Vista, XP and Seven – To Be or Not To Be

Despite all of the scathing reviews of Windows Vista, I felt I needed to experience it first hand before I could formulate an opinion about it. Being a Computer Repair/Troubleshooter Tech here in my area, I needed to know it, so I purchased a copy and installed it on one of my systems. I made sure all of my hardware was Vista ready and in no time at all, I was running Vista! Now I have a few different systems, a Dell Desktop that the kids use, My Dell laptop and 2 Dell Desktop systems in my office. I decided to put Vista on a system I built myself with an AMD Sempron processor. I began to experience what my customers were complaining about. I used my Vista rig almost exclusively for 4 months. It was so difficult to network I finally wiped my drive and went back to XP SP2. Why? Because XP is efficient, Vista isn’t. Sharing files with other PCs and My 3 Tivos was pretty hard. Now I’m Vista Free and XP Carefree! XP is easy to share printers, Vista is not. XP breezes through Office Docs, Vista sometimes couldn’t open Word documents. Sending files to and fro between XP machines and Macs, a breeze, using Vista, most of the time doesn’t work. Vista is a safer OS right out of the box, but if you’re security-minded you can be just as safe with XP. Vista seems to be so bad Microsoft is preparing the release of Windows 7. Kind of reminds me what happened after the horrible Windows ME came out. Why call it Windows Seven? 1. Windows 95 2. Windows 98 3. Windows ME 4. Windows 2000 5. Windows XP 6. Windows Vista 7. Windows 7. Good enough reason?

2009: The Year of the Trekker, The Year of the Geek

Right after I wrote the post: 2008: The Year Of The Trekker, Paramount announced that the new Star Trek XI Film would be opening in the summer of 2009, rather than the original Christmas 2008 release date. Paramount is hoping the film will be a Summer Blockbuster. There’s the pressure again. Hopefully the entire geek population will go see it. We have to make sure this movie is successful, otherwise there may be no more for a long time to come! As for the Bring Back Kirk movement, as I’ve stated before, there’s no way to put Shatner in the film since he was killed in Star Trek: Generations. When Spock died in The Wrath of Kahn, the next movie was devoted to restoring Spock to life, and that’s the type of event that would be necessary to bring back Kirk. Great plot for Star Trek XII. Kirk’s still in the Nexus – it was a manifestation of Kirk in Generations that was killed by first Soran’s weapon, then they changed the death to the fall of the bridge with Kirk on it. There’s always a way to bring someone back from the dead in the movies.

Now I already know quite a bit about the movie, and I’m at the point where I will no longer read spoilers. I want to be somewhat surprised when I see it and I’m glad JJ Abrams has tightened security on the sets. I’m glad that Paramount didn’t go with the last idea for a movie, about the Romulan War. That’s a subject would have been a great idea for Enterprise had it lasted for 7 years. I’m not ashamed to say I loved Enterprise – the first two years were kind of shaky but they got their footing by Season 3, and in the last part of the fourth season had my favorite Enterprise episodes, In a Mirror Darkly, Parts 1 & 2.

So, c’mon Nerds, Geeks, all lovers of Sci-Fi, lets make Star Trek XI a Box Office Success! Show you’re a Trekker by making the image above your Desktop Background (right-click on image)! Live Long and Prosper (at the Box Office, too)!

My Review of the Tivo HD DVR

Up until just recently I had only owned Series 2 Tivo Boxes, 3 of them. It was perfect for analog cable, and until Comcast deactivated the serial port it was sufficient to control a digital cable box with. I was just fine until I first saw HD on a TV screen – then I was hooked. There was no turning back. I went out and bought a LCD HDTV and then purchased a Tivo HD at woot.com for a mere 179.99 – I ordered the cablecards right after and then I awaited their arrival. All I had to do was slide the Multi-stream Cablecard into Slot 1. then call the cable office and give them the numbers from the Tivo – it took less than an hour to get it up and running. Its performance has been highly satisfactory. I am able to do everything I did with my Series 2 Tivos – play music, movies and photos from my PC Server onto the Tivo HD, transfer shows and movies to and from my PCs, download web content from the internet and more. The HD channels work great and look beautiful – it is far superior to the Cable Co DVR! Direct ethernet connection, plus two USB ports and an esata port for an external drive – partnered with a RCA Surround Sound System and a RCA DVD Player/Recorder that upconverts my DVD collection to 720p thru the HDMI port, together they make quite the entertainment center.