Windows 7 Released in Australia
You heard it right Windows 7 is now available from your closest retailer in Australia.
For once Australia gets something early thanks to our position on the International Date Line.
Unfortunately the prices are fairly steep compared to the rest of the world.
| Product | AU | US (AU) | UK (AU) | ||
| Windows 7 | |||||
| Upgrade | |||||
| Home premium | $199 | $119.99 | ($129) | £79.99 | ($141) |
| Professional | $399 | $199.99 | ($216) | £189.99 | ($336) |
| Ultimate | $429 | $219.99 | ($236) | £199.99 | ($354) |
| Standalone | |||||
| Home premium | $299 | $199.99 | ($216) | £149.99 | ($265) |
| Professional | $449 | $299.99 | ($322) | £219.99 | ($389) |
| Ultimate | $469 | $319.99 | ($345) | £229.99 | ($407) |
The above table (source) shows that we pay a fair amount more for our software than our counterparts in other parts of the world, in some cases it is claimed that we pay five times more for our software.
Personally I think it's because our market in general is smaller than the likes of the US or the UK meaning overall less units will be shipped so retailers have to make up losses somehow, though having worked in the field of computer retailing I've seen my fair share of dodgy pricings.
Anyway, good to see Windows 7 being rolled out and thus far I'm pretty happy to part with my hard earned cash for this release of Windows.
How to run TF2 & L4D in Triple Monitor Glory
Okay so I had a question about how to get TF2 running on three monitors and since Youtube doesn't give me enough room to explain it I'll post here.
I'll include lots of pics for your enjoyment too.
First you need to download a copy of SoftTH from the creator's site here.
Download the latest release which is 1.08b during the time of writing.
After downloading you should end up with a zip file that resembles something like this.
Left 4 Dead Triple Monitors on SoftTH Windows 7 Build 7077
Having sucessfully run Team Fortress 2 fairly smoothly with SoftTH I decided to try the same thing with Left 4 Dead.
The results surprised me as it ran on high settings with 2xAA and 2xAF very well.
All the UI elements didn't look messed up and everything rendered very nicely it was as if the game was made for multi-monitor setups.
The only thing that was messed up by the huge resolution was the main menu's background.
Otherwise everything was sweet.
Here's a test run jumped into a random game, in this case the finale of No Mercy.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzOAFXadRpE]
I used the same config as my Team Fortress 2 attempt, which can be grabbed from here.
Team Fortress 2 Triple Monitors on SoftTH in Windows 7
After reading this article from Multimonitor.net showing that it was possible to get Team Fortress 2 to run on triple monitors with a program that emulates Matrox's TripleHead2Go's functions - SoftTH.
I decided to give it a shot so after a good two hours of google, trial and error I finally got Team Fortress 2 working on my three Samsung 2243BWs.
It seemed to have a bit of difficulty running on Windows 7 Build 7077 so it took me a bit longer than anticipated.
Check out the test run on my Youtube video below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8tInaRVlLI]
You can give SoftTH a shot too, download it from the developer's site.
Grab my config file from here, just copy paste the code into your config file and it should work.




