A broad title to this blog post, but one none the less that covers the topics herein. As you will recall I bought Vista for my PC after a small issue, the downside being on installation Vista told me in no uncertain terms "your graphics card is shit, you don't get to see my fancy graphics until you buy a new one." I was rather put out by this, I knew my GeForce 440 MX was bad, but I didn't think it was that bad! Anyway I decided at the time sod it, Vista is working, lets stick with what we've got for now.

A few months in and having come back from holiday I wanted to edit our Brussels video. Great, I'll crack open the Windows Vista Movie Maker, only no, that too requires a better graphics card, instead download Movie Maker v2.6 Poo. So I did, installed it and guess what, v2.6 decides that the lovely video that media player plays, is actually just audio, gargh! I try and get codecs and the like for v2.6 but nothing works. Poo. Add into the mix the fact I've had a fighter sim game sat collecting dust because the GeForce 440 MX doesn't support the pixel shading it wanted and you have 3 good reasons for updating my graphics card.

So a bit of browsing and voila, the Asus GeForce 6200, a graphics card that will do all I need it to do for less than £25, can't say fairer than that! After finally being delivered I had it installed and set about making Vista look pretty.

And look pretty it does! Vista is sexy people! I know you Mac users will have had this for a while now, but I'm loving the funky window animation for maximizing, minimising, opening and closing windows, and the real time snapshot when hovering on the task bar is impressive. However the really cool one is Windows+Tab, that is super cool, and the fact they update in real time too is also impressive. As you can probably make out, having an updated graphics card makes Vista impressive!

So, onto Vista Movie Maker - it works! It plays the video and allows me to edit and everything, so I can finally edit our Brussels and Bruge holiday video together, and edit it I have. What's that, you want to watch it? Well good thing you asked, because you can! Either watch it below, or find it on Vimeo here or in the videos section here. I'm sure you'll agree that, with the tasteful use of titles, fade transitions and fade to blacks, my distinction pass in BTEC National Diploma in Media has not gone to waste ;o)



And finally, the fighter sim game is working, hurrah!