Using Console Hardware on PC

If I get any interesting Hardware for my consoles I try to connect it to my PC just to see if it works.

This started when I found out you could get the eye toy working as a web camera on windows by downloading some drivers. It was pretty straight forward, just had to find what drivers went with your camera model and off you go.

With Windows 7 now it seems to be even easier as just about every piece of hardware I have connected has installed itself with no issues.

I got the Beatles Rock Band set last weekend, and thought the mic might be good for talking to people on Team Fortress 2 etc on PC. I plugged it in and it installed itself, and worked pretty well.

Even better at the weekend I got a bluetooth headset for my PS3. After playing Uncharted 2 for an evening with my friend I thought this is great (much better than the usual type of headsets) so I thought about setting it up on my old PC.

Luckily enough for one reason or another a few years ago I had brought a blue tooth receiver for my PC.

I plugged that into my PC and Windows 7 installed it right away (Was a relief because I remember having problems with it on XP). I then took my blue tooth headset set it to broadcast, and the PC picked it up and connected to it right away. After that without having to set anything up I fired up Team Fortress 2 and it was working great.

So it is always worth trying your console hardware first before going out and buying the same thing for your PC. As both my PC headsets are no longer working this saved me a bit of money and got me a more comfortable PC headset all in one.

Another thing I use on my PC is my 360 Street Fighter Arcade Stick, which is great for arcade games.

Windows 7 and me

So after using my shiny new copy of windows 7 for a week, I can judge how it feels different to using vista for the past couple of years.

These points here are observations made from my daily use of my computer and how things have changed between systems.

First things first, booting is a bit faster, not massively as some may say but faster none the less (this could be due to windows applying updates as it starts up till things settle down a bit) . The thing that is quite a bit faster is shutting down, even when its applying updates its still pretty fast. The new taskbar is very nice, I like the way it lays out the windows for each program just above the icon, allowing you a preview of each windows as you hover over. The other neat thing you can do here is right click any running program on the taskbar and pin as a shortcut.

Im usually not one of shortcut gimmicks etc but I really like the new drag to the edge of the screen features. I now naturally find my self dragging windows to the top of the screen to full screen them, and even better dragging one to each side to compare two windows. The side by side  feature is really useful as its quick and really helps when your choosing files to upload somewhere or just looking at two different articles at once.

One thing that was amazingly simple to do is set up printer sharing. On vista I had to dig out the driver CD for the printer when setting it up across the network but windows 7 installed it on its own and in seconds too.

So how are things on the games front? Well for all the slack vista got it really wasnt to bad in the end, and I do not think there is much difference in terms of performance between vista SP2 and windows 7. There were a few games that vista did not get on too well with, one being Company of Heroes and these issues seem to have cleared up now. Of course if theres still problems windows 7 has theXP mode if your using professional or above. I do not know if these issues were to do with vista or direct x 10, but we will have to wait a few months to find out what direct x 11 will bring us.

Well thats all for now, I cant really think of any other features to comment on for the moment, I might try out some old games on XP mode at some point and see how that goes.