_ViStA On the Horizon

_BeGiN

This weekend I got my hands on Windows Vista Beta 2. IT seems that Microsoft is heading in the right direction in terms of organization and ease of use. But the thing that made my nod my head to it was Aero. The GUI of Vista. They are really bringing Windows into the 21st century. Though they still need to work out the bugs. Aero tends to kill off depending on the application, and it glitches depending on how many windows are on the screen. Backtracking a little, I LOVED….you hear me…LOVED the installation process. They really made it streamlined enough to not worry about whether or not the installer will destroy your hard drive’s contents.

Though some will argue that its XP with a pretty interface. Which is debatable, because it still has remnants of XP still there. The one thing however that will get on peoples’ nerves is Networking. MS says that they overhauled it or whatever but it makes it much more difficult to tap into a network when things are all over the place. Another feature that can be annoying is the Unix like security dialogs that will pop up depending on what you are trying to do. It didn’t bother me much since I’ve played with Linux OSes for months now, but Windows stranded people will find it very annoying until they get used to the feature. Starting up the computer is a bit longer but for how much things Vista has to churn out, Its not shocking.

_HaLf-LiFe Bully

So, I heard about all of the buzz around Half-Life time and time again. But since it was a FPS, I just brushed it off. I’m not the First Person Shooter type, but a friend says that it’s all that the rage makes it out to be. Not to mention that I was VERY wary of Steam and how they wanted an internet connection for everything. But he goated me into buying the “Source Pack”. That’s what its called on Valve’s site. For about $60 bucks, you get both Half-Lifes(1 and 2), the new segment Episode 1 and 3  to 4 other mods including the  fabled “Counter Strike”. Since I bought this through Steam, its gonna take days to download it all.

_EnD