Random Fact

A system interrupt (either a hard restart or system freeze) during windows Vista boot can corrupt the boot sector, making Vista impossible to boot into or even do a simple repair on to fix.

Windows Vista's Speaker Room Correction

Very expensive speakers have this feature called Room Correction. This is a calibration system where each speaker plays a test signal and uses a built in microphone to listen to the signal coming from the other speakers. By listening to this signal, delay and room frequency response from a room can be mapped out. This creates an automatically calibrated listening environment that compensates for a lot of room features like furniture and has many advantages over a manually calibrated equaliser system (mainly the fact that it is automated).

Windows Vista has Room Calibration built in. To do a calibration:

1) Connect up a microphone to your computer.

2) Setup your microphone so that your computer can listen through it.

2) Open up Playback Devices window.

3) Open up the properties window for your speakers.

4) Select the enhancements tab.

5) Select Room Correction and then Settings.

6) Follow the on-screen instructions.

I recommend turning your speakers up so that the test signal can be heard by your microphone. And place your microphone in a similar location to where you yourself will be listening to your speakers.

I don't know if this has made my listening experience better because I am not that well trained in these things, but the alterations applied to my system where to add a delay and slightly turn down the volume on my right speaker. This makes sense when you consider that my right speaker is closer to me, than my left. So logically my speakers should now sound better. Although I should add that this is no consolation to not buying a good set of speakers in the first place.

A Story Of Minesweeper and Localisation

Writing software isn't easy and being in feature creep or having a client that keeps changing their mind makes the job much harder, but what if you work at Microsoft and your user interface almost sparks an international incident.

Well that's what David Vronay wrote about in This Post about the updated version of Minesweeper for Windows Vista.

[via The Old New Thing]

Shipping Vista Song

For some reason Programming and Playing Music seem to go hand in hand. Musicians seem to be able to apply themselves to programming easier than it takes everyone else. So it is no surprise to me when a song like Shipping Vista comes along once in a while as there are some very talented musicians behind a lot of the applications we all use every day.

To Delay or Not To Delay Windows Vista

Robert McLaws over at LonghornBlogs.com has an interesting post titled Vista Needs More Time: The Entry I Didn't Want To Write. Which talks about how Vista needs to be delayed just a few more weeks to make it right for launch.

This is an interesting problem in most kinds of development because the product is already delayed, but there is call for a further delay. The problem with a decision to delay it further is that some projects never get launched because there is always something that could be done better with a bit more development time. One of the first things anybody should realise is that the most important feature of any commercial project, is that it must ship. So the choice to delay by even just a few weeks will be a difficult one to make. As in Vista's case there are probably other companies that are going to suffer further because further delays. It is not uncommon for some to go under because of such things.

Microsoft has a reputation of releasing new versions of it's OS unfinished. This always plagues early adopters and the reputation of the OS throughout it's life. I am not sure wither first impressions are the most lasting impressions, but certainly a good out-of-the-box experience helps all products. So in my view Vista is already late so they might as well make it worth waiting for. It's like being late to an important interview. You can either be five minuets late and be unprepared, or be twenty minuets late and have all your shit together. You are already noted as being late so wither that is ten minuets or half an hour might not make that much of a difference.