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[Tech] For all you Vista users out there...
18 years ago
...and I know some of you exist... I gots a little bit of knowledge you might care to know.
When you pick an awesome picture that you want to be your background, do yourself a favor and apply it through the Personalization |> Desktop Background bit rather than right-clicking the image and telling Windows to set it as the background image.
Why? When you do it through the control panel, it uses the image you specify as the background image. When you do it through Explorer, IE, Windows Photo Gallery and other methods NOT directly in the control panel, it exports it to a JPEG (all behind the scenes) and uses that. If it's a crap quality picture you might not notice, but if it's a good quality high resolution image which you cropped and scaled to fit, you may notice it looks a bit shittier than usual. I applied an image as the desktop, took a screenshot, overlayed the original in "subtract" mode and this is what I got [<--- Link].
As you can see, there's a hazy silhouette, mostly around the drastic (red to black to gray) color changes. These are compression artifacts, the bane of the JPEG. This is why I use PNG whenever size permits it.
I did a Google search and on the second page for "Vista compresses background" I was able to find something talking about how Vista improperly interpolates backgrounds and such... that wasn't the bit that interested me, the part about how the Explorer and Windows Photo Gallery methods of setting something as a desktop turned it into a JPEG was however. Mystery solved.
So yeah, if you value nice-looking computing and have an eye for quality (which you probably do if you opted for Vista), whether you have or haven't noticed a quality issue with your backgrounds, just apply them from the Control Panel... better quality that way, and hardly more effort.
Please note: I realize that Vista is a nearly immediate "LOL idiot" topic for many people on here. Dragoneer so much as mentions that he uses Vista on his machines and everyone's like "WHOA WATCH OUT IT'S GONNA CRASH". If you think Vista suxxorz, save your comments on it for later. I know that this little glitch described is annoying and an example of poor coding and consistency. This is just a sort of heads up for any of you 700-odd people watching who might be using Vista, or are planning on it some time soon.
When you pick an awesome picture that you want to be your background, do yourself a favor and apply it through the Personalization |> Desktop Background bit rather than right-clicking the image and telling Windows to set it as the background image.
Why? When you do it through the control panel, it uses the image you specify as the background image. When you do it through Explorer, IE, Windows Photo Gallery and other methods NOT directly in the control panel, it exports it to a JPEG (all behind the scenes) and uses that. If it's a crap quality picture you might not notice, but if it's a good quality high resolution image which you cropped and scaled to fit, you may notice it looks a bit shittier than usual. I applied an image as the desktop, took a screenshot, overlayed the original in "subtract" mode and this is what I got [<--- Link].
As you can see, there's a hazy silhouette, mostly around the drastic (red to black to gray) color changes. These are compression artifacts, the bane of the JPEG. This is why I use PNG whenever size permits it.
I did a Google search and on the second page for "Vista compresses background" I was able to find something talking about how Vista improperly interpolates backgrounds and such... that wasn't the bit that interested me, the part about how the Explorer and Windows Photo Gallery methods of setting something as a desktop turned it into a JPEG was however. Mystery solved.
So yeah, if you value nice-looking computing and have an eye for quality (which you probably do if you opted for Vista), whether you have or haven't noticed a quality issue with your backgrounds, just apply them from the Control Panel... better quality that way, and hardly more effort.
Please note: I realize that Vista is a nearly immediate "LOL idiot" topic for many people on here. Dragoneer so much as mentions that he uses Vista on his machines and everyone's like "WHOA WATCH OUT IT'S GONNA CRASH". If you think Vista suxxorz, save your comments on it for later. I know that this little glitch described is annoying and an example of poor coding and consistency. This is just a sort of heads up for any of you 700-odd people watching who might be using Vista, or are planning on it some time soon.
I'm going to purchase Vista OEM soon, since I've sorted out an old computer of mine and upgraded it. I'll keep this in mind.
By the way, what if I wanted an active desktop on Vista? *flees*
If you want active desktop on Vista, buy a second monitor and fullscreen a Firefox window in it c.c
Anyone?
Bueller?
Bueller?
It sucks, but I wouldn't know why you wouldn't go that route in the first place ^-^;;
But good to know anyhow
Basically Paint sucks, period. That... isn't a very satisfying conclusion c.c
But that's definitely good knowledge to know!
As far as virus stuff is concerned, the fact of the matter is that anti-virus companies bitched and whined about Vista's attempts to make itself more secure. They argued that the changes should be reverted because then they couldn't as effectively do anti-virus stuff. So, whatever, the gauntlet of anti-virus has been passed off to independent companies, because they claim to know better, and if Microsoft tries to deal with virus threats they'll get their asses sued for including for free what other companies would charge for.
Really though, did you even read my journal before posting? Or did you just think you knew better than to respect my wishes on the matter? Did you want--like the "I'm just advertising Macs" folks who posted on Dragoneer's journal about computer hardware problems--a place to voice your opinion where more people might read it?
You're welcome to your opinion and you can make all the suggestions you want. You might even be able to slip some of them into other people's conversations and such. But please, when I specifically ask for you not to complain about why Vista is terrible, please... don't complain about why it's terrible. This journal was meant to be a helpful spot for the people who already have or will in the near future be adopting Vista. It was hard for me to find anything about the problem elsewhere even with the power of Google, so I figured I'd save some people the confusion. There have been and will continue to be times when I'm up for talking about pros and cons of all sorts of OS things. Now isn't one of those times.
I just don't get people who hound on the early adopters for Vista and other things... who do you think helps make it more stable? Who tries it on new and old hardware with new and old software and drivers, then submits error reports about problems they have? Who helps Microsoft identify problems for updates, patches, and service packs? We early adopters do. So yeah, give us trouble about it, and in 12-18 months when you're using it, you can profusely apologize to us for helping to make it usable for you.
Now I'm done.