Being a Vista user, I’m used to getting smacked in the face, and yet even I was curious when Vista wanted to download a 56 megabyte update — is it installing something completely new?

So naturally I checked out the Knowledge base article:

The words “Friendster,” “Klum,” “Nazr,” “Obama,” and “Racicot” are not recognized when you check the spelling in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008

Oh, noes! That’s serious indeed. And worse: it applies to such critical applications as Windows Mail! — The Office apps seem to “correctly” accept all of these words.

So to re-iterate, 5 words weighing in at 34 bytes compresses down to 56 megs. Giving a compression factor of ~10^jeeze-louise-people!

Seriously guys, I don’t want to hear any more about how XML adds a lot of overhead.

p.s. I’m pretty sure I know why this happened. The PM in charge of this had two choices: EITHER have a dev write code to do a diff, and get an SDET to test it which could take a long time, and get slagged in the .01% of cases where something goes wrong OR just throw resources at it, in this case the bandwidth of millions of people. It might have actually been the right choice from their perspective, but it betrays some poor design somewhere.

p.p.s. Standard disclaimer: I used to work for the Borg as a PM, but I know nothing about this particular team.

Desktop:
Grr, Vista won’t let me fiddle with my C:\Windows directory. It’s not a security protection though, just a personal distrust so I had to take ownership of the windows directory and give myself fiddling permissions.

Laptop:
Apparently, there is no way on earth to get sound drivers for a Gateway MX 6445 for Windows XP except having them pre-installed from the factory, all the other drivers are hassles: network, wifi. After a few hours down the drain, I installed Ubuntu and everything was automatically recognized and drivers were installed without even needing an internet connection.

Win: Ubuntu.

I’m using a Pinnacle Remote Kit (for MCE Certified for Vista USB 2.0 Interface) that was $30 off newegg, and it worked out of the box for Windows Media Center but I want to use other programs. All of this is being done on Windows Vista Ultimate.

Winamp

Winamp takes the cake for compatibility with this remote.

1. Press Ctrl+P to bring up preferences
2. From Global Hotkeys, enable default multimedia key support

Now winamp will respond to keys whenever it’s running unless another program has focus and wants the clicks for itself (like if you’re running Media Center).

Windows Media Player

I tested WMP first, and I could’ve sworn it wasn’t working, but after configuring winamp, WMP now responds to next, previous, play, pause, stop, volume, mute, back and OK seems to go to the previous file.

Media Player Classic

MPC, everyone’s favourite little open source player isn’t so friendly:

1. Press “O” to bring up options
2. Go to Player\Keys
3. Double click on the “key” entry, so for “Next Playlist Item” click on the string VK_NEXT, it turns into a drop down and you can change it to some of the media keys. The one’s I’m sure of are: VK_MEDIA_NEXT_TRACK, VK_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE, VK_MEDIA_PREV_TRACK, VK_MEDIA_STOP but I haven’t gotten play/pause to work correctly.

So I’ve been using Windows Vista at work for a week now, and I think I’m going to upgrade at least one machine to it. I’m not interested in the frosted windows, the colours or the junk at the sides, but it has one killer feature that I was considering programming:

You can change the volume of different applications separately.

I’ve wanted this feature in a few contexts (playing games/listening to MP3s, video editing/previewing) but a lot of programs just use the global volume as their own personal playground.

Oh, and now that I’m back on my WinXP machine, I’m really also missing the start menu where you can type what you want instead of finding it to click on. That’s so useful.

(it might be worth noting that I already have a copy, so I only need to justify installing it )