The new kid in town 5456.5

As you lot may or may not know, the new Vista is out in the beta testing community, which I'm gladly part of. For the last few builds I have actually been installing the builds in virtualized platforms and just tackling thru the problems. However, when I toyed with this build, I realized that it's more proper. It's behaved.

Since it looked like it had some big jumps I started to read around about it. The one article that caught my eye was at LonghornBlogs.com. They mentioned how Build 5456 was not a direct decendent of Beta 2 that is publicly available. I have been personally using Build 5456 natively for the last 2 days. Granted most of those two days I was at work, but I did get to use quite a bit. It's better than Beta 2 people! We still have hope! Well for a Fall release that is :P

What was amazing about this build was that due to my delay I could just use AnyDVD 2.0.6.2 beta which works with Vista. Also I use the SoundBlaster X-Fi beta drivers for XP x64; works like a charm! Now if only I could get 5.1 sound instead of Stereo. Not to mention that my Avast! installed without a hitch and so did RemotelyAnywhere demo. However, I couldn't even get to the license page of RemotelyAnywhere, so that didn't really work. Acrobat installed without any problems and so did Firefox.

It's looking great! And it's sooooo pretty!

Soft gadgets

At home, I have everything sorted and so I hardly ever search for something. I just know where things are. At work, however, it is a complete different story. Becuz of which, I usually end up installing a desktop search agent.

I have been using Google Desktop (GDS) over the Windows native indexing feature. Though even that sux when it comes to code searching. I just end up using UltraEdit's 'Find in files…' feature. It would be really nice if GDS could add a few tricks like search in folder and stuff like that.

But noooo, they can't do that. Instead they can add some fancy ass feature like gadgets. For the people who don't know every Tom, Dick and Harry at the moment comes with gadgets. Not to mention the ones that are only alive for gadgets. It's freaking annoying.

Gadgets and widgets were cool and all, but in all reality I don't end up using it. And if I want to use it, I'd turn on something that only has gadgets or widgets like Konfabulator Yahoo Widget Engine or Rainmeter.

Hallmark holidays

It’s amazing how things catch on. Like all these ‘Hallmark holidays’. I mean seriously. Some people actually expect stuff on those days. Why on earth will I give something to my boss for no apparent reason. Oh sorry, you said it’s becuz Hallmark has it marked as Boss’s day? Well I say it’s crap. If (s)he is being nice to me, they’ll get a gift anyways.

I personally think it’s all the girls fault. No seriously. You guys, take it too seriously. And now, other people have huge sales becuz of it. “Get the burgundy certificate for Secretary’s day!”. I agree it’s nice to be nice to people, but do we actually need a day to remind us that we need to be nice to them? Yeah, it’s cute that they have a card and they are great card, but why only one day?

Cute does not always cut it :P (No hard feelings girls).