I'm using Win7 on an old Celeron-based laptop (an Acer, no less) that even XP would tax. 7 seems to be doing a better job of managing resources; mIRC hasn't needed to dump channel backlog to cache (which would always make the program frustratingly slow when XP did this after ~20 minutes of use), I can now play most youtube videos properly (no browser was fast enough to do this in XP, all would stutter while using 100% CPU time), even MPC runs along with significantly less CPU usage. I'm playing a movie file right now that in XP was using up 60-70% of my CPU time on its own. My total usage right now is just under 50%. So yes, Win7 does bring more to the table than a flashier UI. I'm even able to run snes9x at full speed, provided I set its priority to high. XP was not able to accomplish this. Yes, my laptop really is that horrible.
The only performance complaint I have is that start up time has grown exponentially since the initial installation, for no apparent reason. I haven't installed any new software since the day I installed the OS, but every reboot seems to take longer than the one before. If I'm still using this laptop by July, I figure I'll have enough time to make spaghetti during start up.
Complaints with the system itself are complaints I had with Vista that persist. Namely, the search feature in Explorer is completely useless, now. Also, no animated GIF support in photo viewer? Why the hell not? The boot up time fault is also a remnant from Vista, but seems more profound here. I also have a minor complaint with the control panel layout, but I've grown used to it.
I can't login, either. I've logged in before (I had to have, I've made edits), but every attempt I make to do so now just kicks me back to where I came from. Clearing cookies won't remedy the problem, either.
The only discernable difference I'm hearing between those two samples is an extra brass note on the 1.51 recording. But I'm also without my old sound system, currently restricted to laptop + headphones. Take that as you will.
Or just continue using nigh-universally accepted 1.43, which I thought had been proven several times over to be more accurate in regards to timing with the actual hardware than 1.52.
Almost every game that I've purchased in the past few years has been a sequel, remake, or port. I'm not sure if that's indicative of the state of the industry, or just that I'm reluctant to try new things.
Working backward through purchases in my mind, the only title I can name that was a clean slate is Dead Rising, which was a disappointment after playing the demo. Before that... um... Skies of Arcadia? I don't want to admit to having purchased Halo, so we'll skip that.
I HAVE tried a few new series, but only after they've been around for a while (Devil May Cry 4 comes to mind). Otherwise, I haven't really been adventurous with new titles in quite some time.
On the games I have that run, I pretty much get a solid 60 fps across the board. Twilight Princess dips down in large areas, and probably some smaller hiccups in other areas, but that's about it.
For what it's worth, the 64-bit version makes a tremendous difference (5 fps in 32, 60+ in 64) in Twilight Princess, and really only a small difference in everything else so far.
I have one friend who asks me periodically if there are any new PSX runs. That's about it. I don't really bring it up to anyone offline, so there hasn't really been opportunity for anyone to gather interest.
Current laptop wallpaper - I started making a screensaver out of that image, but never did finish. Maybe I'll get back to it later...
Desktop has no wallpaper at the moment, because it's useless with no monitor attached to it. Remote Desktop kills the wallpaper, anyway.
That's not the issue. Frame skip 0 will not cause a change in the speed playback for the faster, only for the slower, and only if you have an inadequate computer like I do. Frame skip 0 just says, "hey, if you can't handle the draw speed, too bad, draw it anyway" rather than, "don't worry about dropping animation frames for the sake of speed, it's cool."
Frame skip 0 is a good setting. I use it on both my inadequate laptop and more than adequate desktop for the sake of ensuring that no frames go undrawn.
Anyway.
Config -> Speed -> Set Speed. Should be 100%.
The default hotkeys for speed are '=' to speed up, '-' to slow down. If you're hitting = either by accident or because you've mapped it to another function, that's the source of your problem. You can change the hotkey settings by going to Config -> Hotkeys -> dropdown menu 'Speed'.
If you compiled it yourself, try updating the svn and compiling again. If you downloaded the compiled binary, try downloading again (maybe from a different source).
I've had a problem with it spontaneously not recognizing the input devices, but never the plugin.
The StarFox movie still irks me for this. Everything is too fast, some of it obscenely so. And I could have sworn that game was emulated at a correct speed at some point. Meh.
7's UAC pops up slightly less frequently than Vista's. But it annoys me less mainly because it doesn't freeze my system for fifteen seconds before it pops up like Vista's does, which is why I haven't bothered with disabling it like I did Vista's.
What's new to me (or at least, I don't remember it ever happening in Vista) is having UAC pop up with any program that's run in compatibility mode. But if it's running those programs in an XP VM, then I can understand why it would do so.
Easy fix for going back to XP: Taskbar Shuffle. I can't tell you how happy I was when Win7 took away my need to install this software. This is a feature that should have existed since Windows 95.
I thought the Dynasty Warriors series was purely experience/luck-based, no shopping involved.
The shop is used to hire assistants and to buy mounts and weapons, and abilities for said weapons. The best weapons are found on the battlefield, however.
Soulcalibur IV (I honestly don't remember if III's equipment was sold or earned; my ex was the one who played it, not me)
Virtua Fighter 4 Evo (no idea if regular VF4 has the shop)
Virtua Fighter 5
Shutokou Battle series (Tokyo Xtreme Racer, etc)
Dynasty Warriors & Samurai Warriors series
Edit: oh, Sonic Unleashed comes to mind. >>;
I have, and I did. The hq*x filters are okay with a very small number of games. Generally, in my eyes, anything with detail will look terribly wrong with any attempt to add further definition in upscaling. Graphically simpler games usually skate by, as long as there's no dithering.
I'd rather there be no filters of any sort. I'll take my big blocky pixels, thanks. Now 3D, on the other hand, sure. I'm more than happy to play at whatever resolution the monitor will allow.
Amusing - I like to avoid that hideous Vaseline interpolation whenever and however possible.
Go to Config -> Video, uncheck 'disable hardware acceleration'.
Using data forensics tools when you don't know what you're looking for (how do you know a string of characters you've found is a social security number?) sounds infeasible at best. I mean, looking through gigabytes of data to locate a several-byte-long number? You must definitely have some bad enemies in that case.
A couple of close friends who specialize in network security and forensics will buy hard drives off of eBay as training tools. There's a particular piece of software they use that has a myriad of pre-configured regex settings for recovering very specific patterns of data. Index the drive, search index for <x>, read results. A box of eight drives once yielded 36 sets of SSNs with matching birthdates and legal names. Also once nabbed nearly a hundred from one 'dead' drive that came from a realtor's home computer.
If you don't know who your things are going to, you don't know what they'll do with them.
