One day after Nvidia released its certified Vista drivers, ATI releases a refresh of its display drivers for Windows Vista:
Catalyst® 7.2 Display Driver for Windows Vista (32 bit)
Catalyst® 7.2 Display Driver for Windows Vista (64 bit)
Be sure to read the Release Notes before installing these drivers.
[Update: Fixed release notes link.]
WHQL-certified Vista drivers for Nvidia GPUs (GeForce, GeForce Go, and TNT series) are out.
As of this morning, the main Nvidia download page points to older drivers (January 5). Here are the most recent versions:
Vista 64-bit ForceWare Release 100, version 100.65
Vista 32-bit ForceWare Release 100, version 100.65
Note that the main download locations are for English US versions only. If you’re in a different location, follow the International Driver links on each page.
Oh, and the servers are getting slammed (I’m getting a pitiful 5.23 KB/sec), so you might want to wait a little while before you begin your download. At least until I’m done.
Update: I’m now up to a whopping 8.28 KB/sec.
Well, not exactly dead. But as this snippet of my current feed statistics shows, the overwhelming majority of people who come to this site are choosing to read RSS feeds in their web browser:
Google just began reporting its readership numbers last week (previously, all a publisher like me knew was that Google was downloading my feed, with no indication of how many people were actually subscribed via Google). It’s remarkable to me that nearly a quarter of the people reading this site are using Google’s tool, and nearly three out of four are using a browser-based service. That Other Readers category includes some other web-based products as well, like My Yahoo and Netvibes and Opera RSS Reader, meaning the category is even larger than it looks.
In all, there are more than 70 named products and services trying to compete for that tiny slice of the pie. Consolidation, anyone?
(Thanks to Feedburner for the excellent analytics.)
Jon Udell offers some insightful comments and a 14-minute screencast showing off how tagging works in Windows Vista;s Photo Gallery. His comments are remarkably insightful. I was especially struck by this one:
Conventional wisdom was that people could never be bothered to invest effort in tagging their stuff. What del.icio.us and then Flickr and then a host of other web applications showed is that people will invest that effort if the activation threshold is low and the reward is immediate. On the web, the rewards are both personal (I can more easily find my photos) and broadly social (I can interact not only with friends and family but with like-minded photographers everywhere). On the desktop, the rewards will mainly be personal and more narrowly social (friends and family), though if photos can bring their tags with them when they travel to the cloud, the broader social rewards become available too.
A few weeks ago, I called Photo Gallery one of the “killer features” in Vista. Yes, I know about iPhoto and Picasa and even Photoshop, but this is a genuinely different experience. The idea that your metadata actually lives in the file in a standard format (XMP) instead of in a separate database is groundbreaking, especially as part of a free program included with practically every new computer sold to consumers.
My Hands On Vista series continues at ZDNet. Here are the two latest installments:
Vista Hands On #3: Check your disk before upgrading
Before you even think of upgrading to Vista, check the disk you plan to install it on. Here’s why.
Vista Hands On #4: Clean install with an upgrade key
You’ve probably read all about the “Vista upgrade loophole.” Well, it’s not a loophole. It’s a useful and perfectly legal workaround to deal with an amazingly stupid technical restriction that Microsoft built into the Vista setup program. I’ve got the details and step-by-step instructions to work around it.
Microsoft’s official definition of a clean Windows install involves booting from the Windows DVD and pointing Setup at a piece of bare hard disk or a freshly formatted partition.
But that’s not the only way to do a clean install. In fact, thanks to the new Setup architecture in Vista you can now do what you would never have dared to do in earlier Windows versions: install a fresh copy of Windows on the same hard disk as your current copy.
In the second installment of my 30 days of Vista Hands On series at ZDNet, I’ve got details on why this works, how to run Setup (the steps are easy but not necessarily intuitive), and how to clean up the pieces of your old Windows installation afterwards. For details, see:
Oh, dear. Dwight’s new MacBook is DOA:
Obviously, this is a defective hardware issue, and I’ll need to do an exchange.
This is not the way one is supposed to be baptized as an Apple fanboy. When your unboxing photos end with a machine that doesn’t work, it’s anticlimactic. And this is not the first problem. The review unit he had before was plagued with Wi-Fi issues:
I had problems getting it to connect reliably. Once it did connect, it was more often than not maddeningly slow. … This happened with two different MacBooks — Apple sent a replacement unit when I complained about the WiFi in the first one — and Apple’s support forums are peppered with other MacBook owners suffering the same agony.
Three different machines, all with problems. So tell me again what “It just works” means?
I’ve just launched a new series of Windows Vista tips over at ZDNet, where I’ll be posting a tip a day for the next 30 days.
Today’s installment covers product keys. When you buy a retail copy of Windows Vista, the most important part of your purchase is the product key that comes with it. That 25-character key determines which Vista edition you’re allowed to install and activate, and it also tells the Setup program whether you’ve purchased a full or upgrade license. I explain how to check your activation status and how to uncover the product key that’s actually in use.
For details, read:
Wow. That’s all I can say about the Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan.
I’ve replaced a few computers in the last two months and have been reshuffling hardware around the office. I decided that my MWave Pentium D 830 PC (vintage mid-2005), which had previously been my main production system, would now take over server duties: shared files, web apps on an intranet, and virtual machines via Virtual Server 2005 R2. In the process of making the switch I noticed that the noise level of this system had become unacceptable, and it was especially noticeable in its new location. Even with the door shut, I could hear this PC running from 10 feet down the hallway. A little careful listening suggested that the bulk of the noise was coming from a single case fan in the back. The power supply and CPU fans were both inoffensive.
I decided to replace the case fan with the Real Silent fan ($12.99 from endpcnoise.com; the total with shipping came to around $20).
It took just a few minutes to replace the fan. Undo four screws, swap out old fan, use same screws to secure new fan. The power and fan connectors were easily accessible and the plugs on the replacement fan matched the original.
When I turned the system back on, I wasn’t expecting a huge difference. But the change has been profound. When I place my hand in front of the fan’s exhaust, I can feel warm air being pulled out of the case, but I can’t hear the fan at all. I’m sure the noise level is measurable, but it’s crossed well to the good side of the noise fatigue line and blends comfortably into the background.
Generic case fans are especially susceptible to this sort of deterioration. Over time, they seem to get louder and louder. Which is why this sort of replacement can be so effective. Next up, I’ll give the same treatment to a three-year-old Dell PowerEdge server that’s buzzing front and back. If it has the same effect, I’ll have a Real Silent office for the first time in years.
Chapter 1 of Windows Vista Well-Connected is about tips, tweaks, and tune-ups. There’s never any shortage of Windows advice on the Internet,
I’ve run across some interesting collections of Windows Vista tips lately. I’d like your feedback on which of the individual tips within these collections you found most interesting or intriguing. Do you have any opinion about the quality and presentation of any individual site? Which of these sites do you trust as a source of information about Windows?
Who are your most-trusted Windows sources? Have you run across any tips collections that aren’t on this list? Add your pointers and suggestions in the comments over at the book’s blog. (If you want to add a comment here instead, that’s OK, too.)
Ed Bott 