Etherpunk

New workstation

So -- my Sager NP 5750 is going flakey. This isn't an OS issue. Occasionally Windows will just turn off or reboot. I will also find that, usually after this reboot, the bios locks when I have USB devices plugged in. I will havce to unplug these, turn it off, unplug the power, and let it sit for a few minutes. So... I'm going to look for a replacement. I now have no need for a laptop so I'm probably going to go for a Desktop. Since I can't afford it with cash, and I've been waiting until I could (for probably over 2 months now) however this has made me go "well fuck...", I'll have to use credit. So at the moment I'm looking at a Dell. More specifically the Inspiron 530. The slim versions seem to cost a little more and I don't care about case size. I'm not fully trusting of 64-bit Windows yet, so I have to go with the Intel Core2 Duo route and Vista still acts like shit when it comes to gaming, so I'm getting XP -- or at least an XP capable machine (meaning the damn thing needs to have drivers for XP at the very least). I'm going to stick with just 2GB of memory since 1GB served me just fine, except when I tried to program / run HL2 in Vista (which worked, just loading sucked). So I still think 2GB is fine and I can always upgrade later -- assuming they don't fuck me on slots. I'm worried about Dell support though.. they seem to still be lacking in their area. In fact, it seems that unless you get the insane warranties -- they treat you like shit. Which is enough to make me consider going to HP instead.. but I would suspect they are roughly the same in attitude in tech support. I have no reason to believe they are different.

Mice

I'm going to be going to a wired mouse as well. While the MX 1000 was probably the BEST mouse I will /ever/ own, the MX Revolution just was too flakey for me. The LED's aren't working anymore. It never tells me when it needs a charge anymore. It will occassionally just stop working until I unplug, re-seat, and do some voodoo. So, I'm probably going to get a Dell "Premium" mouse since they offer another G7/MX Revolution (I know they aren't the same but for my purposes they are). When I was using a laptop to travel / do things -- wireless fucking ROCKED. Now that I have no need for that, it has no value to me anymore aside from now having wires and consuming batteries or needing to be re-charged. Backups My 160GB backups aren't sufficient anymore and my single 300GB drive just isn't cutting it. I need more space. So I'm also going to order three 500GB WesterDigital MyBooks. One will /always/ be plugged in and on. The other two will serve as backups to this one, with one being swapped out and stored in a closet. I'm more concerned about a surge destroying one than I am a fire -- thus the reason on why I want it unplugged and out of the way. Hopefully this extra 200GB will help.

Conclusion

All in all, I'm probably going to spend about $1,700 -- if I want a new monitor. I'm thinking on getting a 19" capable of doing 1600x1200, but I may go up to a 22" -- I dunno.

So, yet again, I'm left disappointed with Vista Business. Sure, it's pretty. Sure, it has many features that I enjoy that XP doesn't have (out of the box).

• It does not have proper OpenGL support (or at least with my Radeon X1600 Mobility, for my Sager NP 5760 Notebook).
• It's still a good bit of a memory hog
• Watching clips from across my wireless network is a pain in the ass at times. More specifically, everything *but* watching them is a pain in the ass. For example, right-clicking on a file to see how big it is or wanting to append it to WMP.
• iTunes still seems flakey is shit. In fact, I've even had it lock up explorer pretty bad -- to the point bringing up task manager was impossible (or took longer than 5 minutes; which at that point I deemed it never coming up) and required a reboot via holding down the power button for 4-5 seconds... This, at one point, caused my iPod to lock up and I had to Google to see WTF happened and I then learned how to force iPod's to reboot.. which seemingly fixed my iPod that was locked up.
• I almost feel like learning .NET 3.5, the new compact framework for .NET 3.5, and all that new fancy stuff is a little too bleeding edge. In fact, I'm seriously considering bailing off the .NET train and going to some OS independent language -- perhaps Mono or Java. I have no problem programming in VI or notepad. IDE's are nice, but I'm not willing to buy Visual Studio 2008 when it comes out, I think. We'll see if I actually hold to that though...
• Not enough vendors are caring about Vista users *fucking still*. Some are still pointing fingers... yeah.. I got a finger for them... (this one isn't Microsoft's fault, but it still hurts my impression on Vista)
• If I leave my printer unplugged (from the USB) for a few minutes, when I plug it back in I have to reconfigure the damn fax... every...freaking...time. WTF is up with that? Again, probably not Microsoft's fault -- probably HP's. Perhaps even mine for missing some "save this forever-until-it-becomes-rust-or-bad-plastic" setting...
• This one is VERY minor, but something I noticed -- Gimp doesn't take entirely correct screen shots -- the mouse pointer seems to have a strange black'ish circle or something. I wonder why...

So, at this point, one may be wondering why I'm even running a Microsoft OS instead of Linux. The answer is -- Microsoft Office 2007 rules. I really enjoy it. It took me a while to get used to it, but I really do enjoy it. I don't recommend it for people who are slow on computers, however, but I do recommend it for advanced users. Another reason is I'm hoping SP1 will fix a lot of the weirdness, although I doubt it. I want to give them the best shot they have. Alternatively, I could just wait until June '08 and see where it's at there. I seem to hack off the "activiation" wizard because I format and reinstall every 6 months or so... they don't like that. They can bite me. Without teeth. Gums only. :-P

So, I'm giving Vista another shot. I'm going to learn the .NET 3.0 and 3.5 stuff, since 3.5 should be coming out soon. Here is the list of the software I'm running:

• Adobe Flash Player
• Filezilla
• Firefox (with AdBlock plus, Filterset.G, Gmail notifier, Flashblock)
• Logitech Setpoint
• Metapad
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
• Natural Selection
• Pidgin
• Putty
• Steam
• Virtual Clone Drive
• VLC (aka VideoLAN)
• WinDirStat
• WinSCP
• Yahoo Messenger

I'm going to try Nero again, but last time it said I had an invalid code key -- funny, it works in XP -- and Nero wasn't willing to help, so I may be pirating a copy that works because my legal copy doesn't even though they claim it does... blah.

I'm just putting this here so Google will cache it for searches later. If you run across a strange error, I forgot the error but it happened when you attempted to configure the mouse features by loading up the Setpoint software, you should search for the Visual C Redistributable. After a reboot, I was able to get it up however I couldn't get any tabs to open that would allow me to configure the mouse. Once I installed Visual Studio 2005 I had to reinstall the Setpoint software and all was good.