Apparently my NOD32 (anti-virus) and Outpost (firewall) subs ended about
a month ago. I never noticed. Frankly I was just going to let it rot,
but then I did promise Erik that I'd find something that "impressed me
about Windows" by the end of the Week, so I decided to bite the bullet
and protect Microsoft's Swiss Cheese OS for yet another year.
I'm still working on that promise, BTW. No luck so far.
The best I can come up with is Creative's Media Centre (or I think they
spell it "Center"), which facilitates DVD-Audio playback using their (up
to) 192kHz compatible "Audigy 2 ZS" PCMCIA card, that I bought some time
ago. Although this card also works under Linux, so I presume MPlayer
would handle that too. I'd have to check. So this is more a driver
features issue, than application specific. Now I just have to find
somewhere that sells DVD-A discs.
eRightSoft's SUPER® is very handy, and can convert between virtually all
formats with superb results. However, its multifarious back-ends are
FOSS programs like ffmpeg, etc., so I'm not sure if that really counts
as a good example of something impressive exclusively under Windows.
Vegas Video is (as I've said many times before) a stunning NLE, but I've
been using Cinelerra quite a lot recently, and once you overcome the
learning curve, I find it eminently suitable for NLE work. Still, I'd
have to say Vegas wins that one. Is it "amazing" and "impressive"
though? I'll award a cautious "yes", since I'm well used to that app,
and the shiny-shiny has worn off somewhat.
During my quest for the perfect Windows "Wow!", I've come across my fair
share of "Boo's" as well, especially SMB anomalies, and several crashes,
but I'll try to avoid discussing that, in preference for things that I
like about Windows - not an easy task.
One serious issue that I've partly diagnosed, turned out to be nothing
to do with software. I'd been blaming Windows for spontaneous hard
resets on the P4 machine. Turns out that the same box resets under
Fedora too. I suspect a voltage irregularity and/or cooling issue.
If I'm going to be using XP for extended periods, I'm going to have to
do something about the damned sickly colour scheme. AFAICT I have just
three choices, sky-blue, emerald-green, or silver-grey. All three of
those schemes give me a headache. Is there any way to just make the
whole desktop virtually black, like this:
http://media.slated.org/albums/userpics/Fedora-6.png
... I mean everything including dialogue boxes, not just wallpaper?
Anyway, sports fans, the game continues. I'll keep you posted.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
| make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
| - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
`----
Fedora release 7 (Moonshine) on sky, running kernel 2.6.22.1-41.fc7
02:30:30 up 90 days, 2:25, 2 users, load average: 0.07, 0.04, 0.05
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