Time Wasted
Jarod | October 19, 2006It took me two nights – TWO nights – to fix my XP. Something – probably the HDD cloning – broke my DCOM+ and System Restore services. Along with that I couldn’t install any Windows updates anymore. I had to comb the registry back and forth, register DLLs and whatnot. What a waste of time! Especially when Windows kept telling me that a certain fix wasn’t working when it actually was. Bleh.
I’m writing this using Internet Explorer 7. So it finally can do tabs. And RSS. Gee, I’m amazed. I miss my Extensions, so back to Firefox for now. 
And Vista, have you heard about/read the License agreement they want to sell it with? My biggest complaint: You can change your hardware once. ONCE. Then, to re-activate Vista, you have to buy a new copy. I regularly update my hardware, usually I exchange my processor every two years (at least). Do you really think, I will buy Vista twice? If you could, you’d see my finger now.
Gothic 3 is great. I even got used to the combat system. If it wasn’t for the mentioned OS troubles, I’d be playing right now, but it’s too late already. When you compare the graphics to Oblivion I’d say it’s a draw. You can see farther in Oblivion, but Gothic’s woods and hand-build cities look much more ‘real’ and not half as cold and static. Gothic also spares you some work – no equipment decay or complicated lockpicking, I prefer it that way. Quests are fun and the guilds play much more dynamic and also deeper – your actions have much more noticable consequences. The game feeds on hardware, granted. But no loading zones, yay! I’ll post a few screenies soon.
One more day of work, then I’ll spend the next two weeks with, hm, playing games, sleeping, more sleeping, and even more … sleeping. And I’ll travel the world. A bit. And sleep. Yay! Ohmegosh I’m so boring.
So you change your system more then once and have to buy vista again ?
That goes well beyond greed.
Me thinks vista will be a hot item on the piracy table. They bitch and moan about piracy and go to all kinds of effort to stamp it out and still havnt figured out that if they simply made the products afordable to the average user theyd have more sales and probably make lots more money and cut out on the piracy to boot.
The problem is, they can afford it. Earlier or later you will be required to buy Vista – ’cause your favourite game won’t run on XP, or your hardware ain’t supported anymore … they’ll get you eventually. And this plays perfectly well with strategies of hardware manufacturers – Intel and AMD discard sockets every two years and therefore force you to exchange your mainboard, processor and memory if you want to upgrade. Lets not start on graphics cards.
Any game designer worth his salt will shy away from making games vista specific for as long as possible in order to reach as many would be clients.
No one likes to be forced to do anything, its human nature. It may work short term but its gona backfire on them. There are plenty of good programmers in this world and i wouldnt be suprised if someone somewere isnt thinking of making a contender to windows at some point.
Either that or the uptake to pirated coppies and linux support will rise considerably.
Are you sure microsoft is truly planning on doing this tho ? It seems farfetched even for them.
It has been stated in many online mags and blogs, the original source is the Windows Vista Team Blog.
All Micosoft “Use Terms” can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx
I can see this gonna be disputed in the EU, lets wait and see.
That being said, the hardware stuff is just one limitation. Google for “vista license” and be amazed.