Microsoft Vista 64 bit

Ever since the beginning of the year I have been working quite successfully with the Microsoft Vista 32 bit operating system. I needed to test a program written specifically for Microsoft Vista 64 bit so I took the plunge, bought a copy this weekend, and installed it. Having worked with XP Professional 64 bit, which left me with a rather bad feeling, this newest version of Microsoft's attempt at a 64 bit operating system caught my interest. The stability is wonderful, most everything I've tried actually seems to have software and/or driver support and perhaps more importantly it allows me to take full advantage of 4GB of DDR2 memory I've had installed for many weeks. The 32 bit version of Vista has a 2GB barrier so you can't use any amount of internal memory above hat amount. This 64 bit flavor of an operating system has my full support and I personally congratulate Microsoft on the work that has gone into the stability of this system.

New videocards to come in November?

Christmas is coming and the smell of new videocard technology is in the air. Probably in November we'll see some new videocards from both ATI and NVIDIA just in time for the Christmas shopping season and in plenty of time for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to include the videocard hardware in their PCs for Christmas.

Microsoft fixes Windows Genuine Advantage problems

From Friday until Saturday Microsoft had to repair a problem with the Window Genuine Advantage validation system. If you attempted to validate during that time and were refused or received a message that your software wasn't genuine please retry again. Microsoft worked around he clock until the problem was rectified.

Computeruniverse in Germany

One of the questions I receive the most from English speaking people who reside in Europe (except for the UK) is for websites which offer a large number of computer products that ship to most E.U. countries. That includes items such as video cards, monitors, PC cases, etc. Computeruniverse in Germany is one such store and they offer good prices with excellent selection. At the top right of their webpage there is a small UK English flag. Click on this and you'll see the majority of their site in English. For future benefit I have added their link to the top left of my blog.


http://www.computeruniverse.net/?PID=446203

Google Including StarOffice in the Google Pack

Google apparently has decided it wants to offer more competition against Microsoft this week when Google decided it would include StarOffice in their Google Pack. What a brillant move! Google gets to offer an MS Office alternative that hopefully more people will pick up and use. Sun (who makes StarOffice) might have the benefit of getting more exposure to their software.

Windows Vista and SP1

No doubt many of you have seen Microsoft Vista SP1 (evaluation version) floating around the web. I suppose Microsoft will eventually try to get rid of these but I think they should hold off. With so many people installing this just to get a feel of SP1 it could be quite beneficial in a way.

1. Most of those people installing this already have Vista and they want to see if there is any improvement over the existing version.

2. Some people want to test stability of SP1 for themselves. For all intensive purposes I can tell you quite honestly that it is super stable. Of course I have friends who are beta testers, so I've seen this for myself.

3. It might give Microsoft an overall analysis of just how many people are interested in SP1. I think they will find more interest than they realize. With such a super smooth pre-beta release that seems to have a faultless install there is really NO reason NOT to have this ready by Christmas, so that OEMs can entice more customers to buy PCs for the holiday season.

4. Kudos to the Microsoft Vista team that developed this DVD pre-beta SP1 build. The Microsoft Vista development team has really pushed themselves into a whole new quality bracket. Congrats!

September 10th Barcelona Debut?

I received a postcard in the mail inviting me to a special premiere on 10 September. Unfortunately I can not attend but this is probably an invitation to the official release of the AMD Barcelona CPU which is long overdue. If AMD can entice its customer base well enough and stir enough interest, then its consumer CPU line which should be released in the last quarter of this year should help the company ready itself for Christmas and hopefully some good profit earnings.