Dan’s Space on the Web

One of the few things in Vista that I actually hate is its file operations system.

To begin with, before doing anything it tries to search and index the files or something, to get info on it. This takes ages when trying to modify(delete) a large number of files.

Next, the copy operation is junk. Not only does it run slower than my grandmother, it is highly unreliable – often disappearing as though it has completed copying files when it actually did not. I lost a bunch of data thanks to this – I was backing up my files over my wireless network, and I suspect that the other machine’s wireless dropped and so the copy operation stopped and disappeared. I thought that it completed, and wiped my drive. Big mistake – I should’ve verified it first.

Anyway, that’s a mistake I’ll never make again – I’ll never use the regular Copy and Paste in Vista, especially on large files. Heck, I’ve even started to unzip files using 7-zip, because it takes an unreasonable amount of time to unzip files using the built in zip manager (which appears to use the same file operations system as copy/paste).

Enter Robocopy, my new best friend (for copying/moving files) and one of Vista’s hidden gems. Not only is it 102938 times faster, it provides you a handy log of the files copied. There are also a bunch of useful options, such as mirroring two folders to easily keep them in sync, or copying in restartable mode which allows you to resume a file transfer over a network if it were to be interrupted.

robocopy, however, is a command line tool, so you’ll have to open a command prompt to use it. you should also open the prompt as Administrator.

if you’re not familiar with command prompts, fear not: there is a GUI version of Robocopy.

I was rather disappointed with Microsoft’s failure to meet their initial promise of distributing the Windows 7 beta to the public on Jan 9th at 12pm. The fact that it was limited to the first 2.5 million people made it worse.

I had delayed a lunch appointment to 12.30pm in hopes of being one of that 2.5 million, and in the end I never got it. It was probably a waste of a good number of other people’s lunch hour as well. No word on their homepage, just the same “want to try the beta? come back in the afternoon on January 9″. They should have at least immediately put up a notice saying that it was delayed, even if there was no ETA – it’s unfair to leave the customer in the dark and having to continuously refresh the page, which I imagine just puts even more load on their servers. Unforeseen demand and server overload? I find that hard to believe. With a catch like “first x number of people”, you should definitely expect tons of people to be desperately refreshing their browsers hours before the release. ok maybe not hours, but close. It looked like a case of bad server management, which is disappointing coming from Microsoft.

Fortunately, they have redeemed themselves with what I think is fair compensation – the beta is not only now properly up and available to the public, but the 2.5 mil limit has been lifted in favor of a limited time approach. The Windows 7 beta is available from the Windows 7 page until January 24th.

my brother convinced me to give GTAIV a try, since he had a copy of it and it seems that many have named it one of the top games of 2008. I inserted the DVD and started installing 1.5 hours ago.

I still haven’t played it yet.

steps to install GTAIV (DVD Version) on a PC!

1. install from DVD. 2 DVDs. bah. I hate having to come back to the PC and see it prompt for the next disc. And then at the end it needs the first disc again.

note: at the start of installation it tells you
installation of GTA4… requires installation of Rockstar Games Social Club, Sony DADC SecuROM, Adobe Flash, Microsoft .NET Framework, Games for Windows – LIVE, Internet Explorer, and DirectX.

Wow, that’s a long list.

finally, after installing game files…

2. check online to see if game release date has passed
3. enter serial key and activate online
(what if I don’t have an internet connection at the moment?)

wait! another thing before you play…

4. need to sign up for Rockstar Social Club.
note: I just realized that maybe you don’t really have to, you can opt to run in offline mode. However for the purposes of today’s lesson, we’re aiming to get the full experience out of the game.

5. need to link rockstar social club account to windows live account for achievements (i think that’s what its for)

finally, got that all out of the way… can I play the game now? No.

6. need to download and install (manually) the latest Games for Windows – LIVE update.

I wonder if the Steam version has similar problems. I’m pretty happy with Steam’s services so far.

Update: Woohoo! The game finally launched. Well something did. “To save your progress and achievements you have to sign in to your Live account.” OK, sounds good. “An update for this game is available. you will have to update it before you can play it with Windows Live.*”
!@#$%^

*I can’t remember the exact wording. but it was something along the lines of “update it or you can’t get the full experience”

Why can’t they just check and slipstream the update during installation? they already require the net to check for release date.