Favorite Files

No favorite files added yet

Recent Posts

1. 
   Review - CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack)

   2010-05-21 Beta (Jun 6, 2010)

   One of the better codec packs...
   
   Warning/Note: If you are using Windows7, be careful of what codec packs you install, and ONLY install the codecs that are NOT already available in the OS.
   
   Even this package turns on FFDShow for a lot of things Win7 already does.
   
   The reason it is IMPORTANT to not replace the Win7 codecs that are already in the OS is that the built in codecs are usually GPU accelerated or offer themselves to your GPU/Driver for acceleration when possible.
   
   Installing 3rd Party codecs to replace the built in XVID, H.294, VC1, etc will put the load back on your CPU, often be more blocky/less quality when decoding, and if you are using a notebook will cut time out of your battery life.
   
   So be careful and only install specific codecs/filters that Win7 does not already provide.

2. 
   Review - wikidPad

   1.9 Beta 20 (Dec 16, 2008)

   This reminds me of an extremely light version of Microsoft OneNote or a couple of DOS era applications for stacking notes and topics of various data.
   
   It is free, so that is a plus, and it is handy.
   
   However, if you can afford OneNote (student edition is very cheap), get it instead, as you get a lot more features from integrated OS level searching to even Voice or Handwritten (ink) notes.
   
   OneNote is one of the MS Office applications that really doesn't get enough accolades, which is a crime because a lot of people would find it to be a lifesaver for storing everything from web receipts and screenshots to even using it to outline your next great project or novel.

3. 
   Review - Blender for Windows

   2.48 (Oct 15, 2008)

   Yes the UI is kind of suck. Sometimes brilliant coders are not good at creating user interfaces that make sense to users that didn't write the code. (Yes I dabble in the world of UI theory.)
   
   However, people interested in using this product, just spend an afternoon/evening at YouTube and watch the tons of 'instructional' videos people have put together that will help make sense of things.
   
   Also for what this is, it is quite powerful.

4. 
   Review - DirectX 10 Compatibility Libraries

   Pre-Alpha (Apr 25, 2007)

   Wow, this is great, except for the parts of DirectX 10 that assume the OS is using a GPU Scheduler, and the OS is capable of GPU RAM Virtualization, which XP does not do.
   
   So you have basically wrapped DirectX 10 to basic functions, but there is NO way to provide all the featurs of DirectX on an OS without the 'basic' plumbing required by DirectX 10, two of which I mention above.
   
   There is also the need for GPU Scheduling for the Physics and non Video Call to the GPU through DirectX 10, again something you cannot do on any OS other than Vista, as XP nor any other OS currently has a GPU Scheduler.
   
   (The GPU Scheduler in Vista ensures no application can fully control the GPU nor do the applications have to 'yield' control, as Vista provides a pre-emtive multi-tasking environment for GPUs, as well as scaling across multiple GPU cores without using SLI type technologies.)
   
   So if an application is written to DirectX10 guidelines and never yields the GPU as it expects the OS to do this, or if the DirectX 10 application expects the OS to virtualize the VRAM, it will simply lockup or fail on XP or any other OS.
   
   To honestly support DirectX 10 on XP, the author would also have to back port the Vista video subsystem, including the complete WDDM from Vista.
   
   So the author is well meant in their intentions, but somehow they have a serious area of misinformation as they do not fully understand why DirectX 10 can only be ran under Vista properly.

5. 
   Review - Vista Codec Package

   4.3.4 (Mar 15, 2007)

   This is a nice attempt at bundling a lot of open codecs for Vista.
   
   However, be warned, that it also includes Codecs that are ALREADY in Vista, like AC3 and MPEG2, replacing the Vista based codecs.
   
   This may not seem like a huge problem, but with ATI and NVidia drivers, they use the internal Vista codecs to accelerate video, and when these codecs from this package are installed, you lose Mpeg acceleration for movies.
   
   Now again, this may not seem big, since most people don't care about CPU usage when watching Videos, but if you are an Ultimate user and are using animated or Video desktop backgrounds, it is a massive performance difference.
   
   For example on a low/medium end system using an MPG for a background will eat 5% of the CPU, and even then it does yield nicely. However, if you install the Vista Codec Package, you will find your CPU usage at 50-80% usage just to have an animated desktop video wallpaper.
   
   I wish the person putting together this codec package would step back and look at the codecs ALREADY in Vista and make the ones that overwrite the Vista codecs an 'option' that is off by default for novice users.
   
   Even with AC3, the Vista codec version is designed with the new Vista audio subsystem in mind and therefore it does a better job handling the conversion to Dolby Stereo and Dolby Pro Logic than the free AC3 codec in the package. With the free AC3 codec, unless you have a 5.1 or up sound system, the voice can get lost and the sound volume is greatly reduced.
   
   So I applaud the effort of getting a lot of these codecs into one package, but the fact they will lower your quality and performance for standard things like DVD and HD DVD playing is bad.
   
   So be warned, especially Vista Ultimate users that like having an animated desktop with little to no CPU usage for it.

6. Comment - I want my Windows Update Rollup!

   4.3.4 (Aug 15, 2011 - 2:13 PM)

   Ok, please stop talking, you have NO GRASP of any topic you are referencing.
   
   DX10 is actually MORE efficient and faster than DX9.
   
   The XBox 360 uses a variation of DX10/11 and it does this on 2005 hardware.
   
   There 'increased' texture sizes are for higher detailed scenes.
   
   The way AERO composer in Vista and Win7 (yes was updated a bit in Win7) works is far more lean and faster than the composer in OS X and any composer to date released for Linux or any other OS. AERO also provides a lot of low level side line operations through the 3D portion of the GPU that INCREASES speed, by doing things like decoding images even when looking through pictures in a folder to even rendering fonts.
   
   AERO is also a vector composer, and for WPF and other applications that are vector based, it maintains the redraw states for the applications, making them MUCH faster. This is even true of Games, as running in a Window or with AERO (DWM) enabled instead of true full screen for older games often will 'increase' their speed, as the OS is more efficient at handling the management of VRAM and GPU thread scheduling.
   
   Vista and Win7 changes were due the designs that came from the XBox 360 development, and were put in place BECAUSE THEY ARE FASTER than how XP handled graphics and 3D graphics.
   
   For example the WDDM in Vista and Win7 has GPU virtualization, making VRAM and System RAM work as one, with the OS placing slower referenced VRAM into System RAM, and it then uses teh PCI/e (and part of the AGP bus) specifications to write this RAM to the screen directly. OS X on the other hand, has to transfer and write through its composer, which means it will never be quite as fast.
   
   The WDDM also introduced the WDM 1.0 and 1.1 GPU scheduling technologies. Which means that GPU operations are effectively pre-emptively mult-tasked by the OS, instead of running cooperatively like OS X and ALL other OSes handle 3D threads. This base principle is now considered to be essential for CPUs, yet only Windows does this with GPUs. (This is why RemoteFX and even multi-user login hacks on Windows 7 are rendering MULTIPLE user 3D desktops and 3D applications and games, and can do so on ONE GPU.)
   
   BTW It the GPU virtualization technologies and the unified shader that Microsoft designed for the XBox 360's GPU (Xenos) is what makes modern CUDA and even OpenCL even capable of working to utilize the GPU as a GP-GPU. CUDA 2.x and OpenCL use the base desing of the GPU technology from the XBox 360 and what Vista implemented to work how they do.
   
   The 'increase' in effeciency you notice with Win7 is also present in Vista, as it was about getting ATI and NVidia and Intel to properly rewrite their XPDM drivers as WDDM and optimize around this new concept. Microsoft sent engineers after Vista was released to work hands on with the driver teams at each of these companies around July and by September is when you notice Vista gaming benchmarks caught up to XP and even was running faster than XP.
   
   If your argument was to stick with XP, you are seriously screwing yourself, as on 95% of the computers running XP, Windows 7 WILL RUN FASTER, and not just for graphics. (To get AERO and the faster WDDM, you do need a 2004 DX9 capable GPU, but that is a 7 year old video card that you can find for $20 or less now. HOWEVER, if you want the SAME features and speed as XP, you can continue to use an older GPU or even a newer one and LOAD the XPDM drivers instead of the WDDM drivers. As Vista and Win7 had NO NEED to remove the XPDM driver layer due to how NT is designed.)
   
   Ok?

7. Comment - Google and Mozilla talk HTML5

   4.3.4 (Jul 28, 2011 - 9:42 AM)

   When Google/Chrome/Webkit can even get a solid 30fps on the majority of the graphical HTML 5 tests, the world might take them seriously. Until then, it is a bit of a foolish leap of faith.
   
   So far the only way Google has shown good graphical performance is using the HTML 5 canvas and running either native code or WebGL, and neither are 'standards' and both are HUGE security risks. (Also they aren't using HTML5, other than the box/canvas they are using to hold the position of the content they are rendering, which isn't any different than Java or Silverlight or Flash rendering to a specific 'box' on the page.)

8. Comment - Google and Mozilla talk HTML5

   4.3.4 (Jul 28, 2011 - 9:38 AM)

   I agree, but unless Chrome/WebKit gets re-written from the ground up to treat HTML 5 more like compiled content than an application loading a document, the performance will be worse than Flash.
   
   When you shove the same type of graphics/content to Chrom via HTML 5 and CSS 3, it is slower than Flash. Go look at the 'simple' graphic demos on IETestDrive. Chrome can barely hit 2-3 fps on some tests, that are 'lighter' than flash. (IE9 and IE10 maintaint a ful 60 fps on the same tests, with some tests showing higher end graphical features on IE9 ranging from 100x to 1000x times faster than Chrome.

9. Comment - Free Android tethering apps now blocked by nearly every US carrier

   4.3.4 (May 5, 2011 - 9:25 AM)

   ...completely open platform...
   
   You aren't being serious, right? It is open in that you can see the code, but if you can read machine code/assembly, you can see the code of Windows NT too.
   
   Because Google makes all the decisions, defacto standard comes into play, and it is just as locked as 'closed source' software - especially when carriers are involved and what is allowed to use their networks.
   
   People get too caught up in 'open source' and don't realize that some very popular open source projects are even more restricted and 'controlled' than closed source projects.
   
   For example, VP8/WebM is open source, but Google defines everything about it, and could even fully 'close' access to the code if they wanted. In contrast, VC1 which is Microsoft's WMV, is a closed source alternative, but it is handled by a standards body, that defines it, so that Microsoft can't make it stop working, or mess with the quality or make older devices stop working that use it, etc... So in reality, VC1/WMV is more 'open' as it is controlled by a standards 'group' and not one company, where WebM is 'open source' but more 'closed' in that Google has complete and utter control of the codec and format.
   
   'Open Source' is almost a marketing trick anymore, because on things that it really does matter, people like the sound of open source, but don't think beyond the moniker and realize how 'closed' it really ends up being. XNU/Darwin is another good example, as OS X is based on a very large open source project that a lot of good people put work into, but Apple made the final decisions and changes and basically used the 'open source' terminology to get free work out of well meaning people, without giving them any access or influence in the product, let alone access to upper layers of the OS that it exclusively works with. Making it technically more 'closed' than Microsoft's Windows NT after all was said and done.
   
   Most 'open source' is good stuff, but be careful.
   
   Google is not good with their 'open source'. They are in the process of replacing the Linux kernel with a sideline/legal loophole version of Linux that they fully control - go reference their fights with the Linux community. Google is also closing down the VM they bought that Android's applications run in, even though they already have complete decision and control of it, as any changes you or I make to their 'open source' version would never be used by Google. And they have already delayed the code release of Honeycomb, and are finding legal loopholes in the license to keep it on hold indefinitely.

10. Comment - Get what Apple won't give: TRIM support for 3rd-party SSDs

    4.3.4 (Mar 28, 2011 - 5:10 PM)

    I remember the time when PC users had to manage and deal with technical details like this, and Mac users laughed at how silly it was.
    
    Now in 2011 - Windows users never have to think about stuff like this, as it just works, and Mac users have to fight to get features turned on or fight to get common hardware to work properly.
    
    It is just like SSD on phones, Android is always killing processes because it runs of RAM and does not have a good way of dealing with VM on SSD technology. This is something WP7 inherently knows how to handle without degrading SSD.
    
    Microsoft even takes this to the next level of allowing users to use SSD for ReadyBoost with advanced compensation that it won't degrade the life or performance of the SSD devices even acting as a full time active cache mechanism.