My experience to upgrade graphic card

Since Windows Vista told me I can get a system performance boost if I upgrade my video card(see my previous post), I decided to give it a try even the Aero glass interface is working, and I am not a big gamer.

Calling HP first for information about how I should do it, I was told the mother board supports PCI-Express card that is what I should look for. They also told me to upgrade the power supply since it is only 300W. Great!

After searching on line for a few hours, I find one, eGForce - 7100, that requires only 250W as a minimum and with a memory of 128M, but when I got TigerDiscount to buy it, they told me that I have to upgrade my power supply. And the problem is they did not know which power supply I should buy, since they do not which will fit into the Canpaq tower.

Then I go to Best Buy trying to find one there, however, I played instead with a few models they are selling. What I found is that even a good graphic card like the GForce 7600 256M still has a problem same as me. The performance message can be accessed like this: Go to Control Panel, System performance and Tools, then click Advanced tools at the left pane, you will see Performance can be improved by changing visual setting. View detail. If you click View performance details in Event log, you will get this:

The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention.
Scenario : Video memory resources are over-utilized and there is thrashing happening as a result. Reducing number of running programs and open windows may help resolve this condition.

Well, even a gForce 7600 will get the same thing, why should bother with it?

The funiest review on Vista

Wayne's Old Computer Gets Vista by Wayne Rash

WEI score of my computer

After upgraded to Windows Vista, here is the WEI result of my cumputer. Looks like a video card upgrade is required, but the Areo glass UI works fine.

Global warming: opportunity, not disaster, for Canada

Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post

New Arctic shipping routes, a boom in trade with Russia, corn instead of wheat on the Prairies, golf instead of skiing in Ontario, Chardonnay instead of ice wine in Niagara, lower heating bills and fewer deaths due to pneumonia.

As the world braces for an onslaught of doom and gloom from a United Nations report on climate change next Friday, perhaps it is time to consider a hitherto heretical notion: while a warmer climate may pose challenges for Canada, it will open up new economic opportunities, too.

Consider one overlooked passage in last year's Stern Review, a sweeping assessment of the potential costs of global warming by Nicholas Stern, Britain's chief economist: "In higher latitude regions, such as Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, climate change may lead to net benefits for temperature increases of 2C or 3C, through higher agricultural yields, lower winter mortality, lower heating requirements and a possible boost to tourism."