Text 17882, 105 rader
Skriven 2007-05-14 21:40:26 av mike (1:379/45)
Ärende: Vista's vexing moments tied to security, music
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From: mike <mike@barkto.com>



http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070513/NEWS/70513035
2/-1/State

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The first few millions of us PC users have endured a few months inside the maw
of the beast called Vista. During that time, some nasty downsides to
Microsoft's Corp.'s no-longer-brand-new Windows operating system have become
painfully apparent.

More to the point, since Vista went on sale to the general public Jan. 30,
we've found a few ways to make the best of the rude and cranky snags to the new
operating system that will capture your computer sooner or later - probably
sooner. Happily, much that we've learned about Vista works great for Windows XP
as well.

First and foremost, let's say there is substantial truth in those commercials
from Apple Inc. showing the Vista guy in a rumpled business suit surrounded by
bodyguards who interrupt with a silly warning every time he tries to talk to
the hip young Mac guy.

No matter how loosey-goosey you set Vista's security tools, there will be
repeated times when you try to do something only to have the computer screen go
black and then pop up with a small message box asking if you really want to
"continue" what you're doing. You think it over and say yes, and you're hit
with another box that asks you if you want to "allow" whatever you said to
"continue."

Second on my list of grievances is the effort by Microsoft Corp. to turn Vista
into an instantly available music/record store through the omnibus built-in
program used to play music, watch videos, rip CDs, sync music players and
search for tunes.

It is galling, for example, to be frustrated because a video or song you just
downloaded won't play in the Vista Media Player only to be further accosted
with an error message that reads "Contacting Store ..." (Microsoft's online
competitor to iTunes).

This brings us to what may be the best fix for vexed Vista video victims
- a free program called VLC media player from the open-source
programming group called VideoLAN.org .

VLC comes with built-in tools called codecs (coder/decoders) that specify the
settings needed by a program to play different audio and video formats clogging
the Internet landscape of YouTube, MySpace, iFilm, DivX, etc.

Even on my hot rod of a dual-core Intel-fired HP Pavilion with 2 gigabytes of
memory, Vista's merchandise-laden Media Player comes up much slower than does
VLC, which appears on the desktop as fast as you can click its icon. VLC is a
music and movie/animation player rather than a storefront, and it lacks most of
the bells and whistles, and frills and fopperies, and reboots and redundancies
of the Vista Media Player. VLC shines particularly when using it to display
videos that one acquires from the tens of thousands of places online where
movies short and long are found.

A great many of these files won't run on Microsoft's player anyway, such as the
FLV for YouTube videos and Apple's widely used MOV format. Beyond that, the
free software handles just about anything you can throw at it except,
appropriately enough, the proprietary WMV format from Microsoft.

You can play music files as well on VLC, but that is one of the places where
the new Vista shines with its good-looking interface, big fat icons for album
covers, simple and powerful playlists and psychedelic visualizations.

Enough niceness toward the world's largest computer software company: The
experience of installing VLC points out the nasty compatibility sideshow to the
epic global move of PCs to Vista.

Microsoft's engineers loaded Vista with code that conflicts big-time with many
programs that were written for Windows. Too many programs work great on XP only
to crash, burn and die on Vista.

For example, the DirectX video display feature of Vista disables VLC's ability
to display the visual side of videos, so in its default settings all you get is
the soundtrack.

Thanks to a Web search using the words Vista and VLC, I quickly found the
setting change needed to restore vision on Vista machines.

It remains to be seen how much software that people came to love in Windows XP
will be toast when popped into a Vista machine. I can tell you that two of my
favorites won't work right in Vista: the superb and free Treepad personal
information manager and the new Xara Xtreme Pro graphic illustration program.

When Microsoft execs made the rounds before Vista arrived, they were full of
assurances that moving the software you currently own over to Vista would be a
cakewalk.

In theory, you would just give the program icon a right-click and open the
Compatibility tab in the pop-up that appears. When you do this and it works,
Vista dims, blinks and changes, and then advises you that it is taking away the
trademark translucent windows, cascading windows and other new features you
just spent hundreds of dollars buying.

Microsoft's geniuses probably think these messages sound helpful. Here's how
they sound to me: "You can buy new software, Coates, or you can rot."
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 /m

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