Vista - SlashGear

‘vista’ Stories

ASUS R50a UMPC reviewed: underpowered for Vista?

Chris Davies, Dec 29th 2008 Discuss [0]

ASUS' R50a UMPC was always taking on a serious challenge: Windows Vista on a 1.33GHz Atom Z520 processor with 1GB of RAM is asking either for nth-degree fine-tuning or just plain trouble. Initial reports seemed vaguely promising, but Ben over at UMPC Portal has found things less impressive. Chief criticism - aside from the bloatware, cramped writing area and difficult form-factor - is the sluggish performance. Read The Full Story

Microsoft Vista Ultimate PRODUCT (RED) edition coming Dec 15th

Chris Davies, Dec 8th 2008 Discuss [0]

Microsoft will be widely selling the Windows Vista PRODUCT (RED) edition, debuted on Dell PCs, as of December 15th. The package consists of several new wallpapers, a screensaver, two sidebar gadgets and a Dreamscene, and for every sale Microsoft will make a donation to the PRODUCT (RED) fund. Read The Full Story

Samsung MediaLive coming October 15th

Chris Davies, Sep 23rd 2008 Discuss [0]

Samsung's MediaLive HDTV Media Center Extender has finally got a shipping date: October 15th. The compact box is intended to bridge the divide between your Vista Media Center and your Samsung HDTV; it basically straps to the back of the set and brings the Vista interface into your living room, streaming content either via WiFi draft-n or cabled ethernet. Read The Full Story

Windows 7 Previewed; beta to come in December

Brenda Stokes, Sep 19th 2008 Discuss [1]

Windows 7, Milestone 3 was just previewed and Mary Jo Foley got a brief look at it. And though Microsoft is now just one more preview away from the official Beta 1 version, not a whole lot has changed from Vista. Read The Full Story

Willcom D4: battery life terrible but Vista performs well

Chris Davies, Jul 30th 2008 Discuss [1]

Having been unboxed on video, the Willcom D4 UMPC has now travelled over to Jenn at Pocketables for some darned good testing. While the system is still something of a miniturization marvel, the first reports aren't exactly glowing. Top of the list (or should that be bottom?) is battery life; Willcom themselves only promise 1.5hrs and that measly figure looks sadly accurate. Worse still, Jenn found that leaving the D4 in Vista's sleep mode for 7hrs drained it to just 19-percent: around 15 minutes of actual use. Read The Full Story

Samsung Q1 Ultra range gets new HSDPA and Vista versions

Chris Davies, Jul 28th 2008 Discuss [0]

Samsung has announced two new versions of the company's Q1 Ultra UMPC. The Q1U-CMXP adds a 3G HSDPA modem, while the Q1UP-V replaces Windows XP with Vista Business. Both use Intel's 1.33GHz Core Solo U1500 processor, but in a nod to Vista's greater RAM hunger the Q1UP-V doubles standard memory to 2GB. Read The Full Story

Samsung MediaLive HDTV Media Center Extender announced

Chris Davies, Jul 23rd 2008 Discuss [0]

Yet another home media option from Samsung, this time aiming to connect your shiny new LCD or plasma TV up to your media center PC. The Samsung MediaLive is an extender that brings the Vista Media Center to your HDTV screen; that means you can watch recorded or downloaded media, pause live TV and also watch live high-definition programming via a CableCARD tuner. Read The Full Story

SanDisk blames ‘Vista shortfalls’ for delays in MLC SSDs

Chris Davies, Jul 22nd 2008 Discuss [0]

SanDisk has criticised Microsoft's Windows Vista OS as not being "optimized" to take advantage of the speed benefits of solid-state drives. Speaking during the company's Q2 financial results conference call, SanDisk Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari described what he called the "Vista shortfalls" and how developing their SSD drives had been a special challenge. In fact, Harari blamed Vista for putting SanDisk behind its competitors in the sector. Read The Full Story

Eee 1000H unboxed & Vista Ultimate installed: performance surprisingly good

Chris Davies, Jun 16th 2008 Discuss [2]

We already know how much it'll cost (read: plenty) and that its smaller 901 sibling holds up well performance-wise, but so far in-the-wild footage of ASUS' Eee PC 1000H have been pretty rare. Having gone on sale in Taiwan last Wednesday, TweakTown managed to find someone with stock and have shot an unboxing video together with a whole lot of first-impressions. True to their name, they've also had the chance to do some OS tweaking. Check out the unboxing and a switch from XP to Vista after the cut Read The Full Story

HP 2133 Mini-Note XP versions announced, but with a catch

Chris Davies, May 12th 2008 Discuss [0]

As expected, HP have today released their new wave of 2133 Mini-Note ultraportables running Windows XP rather than Vista or SUSE Linux. However, while the leaked pricing may have been correct, what the tips didn't tell us was that HP would be pushing the Vista-downgrade route to XP rather than supplying XP alone. Microsoft allow users of certain versions of Vista to "downgrade", free, their OS to XP. In fact, the option to do so was already available on the 2133 KX870AT, which runs Vista Business. Read The Full Story

Willcom D4 UMPC import on sale in US

Chris Davies, Apr 24th 2008 Discuss [3]

Willcom's D4 UMPC might be rocking the smartphone look but its guts are pure PC. Running Vista on a 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor with 1GB of RAM, a 40GB hard-drive and 5-inch touchscreen, plenty of people were interested in the QWERTY-blessed device but Willcom are showing little interest in releasing it outside of Japan. In situations like these, if you've the money, imports are your only option, and GeekStuff4U have just thrown up a pre-order page for the D4 which suggests they could be in the US by June 20th. Read The Full Story

HP MediaSmart SL4282N, SL4782N Media Center Extender TV’s up for sale now

James Allan Brady, Apr 17th 2008 Discuss [0]

HP has apparently been working on these televisions for quite some time now and they have finally arrived. The TV’s connect to your home network and then subsequently to whatever XP MCE PC, Vista Home Premium, or Vista Ultimate PC that you have them setup to connect to and from their can stream music, pictures, and even video directly to the TV. Read The Full Story