Schlagwort: windows

Über die Defragmentierung von Festplatten

Fast jeder Windowsbenutzer hat es schon einmal gehört: an solle im Laufe der Zeit ab und an seine Festplatte defragmentieren, dies würde die Systemleistung erhöhen und auch dem Cache zugute kommen. Ebenfalls, als weiterer Tipp wird oft empfohlen, den Viewercache auf einer anderen Festplatte (nicht Partition!) als das Systemlaufwerk anzulegen, um zusätzliche Leistungssteigerungen zu erreichen.

Manche löschen sogar ihren Cache vor jedem Start, weil sie meinen, dies würde dem Viewer gut tun, aber natürlich muss so jedes Mal alles (Inventar/Texturen) über das Internet neu auf den heimischen Rechner geholt werden. . Die Frage bei all dem ist aber: wo liegt denn genau die Wahrheit? Die Antwort darauf ist, wie immer, kompliziert.

Die Grundlage der Speicherung: meine Festplatte, das unbekannte Wesen

Als Festplatte bezeichnet man eine oder mehrere sich extrem schnell mit einer magnetisierbaren Schicht überzogenen Scheiben, die von einem mittels Stellmotor betriebenen, auf einem Luftkissen dahingleitenden Schreib-Lese-Kopf beschrieben oder gelesen werden. Wichtig dabei ist, dass diese mechanische Vorrichtung pro Sekunde nur eine gewisse Anzahl an Sprüngen zulässt. Dies ist der wichtigste, limitierende Faktor dabei, nämlich die Anzahl der Suchläufe (Seeks) pro Sekunde, auch gerne Input Output Operations per Second (IOPS) genannt.

Die Entwicklung der letzten Jahre ist dabei (wie hier bei Microsoft in der ersten Grafik gut zu sehen) drastisch gewesen: während die Prozessoren immer schneller und schneller geworden sind, dümpelt die klassische Festplatte weiterhin bei ca. 250 IOPS herum. Die Grafik ist dabei nicht ganz sauber, zeigt aber eines: die Festplatte hinkt heute gehörig der Prozessorentwicklung hinterher, dafür bieten sie inzwischen nie geahnte Speichermöglichkeiten.

Was genau ist Fragmentierung?

Fragmentierung tritt meistens bei größeren Dateien auf. Der Idealfall einer geschriebenen Datei auf der Festplatte ist nämlich, dass diese an einem Stück geschrieben werden kann. Nur so kann die Festplatte ihre theoritische Maximalgeschwindigkeit auch in der Praxis erreichen. Fragmentierung bedeutet aber, dass die Datei in verschiedenen Bereichen der Festplatte geschrieben worden ist, es also dazwischen Sprünge gibt, die für zusätzliche Seeks des Schreib-Lese-Kopfs sorgen und somit die Gesamtleisung herabsetzen. „Über die Defragmentierung von Festplatten“ weiterlesen

Wenn Phoenix unter Windows nicht starten will…

…und beim Start nur abstürzt, dann sollte man sich mal einfach diesen offiziellen Fix runterladen, diesen installieren und normal klappt es dann.

Der technische Hintergrund: das System versteht aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach die Visual Studio C++ 2005 SDK dlls ohne diesen Fix nicht.

GTA IV sucks golfballs through a garden hose

I’ve purchased the PC version of "GTA IV" on Steam at the holiday price action. This means, I had to pay around 8€ for that game, while you still have to pay around 40€ in different kind of shops. Well, it helped me to keep my temper down – a lot. Here’s why.

First, GTA IV is really a great game. Graphics, story telling, looks, you name it, it got it. The high ranking ratings and well received critics don’t come from nowhere. But the stuff surrounding the game just really sucks golfballs through a garden hose. The game, even one year after its launch on the PC platform, is full of annoyances.

Which kind of annoyances, you might ask? Well, here they are:

  1. The sheer amount of computing power under your desk you need to play it nicely. Better have a decent quad core, at least, and a very good graphics card, 512 MB of memory is the minimum, better yet 1 GB, if you want to play it on the highest detail level. This is something that’s going to wane down in the future when more and more potent computers are becoming wide spread.
  2. One word: Microsoft. It just plain sucks. What the game has to do with Microsoft, you might ask? Well…
    1. You are unable to make any saves of the gaming progress at all, when you are not signing up for Microsoft Live. What the bloody fucking hell have the developers thought about that? I don’t need no stinking membership in there, when I want to save a game, it should happen without that kind of stuff and shit, period! And believe me, since you are going to play it for a long time, membership is really a crucial need for you. This just plain rotten stinks!
    2. Support for 3rd party Controllers, namely gamepads. The first version of the game, released in 2008, only supported one type of gamepads, namely the ones from Microsoft for the Xbox 360. Why in the name of bloody hell should I buy a gamedpad for around 50$, just because the developers are forcing me to do that? Games on Windows have always been open for a broad range of hardware, there are enough cheaper and almost as good controllers around for PCs, anyway, and I am not going to buy a stinking Microsoft controller just because the developers have made the game that way. With later patches they introduced a somewhat broader support for other controllers, but still the support is severly lacking and leaves much in the dust.
      I repeat: this has just been a decision to make people go to Microsoft and buy their stuff. Hell, I for sure really dislike that kind of attitude!
  3. DRM. You need to activate the game once over the internet. If you bought the DVD-Version, you are only able to launch it if DVD #1 is in your dvd drive. You for sure cannot start the game without always first launching up that application named "Rockstar Social Games Club", because it is part of the DRM. There is no way to get rid of it. You can start the game with that application, but when you are not a member of that club you are always getting reminded in a very annoying dialog box that you are unable to publish your acchievements on that club website as long as you are not signing up there. Hell, why should I want to do that? This is just another plain and annoying part of the customer being treated like a child and not a grownup at all. Bummer.

So, since I bought that game on budget, I am content with most of that stuff, though. But, if I would have bought it in a shop, I would have returned it, because of all that annoyances. They suck great lengths! Don’t get me wrong, though: the game itself is great, but all that stuff makes it really an annoying pain in the ass. No customer likes to be treated as a child as much as this game did and still sometime does!

Feeddemon now free as in free beer

I rarely comment on other software than Second Life here at all, this here is one of the rare cases.

Feeddemon, argueable the best RSS aggregator for Windows out there, is now free as in free beer. The company that bought it from Nick Bradbury a while ago, Newsgator, is now giving the fully enabled version away for free since the beginning of January. Before that you had to buy this version for 25 US$, which was also quite a good price if you take a look at the features and sheer speed this beast offers to you. You want a feature? Bet that in 99.9% of the cases Feeddemon has it and much, much more!

If you are really a news junkie, then this is the only program you’ll ever need! The same goes now for NetNewsWire, the standard RSS aggregator for Mac OS X, backed up by the same company.

Vista is shit, part two

Microsoft has reacted to the demand on the market and now has created two new options for purchasing XP:

  1. It allows big manufacturer now to offer their customers of computers with Windows Vista a free downgrade to Windows XP. Consider this – buying a new computer with Vista and you got the option to downgrade to it’s predecessor! This has as far as I know never been around before.
  2. They extended the availabilty of XP OEM versions from 31. January 2008 to 30. June 2008 to "give the people more flexibility."

So the market has spoken and the market doesn’t want Vista. It’s really easy. Is there a greater way to admit that your software is bad and that you’re not content with its sales pitch?