Tag Archives: windows

Windows Photo Gallery – It’s Really Bad

Photography, Technology, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today I was processing some images in Adobe Lightroom so I could send them to my brother. After the images was done, I did a quick preview of them. The default program on Windows Vista is Windows Photo Gallery. I was not pleased with the result, so I entered Lightroom and checked the export settings only to find them being set to maximum quality.

Then I opened the images in both Adobe Photoshop and QuickTime PictureViewer and to my surprise I discovered that the photo was looking better there.

Take a look at the sample image for comparison:

Windows Photo Gallery vs QuickTime PictureView
To the left: Windows Photo Gallery, to the right: QuickTime PictureViewer

Before you start complaining about the photo being totally awful, and that this has nothing to do with Windows Photo Gallery, but more my camera or my skills. Let me explain to you that this is not the photo itself as a whole. This is a crop of the top right corner of the image. In other words, it’s the background, not the main subject.

From this crop you can clearly see that Windows Photo Gallery renders the dark areas differently than QuickTime PictureViewer (and Adobe Photoshop).

I guess this has something to do with Windows using it’s own JPEG-library which differs from the real deal.

You have been warned.

Why do Acer fill their computers with crap?

Technology, , , ,

A few days ago I was preparing a new Acer laptop for a customer. Instead of the 30-day trail version of some antivirus software, we usually install a full version of another antivirus software. So I open up Programs and Features, which it is called in Windows Vista, and while scrolling through the list looking for McAfee, I found the following programs.

  • Alice Greenfingers
  • Backspin Billiards
  • Big Kahuna Reef
  • Bookworm Deluxe
  • Bricks of Egypt
  • Cake Mania
  • Chicken Invaders 3
  • Chuzzle
  • Diner Dash Flo on the Go
  • Flip Words
  • Jewel Quest Solitaire
  • Mahjong Escape Ancient China
  • Mahjongg Artifacts
  • Mystery Solitare – Secret Island
  • Orinon
  • Zuma Deluxe
  • Turbo Pizza

I don’t know about you. But this is a list of games I would probably never play. I can’t really see our clients playing them either. It is probably faster to do a complete reinstall rather then removing these games.

Problems with iTunes and Windows XP

Technology, , , , , , ,
iTunes
iTunes

A few weeks back I bought myself an iPod nano, 4th generation. While the iPod has been great so far, I can’t say the same about iTunes. In the beginning it complained about not being properly installed, and it spontaneously crashed while I was updating the library or moving files to my iPod.

After a day or two it told me that a new version of iTunes (8.0.1) was available, so I downloaded it instead. The installer wanted to remove the old version first, and afterwards it yelled about this not being a 32-bit system. Come to think of it, the first version also did that. However, this time it didn’t want to continue. So suddenly I didn’t have iTunes at all.

I’ve tried different techniques involving changing the .msi-file with a program called orca, but without any results. So now I have to either run regular Windows XP, not the 64-bit version, or “upgrade” to Windows Vista. For the time being I’m running a 32-bit Windows within VMWare workstation.

This makes me wonder. Are there really so few people running Windows XP 64-bit that Apple has decided not to support this system? I know I shouldn’t be running Windows at all. Being a Linux dude and all. But that doesn’t change the fact that Apple doesn’t support 64-bit XP.

I tested Songbird, a open source music player, which support iPod. This doesn’t, as far as I know, handle coverflow, which is a nice way to navigate through music. So until I find a player which supports the iPod, with coverflow, I’m stuck with iTunes. It would also be nice if this program supported podcasts. But who doesn’t these days?