Hey that sounds good, thanks Nin!

I was using a rather patchwork (forgive the pun) setup, and it wouldn't always get all the servers.. Grmbl..

Cheers!

Creston

That sucks.

But Win98 will give you even more headaches. While that particular problem might go away if you downgraded, the number of criticial app crashes (that take down the entire OS) and regular crashes will drive you insane.

I'd recommend Windows 2000 over 98 any day.

I guess it's a crap-shoot when it comes to systems. Fortunaly for me (and a lot of people I know), we've been rolling sevens for a while.

However, my next computer will probably be a Mac (either G5 or powerbook). It just depends if I can hold onto this job for another 6 months.

Creston, you need to look into an app call SPQuery, by Sunbelt software. It proxies all your Windows boxes and can tell you what patches are installed on each machine. It also keeps a list of the latest patches, auto-downloads them, and allows you to push out as many patches to as many machines as you want to.

edit: Whoops...looks like the product has changed names and hands. I used an earlier version a few years ago and it worked great.
http://www.stbernard.com/products/updateexpert/products_updateexpert.asp

Supporter of the "A happy fredster is a muted fredster" fanclub.

http://www.originaltrilogy.com/
This comment was edited on Jul 24, 19:01.

Schnapple, you're (presumably) looking at this from the single home user's standpoint.

Now try looking at it from the standpoint of a server admin who has to maintain a server farm of 2000 servers, all of which must remain patched to the same level etc. I'm sure you'd THEN see why "people complain about this".

It's not the fact that it gets PATCHED that bugs me, it's the fact that those patches are released every two days that bugs me. They COULD just gather up fifteen patches and release them once every three weeks, for convenience's sake. Yes, that would leave the server farm vulnerable for three weeks, but it's a risk MANY server admins would gladly take. Rebuilding ten servers that have been attacked takes NOWHERE NEAR as much time as implementing 2000 patches every other day.

Creston

"Honestly, if you have good hardware and use the proper drivers, WinXP shouldn't give you a problem."

Gigabyte GA8INXP Mobo
Radeon 9700 vid card
latest everything.

"driver stuck in loop" lockup, kick to 640x480 256 color resolution.

Widely experienced by ATI/Nvidia users, Intel & AMD - ONLY in Win XP.

Yeah, WinXP is the cat's meow. Wish I could degrade to Win98 without hours of resintalling all my crap.

all bizzard games (Starcraft, Wc3, etc...) are all for both platforms

I thought the AA bug was an Nvidia thing.

You thought wrong! Some Ati fanboys tried to make that believe everyone but it was just a voluntary misinterpretation of a comment made by a guy from valve.

This comment was edited on Jul 24, 15:28.

Agreed. I've come close to buying a 15" powerbook twice in the last 2 months. Seriously, I'm looking for ANY excuse to buy one. The only thing holding me back from buying Mac has been:

1) no/few games

The Mac quite a few games available. The Apple Store has a large selection and there are many more available at websites like www.macplay.com and www.aspyr.com

This comment was edited on Jul 24, 10:03.

I didn't just lash out blindly at MS - I gave two very SPECIFIC examples, which no-one addressed.

And as far as OSX is concerned, it has navigated the bumpy road of crashes and incompatability just like any other OS. The problem is, there are very few developers working on the mac, as evidenced by the dearth of software.

I've worked with macs for years, but it would be a frozen day in hell if I ever used one at home, let alone paid .25 for one. The average knowledge of a mac user is far below short bus standards - I have fielded many tech support calls and am amazed at the AOL mentality persistent in the users.

This comment was edited on Jul 24, 10:03.

Ofcourse, the fact that every other day there is another "windows critical" patch shows that despite their Trusted Computing broohaha, they still don't know jack shit about security.

I never understand why people complain about this. It used to be that MS would never patch critical system flaws in a timely fashion - now they patch most of them before we hear about them. Their Trusted Computing bit is to make everything work the way it's supposed to, and largely the way it's not working already - be glad they're not making the changes to future OS' only.

Sure, the best thing would be to have come out with an OS that never had the problems to begin with, but get over it.

you can say what you want about them being stupid because their software has bugs - but so does everything..

hl had bugs, quake had bugs, unreal had bugs.. are all the companies responsible stupid? And do you think its harder to program an OS or a game?

at least they patched it - and if theres another vunerability i'm sure that will get patched within a couple of days too.

personally i have great faith in MS. winxp is as stable as a rock for me.

thats what the valve guys said...

"Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure"

I thought the AA bug was an Nvidia thing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3092399.stm

>" I run OS X on my real computer, now that's a nice OS."

Agreed. I've come close to buying a 15" powerbook twice in the last 2 months. Seriously, I'm looking for ANY excuse to buy one. The only thing holding me back from buying Mac has been:

1) no/few games
2) I do development for Windows, and spend some of my free time learning something new or working on a part of a project for work. And my company doesn't use Macs. So it wouldn't help me with this either.

Heck, once I saw that Oracle had finally released a server and client for it, I drove to the local Apple store. But I changed my mind half-way there.

Is this the patch that makes DirectX... ahh forget it. Whatever it is, DX is not.

anyone elses framerates go to shit after installing this?

not sure yet whether its this update to blame but I cant really think of anything else that could have done it..

hmm..


edit: whatever the prob was, it went away after i reinstalled my detonators


This comment was edited on Jul 24, 04:17.

I wonder, but doubt, if this in anyway addresses the Halflife 2 FSAA issue?

No, only DX9.1 can fix the FSAA issue in HL2 and Dx9.1 will not be released before the end of the year.

The other way to fix it is through a graphic driver update but since HL2 is not out yet, neither ATI nor nvidia will comment on the situation. But as Gabe indicated, they are several ways to solve this problem for both companies. Expect to play HL2 in AA modes with both nvidia and ATI cards...

"I'm all up for open platforms and a *nix based core, but I go with what works and where the software is. Hell, I'd switch to OSX or linux if the apps "I" need become avaiable. But right now, Microsoft is the sweet spot of OS's; development-wise and game-wise."

My PC is just a game machine. That's the only thing it's got over other OS's for me. A lot of games. I run OS X on my real computer, now that's a nice OS.

RaZ0r!
Tweak Monkey and Gaming Extraordinaire =)
http://users.ign.com/about/Cutts

nm

This comment was edited on Jul 24, 02:11.