I think my video card may be melting down (or something). This morning I noticed a lot of strange video artifacts on my Mac Pro. It’s running an ATI 2600 card. Up until today, there weren’t any problems. Curious to know if other folks have experienced these video issues.

Thanks!

-Krishna

Yesterday I posted about the weird video artifacts I was seeing on my display.

On a hunch, I opened the case of my Mac Pro yesterday afternoon. Sure enough, dust was everywhere inside the case, especially on the video card. I gave a few blasts of compressed air to the video card (and surroundings) to clear the dust out. I powered up my Mac. The video artifacts that had plagued my system before were no longer there.

Flash forward 12 hours later, and my machine is still behaving. It would seem that the video problems have gone away. An article on Macworld seemed to confirm the experience.

Moral of the story: I need to clean the inside of the Mac more often.

-Krishna

Because I’m a nerd, I took some photos of replacing the video card on my Mac Pro. The weird picture problems are still there, and I’ve isolated the problem to my Samsung display. Right now I’m waiting for a replacement to be shipped from Samsung (hopefully within a week).

I was really impressed with how fast Apple sent the replacement card over. I called AppleCare Sunday morning, and by Tuesday morning, I had the card at my doorstep. Say what you will about Apple, but I was really impressed with their service.

Samsung’s customer service was good as well. The lady I spoke with was polite and understood the issue (read: didn’t treat me like an idiot when I explained what was happening). Here’s hoping the new monitor comes soon. (Kudos to both companies for having customer service available on a Sunday morning. I didn’t expect that to be the case when I called…)

Here’s the replacement card:

…here it is installed:

…and another snapshot of the really weird video artifacts I’m still seeing.

-Krishna

I never expected to like Windows 7 as much as I did.

But I did.

A lot.

Windows 7 has changed my impression about Windows. Not only does it *look* good, it runs good. Installation was surprisingly easy and very straight forward. Imagine that?

I used Apple’s Boot Camp Assistant software to perform the install. Installation took about 20 minutes and involved 2 reboots (One for the install, one for the updates).

I purchased the Home Premium upgrade package, having owned Windows Vista Ultimate, and performed a clean install to a new hard drive partition. I was prompted to enter my Windows 7 serial number and authentication ran without a hitch. Windows 7 also automatically picked up my wireless network.

Printer and scanner drivers were found quickly and installed without incident. What are my first impressions from moving around Windows 7? The OS not only looks fantastic, it’s *gasp!* actually very fast and usable. My video card is an older ATI 2600XT 256MB and window performance was very snappy.

The OS feels cohesive – much more so than Windows Vista. The fit and finish of Windows 7 is absolutely solid and is a testament to the MS engineers who worked on it. There are minor niggles I’ve encountered – such as the lack of a keyboard shortcut to eject discs, or the fact that audio does not work yet (I’m assuming its because Apple’s Boot Camp drivers have yet to be updated to work with Windows 7). But that’s about the biggest “gotcha” I was able to find so far.

According to Steve Ballmer, 8 million people beta-tested Windows 7 during its gestational period. It really does show with this release and the engineers behind it deserve to be recognized for their efforts.

Windows 7 makes me more curious about the platform. I actually want to start using it on a regular basis. I’m planning to install my primary apps (Maya, Photoshop, Painter) over the next few days to further evaluate the OS during day-to-day use.

Do I like Windows 7 more than Snow Leopard? It’s still too early to tell. My first impressions of Windows 7 are very positive, about the same as it was for Snow Leopard. On the same hardware, a 2008 Mac Pro model, Windows 7 *feels* faster and snappier than Snow Leopard. A true comparison can only take place once I’ve had a chance to run my main apps on Windows 7.

This release, in my opinion, brings Windows (finally) on par with Apple’s Mac OS X.

Should you upgrade to Windows 7 from an older version of Windows? That’s your call. I’m glad I did.

-Krishna

I reorganized my studio this afternoon. I took some time to vacuum the carpet in all those hard to reach areas where wires usually hide.

The maple desk carries a 20″ Cinema Display with PowerMac Dual 2GHz G5. The wood laminate desk houses a dual display setup, with a 30″ Samsung and 19″ HannsG being driven by a Mac Pro (2.8GHz octo-core).

From an ergonomic standpoint, I feel like I did the right thing. My keyboard is now at a comfortable height. I also brought my MacPro up on the desk.

I was also able to clean and eliminate some unnecessary hardware and cabling. The hutch houses all my external drives. I’m feeling productive already!

Without further ado, the photos:

-Krishna