Just a heads up for those living in the UK or further east. There will be a eclipse of the Sun on the 1st of August, best viewed from parts of Russia and China where it will be total. Only partial from the UK - around 10%.

In the UK this will start at around 0931 local time (0831 UTC), the mid-point of the eclipse will be around 1015.

Safely blurb:

Obviously don't go looking at the Sun directly, you can cause damage to your eyes. Eclipse glasses are one option just make sure they carrying the CE logo and are undamaged - if you're not sure look at a bright light through them - if you can see anything at all throw them away.

Failing that there's pin-hole projection, where you can make a pin hole in a piece of card and project an image of the Sun onto a piece of card behind it.

You can also project an image using binoculars or a telescope like so:

You can bring the Sun into view by using the shadow cast behind the telescope or binoculars. Don't think about using a viewfinder or looking through the instrument itself - it would be bad.

Weather permitting, I'll have some images to share.

Let's put this bit of FUD to rest.

Fact: Windows Vista on launch was around 5-10% slower than Windows XP for gaming, this was largely due to video drivers not being as mature.

10% isn't even noticeable, I'd happily trade 10% for video drivers which don't take out the entire system when they crash thanks to them running in User Mode in Windows Vista instead of Kernel Mode like they do in Windows XP.

Fact: That gap was closed months ago, and now in many benchmarks Windows Vista is faster.

From ExtremeTech:

They also benchmarked World in Conflict, where the two were dead level.

Conclusion: there's no difference, and if somebody wants to get picky and argue Windows XP must be faster, kindly point them in the direction of some benchmarks.