Tech Tips and Reviews
Off the bat, I have to tell you, I do not have the fastest or the best machine in the world.
I have a machine that is at the max processor and ram for the motherboard’s capability.
Here are the specs for the machine I am using.
Sis 755 A-2 Motherboard
Sempron 3400+ 64 bit Processor
Nvidia 7600GS 512 mb
2 Gigs kingston 3200 ddr Memory
Sony cd/dvd burner
500 watt power supply
Ok for the past 7 or 8 years, The way I have benchmarked computers and operating systems Would be by playing Grand Theft auto III.
Of course I have since then added vice city and San Andreas to the mix. But GTAIII Is the benchmark for me. If you do not like the game sorry
But please hang with me on this.
For a long time I fought trying to make my computers strong and sturdy enough to handle the demands this game calls out. Computers these days are actually strong enough to handle these demands.
After the install of just straight vista drivers I went to pcpitsop and did my first benchmark of my machine. The score was pathetic. I kind of knew what would happen after I installed gtaIII, But I go ahead and start the game. Before the load screen I get a notice saying that there is some sort of dll missing (sorry all, I did not write it down) . I then hear the game start up but minimized in the task bar. I click the notification and the game takes over the screen. I see this look that took me back to the days of 256 megs ram and nvidia 440 on a 800 meg processor. This game looked wretched. But what do you expect with o/s drivers and not vendor drivers? Well since it’s a newer o/s than XP, I would expect better results than xp, not similar to win 98 on a crap machine. Very pixilated simi laggy but not as laggy as you would think with the way it looked.
After the drivers had been installed I start GTAIII again. Again it gave me the notice of missing dll. When the unnamed player in gtaIII walked out of his hide out I noticed artifacts. The garage was covered with imaging from the walls adjacent to the Entry to the garage. The player had openings so you could see through him in many places. I moved on and walked into the garage and drove the banshee down the ocean blvd to check how the game (typically) lags (with bad bad drivers or bad hardware) as you drive under objects, like the over head train, and trees and bridge. The game was very jaggedly laggy and objects where not being displayed properly.
After the gtaIII test I tried the other two Grand Theft Auto games and got the same mess. I swear the game looks better and plays better on linux with just the linux basic drivers, but the lag is way worse on Linux.
So I did searches for help forums and the like. I found that allot of people with the 7000 series nvidia video cards had similar issues. I never found a solution that worked. No, using older drivers did not help. Until sis/ecs releases more than one gart driver I am pretty much stuck in the same spot.
I did notice that the fonts on websites looked a bit bigger than when on xp.
As much as I enjoyed the looks of Aero (makes me think of Ubuntu) I decided to try turning it off. I used Black Viper’s tips from his tweak site .
The game did not change. and my bench score on pcpitstop only went up 10 points from the first test with base drivers.
Vista test was done 3/29/08. So please wait a few months before you tell me they fixed the operating system. I did try all online update and nothing got better that I could witness myself.
I am now back on xp and my machine runs three times a fast. using the same direct version as I used on vista.. 9.0c
Ok So I was sent to office depot 5 minutes before lunch started. I decided to swing by the burger place and get some lunch before I go in, and just waste an hour and 15 minutes for lunch instead of my regular hour lunch. I went in to Office depot and gathered all the things I needed into a buggy (office supply junk, paper pens toner ink) and walk in circles for a few minutes. While walking in circles and getting followed around by the depot snipers ( not sure they thought I was shop lifting, so i picked up stuff and would misplace it like crazy) I stumbled on the $9 software bin. While rooting around I saw a “buy one get one free” sign. So I decided to dig around and make sure I find something. Well I found a web page design thingy disk. I pretty much knew it would be crap because it’s price and the fact that the makers say nothing about it’s form or style. Like css,html javascript. Nothing just says something about templates.
The product is made by a company named Cosmi, the product name is “WEB PAGE CREATOR”. there is a circle stamp on the front with a symbol that says “#1” and some stuff in tiny freaking print though I can make out the work “productivity” . Well I scanned it with asquared,virscan.org, norton anti vir and found no reason to freak out.
So today I finally install the software. The actual software they are selling is all of about 10 megs of software, the rest, well, the rest is a 2002 version of open office.
The software they created (I think they created or just downloaded from some poor joke’s website) is just a shell script hand full of short cut links to open office items but named differently in the program. Don’t worry, when the open office items open up they do show their names at the top of the program’s window.
Well My True honest opinion, as far as web design goes, you can do everything this software bundle can do, Simply by using netscape navigator 7.2 suite edition. ns 7.2 suite comes with a program called “composer” and well, you can do the whole “what you see is what you get” web design part of using a program just like you can with cosmi’s erm, uh, java sun system’s? open office program.
plus netscape 7.2 s does not come with netzero crapware like this program does..
My call?
Walk past this thing, sure waste of ten bucks.
| TruXter Toolbar With Radio And feeds |
I was using Xandros 3.4 for over a year. I purchased my disk from Fry’s electronics for like $29.
Well I saw in all of the help forums for modding of Xandros desktops and boot screens tons of help but it was all for 4.0 so I installed 4.0 . It really looks good and comes with a blue launch button as opposed to the default red I had to use with v3.4 . Quite nice. I changed the start button to a modified that I found through the links of the Xandros forum. with 3.4 when you changed the launch button you kept getting a notice to upgrade service pack, even if you already have. When you do the service pack upgrade it changes your launch button back to default. but with 4.0 , no you do not get forced into the change. Nice addon I like this.
When I installed wine again, not a hiccup one. Not one issue. It went great. My Grand Theft Auto Vice City and San Andreas both play nicely and my III does not freeze up on the video configuration like it did with 3.4.
I am happy with 4.0 it was a very good move.
I was there at Fry’s to actually by a new motherboard and nvidia video card so I could prepare myself for Vista. Thank god I did not get into that mess. Xandros is really good. I did of course remove my Ubuntu partition. Ubuntu is not pleasant at all. Even though Ubuntu is Debian just like Xandros; it does not come close in comparison to Xandros with features. I am satisfied and I hope this helped you decide what you will do to you computer.
enjoy.