So, here’s what we did it: Brad called me out of the blue in an afternoon on Skype and said we’re going to do a podcast for Tech Webcast’s Episode 8 – and so I decided to go for it as I wasn’t so busy during that time. The problem was that we had no solid outline of topics to discuss. So what we did is that we just picked randomly the things what we have in mind and elaborate them. Good thing that I recently went to a mall’s arcade center so I had something to share. Plus, I remembered trying VMware Workstation software and played Linux Ubuntu and Windows XP Service Pack 3 Professional with it so I already got good things to discuss about. Have a listen below:

As you’ve heard, episode 8 turned out to be a funny podcast! I was laughing at myself when I heard this recording for the first time especially on several portions where Brad tried to stop me from talking a lot. Honestly, I was not able to clearly hear him saying “stop” from my side and I just kept talking like crazy. The most hilarious part on the podcast is the part where Brad said that we didn’t get “too many emails” on our official podcast email – and then I replied innocently and seriously “That’s good, that’s good” and Brad laughed and said, “Not really.”  The quality of our podcast is not that great as we have done our podcast through Skype.

I invite you to listen to all other episodes that we have.

If you prefer media player looks over performance (that is, you are inclined to love a player by its design over its speed and capabilities), you might not like Media Player Classic as much as you do with other media players. Commercial media players usually reign the graphical user interface (GUI) department and unfortunately, Media Player Classic was not developed for it.

Media Player Classic’s design was aimed to mimic the simplicity of the old Windows Media Player 6.4. However, it boasts a set of additional features that is hard to find in an in-built media player: a native DVD-support with real-time zoom, support for AVI subtitles, QuickTime and RealVideo support (requires QuickTime and/or Real Player), and built-in MPEG2/SVCD/DVD codec.

What captivated me most of Media Player Classic is its speed. Even now that I’m already using Windows Vista, and there are lots of modern players, they are still unable to knock out Media Player Classic’s leadership in speed. The program is very fast and movie files are loaded almost instantly when you hit the play button.

I therefore encourage you to try Media Player Classic now. It’s the best for me. You’ll see what I mean when you start experiencing its playback performance and you will strongly like it.

Click here to download Media Player Classic.

Well, to tell you, I’m a Vista user too. I have Home Premium version in my laptop and been running for almost six months. For sure, I found some annoying things on Vista that make the previous Windows versions (like Windows XP) a little worthwhile. But hey, I found some great things people missed or under-appreciated.

First, the good thing about Vista is that Microsoft took a major revamp on its Graphical User Interface (GUI) that modernizes its look. By revamp, I’m not only talking about the windows transparency feature of Aero, but I’m pertaining to the overall aesthetic efficiency or the improvement of accessibility and folder navigation.

The folder navigation in Windows Vista is exceptional. As you refer to the image below, folder to folder navigation in the system is faster and easier. You can virtually jump to any folder you want in just few clicks. On the left side of Windows Explorer, the traditional explorer view or pane is enabled by default. This speeds up the navigation as it automatically scrolls horizontally whenever it is needed. This is an intelligent Microsoft work in removing the daunting horizontal scroll bar of the previous Windows versions.

The sidebar on Windows Vista is very useful to me. You can add little gadgets (this is similar to widgets) to it and applets like calendars, photo slideshow, among others. Microsoft provided a gadget library at Windows Live Gallery where people can upload and download gadgets.

The other things that I liked in Vista are the system utilities which let you assess or do comprehensive reports for better performance and reliability analysis. Security is robust in Vista, although its persistent User Account Control feature can be annoying to some. This can be disabled, however.
Here is a screen capture of the Windows Experience Index, an inbuilt system-wide benchmarking tool included in Windows Vista’s Performance Information and Tools. Mainly it is used to determine what software (especially graphics, resource-intensive applications) can run in your system – the greater the number, the better. In my case, I scored 3.1 and it’s pathetic.

Despite Vista’s glory, it is still quite detrimental to know that this operating system’s elegance requires higher hardware specifications compared to its predecessors. In my personal standpoint, this is just a normal characteristic of software technology evolution as it tries to parallel the extended capabilities brought about by modern hardware. The Windows Vista I have runs over a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 256 MB video memory (in-built graphics chip). You can see the details below.

If these hardware specifications are used for a Windows XP system, it would surely bounce to the roof.

To let you know these are the few major things I wish Microsoft would resolve or improve in the forthcoming Service Pack 1 (SP1) release for Windows Vista in first quarter of 2008 (they say in February):

• Speed of copying and moving of files in the Windows Explorer
• Random freezes, lost of responsiveness in some programs
• Performance of ailing Internet Explorer 7
• Overall system performance, reliability and stability

It seems however, after reading Paul Thurrott’s article for Windows Vista SP1, most of the issues I stated above will be addressed on SP1’s release along with new features. This is good news to me and to other prayerful Vista users. We truly need it.

In light of the issues, I can still proudly say that I love Windows Vista. It still keeps my work done, and its new environment inspires me and removes boredom. However, if you’re not too patient before the release of any service packs, you might be inclined to go for XP instead of Vista, or wait until 2010 when Windows 7, the next version of Windows, will be released.