CobraA1

[quote]Well, the place to install programs is "Program Files", and that's where most users install their apps, so programs should play nice with that folder restrictions.[/quote] They should, yes. And newer software generally does. But a lot of older software doesn't. This is especially true for games, as most games are not maintained indefinitely. This is in stark contrast to regular apps, which are updated on a fairly regular basis. It's very unlikely I won't update

My thoughts: [quote]Reason #1: Nothing is ever responding[/quote] Yeah, the shell doing that is pretty silly. Win7 fixes that. Although that won't fix individual apps that are locking up. Firefox still locks up badly on my system. [quote]Reason #2: The UAC[/quote] It didn't bother me so much, but it's good to know Win7 improves it a lot :). There's no going back to nothing, though - a ZDNet blogger <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=27234&am

Found a cool roller coaster deskscape - until I put my headphones on. It would be nice if the sound could be turned off for video deskscapes.

Found a workaround: Insert the serial number and download it from MyColors, rather than trying to install via Impulse.

I just can't get the theme to download, no matter what I try. Windows 7, 64 bit.

[quote]I know - I was curious of the "native" bit.[/quote] I think that means they use DWM's own native APIs when they are available.

[quote]There isn't any single good reason to keep buying a 32 bit OS today.[/quote] I have a netbook with an Atom. But, other than that, you're right. Well, and apparently people with Photoshop: [quote]For example my converter for *.tga 32-bit to *.png 32-bit, Photoshop plug-ins[/quote] humm, strange, but okay, Photoshop must be doing something at low levels of the CPU (at the register level) for something like that to be affected. I guess they're proba

That's the thing about Windows - they have to deal with such an enormous variety of configurations, and inevitably some fall through the cracks. Sorry to hear you had some troubles. [quote] My bank account is getting low and dropping an extra $100 for a better supported card would be a hard knock to take.[/quote] Well, if you do decide to get a new one, Tiger Direct is selling a lot of sub-$100 cards, many of them far superior than the one you have right now. It's actuall

Fences Pro looks great =). Can't wait to have my icons automatically organized. I just hope Icon Packager is less flaky this time around. Haven't tried it in Win7 yet, but with XP I had some major issues . I'll probably wait for the upcoming OD to try it again.

[quote]However some of my programs which I use every day does not support the x64 Windows. So I returned back to x86.[/quote] I'd be curious to know what they are. My experience is that 32 bit support is excellent in x64 Windows. With the exception of some firewalls and antiviruses, the transition was very smooth. And by now, the antiviruses and firewalls all have 64 bit support. Well, except maybe Sunbelt, I don't know w

[quote]The problem is that people can't accept video games as an entertainment medium on the same level as movies, music and books. In my observations in both the media and political circles video games are portrayed as something that is for children only. Adults don't play video games, only children do, and as such no adult content should ever be included in a video game. This is merely a case of an outdated understanding of the medium, and will solve itself with the slow attrition

We do live in a pretty religious society. Yeah, that includes me. So we can't just wave off religion and ignore it. Everybody has a right to be represented in a society, including religious people. It doesn't make much sense to ignore religious people, especially when most people claim to be religious. Love us or hate us, you have to live with us. It's a free country. And you know what? The biggest reason for ratings in the first place is to place par

[quote]You know, I'm not religious... I'm primarily agnostic... but blaming religion for everything is not the answer to anything. I primarily don't like these arguments because bad stuff comes out of anything and trying to put the blame on something is distracting from the darkness that can come from anywhere.[/quote] Agreed. Blaming "religion" is a non-argument. Religious people can be great people, and non-religious people can be horrible people. Even scientific principles

This is why I always get the DVD. Even though I got the download, they gave me the option of getting a disk as well, so I did that. IMHO Digital River has always been a bit questionable. I use them, but I have to be very proactive at making sure everything gets done right whenever I do. Their 100% unnecessary "wrapper" around the Win7 install reminded me of how poor they are. I'd probably blame Digital River more for this issue than Microsoft. On Windows 7 now,

Maybe from a different point of view may help: I like knowing when something wants to access my system files. That's how most stuff gets in, by overwriting the system files. If I disable UAC, how will I know if that new program I've downloaded is trying to access files it shouldn't? BTW - with most new installers on legit software, they offer the choice between being accesible to all users or being accessible to just the current user. If you choose to install f

[quote] I personally don't care what it does that I can't do for myself.. [/quote] Until, of course, something happens. Which hasn't happened yet for you, but for many people it has. [quote] Ive had it turned off since day 1 on vista, havent had any issues whatsoever with security following the normal security precautions and using common browsing and computing sense. [/quote] [quote] Backwards Maxim: Most people

[quote] All due respect Cobra and although the setttings may ring true in some cases, Win 7 is hardly a nuclear power plant. [/quote] You're right, the systems he maintains are likely to be vastly more secure than any desktop OS in existence. He still warns vehemently about being arrogant and downgrading your security. [quote] Most people can use simple common sense to protect themselves from anything that UAC would ever help them with [/quote]<

I do not recommend turning UAC completely off: There are benefits beyond that dialog box that you may not notice, but may prevent you from getting stung. There is a workaround in Vista, and I'm sure it applies to 7 as well: Use the the task scheduler. Interestingly enough, the task scheduler starts as an elevated process and has the ability to create new elevated processes without prompts. Just add a task in there to load your programs with admin privileges at startup.

If you ever upgrade to Vista or Windows 7, they have a photo gadget as one of the defaults :).

Other AV solutions have been driving me crazy with false positives and bogging down computers. Especially AVG's "link scanner" stuff, which frankly I had to turn off to make the Internet bearable. When it expires, I'm likely not to renew and just use this.

The only complaint I have about the new interfaces (I've seen this in WB7) - the size of the scrollbar. So far, it's been too thin.

I'll go ahead and recommend the Alienware M15x Laptop .

While 3D has a big "coolness" factor attached - I haven't really seen very many examples of them actually being useful in a way meaningful to most people. BumpTop is a nice attempt to do so - but turns out it's only useful for a single task: Sorting documents. And even then, once the coolness wears off, I'm not entirely sure it's more efficient than a file manager. I've actually had BumpTop for a while. But I use it so infrequently - honestly, I'm thinking about uninstalling it. For o

In case anybody is wondering - there is an option in Windows 7 to change the icon size, which changes the bar size . . . [quote]Have you tried a vertical taskbar setup yet on W7?[/quote] As somebody who normally works with a horizontal bar, the icon-centric approach actually works well vertically. I never really liked vertical in other OSes. But I think I could handle vertical with Windows 7.

After playing around with WindowsBlinds a bit more (on my Vista system) - the transition between Windows themes and Stardock themes is still a bit rough. Sometimes Windows seems to forget about hardware acceleration and has difficulties getting Aero back. Also, the scroll bar at the bottom of the new WindowsBlinds UI - honestly, it's a bit thin.