Leandro

Nope. ATI card. It's an Aero issue, not a drivers issue; the Desktop Window Manager doesn't play completely nice with OpenGL apps.

You're ignoring the rest of the minor issues. Yes, they were all minor, but cummulative they got really annoying. It's the little things that happen more frequently the ones that bug me. The specific issue that made me go back to XP was driver issues with several devices, and my sound editing software crashing often because of the changes to the audio interface.

Seven tends to be too quick to believe a program is not responding just because its message queue freezes. While it's not great programming to let your message queue stay unprocessed for a long time, it's not uncommon; lots of programs stop processing messages while in loading loops, and Seven would constantly bug me to close them. I prefer to decide myself if a program is taking too long or not, and terminate it if and when I feel like it; I don't want the OS getting in my way.

User friendly: I'm an advanced user. I can make Windows XP as friendly or more friendly than seven (as in features included). Pretty transparent windows do not equal user friendliness. Searching everywhere can be done with several third party apps. The only thing I liked from Windows 7 was the better Bluetooth stack, but a third-party program takes care of that

Efficient: you have a weird definition for efficient. I found seven to be slower (not much, but noticeably so) and to use more system resources for several tasks; video encoding in particular, but also I found the system to be much less responsive under load than XP (in XP, if the system is at 100% CPU usage, I can still click "My Computer" and it loads; in Seven, I clicked it several times because it was doing nothing, and then after like 30 seconds, a bunch of instances of Explorer opened. Another of those "little things" that got very, very annoying.)

Streamlined environment: define what you mean by this, because it sounds like you're throwing buzzwords rather than praising specific features.

I like to be in control of my computer. I clean and optimize Windows XP for my personal needs and it runs much faster than Seven. I am quite comfortable with my security, so I don't need the OS babysitting me.

Doesn't work on all CPUs; it requires hardware virtualization. Only high end CPUs currently support that.

In the end, the OS is there to run software and get out of your way. That's how I see it, anyway. Seven kept getting in the way, with a bunch of minor glitches that caused major annoyances over time. Until I can be guaranteed that ALL my software will run JUST AS WELL as it does on XP, I'm staying on XP.

And it's not for lack of trying. I gave Vista a try. I beta tested Seven. I installed Seven after it released. I wasted a lot of time trying to like it. It still won't work for me.

One tab = the "core" process + the tab process = two processes.

Go to Tools > Manage Addons and disable everything you're not actively using. Some site may have installed a plugin that screws thingss up. Also in Tools > Internet Settings make sure you don't have the box "Delete browsing history on exit" marked.

Rylas, I was in the same boat (all my cards since 2003 have been NVIDIA cards), until a couple of months ago I had two NVIDIA cards fail on me and I waited a month for my distributor to get me a replacement (and in the end they couldn't; NVIDIA is making the cards scarce). I bought a Radeon HD 5770.

Yes, there are minor issues with COH. You're going to need to mess with the Catalyst Control Center in order to have FSAA back in COH. However, once I got past that, I'm really happy with the performance of the card, and it DOES run quieter and cooler than the GTX 260.

In Windows XP you'll have a few issues that a new driver should fix (the COH loading screens get corrupted if you alt-tab out of the game; doesn't affect the game at all, just the loading screens) and in Windows 7 you also have a few issues that are probably Aero's fault and would appear on a NVIDIA card anyway (I dumped Windows 7 last night and went back to XP, and they're gone).

If you don't miss messing with the Catalyst Control Center a bit, the 5770 is an excellent buy.

I'm going to disagree with you this time. Positron has two of the most painful mobs to face at that level: COT and Vahz. And the Clockwork's endurance drain doesn't help. By playing with a team of 8, you'll get a lot of bosses in every mission, and both COT bosses and Vahz bosses are pretty brutal at that level.

I think you got extremely lucky with that 8-man PUG Posi. An 8-person PUG is more likely to have at least a couple of players that "don't know what they're doing, don't cooperate, don't fight and travel efficiently, tend to go AFK or obsessively shop". Keeping it small means that if one of the four is not pulling their weight, you only have to face 4-man spawns, and not 8-man spawns, with a smaller team.

Also, the fastest Positron time we ever had was 1hr 16min, with a 4-man team. I don't remember the team right now, other than my sonic/rad defender.

This. A COH-specific problem is that when COH hangs, the hanging dialog ("coh hanged, tell us what was wrong") does NOT display (it's hidden "behind" the game screen) so you can't get to it to close the game. You have to ctrl+alt+del into the welcome screen, then pop the task manager from there in order to close the game. And it means you can't send crash reports.

A similar problem I'm running into is that sometimes I alt-tab out of COH and any program I try to activate also apperas "behind" the game window and I can't get to it. I have to close the game and restart it to open it. This doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, darn it's annoying.

If you think FREEDOM, of all places, is empty, no amount of server merging will ever help you. Last night, freakin' New Years Eve, there were 600 heroes and 300 villains online. I logged in my villain, which is the low-population side, and still had a LRSF running within 15 minutes.

You're just not looking for team in the right places. The maps (aka. zones) are ALWAYS going to feel empty; people play on instances, not in the game world.

Yesterday I defeated 693 minions and 482 lieutenants solo. My drops were perfectly within range, with 45 Pool A recipes dropping. You are not going to be taken seriously unless you show some hard data to back it up; "I did ten runs and got two common IO recipes" is not enough. Post some logs.

Nope. You said: "But those aren't as effective as Single Origin, let alone dual origin, enhancements."

IOs are more effective than both SOs and DOs as you level up. SOs are more effective than DOs, as well. So nope, what you stated is not correct at all.

DOs: they enhance 16.66% an attribute, and you can slot them at level 15 (character level 12). If instead, you slot a level 15 IO, you get 19.2%. Better than DOs.

SOs: they enhance 33.33% an attribute, and you can slot them at level 25 (character level 22). Level 25 IOs don't quite match the stregth (at 32%) but they're still viable to slotting once and forgetting about it (because they don't go bad), and they get stronger as you level up. Level 30 IOs = 34.8%; stronger than same-level SOs. Level 35 IOs = 36.7%; even stronger. Level 40 IOs = 38.6%; as strong as +3 SOs. Level 50 IOs = 42.4%, way above SOs.

That's the reason why most of my characters are Natural origin; I just have to remember one set of esoteric names. However, the Wiki is there to help you: Enhancement Names.