So, one of the consultants I interact with has a Dell's latest high-end laptop every time I see him, ostensibly for demonstration. I really can't see the need for a BluRay DVD drive and 2 SLI video cards, but hey, I'm not paying for him. He runs Vista Ultimate and his background is the new feature in that version of the bloated, slow, RAM hog OS called DreamScene which allows a .wmv or .mpg to be looped as your background. That's right, not a static background, but one in motion. It's actually pretty visually stunning which, might I add, is the hallmark of Vista.
Like ReadyBoost and Aero, it's technology developed to compensate and distract from the OS's underlying disappointments. Having only Vista Business, I decided to use the powers of Google to figure out whether or not I could get this exciting and productivity enhancing feature. It turns out, I can, via some hacked dll's. Yes, I know what you're thinking, putting hacked dll's over a suspect OS, what are you doing? Well, my public, I'm doing it for you. After a few tries (apparently, the guy who did the hack got a cease-and-desist from Microsoft almost immediately) I found and installed the dlls that allowed me to use a few pretty scenes in the background. Do not get me wrong, it's pretty and not at all distracting when I'm using other apps.
With that said, it constantly uses 10% - 40% of the CPU to keep the loop going. Way to go Vista, first, take my RAM, now my CPU. What's the point of this OS again?