Windows Vista???
 

Has anyone tried SereneScreen on Windows Vista and does it work? Been afraid to try it myself. Last XP program I tried in Vista resulted in a complete system restore from backup disks.

I tried Vista and ended up reformatting and re-installing WinXP. Not again for me for a long while.

It works on Vista with no issues that I am aware of. But I agree with Marian. I don't like Vista on many levels (it needs about 3/4 of a GB of RAM for itself just to boot up and then however much RAM you want to add for your programs) and will be sticking with XP.

The Aquarium has no issues with the normal versions of Vista.

The 64-bit version of Vista might possibly place the Aquarium in the wrong directory during installation, but it would be easy to move it to the proper directory. This affects such a small percentage of the population that we've never actually been able to confirm it.

I have run Vista for three months now on my laptop, SereneScreen and Gold Fish screensavers work fine, as does Dreamaquarium, I am very pleased as to how Vista runs on my machine, much faster than XP was and very stable. Jim

Thanks for the info. I'll give it a go. I don't like Vista much either but I got a new notebook with Vista installed and I'd like to put MA Time on it.

Jim, you just made another sale. :D

GOLDFISH AND VISTA
 

Hi Matt...I've been reading all these concerns over Vista and don't quite get the reasons for the problems people seem to be having. I have loaded a variety of programs into Vista that ran in my Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and of course Goldfish - none have given me any concerns that would make me think it was Vista's fault. Vista is finally a Windows manager that does a lot of work for the computer user, so I think a lot of these problems come from those who don't want to relinquish their role in using a computer. Me...the more the computer does the nitty-gritties the more time I have to do exactly what I want to do and not worry about the system's behind the scenes workings. And loading what you're calling an XP program is not what froze/crashed your system. Loading an unexceptable program will normally only result in Vista telling you that the program is unacceptable for your system. You back out - no harm done. I hope this helped....Really I don't understand all this frustration and fear of Vista?? It also lapses over into Microsoft's Office 2007...and that's an excellent program with some pretty fantastic features - Vista and Office 2007 are what computers are about - "the future" - computers doing the work us merely the spectators.....

I love Microsoft Office 2007. It was clearly designed by a team of people who understood how office software should work. The team admitted that 90% of the features people were asking for were already built into 2003, they just couldn't find them.

On the other hand, Windows Vista was designed with some strange goals. Bill Gates said he wanted Windows to stop being the laughing stock of the OS world as far as security. As a result, Windows Vista prompts ENDLESSLY to do anything. Even the most trivial of tasks like changing a setting in the "Display" control panel requires answering a security prompt.

As much as Vista blatantly copies Mac OS X (use Mac OS X for about 10 minutes and you'll realize just how much of Vista is a direct copy), they got security all wrong and I consider Vista to be a nuisance.

People keep telling me if I just give it a chance I'll like it. The more I use it, the more I hate it.

Yes, UAC is a HUGE nuisance. You can disable it though...hehe

Morgan, I was listening to the radio the other day. They were interviewing a restaurant owner. The restaurant owner was trying to gather support for his 'get back to tap water' campaign. He mentioned the same thing that your signature states. I never really thought about all of those bottles being made and going into the trash.

I use a 3 litre Camelbak on my bike rides and on hot days, I bring two 20oz Polar Ice bottles which keep the water cold. I fill them with ice at the beginning of the ride and by the time it gets hot, it's ice water and I dump it on my head to cool my core temp down.

But when I'm not riding, Polar Ice bottles are a good reusable way to carry cold water.

Then again, the U.S. uses 19.6 million barrels of oil per day (25% of the world's consumption) so there are still 7152.5 million barrels/year used for other stuff...

I am getting this exact issue with my 64bit Vista. Any idea how to get it to the right folder?

This was the problem I had earlier today. I could get it to pop up upon installation in the screensavers folder in control panel, but once I closed it and re-opened the screensaver tab in control panel it would show screensaver being used (none) and and Serenescene was not even present.

I did a search for sysWOW64 and then sorted by screensavers name, then found the file called MA2_6 (alternatively open the search function and do a search for MA2_6) once it finds that file in the SysWOW64 folder right click it and simply click install and it will then install it properly in the correct directory, takes all of 2 minutes once you know how.

Hmm, That's more than enough reason I would NEVER get it.

About two months ago, I tried Vista again. This time I am very happy with it. I needed a year for all my hardware and software to catch up with new drivers and/or version compatible with Vista.

What does Vista give you that XP doesn't have?

There's the sidebar that I like and use. I like the way folders are previewed without having to open them. The look is so different and I like to change things around. Vista firewall is all the firewall I used and it is quite effective. More so than previous versions of Windows firewalls. I use Windows Movie Maker that is part of the OS although it can be downloaded for XP. I also like and only use the DVD burner, XP does not have it. Media player is also part of the OS don't think it is with XP although I had it then. I only use Vista photo gallery, I can connect all my cameras and they are recognised and the pictures downloaded without extra software. I am sure there are others and will remark on them as they come to mind.

Those can be switch off if they are a worry, unless it has to do with security. I turned off my users controls.

Windows Media Player 9/10/11 make me want to tear my hair out. The interface is a nightmare. It completely breaks all the rules of user interface design. I cannot seem to press <- and -> to step through a video. Also, the video usually stutters because there is so much overhead slowing down playback. I use Media Player Classic or VLC to play videos.

Maybe the image viewer in Vista is better. The photo viewer in XP was so slow, tabbing through photos seemed to take 3-4 seconds to load each image. I use ACDSee which is almost instant at flipping through photos. It also has nondestructive image rotation. When I go take photos, I can look at the thumbnails, click on all the images that are sideways, and rotate them without re-saving the file (which would dramatically lower the picture quality). It just flags the file as "rotate 90".

The sidebar in Vista can easily be attained with add-ons like StarDock which came out years ago.

I have not used the DVD burning software built into Vista so I cannot comment.


I am not trying to start an argument, just genuinely curious what is new in Vista that is worth buying a faster computer with more RAM, bigger hard drive, and faster processor to run the same applications I run now.

If Vista had the journaling file system that they originally promised (and which has been seen in operating systems as far back as BeOS in 1998), then maybe it would be different. Each file on the computer can have descriptive information attached to it which makes searching a snap. You could label each photo that has a person in it and then search for photos with that person and it would give them all back to you.

I like trying and learning new things and they don't fluster me for the most part if I can figure them out. Vista built in programs saves me from buying extra software. If it is there already all I need do is use it. Sooner or later you will have to switch to Vista, we all know this. I am ready to try Internet Explorer 8 when it comes out of beta.

But it's okay if you don't want to change I am not trying to persuade anyone to, I just wanted the new version. Happy computer--ing. :)

So few people are switching to Vista, I think people may skip it entirely the way millions of people completely avoided Windows Me.

The thing with WinMe, I feel, is MS came out with one OS after another and you barely got use to one before another came out. But hasn't it been a good five years since XP? And if I remember correctly you were hesitant about moving on to it. I don't think Vista will go the way of the Dodo. The last/fist service pack that was released is why I decided to it give it another try.

I skipped Me and went straight to 2000. I only switched to XP last year and the only feature it has over 2000 that I use is Remote Desktop.

So far my experience with Vista has been that they randomly rearranged all the control panels for absolutely no reason.

NTFS is a journaling file system, always has been...

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

(This link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ote-note-37-54, says it doesn't do block journaling, but if you read the attached note you'll see it does journal everything, just everything is counted as meta-data.)

Ok journaling is the wrong word. Tagged then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

Many filesystems found on common operating systems, including the NTFS filesystem which is used in modern versions of Microsoft Windows, store files and other objects only as a stream of bytes, and have little or no information about the data stored in the files. Such file systems also provide only a single way of organizing the files, namely via directories and file names.

Because a file system has no knowledge about the data it stores,[5] applications tend to use their own, often proprietary, file formats. This hampers sharing of data between multiple applications. It becomes difficult to create an application which processes information from multiple file types, because the programmers have to understand the structure and semantics of all the files.

WinFS natively recognizes different types of data, such as picture, e-mail, document, audio, video, calendar, contact, among others; rather than just bytestreams as with file systems

For example, a search for "the phone numbers of all persons who live in Acapulco and each have more than 100 appearances in my photo collection and with whom I have had e-mail within last month"

I also like the automatic backup system that runs after you have set time and locale.

..And here comes Windows Vienna..:rolleyes:

What? Are you serious? If so, explain.

I've used Vista for about 6 months, no real problems with it, esp since I turned off all of it's Vista-ish looks..it's a memory hog for sure...I was quite content with XP..I also use Mac's all the time, so my windows machines now look like Macs with Windowsblinds and RK launcher..the prompts are the one thing that make me want to throw the box through window..if I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't have initiated it in the first place, so don't ask me six times if I want to do something..I use iTunes and Photoshop, Quicktime and VCL, I don't bother with the MS players and photo stuff..all-in-all, it's a big "so what??"... all of the Aquariums run fine on it as well as the Digifish Dolphins....

I've read that Microsoft hasn't even decide what "feature route" to go. One route their considering is to completely change the G.U.I. for the next Windows operating system. At least Windows vista was somewhat similar to XP, that if users were familiar with the previous and wanted to upgrade to the new operating system they wouldn't be completely lost. It seems with Windows "Vienna" people would have to learn something "new"..like teaching a dog "new tricks." :loco:

To me Vista was a feeble attempt to copy a lot of the Mac OS X interface.

So the choice to me is either XP, or the "original", which is to say GET A MAC! :)

I was really hoping that Windows Vista would break with the past and quit trying to be compatible with software from Windows 95, 98, and Me and focus on 32-bit and 64-bit apps. Instead, there is this monstrous compatibility layer which tries to make Windows be compatible with everything. The end result is, it takes 10GB of hard drive space and 1GB of RAM all for itself.

Marian, Vienna is one of the codenames for the next major release of Windows.

Thanks Morgan, I hadn't heard as yet. I am sure it will change names many times before its final released.:D

Indeed it does, which is why I have three hard drives. I just now moved 'old windows' onto my external dive. It is like keeping house.

I love my Vista. I have 4GB RAM and really notice no slowdown from the way my XP ran. The look is great ( I am more about the way my OS and other things look these days) I love the ease of instal;lation and the lack of having to load up software for so many programs, generally Vista picks it right up and installs it with no extra issues. Most times there is no need to even reboot the computer. I also like that once I get Vista installed and tweaked I can back it up to a second hardrive or a DVD and from then on when i need to fformat I can pop that disk in and it will reload it back to teh way it was when I got it tweaked out.

Also Microsoft is dropping support for XP as well as nding the sale of any new XP editions this year. You will be forced to use Vista if you buy a new comp as of June of this year. The new Windows is scheduled for release in 2010. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...n.html?ref=rss

However, I am getting an issue now, but I think it may be with my ATI card. I will post a new thread on this however.

Though I only use my Vista machine for testing the Aquarium code, I sure do like the way it's ready for work about 15 seconds after I turn it on. With most of my other machines, I turn them on in the morning, go have breakfast, and they might be about ready when I get back.

Nope.

Interesting article...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/bu...=1&oref=slogin

Interesting linking technique... :p

Now I'm having the problem you guys used to have! Post a link, it looks great, come back to the thread later and it's wrapped in tags instead of a functional, clickable link.

I'm looking very hard at vBulletin 3.7. I really want to jump us forward.

Is able to utilize new hardware improvements as well as dx10

Is immune to Sinowal/Mebroot, the nastiest nasty out there...
(Well, currently...)