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Archive for February, 2007

Vista Ultimate Edition DreamScene

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Ultimate Edition Extras DreamScene Windows Vista didn’t seem to get many updates on Patch Tuesday. But, one interesting update surprise was a DreamScene for Ultimate Edition owners. It is a pretty simple one of an animated Aurora type shimmering lights on the desktop. I’m not so sure an animated desktop background makes a whole lot of sense. However, it would be nice to get something like Windows Live’s RSS feed as a DreamScene auto-updated background. it also looks like it was designed for those new-ish so-called wide-format screens. It doesn’t fit well on my more traditional 4:3 1280 x 1024 display.

BTW, if you are like me, you probably had to think for a moment before realizing the DreamScene is a configuration item and not an individual app in the menu somewhere. Here’s how you find it.

Right click on the desktop
Choose Personalize
Choose Desktop Background
Click on the Location pull-down menu
Choose Windows DreamScene Content
Click on the lone DreamScene available to activate it

Posted in Microsoft, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »

What’s with AjaxWorld’s Website? Busy Enough?

Friday, February 9th, 2007

AjaxWorld home page I went to this site for the first time after learning about an interesting Bruce Eckel article published there.

Now, I realize that Ajax World Magazine is about, well, Ajax. But, couldn’t they have toned down the pop-ups and Flash. Do I really need to have a bunch of Flash animation distracting me from reading Eckel’s article?

Earth to AjaxWorld. Leave the annoying pop-ups and excessive Flash animation to sites where that is the main attraction.

Posted in Opinion | No Comments »

Q&A: Dell Latitude D600 and Vista Aero Glass?

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Reader F.T. asks: I did the same thing as you this past week [upgrade a D600 to Vista], I have the same ATI Radeon 9000 as you. Have you been able to do anything else with the laptop so that you can use all the features of Vista?

I’m assuming this question is about Vista’s Aero Glass features like Flip-3D, Taskbar thumbnail previews, and transparency. If so, the simple answer is that a Dell Latitude D600 notebook with an ATI Radeon 9000 graphics chipset (32MB dedicated graphics RAM) simply doesn’t meet the specs required for those Vista features. So, while Vista works perfectly well in other respects on a D600, you will not see the snazzy new graphical features.

It was just a stroke of luck that my cheap desktop PC had a decent graphics chipset (nVidia 6600) with enough shared video RAM (128MB). I hadn’t actually expected to see any Aero Glass feature on it while planning the upgrade.

Posted in Microsoft, Q&A, Windows Vista | No Comments »

Windows Vista Windows Mobile Device Center

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

I installed Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) on my cheap PC running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition this evening and partnered it with an old Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone (WMDC will not partner with anything older than WM2003). You can find my comments about this process on my other blog (MobileViews.com) in an entry titled: Windows Vista Windows Mobile Device Center Illustrated Tour.