druid's Forum Page

Hey Telenator, one thing I’d like to correct you on, having worked (admittedly relatively briefly) in I.T. before, and reading plenty online (on both sides of course).

Businesses are not particularly likely to pick up Windows 8 regardless. Your comments about it not being wanted is mostly true, but not just because they don’t like WIndows 8. Imagine companies upgrading every iteration of Windows, indeed even before the first service pack. Can you imagine it? No, no way. Way too much money.

Windows Vista was also skipped. Even after the first, even second, service packs. Why? Because they’d invested in XP and it still worked.

As XP’s support period was nearing, however, corporations decided to jump on Windows 7. It makes sense because XP was starting to finally age and become less secure. Of course, there was the pending cessation of security patching of Microsoft (I believe it ends next year totally). But it’s also because it was a stable version of the big jump Microsoft made from XP.

I would never expect businesses to take up Windows 8 on a large scale, purely because they’ve pretty much all upgraded to 7 only “recently” (in business terms) and there’s plenty of support for 7 left. Of course, being able to avoid that new interface with Win8 is icing on the cake. 😛

Of course, with their new plans for a different release schedule, I don’t know what will happen now. But I don’t think it’s fair to claim businesses are avoiding purely because they don’t like the software. It’s really not economically viable anyway, and those patterns have already been in place before MS were even starting work on Win8.

Now if I may also add my own view to this… Er, in a specific context I mean. I’ve read quite a few people who were on the fence about Win8 for the general populace (but saw potential in it themselves, like me, and wanted to get into it). Win8.1 some of them feel will resolve many issues they had, and they believe it will be a lot more ready for the general populace.

I really do have to disagree with that one. For ME, Win8.1 will solve quite a few issues (seriously, search should have ALWAYS just had one list of results, what’s with this switching between search areas? Ugh). But it will do next to nothing to bridge the division that the new Windows has created.

Only time will tell really what this really means. MS may find a way, given way more time than should be needed (typical MS), to fit business needs in to how they want to portray their new Windows, and people may adapt. Or, it may not and MS may find they have to cede much headway.

Or maybe everyone will move to Linux! (That was a joke. Not Linux, but the idea everyone would actually bother trying to do so.)

For people like me who constantly check tech sites, this is all old news. 😛 Right at the start of specualation about Blue (Win 8.1), which I think began end of last year, there were rumours (I don’t believe MS confirmed it) that Windows was moving to a more regular update schedule, and possibly costing less per hit because of it (obviously you couldn’t keep the prices as they even are now, despite having dropped considerably, if it were a yearly update). There are advantages and disadvantages to that system, and the one MS employed in the past, and none of it is confirmed. I’m not sure how reliable the sources are, either.

I guess we’ll find more out when 8.1 is released later this year.

But 8.1 won’t “fix” the WinRT and Win8 divide. Some conspiracy theorists (who might be right, for all I know) believe MS deliberately made WinRT purely to get the push on to Intel to make more competitive CPUs for mobile usage, as they were lagging considerably. I’m curious to see if Haswell changes much. Of course, for people like me who are more aware of this stuff, I know that it’s a product I will likely want (I’ve held off buying a tablet mostly due to current Intel CPUs being still impractical). However, can MS overcome the general view that people seem to hold about them, how their products are used and what they are for? I guess only time will truly show this.

As interesting as they are, I’m a bit sick of all the rumours. Trying to help move their products up the chain, I’ve tried to push MS to fix a few of the issues in some of their products (apps, basically), but they are very unresponsive. I guess we’re stuck with rumours for most things with MS, as they don’t seem to concerned about providing much detail about anything to the public, unless it’s a buzzed up blog post by a senior employee, and/or a marketing statement (usually the same). A pity, too!

And .. that’s probably all I have to say. It’s all rumours at this point. 🙁 Not sure about the mid-2013 either. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I personally suspect it’s more heading for end of third quarter or a bit after, which would be close to the one year mark of Win8 release.

Is this topic really important, even for a mere curiosity? It feels much like on computer games forums many years ago when guys would ask the same, and it just has this weird, creepy feeling to it. Of course, I’m curious too, purely from the hope that there’s some evenness to it, but there’s just something .. maybe politically incorrect? … about it. If I were a female, I wouldn’t be responding to the thread. From what I’ve seen, usually the only females to respond to such requests are either attention seekers or are strongly idealistic and think they might be proving something about themselves or the state of women in (whatever it is, games, music, etc).

Sorry, I guess what I’m saying is pretty down about something that is *probably* just a mere curiosity to you. You could just as easily ask, however, are there any government officials on these forums? Are there any solar power engineers? Are there any gamers on these forums? (I’m one!)

But what is much more common on the internet? “Are there any girls here?” or similar. To me, this sort of thing seems even more off-topic than for general on a music software website, and typically appears to occur when the forum is (likely) largely composed of males.

To interact a little more with the topic, I would imagine plenty of females produce music, as they also play computer games. They may not deem the forums worth their time, however, and who knows about specifically Podium users. I could ponder on how many females use Tracktion, too, or Renoise…

Of course, I am not a moderator, nor do I claim any inherent right to say what people should and shouldn’t do..! (And I only say this because I fear what I say will be over-reacted too .. I’m proactively self-defensive based on what often occurs on the internet… T_T) I just wanted to share my opinion that it’s not really an appropriate question given the nature of the website, and I guess based on the internet’s history, in my humble opinion.

This may not need to be said (and I don’t know if it applies to using purely MIDI, but it does if using USB MIDI devices connected through USB). The keyboard needs to be plugged in and turned on before opening the software, in almost all cases I’ve experienced or heard of.

Podium supports standard MIDI devices, so I can’t imagine you’ll have any problems using it, as long as your drivers (if you aren’t just using Windows defaults, which I’d recommend starting with), and hardware are functioning correctly.

@alex wrote:

Why would you delete the plugin that you use (have used) in projects unless you have the newer version?

Are you familiar with Elogxa’s Baxxpander (not sure if I got the number of X letters correct)? I found a replacement, and as I hadn’t created that many songs, I thought I wouldn’t have used it anywhere. So I deleted it.

… and then many months later, I tried to load some older songs, and realised I HAD used it. Oops! And as I have a naming scheme for VSTs (they are horribly non-standardised, when relying on filename, so I “fix” that…), when I downloaded it and put it in the same folder, it didn’t work. I had to give it the same filename (of course, knowing my naming scheme helps in this case…)

Anyway, my original point is that plugins can be deleted. And forgotten that they’d been used… I wouldn’t say it’s a large case, but just something to keep in mind, is all!

One problem I have with automatic removal of plugins and so on is in cases where older songs are loaded, and the VST has since been deleted. I have had this occur.

Podium is the first host I’ve used that actually keeps it there, along with the data, even if it can’t actually use the plugin, because it’s not there. That means I can go and try to source it again, and plug it back into the project. I believe (?? though I haven’t tested it much at all?) that I can edit and save the project and it will retain that data regardless if the plugin is missing or not, until I actually remove that from the project. Please correct me if I’m wrong, though, for my own peace of mind if nothing else. :S

I like automation, and I think it’s a balance. But, as a sporadic user of music software (and quite possibly a minority), I sometimes have stuff I’ve worked on from a long time ago that I want to load … but I’ve renamed VST files (yes I’m obsessive), or deleted them, and hadn’t realised I’d used them in something, and then … other hosts I’ve used just remove it and then instead of having a chance at fixing it up, I’m left with nothing, to try to work out how to get back there again.

Automatic plugin scanning at the start is trickier than it sounds, too, in my opinion. How does Podium know whether a plugin has been updated or not, whether it exists or not, and so on? You can look at files … but updated VSTs with the same filename, does it bother to check them? If so, it needs to read at least some of the VST to check version or other data. Or, you could use the file system’s last date modified, but then what if it’s not correct? What if it’s the same, and Podium skips it, and it turns out to have added parameters that you’ll miss because it wasn’t reimported?

Just some thoughts. Having to read the VSTs to check if they’re updated or not may increase loading time enough to make it not a lot less than just reloading them all, though only programmers with experience would be able to know whether this is truly the case or not (I’m not one, I only suggest this is the case).