Macworld 2008 & windows seven.
So I tuned into macworld the other day, when i say I tuned in, i mean i just kept the macrumours live page open to watch the updates lol. pictures were cool too, ars had some too, but that crashed out quite often, probably because of the huge amount of users online. so i wont bore you with all the talk that jobs likes to do :p there was supposed to be a stream somewhere but i couldnt get it to work/load.
so heres a 60 second overview 
http://www.mahalo.com/The_Steve_Jobs_90_Minute_Keynote_in_60_Seconds
I think the new macbook is the sexiest thing EVER. (except for maybe the cute girl next door) but the price and limitations on it are so crappy that I can see only mac fanboys buying one.
for $3000 (yes thats £1500) you get a fixed non replacable battery, non upgradable 2GB of ram, a most-likely short lived HDD since its solid state, and the lack of an optical drive.
the pros being, its very fast, very small, and very good looking.
Its a shame this thing has more cons than pro’s.
I think the new airport thing with the hard drive is just an over priced NAS & combined router/switch type thing.
I have recently been thinking such a device would be useful. but i think id get more use out of a home built WHS. (which this just seems to be an expensive copy of).
I think the online movie rental thing is quite good, the only limiting thing with that is the download time, i guess the watch times are reasonable, you get around 30 days to watch it after you’ve downloaded it.
probably not very useful for people on dial-up as it would take longer than 30 days to download lol.
I lol’d at the fact that itouch users will have to pay $20 to upgrade too.
Ive always wanted to play with an apple TV simply because i wanted to find out how it works, it doesnt seem to have taken off very well.
There was no “one more thing” either, also i have no idea who randy newman is, but im betting he has a lot more results on google now lol. so that was pretty much it from macworld.
Apparently there is a build of windows 7 (a.k.a Vienna) floating around somewhere.
more info about windows 7: (for the uninformed) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
a copy of M1 has been shipped to microsoft partners:
[quote]The current M1 drop is available to Microsoft partners in English only and has shipped in x86 and x64 versions. An interesting feature that has been highlighted by Microsoft is the ability of the M1 software to handle a heterogeneous graphics system consisting of multiple graphics cards from different vendors. A new version of the Media center is already integrated in this software, but supports PC speakers only at this time.[/quote]
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35641/118/
When i manage to get some screens of this, i may post them in teh gallery >.>
CES also happened this week but for some reason i didnt pay much attention to it, the only real big thing that came out in the news about it was when gizmodo managed to piss off 90% of the community by playing pranks and turning off TV’s etc. personally i’d agree that it did seem a bit childish tbh.
in unrelated news, the downloads section is still empty, mostly because i dont really have anything to put in it. I dont really make things lol. I guess i could use it to mirror popular file but usually those files require lots of space and bandwidth, which i dont have a lot of. lol. nevermind :p
x
Tags: 2008, ads, ce, drive, hard drive, job, microsoft, mirror, ms, pe, post, software, space, support, tv, update, updates, upgrade, windows
my sexy new multifunctional bootable autorunning switchblade, drive.
Dec 18, 2007 Tech
So ive had my 4gb u3 enabled cruzer micro (I may actually buy a cruzer titanium because the plastic case feels a bit thin on this one) usb flash drive for a while now, and id been planning to setup a number of things on it.
- an implementation of switchblade.
- a portable applications menu.
- a bootable version of winPE.
Ive just finished setting up all of these on my drive, and now it rocks 
The implementation of switchblade is pretty good as its sets to run completly from the u3 partition so that any anti virus software that thinks its a virus cant delete any of the files as the u3 partition is basically an emulated cd rom drive and as such is read only. log files are saved the the flash partition of the drive but theyre hardly likely to be detected as viruses this autoruns in the background on the drive when i plug it in. no popup windows or anything, thanks to CHP.exe 
the options of this ‘payload’ are configurable from a configuration program that is kept on the root of the flash drive, which is handy. One improvement to this that i might consider looking into is packing some of the ‘detected’ files with a uPX packer or something similar this should make them less detectable by anti virus softwares.
Btw, for the uniformed, Switchblade is a set of applications and scripts setup in such a way that they run silently when the drive is plugged in, these scripts applications, rip & decrypt usernames and passwords for windows, IE, firefox, email accounts, IM accounts such as MSN/WML/IRC etc, /network usernames and passwords, wireless keys, internal and external ip addresses and probably a lot more. it also sets vnc up as well as a mail server that sends email thorugh a secure tunnel to a specified email address, the emails contain attachments of the files that are ripped from pendrive and usb drives that are plugged in after mine. yeah im nosey. there is an option rip the contents of the my documents folder to the pendrive too, but ive left that option disabled just incase the mydocuments folder turns out to be like 8gb and then a copy error shows up, that’d be hard to explain lol.
the portable apps menu doesnt run automatically, but thats because its contained in a portable truecrypt partition. when plugging the drive in, truecrypt will auto start up and ask me for a password to the partition, upon entering this password i have full access to a whole load of applications tyhat i use normally on my home pc (the whole encrypted truecrypt partition only takes up 512mb so theres penty of space) if i dont enter the password i can just use the drive as a normal storage drive if i dont need to access my applications. Im also using a forked version of the portable apps menu which gives a lot more functionality and flexibility in terms of menu organisation.
The drive is also formatted as FAT (yes just FAT) so that it can be set bootable, there is an installation of BartPE on the drive which boots when you plug the drive in. Unfortunatly my motherboard doesnt support USB Booting 
So i havent been able to test it, VMware doesnt give me much luck either, but it should work depending on if the motherboard supports it, hopefully more motherboards will start to support it soon. This brings me onto my next project which i will talk about in a bit.
Also on both the u3 volume and the flash partition there are custom autorun.inf files that define custom context menu items ahd control what the default action is on a double click of that drive. I always hated that “autorun” or “autoplay” because the default action when there was a CD or autorun USB stick in the drive. So ive changed those back to “open” which just opens the “Files” folder on the flash drive when you double click it. same for both partitions, except for the u3 partition where its the root of the drive. but you wont find much there as all the files have been hidden. (as in hidden from windows too, you cant access them from explorer or DOS.) the context menu entries include an option to run truecrypt and an option to dismount all truecrypt partitions, as well as the autorun option which i cant seem to get rid of but that doesnt bother me really, and then theres the other uselless options that windows adss like explore and search. the autorun files also define the icon and the label for each drive, the icons are kept on the flash part so they dont default to windows icons, bu you know what windows is like, it still refuses to set my virtual drives to the same icon as my actual optical drive but never mind. the icons arnt a big deal tbh, just a nice feature.
Some more techincal details of how the drive is setup:
I used UltraISO to create a custom ISO to be ‘flashed’ to my u3 partition using universal customiser, my custom ISO is about 9.30MB so the original sandisk installer wont work, i think it can only handle an ISO thats around 3-4MB.
The custom ISO contains:
- Smithtech applauncher.
- Custom autorun.inf
- Switchblade implentation.
the autorun file is set to automatically run applauncher on start. this application will then run the 3 programs defined in its configuration. the configuration file is kept on the flash partition. in addition to running the defined applications it will also set a system variable of my choosing (I chose “U3CD”) this means i can use %U3CD% in paths to certain files and applications and it will point to the letter currently assigned to the u3 partition of the pendrive. this is because the drive letter may change from pc to pc due to the different drive letter configurations.
the first application the applauncher runs is drivevar. this program is solely for setting a system variable (%PA_DRV%) from the flash partition of the usb drive, I dont mind that you cant customise this one though, its still usable . this runs with the paramenter -a which will add the system variable without prompting the user.
The next application it runs is “chp.exe” this small .exe file is used for creating and starting hidden processes, hence the name CHP (Create hidden process) this is run with the parameter of go.exe (this is a small .exe file i made myself that simly runs a .vbs file from the u3 flash partition. this is what starts the payload running. Yes that is a long winded way of getting it to run but thats because applauncher has a few limitations when it comes to running programs/files. the applauncher cant run an application from the drive its running for (e.g. the u3 partition) and it also seems it can run anything but .exe files. (hence not being able to just put the vbs file on the flash partition – plus this saves it from deletion by an anti virus as mentioned earlier).
the 3rd program that is set to run truecrypt, this runns with a few paramenters which means it just pops up a password box asking for my password, which is handy.
the way the switchblade is implemented also has some error ‘managment’ too, if for some reason the system variable for the u3 partition doesnt get set, instead of not doing anything or producing error messages on screen, it runs a substitue vbs file that simply pops up a dialog welcoming me. this is so that i know the payload hasnt run but anyone watching would just think it was a cool ‘toy’ that i’d set up. this works because there is an identically named vbs file on the root of the flash drive, if the system variable isnt set then the .exe file assumes it should run the vbs file from “\” (current directory) which turns out to be the vbs file that pops up the “cool” welcome message.
as well as error managment the switchblade is setup to check for a certain file on the root of the c drive before running, if it finds this file it will not run (it wont do anything at all) this is so that i can plug the drive into my own machine safely without owning myself with my own payload :p
as i said earlier, the drive is formatted in FAT and has been set bootable, also the volume boot sector id has been set to 0×80, this is what makes the usb drive bootable. (again, this depends on the motherboard/BIOS and if it supports booting from usb devices).
To do all this I used PetoUSB. You’ll need a bartpe build source directory. this will copy bartpe to the disk too so all you need to do is setup your bios to bott from usb, restart and test if it works.
As I said earlier, this beings me onto my next project:
A Bootable DOS CD.
Yes, I know it doesnt sound as exciting but this will enable me to use my bartPE stick on a lot more computers, for example if the computer doesnt support booting to usb devices, like mine, then i can boot from a CD and launch bartpe from that.
for this to work i’ll have to look into loading usb drivers in DOS and accessing devices from DOS.
maybe setup an autorun so that when the CD boots up it automatically looks for the USB drive and boots bartpe from there automatically.
I’ll probably attempt this sometime in the new year, get christmas over with first.
after that my next project will be something similar but with the ability to emulate drives or mount .iso files in DOS.
this is so I can create a customised version of a windows install, maybe an unattended install, and install it from the usb drive, without having to carry around CDs all the time.
When i finally get one of these other projects finished, i may post here to say how i did it
I might post a tutorial sometime on how to do this, although this post pretty much explains the majority of it.
Thats all for now, folks.
Yes, that was a very long post.
In other news: I’ve recently discovered the awesomeness that is ill nino, it really is a mystery why I havent heard of this band before.
Tags: autorun, bartpe, computer, portable, portableapps, software, switchblade, Tech, usb, windows
The pinnacle of shitty software
So today I remembered an app that i used to use to “wipe free space”, it basically writes over your blank space with 0′s. because as everyone knows when you delete something its not actually deleted. so this app would actually go through your hard drives and “clean” your disks. I thought I hadnt done that for a while, but thats because I lost the app, and the only thing i remember about it is that the .exe file was called restore.exe, and google didnt give any results. anyways, so i thought I’d search google for an alternative, I didnt find many that were free(maybe im just rubbish at searching), the most i could find was a shareware version of a pprogram called “12ghosts shredder”. so i downloaded and installed, and looking through the options I thought it seemed quite a through program, so i clicked the “clean now button”, and within a few mins it tols me it was finished, odd I though as i Have around 500gb of space for it o work though, so looking further into the program, i had to tell it what to clean, so after ticking the box’s and pressing the button again, the program then proceeded to fill up my hard drive with files called “delete_me_delete_me_delete_me_(random_number).del”, they filled my desktop, my start menu, my quick launch menu, and pretty much any other folder I could find. WTF? and by the the prgress indicator said it was only 10% done, it stopped every 10 seconds with a dialog asking me to buy the program, which got really fucking annoying, So i quit, and then using windows search i searched for all files beggining with “delete_me”, there were over 50,000 files found, all of them 0kb. what possible use could these files have? apart from pissing off the user. I tried selecting them all and deleting them, but as you can imagine trying to delete 50,000 files in one go wasnt going to be easy. I tried system restore, but that didnt seem to affect it. so eventually I had to open a DOS prompt and use the “del” command to the delete them.
Never again am I going to use such shitty software. and if i Have to i’ll set up a sandbox or VM or something.
>.<
/end rant
SEO Research thing
Dec 3, 2006 Tech
So ive recently become interested in SEO stuff, and decided to do a little test of sorts 
Im interested to see wheather certain keywords on a page attract more hits / clicks or not, so below are a list of random words that will most likely be picked up by search engines and indexed, then i can check stats and compare it with last months. (thats why this is first post of the month ) So without further hesitation here we go >.>
domains yahoo domain name yahoo dc hair laser removal washington lemon wisconsin hair removal washington dc domain registration yahoo benchmark lending domain yahoo yahoo web hosting hair laser removal here virginia peritoneal mesothelioma ca lemon law best buy gift card adverse credit remortgage mesothelioma shape! information law lemon ohio att call conference insurance medical temporary illinois law lemon mesothelioma symptoms angeles drug los rehab personal injury solicitor att go accident car florida lawyer google affiliate at t wireless home equity loan mcsa boot camp anti spam appliance adverse remortgage chicago hair laser removal att conference at and t laser hair removal maryland mesothelioma buy gift card mesotheloma student loan consolidation program so anyways california law lemon event google management security canada personals yahoo orlando criminal attorney goes uk homeowner loans vioxx lawsuit compare life assurance criminal defense lawyer american singles federal criminal defense attorney laser hair removal manhattan att prepaid wireless in fortis health insurance temporary miami personal injury lawyer hair removal chicago at and t old cell phones refinance with bad credit malignant mesothelioma lease management software primary pulmonary hypertension miami personal injury attorney anti spam lol lotus notes life insurance quotes egg credit anti spam exchange server lemon law adsense best consolidation loan student refinance with poor credit employee leasing student loan consolidation center buyer mortgage note federal student loan consolidation symptoms of mesothelioma city hair laser new removal york att wireless com san diego dui lawyer indiana law lemon law ads lemon michigan angeles criminal defense los refinancing with poor credit home equity loan action class lawsuit vioxx term life assurance e loan celebrex lawyer vasectomy reversal mortgage rates refinancing attorney law lemon consolidate student loans home equity loans mesothilioma new york personal injury lawyer home equity loan rates auto insurance quotes georgia law lemon homeowner loans equity loan rates administration lease software egg credit card student new consolidation loans microsoft anti spam Max CPC ($) Avg CPC ($) Keyword mesothelioma prognosis second mortgages my auto century insurance employee florida leasing federal consolidation adsense loan equity loan personal injury attorney colorado accident lawyer michigan refinancing with bad credit home equity line of credit rates federal consolidation non profit debt consolidation pay per click affiliate city hair new removal york acid reflux disease diet refinance poor credit equity loans student loan consolidate consolidate loans secured loans criminal lawyer new york affiliate per click chicago personal injury lawyer los angeles dui lawyer att prepaid angeles criminal defense lawyer los critical illness insurance life irs lawyer tax laser hair removal new york comcast high speed personal yahoo san diego dui attorney michigan personal injury automobile law lemon cheap insurance life term home loans refinancing consolidate college loans cheap ya life insurance vioxx law suit student loan refinance car hire alicante spain tax attorney refinancing my home criminal dallas lawyer line of credit home equity litigation vioxx at and t phones criminal high defense attorney los angeles commodity online trading home equity rates adsense law lemon keywords mass equity home arizona law edit lemon child molestation attorney noob home line of credit alicante keeping car coding rental spain attorney defense php federal san diego criminal attorney really injury lawyer new york attorney injury new personal york at and t mobile pleural mesothelioma augmentation breast diego san home equity poor credit health insurance temporary compensation mesothelioma st century insurance cheap insurance medical angeles criminal lawyer los low cost etc term life insurance home refinance loans eloan life insurance quote cheap life assurance equity loan anti spam exchange tech credit equity home line att go phone dui florida lawyer spider hair removal value new york vioxx class action suit merchant account international vioxx site class action home equity loan life insurance quote online consolidation loan equity line of credit carolina law lemon just north equity rates irc direct home insurance line angeles text attorney los tax credit home line term insurance auto insurances debtfreedirect refinance comparison acid reflux treatment bad credit mortgage refinance college loan refinance :p
That was long wasnt it
Anyways, i’ll probably post my findings next month with stats etc, so you can see the the results too
… thats not good …
Jul 26, 2006 Other
k so ive just basically corrupted 150GB of my data, in fact, that was all my data, all the thing ive ever downloaded over the past 6 years, the visual styles, wallpapers, icons, application skins, software that isnt available anymore, all my pictures, of me, family, other events, mostly irreplaceable ones, videos, my entire music collection, all my work related stuff, like cv’s, spec letters, job letters, everything else, site backups, source code, projects, everything… its ok though, it hasnt sunken in that ive lost it all yet. now here comes the best bit, I have no backups, none, at all. so brb, im just going to kill myself.
*cries*
EDIT: UPDATE: I used GetDataBack for NTFS and it recovered all my data
*stops crying and unkills self ^_^ *
New Gfx cards, New MS Device, New mobiles, AMD Attacks intel..
Feb 28, 2006 Tech
ATI, last week announced the first HDMI-HDCP Video Card, the card comes with no VGA or DVI connections making this card HDMI only, The job of encoding and serving the protected HDCP video signals will fall to a Silicon Image HDCP TMDS transmitter. mean while Nvidea released the 7900GTX, the reported spec is as follows:
this card is expected to debut early march. in other news, a website owned by microsoft, “origamiproject.com” hints at a new device, from what the website says, the device is a Tablet style PC device with an approx 7″ screen.
it would appear that these devices can play back music, connect to WiFi networks (and possibly Bluetooth devices), and has enough power to handle graphics work and games. Like Tablet PCs, Origami makes use of a pen input device, as well as buttons on either side of the screen
Man, that sounds cool. more info here. would be even better if that ATI card had a VGA/DVI port though.. although it think its probably been made a dedicated card for a reason.
Also yesterday AMD attacks intel over performance claims:
“It’s driven by the fact that they can’t talk about their current products, because everybody knows their current products aren’t very good,” said Henri Richard, AMD’s chief sales and marketing officer, in an interview with CNET News.com late Friday.
This was in reponse to a prediction by an intel executive that the companys chip scheduled for the second half of the year will deliver a 20 percent improevment in performance. source.
lol.
Sony ericsson’s new mobile phone the k800i/K790 comes with sony’s new imaging software, Cyber-shot & software specifically built in for uploading the pictures to Blogger, googles blogging service.
While various Java apps have been available to allow cameraphone shots to be uploaded directly to a blog, these new handsets are the first to come with a built-in blogging capability.
All the user has to do is select a picture and then pick the option for sending via ‘blog’ rather than MMS (picture messaging) or email. By default this will link the user directly to Google’s Blogger service.
Better still it will be entirely feasible for the user to customize his or her blogspot address from the handset – no need to access a PC. Meanwhile vodafone are showing off thier latest mobile phone, with face recognition, VGA screen and a 3.2Mp camera. The 904SH handset made by Sharp, will go on sale in Japan in April.
The security system uses a small camera positioned under the main display and replaces the PIN-code or fingerprint authentication found in some other phones. It is based on technology from Oki and is capable of authenticating within one second whether the face of the person trying to use the phone matches that of the pre-registered owner. Should recognition fail – for example, in a dark room – a backup question-and-answer system can be used.
Other features of the 904SH include support for network-based software upgrades. This allows users to download new and updated firmware across the network when required. At present upgrades typically need a visit to a service center or shop.
The 904SH has a 3.2Mp (megapixel) camera with 2x optical zoom and supports the Felica nearfield wireless communications system. This latter support means it is possible to use the handset as a touch-and-go transport pass on railways in the Tokyo area and for payment in convenience stores and other shops that accept the Edy e-money system.
Man that sounds so geeky, i want one. the blogging phones sound like a good idea, although i probly wont use one, since i dont use blogger :p vodafone article | blogger phone
Speaking of google….
has expanded its online payment service so that users can buy and sell everything from bicycle brakes to Beanie Babies through its Web site, posing an immediate challenge to eBay Inc.
Currently, Google’s payment service, Google Accounts, is available from a limited number of sellers on Google Base. More are expected to be added over the next few months, the company said.
To use the service, users must register with Google Accounts and submit credit card information. To make a purchase, users must click on a “buy” button next to a product and then go through the checkout process, which includes an estimate of the shipping costs.
Im not sure if it’ll get as popular as ebay, as ebay/paypal are a pretty strong brand when it ccomes to online auctions, although google has a good name too, so it may happen…
Users of eBay’s marketplace bought and sold $44.3 billion worth of merchandise on the Web site last year. The number of PayPal accounts has surpassed 100 million.
…in a few decades. source
Next: Blu-ray to be released 23rd Feb, this is for film titles and the first BD player from Samsung. you cant buy the blank discs yet :p
The first BD titles from Sony and MGM Home Entertainment include “50 First Dates,” “The Fifth Element,” “Hitch,” “House of Flying Daggers,” and “The Last Waltz.” Additional movies released on the new video technology will arrive in June.
Sony offered no pricing details for the BD movies or the Samsung player (BD-P1000), but the next-generation video discs are expected to sell for about $30, with the player in the $1,000 range.
I think i’ll probably wait for a while until they come down in price. source
Also today, new apple stuff!
the new iPodhifi keeps your music collection at your finger tips, and delivers high quality audio, in a clean compact design. what the iPod hifi basically is, is a sound system for your iPod, also comes with a remote :p pretty pricy for $349 though.
the new macmini, comes with a 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo & up to Up to 2GB of memory.
Sounds nice, if only i could afford one :p
New Apple stuff, new MS Stuff, 1YB Email..!
Oct 13, 2005 Tech
Thought id post a few interesting techie things
New stuff from apple! iPod Video! this has been a long time coming imo, i think they were just squeezing the juice out of the regular iPod before introducing it, even though they only just released this one a month or so after the Nano was released
Witness the evolution of the revolution. First it played songs. Then photos. Then podcasts. Now iPod plays video, changing the way you experience your music and more. Again. In lighter, thinner 30GB and 60GB models starting at $299, the new iPod is music to your eyes.
Sounds pretty good too me! damn expensive though :O
Also along with the new iPod Video comes a new iMac and a new version of iTunes, the new iMac looks pretty sexy although i’ll never be able to afford one lol.
What if you could command an entire world of music, photos, movies and DVDs — all from your sofa? Now you can share the good life with friends and family on a 17- or 20-inch new iMac G5 featuring Front Row software and Apple Remote. Slimmer than ever, the gravity-defying enclosure also houses built-in iSight, SuperDrive, wireless and the easy-to-use software that brings it all together. Modern living starts at only $1299
looks like thy’re trying to make it so its in competition with the media center PC from microsoft. with the little remote and all also the new iTunes version, looking at the screenshots doesnt seem to be much more than a minor update, i mean it kinda looks like v 5.0, me thinks this should be 5.5 or something.. lol
Now the new MS stuff…i know there was something i just cant remember what 
oh yeah i remember now…Security patches!
i also love how the new HD-DVD format will be region free, no more pissing around trying to find regional work arounds or hacks, damn media companies, ah well hopefully blue-ray will catch up soon too
1YB Email! LOL (yes thats 1 Yottabyte, no typo lol) well it had to be offered sooner or later
Found it while browsing around the web for email provider, suddenly the 250mb from hotmail looks rather small, and as with all new things dow days its “invite-only”… i blame google for that
i’d like to know how thy’re doing this because 1YB is literally 1 trillion TB, i doubt even google have that much space amoungst all there servers put together 
Opera goes free
Sep 21, 2005 Tech
Read this today, pretty interesting…
Opera Software today permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser. The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download – completely free of charge – at http://www.opera.com.
“Today we invite the entire Internet community to use Opera and experience Web browsing as it should be,” said Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Removing the ad banner and licensing fee will encourage many new users to discover the speed, security and unmatched usability of the Opera browser.”
Opera was previously available free of charge with an ad banner. Users had the option of paying a licensing fee to remove the ad banner and receive premium support.
“Opera fans around the globe made this day possible,” said von Tetzchner. “As we grow our userbase, our mission and our promise remain steadfast: we will always offer the best Internet experience to our users – on any device. Today this mission gains new ground.”
>> Download it
Wow, im glad i didnt pay for it.
Tags: software
Windows Vista – The Next-gen OS
Jul 25, 2005 Tech
Windows Vista – The Next-gen OS
The new Windows will be called Windows Vista. From now on the name Longhorn will not be used by Microsoft anymore, but it’s possible that you’ll encounter the name Longhorn in the two upcoming beta’s.
This article contains information about how Windows Vista will handle 2D and 3D graphics and information about Vista’s new features.
Vista uses the Windows Graphics Foundation, or WGF. WGF 1.0 will use DirectX 9.0c as its primary interface, but Vista will also have the Next-Gen 3D API build in. You can see it as DirectX 10, but it’s officially called WGF 2.0.
One of the important features of WGF is the Longhorn Display Driver Model (LDDM). It is possible with LDDM to install a new graphics driver without even rebooting your system. LDDM will ship in two stages. The first, called basic, supports current generation graphics hardware: shader model 2.0 and 3.0 capable hardware. The second stage of LDDM, advanced, will support hardware features that ship at the same time or after Vista is released, but will work with the new features in WGF 2.0. Because of the competitive way of graphics hardware development, we’ll probably see advanced LDDM capable hardware before Vista is released. The current Windows XP driver model is still supported, but will be frozen going forward. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: beta, computer, rant, software, Tech, updates, video, windows