Day: 27 October 2007

Windows XP vs Vista … and XP wins!

XP fighting Vista

Oh dear! As reported by Custom PC magazine this week: Vista vs XP: Performance tested, and Vista is slower.

XP vs Vista

The Custom PC / PC Pro teams ran some test on the same kit, one machine running XP, the other running Vista, and the conclusion is that

they don’t do Vista any favours. In all but a few exceptional cases, the new operating system was equalled or bettered by Windows XP …

Our Media Benchmarks 2007 were 6 per cent slower overall with Vista – and again, it was in video encoding that Vista was weakest, being 10% slower than XP when encoding using the H.264 codec. Even file copying was slower with the new OS. (Source)

How can Microsoft mess up something as simple as file copying?!

Windows, Linux or Mac OS?

I know that it’s fashionable to bash Microsoft, but the truth is that Microsoft do release some wonderful software, and I genuinely have an admiration for what they’ve achieved. The new Office 2007 UI is utterly genius, for a start.

I certainly wouldn’t leap ship from Windows to join the Mac OS X (boot)camp for anything (although I would dabble with Linux) as Mac OS X appears to be something akin to a cultic religion for some folks.

Even the Mac OS X Leopard demo didn’t have me running down the motorway to my nearest Apple dealer to buy one. (Is it just me, or is the guy that presents this the love child of Steve Jobs and Richard Gere?!)

Disdain

I prefer to keep at least an element of disdain for my OS of choice! But not quite as much as Microsoft appear to have squeezed into Vista. Sure, it looks beautiful … but do I really need a Cray Supercomputer just to power the graphics needed to run Calculator and Character Map?!

I’ve said it before: I’d rather like a new, faster PC (Intel Core 2 Duo with a nice, fat ATi Radeon graphics card, bucket-loads of RAM and a Creative X-Fi soundcard) but not one with Vista. I just don’t see the point, and these test results certainly haven’t convinced me otherwise.

Steve Lawson in the living room

Steve Lawson playing bass guitar in our living room

Steve Lawson‘s gig in our living room last night was a roaring success.

While only six people turned up, it didn’t detract from the enjoyment of a relaxed evening in the company of friends, with plenty of good wine, fine chocolates, beautiful music and much laughter.

I videoed the entire gig, including Steve’s Q&A at the end, which will no doubt creep onto YouTube in due course.

In the meantime, here’s one video from the gig last night, which I recorded on my Fuji FinePix S5600. This is a video of Steve playing his track called “Scott Peck” from Behind Every Word (2007).

And then, all too soon, Steve had to drive home. (To Steve: it was truly wonderful to see you again, lovely man!)

Shortly after he left I discovered that he’d left his scarf here. Maybe I should auction it on eBay for charity: “Rock star’s Dr Who-style scarf”. Steve would, obviously, have the opportunity to bid for it himself, if it means anything to him!

See more photos of the gig at Flickr: Steve Lawson house concert