When: Sunday February 17th, 8pm EST - Monday February 18th 9am EST

This weekend we will be conducting extensive maintenance on the database systems that power Stardock's forums, articles systems and blogs across all websites.  During this period we will be locking the database preventing anyone from posting to the forums (new threads, replies, private messages etc).

For full details on the upgrade, go here.

It's kind of hard to believe that one year has gone by since the release of Windows Vista.  It seems like all the hype was just yesterday, but even thought the release is far behind us, that certainly hasn't stopped people from talking about it.  Being that Vista is one year old, I wanted to give my take on how my Vista experience has been throughout the past year.

Vista and I had a rough start to be honest.  I was first using Vista as a dual-boot with XP, mainly because my printer would not work with Vista and a few other minor compatibility issues.  After a couple of months I was pleased that Dell updated my printer drivers to work with Vista.  Unfortunately at that time, my PC decided it didn't like me anymore and the motherboard went its separate way, so I had to build a new PC from scratch.  That seemed like a good time to install Vista Ultimate and start fresh again.

I really didn't like working with Vista much at first.  Looking back now I think it was more of a dislike of not working with XP.  However, I quickly picked up on the changes in Vista and eventually began to enjoy working with it.  As far as hardware goes, I built a pretty nice Core 2 Duo system with an Nvidia 7600GT video card and 2gb of RAM.  It runs beautifully and the only issues I had was the lack of an audio driver from Turtle Beach, which has since been taken care of.

One of the biggest complaints you hear about Windows Vista, is its problem with application compatibility.  The only big issue I had with this was with Photoshop CS2.  Strange enough, the problem has since worked itself out, although I have no reason why, but hey it works. 

Performance wise Vista has lived up to my expectations.  I experienced a noticeable difference  in performance between XP and Vista on the machines, but whatever you do, do not run Vista with less than 2GB of RAM.  Memory is just too cheap these days, so save yourself the trouble and get more.  The only issue I have with performance now is the awful boot time.  It just seems like it takes forever to get to a workable desktop.

Is Vista perfect?  Absolutely not, but after working with it for over a year I would now rather have Vista on my PC than XP.  I was going to list the things I don't like, but I figured we hear enough of that every other day.  The common problems with Vista are known, and hopefully many will be addressed in the upcoming SP1. 

So overall, after a year of usage I give Vista a 7 on the scale of how much I like it.  I have a huge list of things I want to see for the next version of Windows, but we will save that for another day.

 

I have a question for the community at large.

Over the past year that I’ve been reading Lifehacker and other productivity sites (like 43 Folders), I’ve noticed a number productivity apps for the Mac OSX that are just friggin awesome. They really seem to be well thought-out and really "fit into the workflow."

For example:

• Things (http://culturedcode.com/things/)
• iGTD (http://www.igtd.pl/iGTD/iGTD2/index.html)
• Omnifocus (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/)
• Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html)

My question is, why don’t such things exist for Windows?... or do they, and we just don’t know about it?

Surely, there exist the same needs for really good productivity apps among Windows users. Heck, if David Allen gave a 45-minute lecture to Google (and I’m sure a lot of them are PC users), then the need is out there. And yet, as much as Outlook and OneNote are useful applications, they just don’t "fit into the workflow" as well as the aforementioned Mac OSX applications. And they definitely aren’t as polished (with regard to either eye-candiness or usability).

Recently, Long Zheng described a new business app that uses WPF, and it looks pretty sleek.

So, the capability is there... But such things are still few and far between. Indeed (as far as I know), even Microsoft itself hasn't released any great apps that exploit WPF or the other capabilities of Vista.

So what gives? Is there just less interest after all?  (Hard to believe.)  Is Windows just harder to program for?  Do Windows apps just try to do too much, and therefore not see the forest for the trees? Are marketing and competition different when dealing with Windows?  Are GTD and productivity needs (such as Scrivener) still an under-the-radar thing that only appeals to the same crowd who end up preferring Macs anyway, and thus the creative people who write this software only write it for that platform?

With the huge userbase in Windows; with powerful Microsoft Office applications, including Word/Outlook/OneNote 2007 (all pretty good, actually); with the new potential opened up by Vista’s WPF – I’d expect to see a lot of leveraging of the Windows environment… apps that utilize the power of all these key applications, but create new user interfaces (and better user experiences) for it.

Just really curious. Look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts!

~ Alessandro (cavalierex)

What is the ideal ultra-portable? What is the minimum functionality for a device that you could truly use on the road?

Here are my specs:

1. Must be able to run Windows Vista or whatever is the current desktop Microsoft OS. NOT Windows Mobile.
2. The keyboard has to be big enough to be able to touch type comfortably.
3. It should have a trackpoint (little eraser thing that Thinkpads have) so that i don't require an extra mouse or lose space to a touch pad.
4. Lots of ports and support for 3G or better.
5. Must be as light as possible. Ideally less than 2 pounds.
6. Must be at least 1024 pixels wide display. 1024x600 for instance

The pictured NEC is pretty darn close to it. Though I cannot tell if it has the necessary pointing device functionality.

Some of you who walk into your local Best Buy store may be wondering where all of the jewel case games and apps went? The truth is some Best Buy stores are sending them back into the warehouse simply due to lack of sales on them. This does not mean that they will not continue to sell games or software, just the ones in jewel cases $9.99 and under. This comes as a major dissapointment since some of their best games on their value shelf are a better bargain compared to the digital download counterparts which charge as much as $19.99 for a download copy of a game. Hey! I saw Galactic Civ Complete for $9.99 at Target!