Upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Release Candidate

I am an early adopter by nature. I love new tech! Sometimes it bites me in the ass (Windows Me, Windows Vista), but other times it is a wonderful thing!

I have been beta testing Windows 7 off and on over the past several months. I started testing it on my Mac Pro using VMware Fusion (virtual machine) early on in the beta program. I was impressed with the stability and speed so early in the beta.

As the beta matured, I started re-thinking whether I wanted to stick with my Mac, or switch back to PC. I had originally switched to Mac after experiencing the abomination of Vista during it's early days. Vista was unstable and XP was having stability issues of its own, so I switched to the greener pastures that Mac OS X.

Between the news of Diablo III began circulating (which I knew I was going to want to play), first-hand knowledge of the stability of Windows 7, and my thirst for new technology, I decided to build a new PC and install Windows Vista Ultimate x64. Vista has come a long way! Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised with Vista's stability and driver support. However, it still feels like a sluggish memory hog compared to Windows 7.

About a week ago, Microsoft released the Release Candidate for Windows 7. I had thought about installing it in a dual boot configuration and keeping Vista as my primary OS until the final release, but after reading the forums and finding no show-stopping issues, I decided to dive in head first and install it as my primary OS.

Upgrade: I performed an upgrade from Vista x64 to Windows 7 Ultimate x64. The upgrade process took about an hour, but once you start the upgrade you can walk away from it and it will do the upgrade with minimal user input at the end of the upgrade. This is the most smooth upgrade in the history of Windows!

Driver Support: All of my devices that were working under Windows Vista were still working under Windows 7! On May 6, nVidia released a WHQL-certified driver (version 185.85) for Windows 7. Creative Labs also has a Windows 7 beta driver available for their sound cards, but I did not install that yet. My audio is working fine with the existing driver.

Problems Found: The only problems that I have experienced so far are:

• My iPhone (1st gen, 8 GB) is having conflicts with the CD/DVD drive. Whenever I plug the iPhone in, I get the regular sounds associated with Windows detecting new hardware. But then I get a series of sounds of hardware being added and removed. This happens several times and usually results with the CD/DVD drive being disabled. One time, this even crashed Windows Explorer. After I undock the iPhone and scan for hardware changes (or reboot the computer), the CD/DVD drive returns.
• I received the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death) when I left my computer on overnight. When I woke up the next morning, I found a message that my computer had recovered from an a bluescreen error. I have since updated to the WHQL-certified nVidia video driver and have not been able to reproduce the BSOD. I suspect this fixed the issue, but I sent Microsoft a bug report with all of the pertinant information so hopefully they will blast that bug before final release.

Final thoughts: Windows 7 is a vast improvement over Vista. It is faster, feels snappier, and stable. This will be a must-have upgrade for all Vista users, and Windows XP users finally have an OS worthy of upgrading to. I don't recommend everyone installing the Release Candidate as their primary OS (wait for it to hit retail), but if you do decide to do so then you won't be disappointed.

Building a new PC

It's been a few years since I built my last PC. Since that time, I became a Mac user for a couple years, but now I'm ready to switch back to Windows, especially with Windows 7 coming up.

After extensive research and consideration, here are the parts that I have chosen for my PC...

Case: Cooler Master HAF 932
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz
CPU fan: Cooler Master V8
Motherboard: EVGA X58
Video: EVGA GeForce GTX 260 SC
Memory: Corsair Dominator 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600
Hard drive: 2 Seagate Barracuda 750GB SATA 300
Power supply: Corsair 850TX
CD/DVD: Samsung 22X SH-S223Q SATA
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech Wave Wireless

For the LCD, I'll use my 23" Apple Cinema Display for now. Dell has some LED displays becoming available next month which have my eye.

I keep telling myself that I'm not going to get into PC gaming again, but I'd be lieing if I said I wasn't excited to break this machine in with Diablo III whenever it's released.

Once I get the parts I'll post pictures of the build process.

Halo 3 stole my life for the weekend

Normally on weekends I try to get out and take some pictures. It's calming, peaceful, and I get some much needed exercise. However not this past weekend. Like hundreds of thousands of others, Halo 3 owned me for the weekend.

Great game! I normally don't care about the story in games, but with Halo 3 you can't help but be drawn into it. It was like reading a good book. I didn't want to put it down until I had finished it... which I did in two days. And I liked the fact that it was a relatively short game. As I get older, I don't really want games that I have to invest more than a couple of weeks of my time to finish. The great thing about Halo 3 is that even though I have completed the single player game, there are thousands of Halo 3 matches on Xbox Live just waiting for me if I want to get a quick gaming fix in.

I had ordered the 'Limited Edition' version. It cost $10 more than the regular version and came with a few extra goodies and a metal case. It also came with real shoddy case with poorly designed disc nubs to hold the discs in place during shipment. The result was that many of the 'Limited Edition' boxes arrived with scratched discs. In fact, it was so many that Microsoft implemented a free disc exchange program to replace the discs at no cost (other than shipping costs to Microsoft). The catch, if you didn't guess, is that you have to send your discs away to Microsoft in order to get them replaced. Microsoft claims a 2-week turnaround once they receive the disc(s), but that's two weeks that people wouldn't have had to wait if Microsoft had just invested in quality packaging instead of taking the cheap path. They're making a bundle on this game anyways... and they should because it's a great game!

Scratched disc issue aside, I can't recommend spending the extra $10 on the 'Limited Edition' version of the game. There's just not anything very exciting on the second disc. Interesting, yes... but it's not something that I would pay $10 for. If you are a serious Halo fanatic, go for the Legendary Edition which includes a whole lot of geeky goodness (yes, I'm a geek too)! Otherwise, I recommend the regular version.

Enough about gaming. I just wanted to let everyone know why I had not made any posts over the past few days.

A quick teaser... I'm doing some volunteer work this coming weekend for the FONZ Photo Club at a National Zoo special event for FONZ members. I'll post some details this week.