Lured by the ability to catch up on my favorite TV shows and being able to see if a movie is good enough to merit a DVD purchase, I got Netflix. I then saw this...
![[Image: DSCF1893_low.jpg]](http://cpd2009.fileburst.com/ImageShare/DSCF1893_low.jpg)
Okay, so when did Clifford the Big Red Dog qualify as a British TV show?
Yes, there is a British-voiced redub, but since the show was written and acted in the USA (with animation being done in China), it doesn't count as British.
It all comes down to being a mistake on Netflix's part. It's actually a bit amusing.
I saved some perfectly good software from getting thrown in the dumpster...
![[Image: DSCF1904_low.jpg]](http://cpd2009.fileburst.com/ImageShare/DSCF1904_low.jpg)
Here is an old site-license software bundle containing copies of WinXP Professional SP1 and Office XP with FrontPage. It also came with Encarta and Streets 2003 and some Magic School Bus CD-ROMs.
After thinking about it for awhile, I decided to downgrade Ruby to XP Pro as it's a more natural environment for my old Adobe suite. Ruby's hardware also has XP compatible drivers available, so why not? I just can't really connect her to the Internet too often since XP doesn't get security patches anymore.
According to the documents that came with this bundle, the volume license key is apparently good for at least two PCs, but since this version doesn't require activation combined with the drop of XP support, I could in theory install this on as many PCs as I want. I'm not too sure about that though.
So, I went and tried the game Sonic Dash, an endless runner featuring Sonic and stuff. It's very fun, though you have to grind a lot to get the good stuff for free. It also made something apparent about Hazel.... she is already showing signs of age. :/
Sonic Dash plays well enough, but slowness and lag is apparent during startup and when transitioning to different level segments. Games like Angry Birds are also starting to lag at certain points, but it's not as frequent as Sonic Dash.
As for web browsing and video viewing, Hazel still runs rather well, but I don't use such features too often at home. News apps and non-game things also still run great. Even so, I'm tossing around the idea of acquiring a new tablet by fall. If I do decide to get a newer tablet, I need to decide between a name-brand tab or a generic off-brand tab.
Name-brands have longer battery life, higher build quality, and wonderful LCD screens. Off-brand tabs tend to come with an almost vanilla Android OS with no bloatware or proprietary UI's and sometimes rather quirky features, such as that JXD Android gamepad thing. But they tend to suffer from poor battery life and bad LCD screen quality. The Rockchip/Allwinner CPUs tend to get burning hot during games, hotter than Hazel!
Apologies if I seem like I'm complaining, but... IDK about my old Adobe Suite. I try to make Ruby run better (and she does for the most part) but there is a new problem with Audition I can't fix. Any audio recorded skips every 10 seconds, and increasing the buffer size has no effect (or at best, makes the skips happen every minute instead). I tried different SB Audigy drivers to no avail. Ruby has integrated audio, but it's not 24bit/96khz. After hearing the difference of 24bit audio, I don't want to downgrade back to 16bit sound. That means it's either getting Ruby's Audigy SE card to play nice with Audition, or switch back to Lilly.... again.
I could just re-install Vista I guess, but my production PC has been out of commission for nearly a month now. I should have just left Audrey as she was. Better yet, I should have just kept Lilly the production PC and never started experimenting with things.
David, would running my Adobe suite inside VirtualBox work well? I don't think you have ever run Adobe CS inside a VM before, but perhaps you have run similar memory/CPU intensive programs in such a way. Lilly does have the CPU and RAM to run XP Pro in a VM without any problems. Even if the performance of such a suite is limited, it would work until I could save up for a Mac-native version of Adobe CS or even Final Cut Pro/Logic Studio.
Here's an idea. Install the Audigy SE card, but instead of going with Creative's driver, try this driver: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.kxproject.com/">http://www.kxproject.com/</a><!-- m -->
Maybe this would work for you instead.
I strongly do not recommend virtualizing Adobe programs, especially audition, since you will be limited by the VM's virtual soundcard and do not have access to the cards' more advanced features. In fact, the virtual soundcard will perform worse than a physical soundcard when under heavy load. Furthermore, you need a beefy CPU and a lot of RAM to get comparable performance.
RAMChYLD Wrote:Here's an idea. Install the Audigy SE card, but instead of going with Creative's driver, try this driver: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.kxproject.com/">http://www.kxproject.com/</a><!-- m -->
Maybe this would work for you instead.
I strongly do not recommend virtualizing Adobe programs, especially audition, since you will be limited by the VM's virtual soundcard and do not have access to the cards' more advanced features. In fact, the virtual soundcard will perform worse than a physical soundcard when under heavy load. Furthermore, you need a beefy CPU and a lot of RAM to get comparable performance.
Hmm... Unfortunately, I do not see my particular Audigy card listed, probably because it doesn't have a hardware DSP. It's an Audigy SE model SB0570.
I think I'll go ahead and just re-install Vista. I will need to re-activate over the phone, but at least I know Audition and Audigy do play nice with Vista. Shame too, since XP outperforms Vista and has less overhead. I really wanted XP Pro too.
I do have Lilly hooked up at present, mainly to get her files off the Bootcamp partition and then remove Bootcamp altogether. After that, I don't know what I will do with her. I hate to give her away, but since I don't have any current use for her, she usually sits collecting dust. :/
Unless if I could secure funds for Logic Pro X or Final Cut Pro X... or even an Adobe CS5 OSX disk set.
I'm fine, just unsure how to join these conversations.