… I am actually quite happy to have installed it. The initial system crash seems to have been something completely independent of the upgrade, and I’ve noticed only positive things with both my own and As laptop running Vista since the install.
Faster response and less heat generated are two very good things, especially considering this seems to become a very warm summer.
It would be intresting to run Ubuntu or Mint on this laptop, but I still don’t see Linux as the superior operating system on the desktop (yet).
I for sure will not miss this – will be very intresting to see what they will announce during this press briefing. I’m hoping for some intresting new features to come for the Xbox Live fall update. Some of you might remember that they revealed NXE during E3 2008…
.. and my hopes are that they will reveal something atleast half as exciting this year!
I really wish I could be there. Let’s hope I find a work related excuse to be in US next time, or even better – manage to get a vacation and do other things too!
Year-over-year growth jumps as Xbox 360 console sales hit 30 million globally and Xbox LIVE community reaches 20 million users.
REDMOND, Wash. — May 28, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. announced today that sales of Xbox 360 consoles have passed the 30 million mark globally, with its Xbox LIVE community swelling to more than 20 million active members. After the biggest year in its history in 2008, Xbox 360 achieved the highest percentage growth in hardware sales of any console so far in 2009, up 28 percent over the previous year.
The new service pack for Vista is out, and I took the time to install it previously today. At a first glance, it did a major difference in regards to the heat coming from the laptop, aswell as giving it a much better feeling of rapid response than it used to have.
Ofcourse, there are a few changes that comes with this service pack – all for the better, amongst them:
Let you record data onto Blu-ray discs.
Add into your system Vista Feature Pack For Wireless, which provides support for the latest Bluetooth technology — Bluetooth v2.1 — as well as for the Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi protocol.
Give you better Wi-Fi performance when you’re exiting Vista’s sleep mode.
Make your RSS feeds sidebar gadget work faster and better.
Give you the latest desktop search engine, Windows Search 4.
Cut down the resources it takes to run your various sidebar gadgets.
This service pack also gives Vista a general performance boost and adds some clean up capabilities that makes sure old unused files are being removed.
Some time during the day, I recieved a mail where I was informed that my web service client I had put together a few weeks ago was useless, because .. *drumroll* .. the server runs Microsofts .NET web services, and as usual, Microsoft took a fully functional standard, and rebuilt it, rendering it useless for any other client than one using Microsofts .NET.
Ofcourse, I do toss these things together in PHP (my pride still being the multithreaded SMPP client I built for a large paneuropean telco company about a year ago), and I was a bit stunned to realize that Microsoft, dispite the fact that they are moving forward to a more open company, still had not fixed these problems for something as commonly used as “Web Servicesâ€.
I do fully understand if they want to add their own extensions to increase the possibilities for communication between their products, but actually rendering it useless for anyone not using .NET just doesn’t make sense in any way.
I have been told that it is possible to add some sort of compability pack to Microsoft Web Service to make it possible to use other clients, but that this also would require a complete rebuild of the communication modules in their software.
I’m not going to hold my breath for that happening here though …
Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 3
2 Call of Duty: WaW
3 Call of Duty 4
4 Gears of War 2
5 GTA IV
6 UFC 2009 Undisputed Demo
7 FIFA 09
8 UFC 2009 Undisputed
9 Left 4 Dead
10 Fallout 3
Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)
1 Castle Crashers
2 Peggle
3 Hasbro Family Game Night**
4 Worms
5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Classic Arcade
6 UNO
7 Star Trek: D•A•C
8 The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
9 Gel
10 Banjo-Tooie
The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.
**Combined sales of all Hasbro Family Game Night titles
Original Xbox Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 2
2 Star Wars: Battlfrnt 2
3 Fable
4 Counter-Strike
5 Conker: Live Reloaded
6 Splinter Cell Chaos
7 Doom 3
8 Star Wars: Battlefront
9 Guilty Gear XX #Reload
10 SW: Republic Commando
Top Community Games (Full Versions purchased)
1 RC-AirSim
2 Rumble Massage
3 ezmuze+ Hamst3r edition
4 Aquarium HD
5 DrumKit
6 Dock’em
7 Math Sniper 3D
8 What The?!
9 StreamLine
10 Iris
These lists are based on global unique users connected to Xbox Live or in the case of Arcade and Community Games, full versions purchased during the week. Stats from Major Nelsons Blog.
I can’t believe it’s 1,5 years ago since Call of Duty 4 has been released. This game was brilliant when it came out, so different from any other game I had played on the Xbox.
The really weird thing is that the game is still awesome, and provides a different challenge every time I decide to go play.
The only thing that bugs me big time about this game online is the inability to pick a decent host. 10 europeans and two american players, and it could pick an AMERICAN host for the game – or the other way around. Sometimes, it even picks me as the host, which is a really really bad idea considering my ADSL connection.
I’m hoping that Infinity Ward fixes this by providing dedicated servers for the gameplay, or atleast optimizing the ability to find the best host for the game – making it possible to, for example, vote for a host change if the host would be laggy for a majority of the players.
Intresting afternoon!
