Take a look at these two dialogs, and tell me what you see as a difference…
File Type file association Dialog:
Protocol Dialog:
Found the difference? (Apart from the file type)
No? How about the lack of a “Browse” button from the HTTP protocol, and the lack of any alternatives. (I have Firefox installed)
Now, these are just two I picked at semi-random…. actually, not really.
See, I like to use Firefox as my primary browser.
When I click links in IM conversations, IRC, and other applications - I like them to appear in my default browser.
Unfortunately, Windows Vista doesn’t seem to let Firefox be the default browser.
Every time I start Firefox, I get this prompt:
I choose yes, every time - but Vista apparently ignores this.
Unfortunately, Windows Vista (Both build 5600, and according to Paul - Build 5728 too) won’t let me change this using the Default Programs utility either.
So, if I click on a URL in an Office document, or IRC, or whatever — it opens in Internet Explorer.
Not only that, but the same goes for HTTPS, and FTP. Apparently this does NOT occur for Mail, but I can’t confirm that (yet).
Can anyone else confirm this behavior isn’t isolated to two PCs?
Have you found a work around?
Is this an intended behavior? (i.e: Lock out 3rd party software from some protocols)
Is there some sort of additional API that programs need to implement, to associate with certain protocols?
Credit goes to Paul for clueing me into this puzzling behavior.
Updated: Looks like I’m not the only one to find this out… CyberNet News had this last month.
Solution? Run Firefox as Administrator, and then it’ll let Firefox change the association.
The funny thing is, when you press “Change” on these protocols, it still doesn’t show Firefox.
Lets all submit a bug report, ’cause this isn’t fun. They could at least give us a UAC prompt, like everything else does.
Oh, and Paul, two words: neer neer (But you got better looking screenshots than me… dangit… I need to crop, instead of just taking a full screenshot.)
I’m in an air conditioned office cubicle, it’s well ventilated — I have a big vent right over my desk to keep the air moving.
I (finally) got the new PC at work… I asked for a Core 2 Duo, I got a Pentium D 945 (the vendors cant build Core 2 Duos yet).
This Pentium-D runs hot. Really hot. Infact, so hot that within 15 minutes of turning it on, it’s raised the temperature in my cubicle considerably. And that’s with the aircon running. I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like if when the AC dies this summer.
Oh, and this is with ~50% load on the CPUs.
During winter I’ll be able to heat the office by running Prime95.
Edit (30mins later): Ok, so just for laughs, I ran Prime95, two copies - both with the In-Place large FFTs. Ran them for 10 minutes, It now feels like Singapore (with less humidity) in here…
I’m looking for a new bit of podcast downloading software. I’ve been using Juice Reciever up until now, but it seems to have taken a dislike to Vista and won’t play nice.
Requirements:
- Runs on Win32 (includes .NET. Java is welcome, as long as it comes with a win32 .exe)
- Scheduled Downloading
- Import/Export OPML (Subscription) List
- Runs without needing Administrator mode (so, no storing preferences in Program Files, for example)
- Scheduler Runs in background (i.e as a Windows Service, or just lives as a Notification Icon)
- Doesn’t f*** with my file associations, install malware, or have a stupid interface. (So, iTunes is out)
Niceties
- Auto-magic tagging of Podcasts that have no ID3 tags.
Hot Damn, USD$1079 for the 16GB Extreme III. Expensive, but oh so nice.
I could’ve had one CF card for my entire trip, used RAWs only, and still had room to spare (and keep shooting). That’s like 3,200 photos, in RAW mode (estimating 5MB per image), or somewhere around the 8,000 picture mark for JPEG.
Well, I got the new PC on Friday, and I’ve been trying to get all my data moved across, while doing about a dozen other things.
First of all, this is the first time I’ve had my PC assembled by AusPC Market… well, it’s the first time I’ve bought a whole PC through them.
They do a pretty good job of assembly, but did some things I’d prefer they hadn’t.
For instance, they slapped the “Windows Media Center 2005″ license sticker on the side of it. I now know that they’re required to place the sticker on the PC (because they assembled it), but it’s a big black case — and it’s got this really obvious white and holographic sticker right at the top front corner of it.
To be honest, underneath or at the back would have been a smarter choice for placement, or if they really want it on the side, then down lower and towards the back where you don’t have to look at it all the time would have been better.
I had actually intended to put the Media Center license on the rebuilt (with new motherboard, graphics card, etc) Media Centre machine — but that’s now sitting on a public Vista RC.
Next time: Don’t pick the “Assemble” option … I’ll do it myself.
Anyway.. So, I started fiddling right away — repartitioned the drives so I could install Vista on the side and have a separate Storage partition. Normally, I wouldn’t do this if I were only having one OS. But, because Windows Vista is still in Beta, I’ll be periodically installing the new releases as they come out.
In addition to this - I’ve been trying to get Vista to play nice with the HTPC. It’s … okay at the moment, but it doesn’t like HD channels (Standard Definition [SD] digital is OK).
The live TV buffering is very cool too — missed that story in the news? No problem - rewind back to that section and play it back.
My major gripe (and this is not just Vista, it’s Media Center 2005 too) is that there’s no EPG available for Australia.
Apparently this isn’t Microsoft’s fault — the networks apparently won’t sell/give it to them. If this is true - then the networks are idiots, and the ABC & SBS shouldn’t be following along with this - they’re publicly owned networks and should be giving that info away for free, to all comers.
One line of reasoning given by someone on the Intertron is that the commercial networks are afraid you’ll skip past the ads. Gee, not having an EPG isn’t going to stop me from doing that… infact, I’m now far more likely to go stripping the ads out entirely on any commercial network - just to spite them.
Again, it’s a flawed reasoning (People will use the break time to get up and get a drink, like they do now), and they don’t realise they have all this additional “time shifted” audience. OMG, Every prime-time show could get top ratings! (Just… not right at the moment when it’s broadcast…)
I’ll have to go look at something like EPGRunner or similar to give me the EPG.
Vista is kinda nice… but it needs a lot of work done for driver support… a LOT of work. Microsoft really need to encourage all the hardware vendors to write Vista drivers for their hardware.
Other than that, there’s a lot of nice, subtle improvements most people won’t talk about… like the resource(?) monitor — accessible from the Task Manager, it gives a good rundown of a bunch of vital statistics, on a per-process level. What’s using all your network bandwdith? Take a look. What’s making that HDD grind? Go for it, it’s right there.
You also get the running line-charts similar to the CPU and Memory usage graphs you’re used to in Task Manager. The quick-summary bar gives meaningful results too (i.e MB/sec for Disk/Network IO). There’s a few other things visible too — for example if your CPU supports SpeedStep or a similar technology, then it’ll show the current stepping level on the CPU graph.
Not major improvements, and not worth forking out hundreds of $ in cash to upgrade, but useful all the same.
One thing a lot of people have complained about is the UAC popups requesting Authorisation for a bunch of different things (changing network/hardware settings, overriding file permissions, etc) — sure, it’s a tad annoying (It’s on a lot of the things you need to do when setting up a PC, for instance) - but in day-to-day usage at home, I don’t see a problem.
If it’s possible to train users that “Hey - This dialog means something bad could be done to your PC” - then it’ll be useful for stopping Malware from being installed, hopefully.
Also, if it were at work - then I wouldn’t see much of an issue there either.
The only slightly annoying thing is that it pops up for every new (unsigned) application you run, and any file you’ve downloaded from ‘teh internets’ via Internet Explorer.
I haven’t had a chance to really stretch the legs of this new CPU — according to reports it shouldn’t have any issues going from it’s stock of 1.86Ghz to 2.8Ghz without need of any uber-cooling - if so It’ll be the best bang-for-buck CPU I’ve had since my Celeron 300a went to 450Mhz with the flick of a BIOS setting (and bested anything Intel had out at the time).
I’ve bought decent RAM (brand name DDR2-800, rated at 4-4-4-12 timings), so that should help some too, or so I’m told.
I’ll need to install some games to give it a good work out too.
(But you got better looking screenshots than me… dangit… I need to crop, instead of just taking a full screenshot.)
