University is probably the most boring expansion, but it does add those want slots for the "Upgrade Pre-Uni Sim" options.  Unless you're sending a CAS retard there, there's not really that much to do.  It also seems like a cheat since an unpatched game gets you to L9 of a standard career track.

Nightlife added Cars, and this gives your sims a level of "freedom" that they didn't have before.  Instead of waiting an hour for the Taxi, your sim could just jump into the car and drive anywhere they wanted.  I scoffed at the feature at first but EA actually implemented it well.  Oh, and Vampires.

I actually liked OFB more than other people did.  It allowed you to make a scenario where a slacker could quit his job, whore out his house, and still make some money.  That, and you could hire personal servants.  As for the actual "Sell stuff" part, I found it too be too easy much like the following expansions.

I would actually recommend that you just play TS1's Unleashed if you want pets.  The pets are much too easy to train compared to the predessor and there are no incentives to do so.  A gold ribbon'd pet offspring fetches $3000, I don't know if Pets does that.  I pretty much got through 85% of the features in a day, the only things that I didn't do were Werewolves and Breeding.  Heck, the dogs in Pets don't even fetch you the paper like in Unleashed.

I didn't try Seasons all that much, but it adds the most to the game engine.  To me, it seems like they broke up TS1's Unleashed into two expansions since first we got the mediocre Pets expansion and then Seasons which actually affects standard play.  I didn't play through it all that much so I haven't seen a Sim overheat but I wouldn't want to go without it if I decided to play again.  Of course, parts of this expansion were supposed to come with the sequel...

Who said anything about upgrading your computer?  I'm saying that DX10 games are so far off that you're better off buying a new system for $1000 when the game you want comes out than waste loads of money for the sole purpose of being DX10 ready.  Even with DX10 capable cards there's no promise that TS3 will run really well either.  I'm guessing that TS3 will take up at least 25GB and take 2GB of RAM minimum, 4GB recommended.  These might be a little excessive but I wouldn't put it past EA for making the game extra bloaty just to force people to buy new hardware (they are the Microsoft of gaming companies after all).  Those cards will improve TS2's rendering now especially if you were on an integrated chipset though.

I really don't understand what makes a card DX10 capable anyway, is it an GPU architecture like PPC or x86?  From what I understand right now, it seems to me that it's saying that a computer is Cω or Python capable.

By the way, Avalon shuts off while you're playing pretty much any game so that's not what's causing the problem.  The slower performance probably comes from the fact that Vista adds a lot of services like SuperFetch and Tablet PC support even when you don't have a Tablet PC.  This is what angers me about Vista the most, they put crap like this in there and there's no way to completely remove it anymore unless you reinstall your entire OS with vLite.

2)It looks like the card's overheating.  You could always try installing different drivers and see if that helps but chances are you're going to need a new card.

3)The Windows Page File should NEVER be increased manually unless you have the "Virtual Memory is Too Low" prompt.  Making this file bigger means you will use less real RAM which means your programs will run slower and increase disk thrashing.  Lowering the page file size will coax XP into using more real RAM but it doesn't work all that well compared to Vista's memory management.

4)I suggest setting it from Minimum (2MB XP, 16MB Vista) to 1.5x your RAM (even this is still a little high).  If you get "Virtual Memory is Too Low" errors, increase the maximum size by a little bit until you no longer get the errors.

By default the system puts it at 1.5x to 2.0x of your RAM.

5)If Pets did kill it, it would have on any graphics-intensive game.

Alternatively you could edit those UAC settings in the Local Security Policy if you're using Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate.  Seriously, UAC's not that bad considering Linux systems have sudo and Mac OSX has something else like UAC.

When Vista says "File Permission Denied" that means it's in use, it probably should make that slightly clearer.  I haven't had any issue with not being able to gain control of a file like in XP.  As for performance, it's about the same and some programs like Minefield, Office 2007, and Eclipse have improved slightly.

I've never had a problem with DAEMON Tools, except for the fact that it would always boot up at start.  The only stuff it would block for me would be msconfig (lol) and Adobe Updater.

It's weird Apache doesn't work completely with Vista, especially since it's based off of a server OS.  IIS works but it's junk (there's a reason why there aren't many WIMP servers).  I'm not going to install XP just to play around on a personal imageboard so I'll have to wait until Apache is updated, but I'm not holding my breath.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=7120.0 - Venusy posted a thread quite a bit ago about moving the main install on a portable drive, in the end it ended up being a frankenbuild of sorts.

(My) Documents is a special folder in Windows, chances are it'll remake it if you don't tell it where you moved it.  Right click on "My Documents" in the Start Menu and right click properties.  Then click the Target(or Location) tab and then "Move..." if you haven't done so already but if you already have then click "Find Target..." and point it to where you put the folder.  I don't know if TS2 will adapt to this location, but it'll fix it for the rest of Windows.

Hmm...
Since MPC is essentially the same thing as Windows Media Player when it comes to video, VMR9 is probably where the problems are coming from in that case.  Don't know about VLC having that problem, it shouldn't even use VMR since it's not a DirectShow player.

Athons have Hyper-Threading?  I thought that was just an Intel thing.

I have no idea if this is still a problem, but nVidia had horrible support for Vista especially with the 8800.  I personally think buying a card just because it supports DX10 right now is pointless since even Avalon¹ runs DX9.1 and it'll be a while for games to use DX10.  Since you were forced to SLI the things there probably wasn't any choice between a DX9 and a DX10 card.

TS2 runs about the same speed in Vista as it did in XP but that might be because Intel's Vista drivers don't suck completely.  I also seem to be really lucky when it comes to these kinds of things though since I also don't have problems with either of my nVidia cards (Geforce 4 MX and Geforce 6100) even when using the latest drivers.

What AV are you using?  It seems kind of odd that an antivirus would alert you about something that doesn't require your intervention.

According to that thread, these multi-core gimpers are still in Vista.  I don't see what the OEMs are trying to accomplish by doing this.

_Footnotes
¹Vista API.  Like AIGLX/XGL(Linux) or Quartz(OSX) it's 3D accelerated so it can do many things that would bring XP to a crawl.  Aero and Live Thumbnails are examples.  Annoyances such as the screen of an application like SimPE turning completely white when freezing is a thing of the past since the window doesn't need to be completely redrawn.  For more information, clicky.

Speaking that thing, will SimPE ever have a 1.0 version?  Hell, it's been in Beta longer than most Google products.

SimPE's Splash in 6.02 (latest Binary on Sourceforge) has a Window around it called "SplashForm" and it also seemed to lose most of the Windows Forms stuff (looks quite a bit better than 2003 Office Style IMO).  These problems are probably caused by .NET 3.0 and I doubt Quaxi will upgrade the code to it anytime soon since they upgraded to 2.0 "for Vista".

I'm wondering why Aspyr didn't port those stuff packs over when they did the EPs.  Aspyr doesn't hate money, do they?

I'd say OFB or wait for Seasons.  Avoid Pets like the plague.

I think the thing should feature a spotlight-like feature for accessing features of the program.  For those not familiar with it, if I press a hotkey then type in "Nei" it would come up with "Neighborhood Editor" and then launch it when I pressed enter rather than going to Tools > Neighborhood > Neighborhood Editor.  I'm thinking it should be a bar on the bottom of the screen and show File, Edit, Tools stuff when nothing is in the box.  If there's something in there then it should have 3 or so results on the bar.

As for the program itself, it should be modular and summon modules with the spotlight-like menu system or right-click menu.  This might not be possible, but I believe it should also have a multiple document interface much like Photoshop or Opera.  Since SimPE has problems with the fact it is written in C#, Java(we're not using Solaris) or Python won't help the speed any.  Maybe as the main interface for accessing the modules Java could be used since it includes a GUI, but everything else should be in a compiled language.

I've got a question about Hard Drives, a commonly overlooked component in PCs.

I currently use a 100GB 5200RPM SATA HDD in my notebook, and I recently got a 500GB 7200RPM Western Digital External HDD with 16MB Cache.  I'm wondering If I'll take a speed hit by running the game off of the external since it has to go through a USB 2.0 connection.

I was able to download the TPB torrent just fine, but they seem to all be down.  It didn't include a crack yet but I'm sure that later today someone will have a one out there with a crack much like Pets.

Windows Experience Index for The Sims 2:Seasons
3.0 - Recommended
2.0 - Minimum

I don't know if the other expansions included this information, but here it is anyway.  Won't do you much good if you don't know your WEI to begin with though.  To put these ratings in some sort of perspective for the XP users, Solitare has a minimum of 1.0 and recommended of 2.0.

It's too bad that FRAPS doesn't have non gaming applications... Well, it does catch when Avalon does something like Flip3D but that's it.

I've been looking for some software to capture thread screenshots for a while, and it seems like SnagIt works for that sort of thing.  It's also got a little bit of Video capture ability, but it compresses to... Microsoft Video 1.  Crap.

The problem with the detection algorithm is that it just goes by the number of Sims in the house, ignoring if they are hungry or not.  It'd be slightly better if it only took into account close, controllable, or hungry sims (these would probably require more checks though).

The less the "AI" does, the better.

Monitor colors do not match real world colors no matter if what you're a PC or a Mac.  I guess you could say, adjust the colors but you can do that on Windows with Adobe Gamma and/or Graphics Drivers.

When I did some print work, the color was always different on the monitor than it was printed.  If we went by the colors shown by the Macs and not by the sample sheet, we would get something completely different than we wanted.  This was a newspaper type publication though.

Vista just seems faster because your components are better.  If you clean installed XP over the top of that performance would be 5%-35% better at the moment but you'd lose stuff like Aero, Flip3D, and DirectX 10.

Oh yeah, since most computers today don't come with a floppy disk drive you'll need to use nLite to embed your SATA drivers with a XP install disk if you're installing from boot.  Vista doesn't require this.  I feel that this is an important point to mention since your computer manufacturer might not provide the drivers anymore, making installing XP impossible to install.

Macs are no better for design than PCs, this "color advantage" as you call it doesn't matter.  If you're designing for print, you'll use a sample sheet for the color and not the color of the monitor since they're very different..  If you're designing for the web, there are so many different ways that someone can see something due to their Gamma settings and monitor type that it doesn't matter if your Gamma is slightly different.

As for software?  It's all available on Windows and currently runs faster than it would on Mac OSX (x86).

Are you sure about that?  I think you need Windows 2000 or XP to use an upgrade edition, at least that's what it says on the site.  I doubt having the correct Windows version for upgrading is an issue though, every computer that can run Vista will have at least one of those two.

It seems that Business would be better than Home Premium since it's not loaded with Media Center junk and has more useful features like Previous Version.  Of course, it's $40 more for the upgrade edition.  Additionally, If you had XP Pro and wanted to install in place then you'll have to either use Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate.

If you're not using the Windows 2000 style login, you can't use Fast User Switching.  I shudder to think how insecure feature is, but I guess if you have it enabled you're wanting more speed than security anyway.

As for Windows Vista versions, it depends on how much you're willing to spend and what features you want.  The features common with all versions are DirectX, WMP 11, UAC, Windows Defender, IE 7, and Desktop Search 3.0.
Home Basic - XP Home.  Avoid at all costs.
Home Premium - Aero, Flip3D, Media Center, Parental Controls.
Business - Aero, Flip3D, File Restore.
Enterprise - Business with Bitlocker Encryption.
Ultimate - Has all Vista features of Home Premium and Business, including Ultimate Extras.

You can upgrade XP Home to any version, and upgrading XP Pro will force you to reformat for Home Basic and Home Premium.

Is there a hard limit to how many VMs you can have running inside each other at once?  I'm guessing the one I'm using now can handle 6 nested XP's but I'm not bored enough to try it.

I'm confused on why you'd seriously want to nest them unless you wanted to see if a Virtual Machine would work in a Virtualized environment or something.  Either that or you're paranoid and want to have many layers of OSes protecting your host OS(I don't even know if this is possible).

They've made it even worse in Vista with something they call User Account Controls, or UAC for short.  This time, they darken the screen and it pops up with a "Are you sure you want to do this?" dialog even when you're copying files to say your Program Files directory.  COPYING.  EVEN NOT OVERWRITING.  Luckily, you can turn this thing off but then there goes the "security" that Vista was supposed to give you.  This idea was just as retarded as hiding the Program Files and Windows folders to make you safer.

Sure, Linux has this sort of thing going on with sudo but there you require a password so you're aware what you're doing has some importance(Well, assuming you didn't put your password in 5 seconds before, then it won't ask you).  Whenever I used Vista RC1, I wasn't asked for my password by UAC to edit settings.  I believe Mac OS X does this too, but only for installing certain software (from my experiences with OS X, I was able to install browsers but I needed the admin password for Photoshop).

I've heard that OSx86 is pretty much dead, so there probably won't be a Leopard release.  I never got the thing to work on my computer without wanting me to reformat the entire drive anyway, not to mention torrents for it are a lot less common than ones of Linux.  I wonder if Boot Camp works...

It's a shame that I never got it to install, it'd probably freak people out seeing Mac OS X on a HP Laptop.

*gasp* Windows XP does this too.  If you're talking about connecting immediately without user intervention then you've probably got an unsecure network prone to leechers(Assuming you don't have MAC addresses registered or some other scheme that doesn't require a WEP or WPA key).

I haven't heard anything that a Mac can do that a PC can't that justifies the increased costs.  Maybe the Macbook series, but the others just seem overpriced(Mac Mini, Mac Pro) or look like children's toys(iMac).

Mac Versions of the Sims can use custom content.  Like others had said before, SimPE can't be used with it since it's coded in Microsoft Devil Language.  As for expansions, you can get all of them except for those donation packs.

<microsoftdevillanguage>
There's a framework called Mono which allows for C# code to be executed on Unix machines, but even Visual Basic programs don't work with Mono.  In my opinion, SimPE should have been coded in Java instead since their speeds are similar and unlike C#, Java is cross-platform and recently became open source.  If speed was an issue, they should have coded it in C/C++ instead of a bastardized Microsoft language.
</microsoftdevillanguage>

If the computer doesn't have internet access, I think you can activate Vista over the phone like you could with XP.

Pes, there's already pirate versions of Vista out there but it's not as idiotproof as it was before since all versions require activation.  There's 3 methods that are used to activate these copies that I know of, the first involves swapping the RTM activation with RC2 which will last until July 31.  Another's setting up a KMS server that pirate Vista connects to every 6 months to activate, and finally there's messing with the clock to give almost unlimited time until requiring activation.  Of course, the DRM isn't hacked out of any of version yet but it's only a matter of time since a security researcher has already cracked it.