Jan,

Hi. Just a minor suggestion: I don't have any desktop icons (Vista Home Premium) on my system, preferring instead to use only Start --> (various menus). Whenever I install Arles I get the two shortcuts -- Image Explorer and Image Web Page -- added to the desktop. I'm not asked during installation whether I want these, and would prefer an option -- which would be the default, i.e., "remembered," for my next upgrade, the way directories are remembered -- to have these not created. I just delete them after each installation.

Regards,

Bill

Hiya wspollack,

How on earth could you go to Vista (any version).

But as you say, you can delete the shortcuts without any problem.

Greets.
Toon D.

Toon,

Vista came with my PC. It's not so bad (for a Microsoft O/S). I have User Account Control turned off (two users, my wife and I, are on the PC), making it almost XP-like. At least MS keeps working on the security patches. And of course I don't use Windows Mail or IE. I keep threatening (myself) to buy a Mac every time I buy a PC, but then I'd be without Arles, right?

Yeah, I know it's fairly trivial to delete these shortcuts, but a lot of software I install asks whether I want a shortcut or a menu item or a quick-launch item, and so forth. Arles remembers my menu-group location and my program-installation directory, so I just thought that Arles should ask about those shortcuts, too, and remember that.

Hiya wspollack,

If Jan had the resources of microshaft or Corel or some other such company then i would say yes.

But please note, Arles is a one man project, and one of the best in it's class. It's the above companies who are attempting to copy Arles.

And about Vista, i am at present trying to buy a new machine, Vista ready but with downgrade to XP. Do you think i can find one?
Not on your nelly. Why do most people accept Vista? I mean you dont buy a car that has not been tested or needs a 5 liter engine run?

Let alone all the new processor names. I mean who still knows what all those new names mean.

We had the P2 in different speeds, the P3 in different speeds, the p4 in different speeds.

What on earth do we have now. All kinds of names to confuse the consumer.

Greets.
Toon D.



Greets.
Toon D.



[/quote]

ToonD

Dell were supplying PC's with XP but I don't know if they still are. M$ according to the announcement of Windows 7 last week are still selling licences for XP. If you remove XP from your old PC it is perfectly legal under M$ licence to install it on a new PC, this is what I have done for several friends recently.

I am playing with Windows 7 Beta running on VMware on my XP system at the moment, so far it seems pretty good and what Vista should have been but it still wants to hold your hand and asks are you sure you want to do that. I am going to try running Arles on it this weekend.

_________________
--
Colin
www.turnspain.com
www.macameraclub.com
www.photos.turnspain.com
www.spencergen.turnspain.com

Hiya colin,

Yes i know that Dell were still supplying XP. But i never had it with Dell pc's. Especially in the early days they were like Tulip and Ericson pc's. If you needed to add/replace something you could do so only with original Tulip or Ericson stuff. Philips pc's were the same.

I dont know if that problem still exsists with dell. If not it might be worth looking into.

Btw, is windows 7 beta that much different from Vista. I read somewhere that it is just a version of Vista with some service pack improvements.

Also, this machine is a Compaq, running an OEM version of XP, No original XP cd so that option wont work.

OT: If anyone has a dead machine which ran XP with official serial number i'd be interested. Preferably the Dutch version, but English is ok as well.

Anyway to get back to the original post.

When Jan sees the post he might add the option to the install procedure, if it's easy to implement. Else it will probably end up on the to-do list.

Greets.
Toon D.

Done: Arles 8.1 will have an option in the installer to disable desktop icons.

I too like the Windows 7 beta. The new toolbar is quite nice. The first tests showed that Arles works fine.

Jan Derk

_________________
Jan Derk
digitaldutch.com

Thanks Jan.

Regards,

Bill

Hiya all,

Well i had no choice but to buy a new machine. Compaq would not supply a replacement motherboard for the old machine, which was dying. Onboard graphics had packed it in and a new Asus video card produced the same problems as mentioned below withe the vista machine. I will rebuild the compaq myself now.

So i had no choice but to buy a Vista pc. Turned out to be an Acer Aspire M3641. Nice machine with plenty of specs.

To be honest, i am not disapointed till now. Once i've played with it a bit and dumped the Google Desktop and extra search bar, and the McAfee 60 day trial is over, the machine should speed up significantly. Now running the afore mentioned and windows defender and Avast. I'm still playing with vista just to get a feel for it.

But with windows 7 just around the corner i hope that Acer will supply an upgrade.

Jan, as you've played with windows 7. Wat are your impressions. Is it significantly lighter (more optimized) than vista or is the step going to to be like it was from XP to Vista?

A tip for those thinking of buying a new machine, dont try to mix XP or older hardware with vista machine hardware. Or the other way around. It will frustrate you no end. Tried to use my LG monitor on the Acer, gave no end of trouble. When the pc started there would be no image on the screen, forcing the acer into sleep mode for up to 10 times would finally give me something to look at. Also my printer wont work, the acer has no parallel port.

So i am still looking for an XP version from a dead machine with official serial.
And does anyone have any experience with a PCI to parallel card and/or USB to parallel cable? Does it work on a vista pc.?

Thanks all for letting me rant.

Greets.
Toon D.

ToonD

To answer some of your questions about Windows 7.

I have created several single Arles galleries without problems using my custom template and using the default ones including Lightbox all without issues.

Even though the beta expires in August I will be amazed if it makes it to the public before summer 2010 (this is based on previous experience with XP and Vista which went public beta and then major bugs were found and the release was delayed).

Acer do usually supply upgrades but only after the official release date is announced by M$. That is what happened to a friend with a new laptop just before Vista was available. I suspect that you will be out of luck.

I have Win 7 running on a 4gb PC with 1gb allocated to it running in VMware and it runs fine and is as quick as my base XP machine with everything I have tried so far. Needless to say it pages a lot if you run a memory heavy application like Photoshop.

I am not a Vista user but I have several friends who are and have worked on several PC's that have Vista on them. IMHO the move from Vista to 7 will be insignificant as it is an evolution rather than the revolution of moving from XP.

I may have a spare XP Home licence that you could have, I just need to check the sticker on an old case in my storeroom. If it is available I will PM you with the serial.

_________________
--
Colin
www.turnspain.com
www.macameraclub.com
www.photos.turnspain.com
www.spencergen.turnspain.com

My PC has been running Vista 64 bits for almost 2 years now and I had no significant problems. Only the software for my scanner would not work right. The reason I run Vista is that I want to test all the operating systems that Arles users may be using. Plus you need a 64 bit operating system if you have 4 or more GB of RAM.

Vista is much more restrictive than Windows XP and especially the UAC (User Account Control) asks dozens of questions if you really want to do X or Y, which drove me mad in the beginning. I guess I see more UAC dialogs because I am a developer and do more things that require adminstration rights. The good news is that it is relative easy to switch UAC off. However I keep it on, because I want to see if and when Arles triggers UAC dialogs. Currently you only see a warning dialog when installing Arles which naturally requires administration rights. Plus I like the way the glass interface looks. All Arles screenshots are made in Vista.

By using it a lot I actually prefer Vista over XP these days. It has several nice small improvements. For example, if you copy a lot of files and one is locked (because it is open in another application) it will tell you so and give you an option to retry. XP would just fail with an error. But only use Vista on a powerful computer with lots of RAM, because it is slower than XP. On my older laptop I still run XP, because it is an older machine. In short, if you happy with XP stick with it. If you new computer comes with Vista and it is powerful enough I would just try it some time. And Windows 7 really looks like a worthy successor to XP. It is snappy enough in the Virtual Machine I run it in. For a beta it is quite good. No crashes yet, but then again I just kicked the tires.

Jan Derk

_________________
Jan Derk
digitaldutch.com

Hiya colin and Jan,

Thanks for your thoughts on Windows 7. I was going to download the beta but it seems they have stopped for now.

And this being a new machine i dont want to mess things up as it seems that acer runs things on a 32 bit Fat ??? and Not NTFS. This because they have a hidden recovery partition. I can't confirm this yet as i have not checked this out yet.

Is it possible to run VMware on a Vista pc? If so i still may try for the win7 download and install it in that.

Anyway, the specs for this Acer, Intel Q8200 Core 2 Quad, running at around 2.44 Ghz, 4Gb Ram, sharing some with the video card, 640 HD, probably a little more due to the hidden partition, ATI Radion HD 3650 with 512 Mb.
Only thing i'm not crazy about is the keyboard, all very flat not like a proper ps2 keyboard. But i'll get used to that.

Also bought a 22" Acer widescreen, which is a nice monitor.

Came with Google Desktop which i'll dump quick smart and a 60 day trial of McAfee security pack. I'll let that run till it expires then dump it too. Once i've played with it a bit i'll do a shop restore and start adding my software back in.

Running McAfee and Avast and windows defender. Only have the sidebar on occasionally, but quite like it.

Vista being Vista, and with all the security running, it runs about as fast as the compaq did at 2.66 Ghz with XP.

I wonder if Black Viper has done the stripping process for vista yet. I'd better check.

That's it folks.
Greets.
Toon D.