Two editorials on Vista, from eWeek and Microsoft Watch. The former: “The looming choice for Windows users is either to stick with Windows XP (and older hardware) or take Windows Vista cold turkey. But Microsoft doesn’t have to be so tough – Apple did it differently with the Mac OS X rollout.” The latter: “How will Microsoft – and its business customers – cost-justify upgrading to Vista in the coming months/years? With Windows Vista, Microsoft needs to please at least two constituencies with very different sets of requirements.”
Instead of getting in the vicious circle of buying Windows and MS software and spending huge ammounts of money, why don’t they put some effort/money to help better develop those applications Linux needs, in an open source way, and all the world would benefict from this? I mean, throw some money for once and you probably never have to buy licenses and be locked in to some provider. How difficult is that? Even if you don’t want to (help)develop software, push your software providers to support Linux.
Is this too much?
Eh? Why give money to Linux development when some smart cookies will use the resulting software to create commercial versions of Linux? Look at the number of Linux-Cost Distros floating around, they will benefit and put very little if anything back into proper opensource development.
“Eh? Why give money to Linux development when some smart cookies will use the resulting software to create commercial versions of Linux? Look at the number of Linux-Cost Distros floating around, they will benefit and put very little if anything back into proper opensource development.”
And what’s the problem with commercial versions of Linux? It’s a scratch an itch matter. You need a tool to solve a problem, you put some money to develop it. You really don’t care if somebody else is making money with it. Perhaps you don’t know about GPL and why it’s so important to protect “your investment”.
Even you understand about GPL so what makes you assume I don’t, any halfwit can get to grips with the concept, but you cannot stop greed and really it looks to me that there are an awful lot of companies profiting from the hard work of private individuals who create the opensource and gpl software. To me this is wrong, and for that matter so are commercial Linux distros, they should be paying Linus Torvalds a fee and percentages of their profits/savings.
You are completely wrong. If Linus was all for the money, he wouldn’t use GPL for his kernel. Nor him or any other of the open source contributors. People write free and open source software because they believe in the methodology/philosophy. There are companies that build around this work, as there are companies that use the knowledge acquired from centuries of investigation. Do this company give back to the community? Some do, some don’t; at least not in the way you think they should. Anything Linux/open source related is a way to contribute to the movement. Talk about Linux and you are advocating; write free software and you are contributing; use free software and you are advocating/contributing to the future of the FOSS.
For the matter, I think is more important the availability of open formats for interchange of information, more than some kind of software. But advocating for OpenOffice, for example, is a means to further introduce the OpenDocument Format. There are companies that contribute a lot to free software. Even ditributing a commercial Linux distro is a way of promotion, and that is a way of contributing.
DUH! I never said Linus was out for money, but rather that if anyone is going to earn out of Linux then it should be him, not IBM or some other commercial company.
That would be like saying that because Archimedes discovered the law of buoyancy, then no company can make and sell boats. And Linus has all what it takes to make money if he wants. And I’m sure he makes as much as he really needs.
You know, you don’t have to earn millions to achieve success and be happy. There’s a missconception that money is everything, and I can see for your talking that you give it too much of importance. Why do you care about Linus wallet?
sbenitezb wrote: (snipped) Why do you care about Linus wallet?
because I hate the thought of him going hungry while all these companies save and make money at his expense.
Maybe we should start a “feed the Linus fund”
I don’t agree at all that a 1k computer won’t be able to handle vista. I just built a computer for under 800 with 1GB of ram and a Pentium D processor which will be enough to be comparable to today’s 256-512MB systems being sold for 600. In fact, it would be quite usable for Vista I’m sure. It won’t take *that* long before this kind of hardware becomes cheap.
Vista ran fine for me 768MB of ram and Aero Basic. Hell, I dont think businesses will be using Flip3D anytime soon or need Aero Glass.
Yes, they will. They’re making it easy to take advantage of 3d interfaces and animations and applications will start really wanting these things.
Besides, if you have the extre $100 for a decent graphics card it’s a vastly better experience to use a 3d rendered desktop. It’s really worth the cost.
I agree with you here, the Vista Basic experience is absolutely horrible. It’s unpolished and looks poorly done. Parts of apps are skinned with Vista style controls others use “hard” classic looking controls it’s really bad.
At the LEAST they could turn on a lower form of Compositing that provides a tear free enviroment and Thumbnails..if SkyOS can do it and they don’t even have 3D Accel what’s so hard for Vista?
I mean if it means I cant have blurred Glass Pixelshaded shadows or whatever the hell it is thats jacking the reqs up then so be it. Give me Aero Basic with Compositing and I’m happy.
“Hell, I dont think businesses will be using Flip3D anytime soon or need Aero Glass.”
Businesses wont be running Vista at all anytime soon.
…and 40 GB of hard-disk space
Forty?! BLOODY HELL.
Edited 2006-09-01 00:11
Vista takes up around 8-12GB in the current RC1 (which is the Ultimate edition). The reason they recommend a 40GB hard drive is because a) You can’t buy anything lower, and b) what good would it be to have a 20GB disk and not have enought room to install more than a few programs on it, nor enough scratch space to install a DVD.
Also remember that with the larger amounts of RAM everybody is going to have to run Vista, the pagefile and hibernation file will grow accordingly.
The reason they recommend a 40GB hard drive is because a) You can’t buy anything lower
You can’t BUY anything lower (unless you’re willing to buy a HDD second hand…scary), but you can still USE something smaller if you already have it.
what good would it be to have a 20GB disk and not have enought room to install more than a few programs on it,
20 Gigs is *plenty* under a real operating system, even if you have a GUI and some serious applications.
You’re arguing semantics over 20 & 40GB disks in a world with 750GB drives and Vista ready computers coming with 160GBs or more? Vista’s ’40 GBs’ requirement is an acceptable thing to state, I was correcting the OP who thought that 40GBs meant used space. Anybody who builds a machine themselves understands exactly what disk space is needed.
You’re arguing semantics over 20 & 40GB disks in a world with 750GB drives and Vista ready computers coming with 160GBs or more?
No, I’m arguing why throw 20GB disks out *if they still work*?
“No, I’m arguing why throw 20GB disks out *if they still work*?”
There is no need to throw them out – I use them for all kinds of things (keeping backups, storing mp3s, linux file servers etc), but there is no reason why you should be using it on your primary OS unless you want to really limit yourself. Of, course, everyone has their own requirements – I do a lot of audio recording, and 192KHz 24 bit audio files and multisampled instruments like Kontact eat up hard drive space for breakfast very quickly, so I buy the biggest hard drives I can afford. If you are just doijng fairly light stuff then you might as well stick to your wee HDD until it craps out on you, but HDDs are a commodity these days, and 8 – 15GB or even 40GB is a negligible amount of data when you have hard drives approaching TB capacity on the market.
what good would it be to have a 20GB disk and not have enought room to install more than a few programs on it,
You can’t run much at the same time anyway unless you have more than 1GB of ram:-)
1) Memory is as a cheap as chips; sure, skimp on anything else if you want, but make sure you have a decent amount of memory; it always ammuses me when I see companies go scottish on the memory when purchasing their hardare, but they’re quite happy to waste thousands of dollars on expensive, pampering ‘business trips’ that add zip to the bottom line – “Oh, Windows Vista specifications are so high, I’m not going to spend the money updating out computer fleet! but I’ll waste the money charging expensive meals and trips to the company account!”
2) If one were to argue; the cost of MacOS X has actualyl come down, given that their pricing has stayed constant for 5 years, without any adjustment for inflation, if one were to look at it from an inflation adjusted point of view, the cost of MacOS X has actually gone down by around US$10-$15, which everything else seems to be going up.
3) The developer from the first article is more of a whiner than a ‘genuine concern’ – why? he’s pissed that he might actually have to WORK on his product rather than sitting back, failing to maintain his application then expect Microsoft to perpetually provide backwards compatibility for junk yard crap such as his product.
It seems that the *only* vendors who are ‘whining about compatibility’ are those companies would rather do what I explained in the first point rather than investing the money into improving thir products compatibility with Windows or providing their application on another platform.
Memory is as cheap as chips? Who are you people who keep saying this? Here, 1GB of RAM from newegg. the cheapest place on the internet for hardware.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220078
$80+, if I ever consider 80 bucks “cheap as chips”, someone please kick me in the sack, just on principle. I think some people have more money than sense, or possibly just no sense.
My entire rig cost less than $200. $80 for one part is ridiculous.
Edited 2006-09-01 04:40
Well, for me, that is pretty cheap. If you are tight for money, why would you even consider upgrading to Vista? But if you have enough money to upgrade to Vista, surely you have enough to justify spending a bit more to bring your hardware up to par.
“Well, for me, that is pretty cheap. If you are tight for money, why would you even consider upgrading to Vista? But if you have enough money to upgrade to Vista, surely you have enough to justify spending a bit more to bring your hardware up to par.”
You’re still not getting it. I make plenty of money. The fact is I refuse to waste it on crap I don’t need. Who sets this par? If my current machine absolutely flies with any Linux distro or BSD out there, why in the heck would I upgrade and waste a ton of money just to run an OS than for all intents and purposes, would be equivalent to ripping out every useful command line tool I have, yet turning on XGL?
“You’re still not getting it. I make plenty of money. The fact is I refuse to waste it on crap I don’t need. Who sets this par? If my current machine absolutely flies with any Linux distro or BSD out there, why in the heck would I upgrade and waste a ton of money just to run an OS than for all intents and purposes, would be equivalent to ripping out every useful command line tool I have, yet turning on XGL?”
If you are using Linux or BSD, why on earth are you complaining about the hardware requirements of Vista? First, for most applications, regardless of OS, more RAM is always better – less paging/swapping, faster application response etc, and second, if your current setup OS working fine, why change it? If running CL apps is what you mainly do, I don’t see how Vista remotely affects you, or why you would complain about it.
when it breaks, there is no reason you shouldn’t buy a Vista ready PC, put BSD or Linux on it, and it will be even faster.
There are plenty of applications for computers that need very little RAM, but if you do anything with computer graphics, audio or games, more is always better. And if you have 64bit systems whose principle selling point is the ability to handle more than 4GB of RAM, why not take advantage of it?
“…when it breaks, there is no reason you shouldn’t buy a Vista ready PC,… ”
Everyone here seems to be jumping the gun. The problem with Vista is that in its current incarnation–beta 2–it is still unstable and many hardware drivers are unavailable or don’t work, including ATI drivers for one of my laptops. It would seem that most people are predicting that things will stabilize and that everything will be just fine in the end. I am not so sure. Only time will tell. I expect few businesses and most individuals won’t be upgrading to Vista for some time, if ever. If Vista is buggy and unreliable MSFT’s reputation will suffer more than it already has.
And if you failed to ‘grasp’ the reality, Services for UNIX is now included with Windows Vista Ultimate, it is a first class subsystem, so there are no performance penalties using it; so no, you don’t loose anything by moving to Windows Vista.
*kicks kernelpanicked in the sack*
I have $200+ plus left at the end of each week, $80 is a small piss in the ocean, a very small piss in the ocean indeed; the cost of upgrading is sweet bugger all.
I also always find it funny that those who claim poverty are quite happy to waste money on other crap, which most people would deem to be stupid.
I’m not here to judge, simply to point that that compared to alot of things, $80 is barely anything – $80 is around 3 weeks worth of smokes, dozen of good beer, 20 pizza slabs from pizza etc.
I have $200+ plus left at the end of each week, $80 is a small piss in the ocean,
I don’t know where you learned maths, but here on Earth, $80 is nearly half of $200. And am I not right in thinking that most people would have $200+ left at the end of each *month*?
I also always find it funny that those who claim poverty are quite happy to waste money on other crap, which most people would deem to be stupid.
Such as? I always find it funny that those who claim high wages are quite happy to waste money on crap which most people would deem to be stupid. And kernelpanicked wasn’t claiming poverty.
I’m not here to judge,
Then don’t,
simply to point that that compared to alot of things, $80 is barely anything – $80 is around 3 weeks worth of smokes,
another example of crap, which some people are unfortunately addicted to…
dozen of good beer,
which won’t last as long as RAM chips or 200 bucks, well-managed.
20 pizza slabs from pizza etc.
Do you have a big family, are you an athlete or just fat?
EDIT: On second thoughts an athlete wouldn’t eat 20 slabs of pizza.
Edited 2006-09-01 12:13
What are you ranting about? If you can’t afford something then don’t buy it, pure and simple.
Many years ago I wanted a PC but I could not afford it so I made do with my Amiga 600HD, then later I could afford the PC and wished I still had my Amiga
In general, except for a few geeks, people don’t upgade to newer versions of Windows. They just eventually get new computers with a new version of Windows pre-loaded. There is no cost justification cycle going on for Vista. When it’s time for a new cycle of hardware purchases (or Christmas comes for home users!), new versions of Windows will be deployed. Don’t forget this cycle.
That is true for home users. Businesses have bigger concerns. They need to test for compatibility with applications, test security, plan a phase out of the old operating system and phase in for the new operating system, and weigh the cost benefits to see if its worth the upgrade.
Even then, I can see a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from home users too, if Unreal Tournament 2006 Ricers’ Edition doesn’t work on their shiny new Vista box.
Yeah, there are going to be lots of complaints from the 30-70 year-olds that will be buying computers this Christmas about Unreal Tournament not running…
… 😉
I have been a software developer for years. I have worked at large and small companies. I have never worked for a company that went out and upgraded all their existing computers to a newer version of Windows. I’m not saying there aren’t some, but I think it is more normal to buy a few newer computers with Vista. Gradually the number of Vista computers grows, and then that is all they buy. I would recommend NO ONE go out and wholesale replace all you computers with Vista (personally, I prefer Ubuntu!). Rather, give one of those geeky accounting executives a Vista laptop. Some of the network admins will get one. Eventually, after some of the problems are worked out, order all you new computers with Vista.
For home users I would generally agree. It’ll be interesting to see if any software vendors, specifically gaming ones, force the hand of users by only supporting DX10 on Vista.
As far as corporates go, it’ll be years before they upgrade. Testing, testing, testing, wait and see, wait and see, wait and see..
Many organisations actually lease their hardware with regular refresh cycles and close negociations with hardware vendors like HP for instance. I don’t see the hardware being an issue for corporate environments.
I don’t see many, other than the elites and tech boffins, whining about hardware requirements just to get a headline in a “review”. I’d be somewhat surpised or more accurately, curious, as to why regular home users upgrade, “just because”.
Edited 2006-09-01 02:31
I work for a medium sized business (2500 clients) and we aren’t planning on upgrading to Vista until at least 2010. We’ve been evaluating the betas and see absolutely no business advantage right now to upgrading to Vista or Longhorn server. I know of many large orgizinations (15000+ clients) that are still running W2K, and have rock solid stability.
The computer I built 3 years ago is able to run Vista in it’s full glory according to the specs on the Microsoft website, and even a budget PC built with current hardware will have plenty of headroom to run Vista (granted, when I built my PC, I didn’t skimp on RAM (2GB) and my GPU has been upgraded to a fairly decent DX9 card). And when you can now buy 400GB hard drives, 40GB is not a lot percentage wise, though it does seem a tad excessive.
And there are still tons of businesses out there who are still haven’t upgraded to XP – basically, no one will upgrade until their current desktops start breaking, then they will buy new machines with Vista licenses included. And these machines won’t be expensive – you can build a very powerful, vista ready machine for well under $800AU, and most of the newer integrated graphics chips are already Vista ready, so you don’t have to fork out for a dedicated graphics card. Personally, I would not run the full aero interface as I find transparent window borders distracting and annoying (I’ve tried it with Windowblinds), but that is just my personal preference.
BTW, you can have a 3D desktop now by using third party apps, though granted they aren’t always as well integrated as the Vista GUI presumably is.
By the time Vista is mature (i.e., Vista SP2), PCs with 4GB of RAM, Core Quadro CPUS and shockingly powerful GPUS (by todays standards) will be commonplace.
And unless you are desperate to stay on the bleeding edge of everything, you’d be better off waiting until Vista has had a service pack or two before upgrading,and by then hardware that can handle Vista will be cheap as chips.
I’m sorry, 40GB may not be “all that much percentage wise” on a 400GB hard disk, but an OS that requires twice the total capacity of my first hard drive all to itself when I can do *useful work* and play in half the space is just itching to be laughed at, transparency be damned. It certainly isn’t going to be installed on any computer I can save from it.
“I’m sorry, 40GB may not be “all that much percentage wise” on a 400GB hard disk, but an OS that requires twice the total capacity of my first hard drive all to itself when I can do *useful work* and play in half the space is just itching to be laughed at, transparency be damned. It certainly isn’t going to be installed on any computer I can save from it.”
Well, if you have an 80GB HDD, then yes, I see your point, but then I don’t see why you wouldn’t spend a bit more and get a decent sized HDD if you are going to the bother of installing a new OS like Vista. Heck, if you buy a new 300GB HDD you can get an OEM copy of Vista with it and save yourself a a lot of money, probably the difference between buying the retail version and the OEM version – might even work out cheaper that way.
From a productivity point of view there is no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista until you have to, so I wouldn’t really worry about it.
In case I have given the wrong impression, I have no intention of upgrading to Vista until I have to buy a new PC, which will probably not be for a year or two yet – my current hardware, although getting on a bit, does everything I need it too, so I have no genuine reason to upgrade. I just find it irritating when people whinge about the hardware requirments of each successive version of Windows, as though it was a surprise that it would take advantage of advances in hardware technology. People made the same complaints when XP was released (and before that when ’98 was released), yet a few years down the track no one thinks much of it. Hardware advances, software takes advantage of it, the cycle continues…
I just find it irritating when people whinge about the hardware requirments of each successive version of Windows, as though it was a surprise that it would take advantage of advances in hardware technology.
I think the reason people whinge is twofold: one, they see no substantial benefit (or reason) in an OS which doubles or triples or quadruples requirements for the sake of a new whizz-bang interface; and two, other companies are doing much more with much less. How much space does Apple’s ooh-what-a-nice-interface-you’ve-got OS take up, for example? Plus if it’s anything like “real UNIX”, it includes useful tools like sed, perl, awk in that space. Not useful to Joe User, you might say, but more useful to a commandline whore than Solitaire is to anyone except those who can afford to play games for a living.
“I think the reason people whinge is twofold: one, they see no substantial benefit (or reason) in an OS which doubles or triples or quadruples requirements for the sake of a new whizz-bang interface; and two, other companies are doing much more with much less.”
———————–
Quite valid points. But you have to remember, Windows carries with it a lot of backwards compatability baggage, as well as having to support a lot of hardware which limits the degree of optimisation that OSX can afford. But you are right, they could make it a bit more resource efficient, but since hardware has well and truly caught up, they probably have little incentive to do so.
BTW, these are the hardware requirements for Windows Vista Premium according to the Microsoft website:
CPU – 1GHz
RAM – 1GB
GPU – direct X 9 with 128MB graphics memory
HDD – 40GB with a mere 15GB free space
DVD-ROM drive
Those system requirements are covered by the vast bulk of computers made in the last 4 years or so, and all most people would need in the worst case scenario is some extra ram, a maybe a graphics card upgrade if you want the aero interface.
It will only take up at most 15GB on your hard drive – 40GB is simply the smallest size you would recommend, so if you have 80GB plus, you are laughing. I don’t even know where you would buy a hard drive less than 120GB these days and get something that was cost effective.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/hardware/vis…
“Those system requirements are covered by the vast bulk of computers made in the last 4 years or so”
There is no way that 1Gb of RAM is covered by most systems made in the last 4 years. Most people aren’t cutting-edge gamers.
While 15Gb is a lot better than 40 that’s still a lot, especially on laptops made in the last 4 years.
“a maybe a graphics card upgrade if you want the aero interface.”
Yeah, because adding videoram to your laptop’s built-in chipset is really easy.
– 40GB is simply the smallest size you would recommend, so if you have 80GB plus, you are laughing.
I’m laughing alright; I have a disk that falls short of Vista’s requirements by 13 gigabytes that *still works*.
It will only take up at most 15GB on your hard drive
It will take up exactly zero gigabytes on my hard drive since the Microsoft fairy-dust wore off on me a long time ago. Given the system requirements for OS X, any Linux and even XP, 15GB even if not 40GB is still simply ludicrous.
“I just find it irritating when people whinge about the hardware requirments of each successive version of Windows, as though it was a surprise that it would take advantage of advances in hardware technology.”
Going from XP’s less than 2Gb to 40Gb is quite a leap and there is no way that can be justified by “taking advantage of new hardware” since Vista doesn’t even have all the drivers for new hardware (that’s why you get Windows driver disks will most hardware).
In all fairness, I have a feeling that the 4Gb requirement is pretty much BS though.
“twice the total capacity of my first hard drive”?! What am I saying?! try “twenty times“.
1) 2GB of ram cost a lot if money
2) RAM is becoming MORE expensive
3) Budget PC’s come with less than 1GB of Memory
4) onboard graphics cards simply are not up to the job on most machines
5) Labtops outsell desktops several times.
Its not a bad thing that Vista requires todays expensive hardware. It should drive down the prices. but looking at real people buying a cheap PC, or schools, or money conscious businesses for now they are too expensive.
BTW quad-cores and 4GB and powerful GPUS will not be commonplace for a long-time.
“1) 2GB of ram cost a lot if money”
Well, that depends on your budget of course, but RAM is still a lot cheaper now than wehn I bought it, and I didn’t think the expense was that severe.
“2) RAM is becoming MORE expensive”
If you are talking about DDR, yes that is true, but DDR-II is becoming cheaper by the day, although you do get fluctuations in price from time to time.
“3) Budget PC’s come with less than 1GB of Memory”
Well, you can certainly buy a lower midrange computer with 1GB of RAM without any trouble. Shop around – RAM is one of the cheaper components.
“4) onboard graphics cards simply are not up to the job on most machines”
What do you mean by most machines? I was talking about most new motherboards made in 2006 or later that have onboard graphics – most of those are well and truly Vista compliant, and have better on board Video than a dedicated GPU bought 1 year ago. Abd they are certainly up to the job of running the full Vista UI with all bells and whistles.
“5) Labtops outsell desktops several times.” Not sure what your point is here, but it is hard to find a new laptop these days (unless you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel) that doesn’t have 1GB RAM, a Vista ready DX9 GPU and a Core Duo processor, which is substantially more than enough grunt to get Vista off the ground.
“Its not a bad thing that Vista requires todays expensive hardware. It should drive down the prices. but looking at real people buying a cheap PC, or schools, or money conscious businesses for now they are too expensive.”
Look, I never said the budget conscious would or could upgrade easily or cheaply at this point in time – in fact I have no reason to think that such people would not continue to use older hardware for some time yet. there is nothing wrong with using 5 year old hardware, and for most computing tasks (writing emails, surfing the web, office applications), a Pentium III with 512MB of RAM is all they would ever need.
What I am saying is, that 1) the hardware requirements of Vista aren’t nearly so bad as people like to make out (though it is a bit of a beast) and that 2) for an enthusiast who likes the latest and greatest in everything, it really isn’t that expensive to upgrade to Vista and some good hardware.
I mean, when I built my last PC in 2003, it cost me about AUD$2500 – and I could easily build a PC with twice the computing power for less than half that now. computers – even fairly powerful ones – are cheaper than they have ever been, in both relative and absolute terms.
“BTW quad-cores and 4GB and powerful GPUS will not be commonplace for a long-time.”
If you read my post, you would have noted that I said they would be commonplace when Vista was mature, i.e., about 18 – 24 months after Vista has been released. There is little reason to think that Quad core CPUs won’t be commonplace in new PCs by the end of 2008.
This is *Today*
Best selling desktop on ebuyer: £235
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=21435831205&a…
* AMD Sempron 64bit 3100+ Processor (Socket 754)
* 256MB DDR400 Memory
* 80GB SATA Hard Drive 7200RPM
* DVD/CD-RW Optical Drive
* 9 in 1Memory Card Reader
* Microsoft Windows XP Home
* Sound Onboard: AC97 (5.1)
* AGP Graphics Expansion Slot
* 64MB Maximum Onboard VGA Memory
I’ve cut out the boring stuff
And for a laptop £410
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=21435837648&a…
# Intel Pentium-M 735A 1.7GHz, 400MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache
# 512MB DDR2 Ram
# 60GB Hard Drive
# 14.1″ Widescreen TFT (1280×800 – 16:10)
# DVD±RW Double Layer Optical Drive
# Integrated Graphics supporting 128MB
# 802.11b/g Wireless LAN
# Windows XP Home Edition
# Windows Vista Compatible
I particularly like the Vista Compatible.
These machines are the reality now, and remember Vista is due out in a few months. This is not 5 year old hardware, its not multiple core, its not 2 GB of ram, Hard drive space is an issue.
“This is *Today*
Best selling desktop on ebuyer: £235
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=21435831205&a…..
* AMD Sempron 64bit 3100+ Processor (Socket 754)
* 256MB DDR400 Memory
* 80GB SATA Hard Drive 7200RPM
* DVD/CD-RW Optical Drive
* 9 in 1Memory Card Reader
* Microsoft Windows XP Home
* Sound Onboard: AC97 (5.1)
* AGP Graphics Expansion Slot
* 64MB Maximum Onboard VGA Memory
I’ve cut out the boring stuff
And for a laptop £410
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=21435837648&a…..
# Intel Pentium-M 735A 1.7GHz, 400MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache
# 512MB DDR2 Ram
# 60GB Hard Drive
# 14.1″ Widescreen TFT (1280×800 – 16:10)
# DVD±RW Double Layer Optical Drive
# Integrated Graphics supporting 128MB
# 802.11b/g Wireless LAN
# Windows XP Home Edition
# Windows Vista Compatible
I particularly like the Vista Compatible.
These machines are the reality now, and remember Vista is due out in a few months. This is not 5 year old hardware, its not multiple core, its not 2 GB of ram, Hard drive space is an issue.”
Not sure what the exact conversion from pounds to AUD is, but those look like pretty shit computers for the money, and you can get much, much, much more bang for your buck elsewhere.
You can build a socket AM2 sempron with 1GB RAM, a 256MB DX9 GPU, 260GB HDD, DVD-RW for less than AUD$1000, as AMD have dramaticlaly dropped their prices. If you want a dual core CPU you might nudge it just over a grand here, but that is still under 500GBP, and that is not a lot to spend on a computer, unless you are desperately poor, in which case, spending money on luxuries like an OS upgrade that really won’t change much seems less than sensible.
The stuff you are quoting looks like old stuff that someone is trying to rip you off with.
The big issue is people and businesses have been expecting to get cheaper machines as the years have gone on. The reason for this is the huge time gap, windows xp is about five years old so all you really need is a machine about ~4-3 years old to run windows xp well.
It’s common place in new zealand for people to buy cheap machines, there are even people buying via chips with 256MB of ram. In new zealand, the majority of computers have only 256MB of memory, which is NOT enough to run vista.
For the computer enthusiasts which is probably everyone that reads osnews, they are not stupid enough to buy a machine with 256mb of ram, so probably have 512MB, 1GB or more.
With people paying around $700 – $1200 NZ dollars for a computer that can run Windows XP. People are going to be very reluctant to pay for a $1700+ (retail most people don’t build their own machines) machine which could run vista basic. To run vista well you would need at least a $2000 (retail price) machine.
So to sum up, computers have got A LOT cheaper over the past 5 years because there were no upgrades to windows. Before windows xp people were used to having to buy a more modern machine. The just acceptable requirements shows my point, Windows 95: 16MB, windows 98: 32MB, windows me 64MB, windows xp 128MB, windows vista 512mb. Notice the huge jump!
I have Vista pre-RC1 installed. It takes up 8.5GB right now. Of which 3GB are the pagefile and the hibernate file. (I have 1.25GB Ram).
40GB is the recommended minimum not just to house Vista, but just for systems running Vista.
I can’t understand why people think when it says 40GB, people assume Vista will take up that. FFS.
That is still pretty dang big isn’t it? Man that IS a pagefile!
The reality is this. By the Spring of 2007, 97% of new PC’s bought for consumers will have Vista on them.
Almost all new PC’s for business will be sold with a Vista license with downgrade rights to XP if that is what is deployed in the business.
Eventually (with in the 3 – 5 year upgrade cycle for businesses) most business computers will be running Vista.
The reality is this. By the Spring of 2007, 97% of new PC’s bought for consumers will have Vista on them.
How many of those will perform *well* with Vista is another question.
Almost all new PC’s for business will be sold with a Vista license with downgrade rights to XP if that is what is deployed in the business.
I hope so, I can see a lot of people taking advantage of the ability to downgrade. Not to mention the SMB’s which won’t be buying new computers at all.
* Bloated, user-friendly Linux (KDE, Gnome) just like most software developments, take advantage of hardware progressions. Say, OpenSuse won’t run nicely with 256MB ram or a P3.
* However, Linux (and to a lesser extent OSX) people separate software upgrades from hardware purchase. They have never had to buy hardware to get their OS. So they tend to slowly but steadily upgrade their OS, and because of the software progressing steadily, their hardware.
* Taking so long to produce Vista has created the impression that XP was somehow “forever”. People have lived with XP for years, and it’s not too scary to hang on for another couple of years.
* In this perspective, MS might become the “victim” (if any such word is appropriate here) of its own success of getting Windows preloaded on virtually every PC on the planet. Will people ever buy Vista without a machine? They may buy a machine, but there’s lots of other gadgets out there that will be upgrades to people: a nice LCD screen, a digital camera, a photo printer, a faster broadband connection, an MP3 player. They can do all they want with the stuff they have now.
* People will be annoyed at Vista, when they learn that the cheapest version of it does not include the eye candy that to them is one of the things Vista is about. This will not create goodwill.
* MS will, as usual, make a lot of money selling Vista to hardware makers. But they’re already doing that with XP.
Now, this business model is quite risky.
If the first cracks in hardware maker loyalty appear – say, Dell will in a few years start selling Suse /SLED laptops or something, or HP sells Ubuntu, what strategy does MS have to change its business model and seduce people into buying copies of their OS, without the hardware?
Microsoft has nothing to worry about – financially – for the next decades. But this ancient business model, based on control, and a half-hearted loyalty (see the Tangent vs. MS case, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060221-6231.html ), is at the end of its days. Two years ago, Linux was not ready for my dad’s desktop. Now it definitely is.
* I’m not saying it will all happen, but would a wise enterprise take the risks?
Edited 2006-09-01 08:47
I’m sorry, but this was a really poor article. I doubt the “Mr. Big business” really exists. The focus on hardware costs, when the reality is that businesses buy many desktops (or lease, as it may be) that are usually quite powerful, smacks of fake journalism.
The reality is that many businesses are on Software assurance, so they will be using vista for both their new desktops and their old ones. And its also true that your average business desktop that is currently running XP can run vista just fine.
Whenever I see people write “FUD” – I cringe. I cringe because many of the arguments that are presented live only in the minds of basement dwellers and do not represent the real world.
What I should be doing – instead of complaining – is trying to find better articles and submitting them myself.
cheers
Morglum
I feel that something that a lot of people have been missing, is that it doesn’t matter that hardware is cheap, or that hardware progresses, or that in the end any problems won’t matter.
We’ve slowly been so conditioned by the industry to be blazé, that they can get away with anything.
Honestly, I find it a joke that a 3GHz PC can still crawl along because Windows is just so horibly inneficient. And that rather than speak our mind on this, we just throw more hardware at the problem as the solution. This never works out in the long run.
Windows Vista is a joke of an Operating System, second only to the joke that is people accepting it, or willing to be able to live with its many flaws until SP2, or willing to pay out money for new hardware, when the software is at fault.
The industry has serious issues with quality that it gets away with only because the government don’t understand computer enough and don’t look at the digital realm much.
In any other industry, Microsoft would be liable for their extremly insecure software. (imagine a car manufacturer consistantly failing to make their cars secure, despite manufacturing flaws)