain in the jar - especially when you are using them outside of the normal scope of how they were developed. What's weird though is the Quake II runs perfectly.... So I figure that XP surely can't be any worse, and in fact will certainly run leaner and meaner on my MacBook Pro than Vista. I have heard tell of folks running Halo 2 on XP Pro with Direct X 9 too - so who knows, I may still get there....

Worse comes to worse, I have Halo for Mac - so I can tool my bro in that for a while before it gets old.....

I decided to be a good little consumer and spontaneously bought Windows Vista Home Premium and... wait for it... Halo 2! Yup, I needed to get a n new OS to play part 2 of one of the best FPS games ever - and so I did. Let me tell you, what a great decision that has turned out to be.

Third time's the charm

I am on my third install of Vista, in just 6 short hours. I am really seeing why Lenovo is offering downgrades to folks who purchased Vista based machines from them. It's crazy. I ran the upgrade advisor, and according to Microsoft the only thing that desperately needed attention was the RealTek audio driver. The thing is, if I let Vista do the updates, it installs some other driver (which I have yet to identify the driver or hardware) which causes the machine to send me into GP blue screen hell. The only way I have found to get around the BSOD, is to reinstall from scratch.

Finally I selected the no upgrade option for the initial install, and told it not update my machine at all. So far, so good. I updated the audio drivers, and added the drivers for my G15 Gaming Keyboard - both of which are still working great. I have yet to get Halo on the machine.

My favorite part is the boot loader, and how it gives two options:

1. Windows Vista
2. Earlier Version of Windows

Very nice, diplomatic and helpful. Like it couldn't figure out that I had Vista - like it thought I was running Windows for Workgroups and suddenly decided to leap out of the 80's to run Vista. That's just lazy guys - come on! Any way, you can change the text here if you really want - I don't care, but check this out here. You can use the built-in (BCDEDIT) editor and do it all Linux/Command lines style, or download EasyBCD to run a little GUI app to help you down the path.

All I have to say is thank the dear Lord I didn't decide to just wing it and replace XP altogether with Vista - what a freakin' mistake that would have been.