Supergeekblog

For those a little more daring: Vista SP2 has now hit the net.

Yesterday Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta to the public. If you have been waiting for a second service pack for Windows Vista, give the new beta a shot!

You can download Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Server 2008 here. Note that this is the beta version and the final version of the service pack is not expected to be released until April 2009. However, if you enjoy testing new service packs or want to test it out before deploying it to your network next year, try out the beta.

Aseem over at Help Desk Geek has a great write up on this. He has included a list of updates/changes that come in SP2.  Like he mentioned above, it is important to remember this is *BETA* software.  It can potentially really screw up your machine.  (Vista Sp1 beta I really didn’t have any problems with.  WinXP SP1 I remember quite a few issues with.)  It all depends on your setup, the tweaks you make, and the various applications and drivers if it is going to play nice.

If Aseem sounds familiar, that is because his wordpress plugin “Best Posts Summary” has been reviewed here before.  A big fan of the plugin, so kudos to him!

Technorati Tags: Windows, Microsoft, Vista, Vista Service Pack

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Saw this a little while ago on the “Geeks are Sexy” blog.  Kiltak did a post on it and linked to the demo videos for us.

I though just haven’t seen enough to decide if it would really work as promised.  For one, I don’t see a single drink shown with ice in it.  Also - as a former bartender, you learn that point to ask your customers for more drinks.  If it is slow enough that you have time to be checking a monitor for everyones drink level, there is probably something you should be cleaning.

That whole part aside - it is actually pretty neat.  If they get towards a production product I will be quite interested to see what sort of bars it would go into.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Surface table, supergeekblog

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I’ll begin with my poor pockets disclaimer. My computer used to be a gamer machine. That was three years ago. It still has a 2.4 p4 with 512 mb ddr ram. Not horrible, but appearantly, not entirely up to Microsoft’s standards for the installer for this.

The Installer took forever. The progress bar was not visible, so I cancelled the first time thinking that it was froze up.

Once I got the game installed, what did I find? I found a fresh new take on the Age of Empires game. My computer handled the game just fine and the graphics were pretty darn good on my 64MB Gforce4. AOE3 takes us to colony America, where in the trial we can play as either the British or the Spanish. In campaign mode, with only one campaign turned on, I find myself in the middle of the industrial revolution. Yep, thats right, the industrial revolution. My job was to build outposts and trading posts along the trade path for the future railroad construction.

The game also comes with a fairly open version of skirmish mode, which is fun just to learn the game a little. The addition of a Deck of cards that you earn new cards from each time you level is quite fun once you figure it out. This took me a while and I couldn’t figure it out. In case your wondering, I don’t read instructions very often.

So, I suppose your expecting ratings of some sort.

Here you go:

Gameplay: The game plays pretty much the same as the previous games(which seems to have worked well before), but with the addition of the Deck of cards and a newer era to play in, I give the game an 9.

Graphics: I was somewhat limited in testing the graphics on this game as my card is a bit antiquated, but even with the older card I have, the graphics are quite good. I can only imagine what they must look like on something better. I give the graphics a genre based 8.

Overall: This game is the third in the series, so you can’t expect it to get too many points for originality, but it gets plenty of points for improving on a good thing, which I believe it did. FYI: I still get my butt kicked by the computer A.I. in this game, just like the rest. Overall, the game gets an 92. Definetely a must get, must play. Not that there were any questions about whether some of you die hard AOE players would or not.

Download the AO3 trial here.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Age of Empires, 64MB Gforce4, AOE3, ratings, Age of Empires III, Age of Empires 3, review

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Consumer reports recently tallied up all the commercially available AntiSpyware programs and listed the beta of Microsoft AntiSpyware as their numero uno choice. See list here.

I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised. Microsoft basically bought the AntiSpyware program then tweaked it a little. And who better to remove Spyware that uses Microsoft loopholes to root itself in than the people that left the loophole in the first place. Additionally, Microsoft has enough money in the bank to pretty much bankroll any program that they want and make it fairly successful as well.

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