Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Codecs and Windows 7 - not working so well...

Why is Windows 7 so useless?

Actually, I did feel that there are some improvement in Windows 7 like the Programs Uninstall, maybe even the set folders- documents, pictures, videos and music. However, I just do not get why something as simple as playing a video works perfectly fine, in XP 32-bit, but is a nightmare in Windows 7 64-bit.

Using the same piece of software, updated drivers in both cases, I cannot get a 1080p video with subs (MKV AVC FLAC) to play properly in Windows 7. The times that I could, the CPU usage was almost double than that in Win XP 32-bit.

Who is to blame ? Nvidia? Microsoft? Codec developers?

I know that machines from 2003 -2004 are capable of playing most 720p video, can go up to 2GB of RAM and really have no need to be replaced with the new quad core machines. It is true that more data through-output is making the requirements of modern machines higher and higher, but really 95% of users will never need or ever use their computer's full capacity.
Rare exceptions would be gaming or 1080p video, if you have a screen to display that quality.

My point in all this :

Increased storage has little benefits unless you are doing a lot of video or photography. Tons of musics which you haven't paid for is passé
Faster CPUs will not improve the performance or productivity when an operating system gets bogged down with peripheral crap
Talk about protecting the environment also means reusing, maintaining older technology. Had the 486 DX-2 100MHz ( or something like that) been the limit until recently, I am sure programmers, and users would have continued to develop within their limits. Some new CPUs and Video cards take tremendous amounts of energy, 200W and more, making me think how much the technological exhibitionism has moved from weapons to cars to computers. Now the exhibitionism is on disposable devices like mobile telephones.
Airplanes, boats, computers etc have all been developed with CAD before the late 1990s with very good results. Faster systems mean more elaborate designs, but from my experience, the tools cannot substitute good design which is most often done on paper.

Looks like I will go back to Windows XP until Windows 7 is out of on the market beta...

Excel 2010 - useless importing feature

Have you ever tried importing a OpenOffice Spreadsheet? Quite a few problems :

- no formulas are imported
- graphics are lost

Essentially you just get the calculated data that was visible when the ODS was saved.

Another problem with Excel 2010, if you paste raw data, either separated by commas or tabs, it will just insert everything into the first column of cells.

At least in OpenOffice, it asks about the formatting when pasting a block of data (from Notepad or Acrobat Reader)

I know OpenOffice is not perfect, sometimes requiring the use of a mouse, or little things here and there that I have to use help to figure out, but at least the interface is labelled in a standard way. It imports Microsoft xlsx quite well, retaining formulas and graphics.

As a personal user, working with technical and financial data, other than legacy, I still cannot understand why Excel is used.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Élégance vs Beauté - Thinkpads vs others

A few months ago, I bought a 3 year old laptop. For over 650$, it sounds insane thinking of how the cost of machines have been dropping constantly. The fads of netbooks, a new interest in the tablet, as brought around by the infamous iPad, have contributed to the change in prices, but newer, faster, more efficient processors and video cards are all part of the picture.

Nevertheless, I am writing this on a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p. It is an elegant black boxy machine which pack most features found on current computers with the exception of HDMI and eSATA, but those option will take time before they replace a VGA or USB connector. Come to think of it, I have never seen anybody do a multimedia presentation and connect the projector to the HDMI. eSATA drives do offer faster transfer, but unless working with HD video, huge amounts of data being processed rapidly, there is no benefit over USB 2.0.

As for the video performance, Bluray 1080p is fine using DXVA. I can watch MKV with AVC video and FLAC audio with just under 15% CPU usage( it jumps around a little). (7% when watching video with no subs!)
(Make sure install the K-lite Codec Pack with Media Player Classic Home Theatre)

I have tried some modern games, playing maxed out at 1920 x 1200 is not an option, but using defaults, adding a little anti-aliasing and ansitropic filtering, does not affect http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifperformance much and over 30fps is not a problem. It seems that shadows are little difficult to process for the Quadro in games like Forsaken World.

As for the option of a newer machine with i5 or i7, I can barely think it would be worth it. My screen resolution is really pleasant, the computer is very silent, which is essential when writing, reading or in any creative process like CAD. Oh, yes the keyboard is really, really nice. Actually still better than most that I have came across.

Should I work for a company, or get another computer because this one gets damaged or stolen, It will definitely be another Lenovo ThinkPad.

(I have seen some Dells which have the same aesthetic, that is sleek black with a track point, and they may very well be suitable - noise, screen resolution and keyboard must be considered).

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Acanac VoIP + torrent transfer - All is Well!

I have been speaking on the phone through VoIP and download at 500kb/s and maintained perfect quality! I was only running 5 torrents, but it counts as a stress test of just about all of the bandwidth of the 5M ADSL connection.

I finally managed to get the correct QoS settings on my router. You need three rules when using the Linksys PAP2 for UDP, from and to, as well as for RTP. Here they are the rules :
Rule 1

Rule 2

Rule 3