What OS do you guys use?

I just upgraded my laptop to Vista. So far so good.

I hate it on my laptop and I am going to format it back to XP this weekend. 20% peformance hit on gaming, 55% hit on battery life, and a major hit with HD performance. No thank you.
 
I've heard battery life improves. What are you doing wrong? :gayo:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128252/article.html

I have looked long and hard and set as much for battery life as I could and still play something like WoW. The battery life just keeping notepad open in XP was over 4 hours. In Vista barely 2.5 hours.

The drivers in XP for my particular laptop have controls to even control the screen refresh rate if it is plugged in vs. on battery. I think there might be more controls in XP than Vista (at least for my laptop) to help control battery life.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6534816.html
 
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One more post about the demo scene. Have you seen this? I'm seriously tempted to order it. Would make great background noise while trying to do work. (Not to mention motivation to learn programming better.
 
There was a time when knowing how many pins your ram needed was very important... not so much anymore unless you're running seriously outdated crap. :p

I dont know fawk all about ram, just from fly. I finally know that I dont have to look specifically for pc2100 anymore, lol.
 
Yeah, I remember running the weak pc demos at the time.

Of course, that reminds me of the audio files they had back then. s3m's mod's. What were the others?

mod, mtm, it, s3m etc.. etc.. etc.. I have a TON of them. scene.org is a great place to grab some old and new stuff.. Look for Necros, Farmer and Ded Silence.

One more post about the demo scene. Have you seen this? I'm seriously tempted to order it. Would make great background noise while trying to do work. (Not to mention motivation to learn programming better.

When I went to Assembly '02, they where just putting together the first Mindcandy DVD. All the old groups worked with them to get the highest quality on DVD. Really cool stuff.

I remember another video I used to own called Beyond the Minds Eye. (Something like that, anyway.) Ever see that one? Would be funny to see what used to be impressive. :)

Oh man. After seeing demos, the first time I saw that, I thought, "how lame.. I've seen better on a 386..."

But the first time I saw Second Reality by Future Crew, I nearly fell out. Then, years later, when I saw Toast.

What's sad, is that the US did have a decent demo scene, but it sadly came and went in less than 5 years. North America just doesn't get in to it. Not sure why. I wish I'd never left. I finally got the money to buy a nice piece of hardware to make music and went to do that.

Ahhh.. I miss it.. more than I miss cracking and phreaking..

edit: Captured (to avis) Demos
 
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Looks like someone has a much better memory than I do on those things. :)

Any thoughts on why the demo scene didn't stick here? What were the 5 years it flourished?
 
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128252/article.html

I have looked long and hard and set as much for battery life as I could and still play something like WoW. The battery life just keeping notepad open in XP was over 4 hours. In Vista barely 2.5 hours.

The drivers in XP for my particular laptop have controls to even control the screen refresh rate if it is plugged in vs. on battery. I think there might be more controls in XP than Vista (at least for my laptop) to help control battery life.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6534816.html


Before you dump it check out all of the power settings, some of them are not in the obvious place. Also try turning off Aero or Windowblinds instead. (if you have access to the Beta. It will be released on the 5th of feb otherwise) Some people on lowerend hardware are reporting that doing either significantly helps battery life.
 
Before you dump it check out all of the power settings, some of them are not in the obvious place. Also try turning off Aero or Windowblinds instead. (if you have access to the Beta. It will be released on the 5th of feb otherwise) Some people on lowerend hardware are reporting that doing either significantly helps battery life.

I tried that before I dumped vista, but to no avail. In a meeting with just notepad open 1.5 hours later with maximum battery (which makes the screen more or less unreadable) I was down to 51% battery life. today in the same meeting with not-so-aggressive battery saver settings on XP I was only down to 78%.

And Aero (and directX 10) are the only features worth getting Vista for, so why bother turning it off?

Fuck Vista. Fuck Vista right in the ear.