Quark Nova (Tumbled)

ST’S Setups, Part 2: Windows

So fried, a million other things to do. I know! Another blog post. Durr hurr hurr.

OK, so the Windows side. A couple things first. I hate anyone who writes ‘Micro$oft’. And they can make some really great software when they put their minds to it. I think Vista is quite good and doesn’t deserve nearly the volume of derision it’s received.

Advantages of Windows: You can build whatever the heck computer you want, in any flavor your want, with any other custom stuff and sexy video cards you want, and it will work. The Windows OS hardly ever crashes, and the individual apps crash/hang far less frequently than on a Mac. You can get software for ANYTHING. In ten years, a major OS revision has made some flagship Windows apps not-quite usable twice (XP, Vista), as opposed to seven times on Macs (9, 10.0, .1, .2, .3, .4, .5, and you better believe .6)

Disadvantages of Windows: Holy shit is it butt ugly. Software activation IS evil, and these jerks invented it. There’s no GarageBand equivalent. So very ugly. There’s a lot a pure shit hardware out there, too. Be careful, read up lots, or build it yourself.

The Hardware:
My prior lappy was a Dell Inspiron that is now relegated to Linux. Not bad, and way cheap. Also, a couple of wicked homebrew towers that would be even more wicked if you could run Mac OS on them in a dual boot. No? Pf. All my hardware suggestions from Part 1 apply.

The software (notice how much of it pretty much the same as the Mac version:

• Before doing anything, go to tweakhound.com and do everything he says, in that order, to set up your rig.
• Adobe Master Collection (until recently much better on Windows. Also, 64-bit Photoshop is CRAZY)
• Maya 2009
• Mudbox 2009 (SO good. I’ve heard Z-Brush may be better, but Mudbox is so cheap educationally that I don’t care)
• Motionbuilder 2009 (part of the Autodesk Consumer Whore package)
• Milkshape
• Particle Illusion (Particles, in 2D. Go figure)
• Firefox (Zotero/Foxmarks/FireFTP)
• Thunderbird w/Lightning (Outlook? no no no)
• Camtasia (HATED it. But it was the only decent screencast app.)
• Office 2007 (much better than Office 2008 for Mac)
• OneNote (DAMMIT this is a great notetaking app. No cross platform. I guess I’m out. If it doesn’t sync across platforms, then it’s not a good enough app).
• iTunes/Quicktime/Safari (ugh)
• IrfanView
• CCleaner
• DVDShrink
• Processing (same as mac)
• Evernote (same as mac)
• 7-Zip
• VLC (same as mac)
• uTorrent (same as mac)
• Notepad++
• Handbrake (same as mac)
• K-Lite Codec Pack
• ClamWin
• Audacity
• SUPER
• Alcohol 120
• DeepBurner
• KeePass (same as mac)
• TruCrypt (same as mac)
• Digsby
• Autoruns
• Filezilla (sucks on mac)
• Picasa (oh, if only on mac)
• Sketchup (same as mac)
• FoxIt Reader (no Preview.app, Adobe reader sucks)
• Windows Live Writer (best blogging client)
• Resolume (total shite VJ app. Maybe the new cross platform version is better, but I’ll never know)
• Stuff to mount homebrews on my DS
• MS Visual Studio with XNA Game Studio Express

Not sexy. Very mundane, actually. Pretty much the same stuff as a Mac, plus 16 million stupid little things you end up needing. And honestly, now that I can run it all on my macs, it like a best of both worlds situation. Now, the best of ALL worlds, would be to be able to use my SICK Frankenputers to run a triple boot. Maybe Snow Leopard will let us, but I’m not holding my breath.

Questions about these, go check filehippo.com. Next up, my train wreck of an Ubuntu Studio rig.