Eyefinity: nice demo, but I won’t play games on it

Friday, September 11th, 2009

The new ATI Eyefinity system has created quite an online buzz. Otherwise sane-sounding people have been openly drooling over the idea of combining six monitors into a vast 7,680 x 3,200 display; and, in fairness, if you just focus on that really big number it is quite seductive.

But, while I hate to be a Negative Nancy, I think that excitement needs to be cooled down with a few caveats. (more…)

Windows 7 and the party faithful

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Have you heard Microsoft’s latest marketing wheeze for Windows 7? They’re sponsoring individuals to throw parties on or around October 22 to celebrate its launch, sweetening the deal for successful applicants with a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate and a mysterious “Party Pack” of goodies and (presumably) marketing material.

It’s an idea that will, I’m sure, be met with cynicism, distrust and sneering in the streets. But personally I think it’s an inspired notion, and exactly the right way to handle this particular launch. (more…)

My one-line, no-frills backup solution

Friday, August 28th, 2009

I’ve heard it said that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who appreciate the value of backups, and those who will.

It’s a maxim that’s been particularly on my mind lately, after I spent last month testing 21 external hard disks – almost all of which came with some sort of backup software – and then, this week, looked at two standalone backup applications as well. Right now, if there’s anyone who’s apprised of his backup options, it’s me.

But do you know which backup package I’ve chosen for my own use? None. (more…)

How to make stubborn 32-bit apps work on 64-bit Windows

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

By now you’ve hopefully seen my feature on 64-bit Windows in the latest issue of PC Pro. And perhaps you derived some comfort from my breezy assurances that “you don’t need to worry too much about application compatibility. Almost all modern 32-bit software should install and run flawlessly on a 64-bit edition of Windows.”

Well, of course, whenever you write something like that you’re asking for trouble. (more…)

Iran: Will Nokia achieve what Bush couldn’t?

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Over the past week I’ve been dipping into the flood of “tweets” pouring out of Tehran. And I’ve been impressed: primarily, of course, by the spirit of the Iranian people, but also by the way Twitter has kept me informed with an immediacy and rawness that mainstream media coverage can’t match. What we’re seeing in the east is a landmark event, not only in geopolitical history, but also in the history of the internet

But while Twitter has undoubtedly played a major role in events, there’s a technology which I think has been even more pivotal. I’m talking about camera-phones — such as the one that captured the last living moments of a young Iranian woman named Neda, shot dead during a protest on Saturday in the streets of Tehran. (more…)

9½ things Wolfram Alpha doesn’t know

Monday, May 18th, 2009

So, after months of anticipation, Wolfram Alpha is finally here. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve found it a big disappointment.

I mean, obviously it was never going to slay Google on its first day. But after watching Stephen Wolfram’s pre-launch screencast I did believe it was at least going to be a credible alternative information source, offering authoritative and structured answers in a way no traditional search engine could aspire to.

Sadly, now Wolfram Alpha’s here it turns out that it doesn’t bloody know anything.

(more…)

Windows 7’s Disingenuous “Advantage”

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Last week, Microsoft announced some details of anti-piracy measures in Windows 7. It sounds like they’re going to be slightly less intrusive than those in Vista, and probably roughly as effective.

I don’t exactly resent all this product validation stuff. I’d prefer it if Microsoft didn’t feel the need to do it; but I accept that the company has a legitimate interest in dissuading casual copying, and to me a one-time online authorisation doesn’t seem an unreasonable way of going about that.

But I do resent all the weasel words and spin that surround the process. (more…)

Windows 7 GDI performance: the trade-off

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Yesterday I noted that our Office benchmark runs surprisingly slowly in the Windows 7 RC. Today I’ve been digging around for an explanation.

The first step was to see whether the slowdown affected all Office applications equally, or whether it manifested mainly in one application. This was easily tested with a stopwatch, and the results were pretty clear: the Access, Excel and Word tests completed in effectively identical times in Vista and Windows 7 RC… but the PowerPoint test took more than three times as long in Windows 7.

Look, here’s that same information in graph form:

(more…)

Windows 7: surprising benchmark results

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Six months ago I benchmarked an alpha version of Windows 7. And I was surprised to find that, despite the new OS feeling much more snappy than Vista, application performance was actually identical.

Now Windows 7 has progressed all the way to Release Candidate status I thought it might be interesting to repeat the experiment with the almost-final code. So again I’ve been running our real-world benchmarks, this time on a Core i7-based system with 3GB of RAM, to compare performance in Vista to both clean and upgrade installations of Windows 7 RC.

This time the results surprised me even more:

As you can see, in most of our tests a clean installation of Windows 7 RC remains on a par with Vista, or at worst a few seconds behind. It’s faintly odd that, in the Photoshop and 3D tests, the upgrade installation was slower than a clean installation of either Vista or Windows 7, but the gap isn’t big enough to fret over.

But what sticks out like a sore thumb is Windows 7 RC’s dreadful performance in our Office test. This test involves extensive number-crunching and graphing in Excel, page formatting and printing in Word, database sorting in Access and slide creation in PowerPoint. Our Windows 7 alpha completed it in an identical time to Vista, but the RC took 70% longer in a clean installation. In an upgraded environment execution time was almost doubled.

(In case you’re wondering, the Multi-app test entails running the Office, audio and Photoshop benchmarks all at the same time, so 7’s relatively poor scores here are probably just another symptom of poor Office performance.)

I don’t yet know what’s causing the slowdown. It’s not unique to this particular setup: I repeated the test on an Athlon X2 system, which is architecturally pretty damn different to a Core i7, and saw a comparable slow-down on this benchmark.

But I’m continuing to investigate, and I’ll let you know what I find.

Making Windows 7 RC gorgeous with gamma

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Like many of you, I spent the weekend tinkering with the new Windows 7 release candidate. And, probably like many of you, I’ve been faintly disappointed at the complete absence of major new features, especially after we were promised “surprises”.

But I have to admit, the outlandish new “Characters” and “Scenes” themes have had me grinning like a Cheshire Cat. I never thought I’d say this, but this new edition of Windows really is beautiful.

And though it looks great out of the box, there’s one quick tweak I can recommend to make it look even better. (more…)