I have been both a Windows and Linux user for a long time (I started with Windows 3.1 and RedHat 5.1 kernel 2.0.x if I recall correctly) and have stuck with both for various reasons. I’m writing this article not as a DIY lofty vantage platform by which I can bash MS nor as a ‘Why you should switched’ flame bate piece, but have tried to keep an open mind and reflect the actually experience that I have had with Vista so far, regardless of OS political propaganda. Please keep in mind this is still an opinion piece and most probably to be taken with a pinch of salt.Being a gamer, I often upgrade my PC but my AthlonXP 3200+, although really good, was swiftly falling behind the vanguard of computing and I wanted to make the leap to 64 bit (or so goes my reasoning for spending lots of money on some new kit). I decided to build a new PC with PCIe, SLi and hardware virtualisation, support so I bought a Core2 duo E6600 system with 2 GB of ram, an ASUS motherboard with nVidia nForce 590 chip set and two Geforce 7600 cards. Now that I had my new PC, It was time to look into operating systems.
The Linux part was easily solved (PCLinuxOS does the job really well for the moment) but I really wanted a good Windows system. I had been beta testing Vista 32 bit on my old PC and was actually quite impressed with the system, so I decided to order the Ultimate 64 bit OEM version (€199). Three days later the DVD arrived and I was set.
A quick side note: This is the first time I personally bought a version of Windows as I was always dead set against it. For years I either copied or cracked the version I was running and always for different reasons (can’t afford it, don’t pay the man, because I can…) but in resent years this has become more annoying, WGA anyone? I think another reason for buying is that the older I get, the less romantic the notion of rebel becomes.
Vista’s installation is a cinch and for the first time has a nice GUI from start to finish. Although it’s a bit limited as far as installation options go, that was no big surprise as every other version prior to Vista has no option for any kind of boot manager configuration or installation on a non primary partition. What did strike me as strange was I could not find any optional component selection menu. I remember having the option to select which components I want during installation as far back as Win95 and although I don’t remember any such option menu for Win3.1, I’m willing to bet there was one.
Having finished the installation, I created a new user and quickly found out that UAC still applies to the Admin user, a good thing in my opinion. The only issue I have with UAC is not actually UAC itself but that most ISVs have been let off the hook in Windows, at least as far as security goes, and every installation or attempt to update trigger the UAC dialog. I promptly turned it off awaiting a more Vista compatible time.
The driver situation for Vista was (and to a certain extent still is) a bit lacking as far as stable, fully functional drivers are concerned. I had a fare idea that SLi would not yet be supported buy nVidia and that I would need to wait a while to get the full benefit of my graphical hardware. Having run Linux for quite some time I am well used to driver issues and, as I like to tinker, I was not put off by this in the least. What did annoy me was the lack of drivers from Creative Labs. I have a Sound Blaster X-Fi platinum, again mostly for gaming purposes, and I swiftly found out that the only available 64 bit drivers for Vista where not only still beta but also gave me poor output. In the mean time, nVidia has released stable drivers without SLi as well as beta drivers with SLi support and both work exceptionally well. Apparently this lack of descent support by Creative is not just with Vista but also with the 64 bit version of XP. The amount of people complaining on Creative’s own forum is truly amazing. I do understand that allot of this is due to a completely revamped audio framework but if nVidia can do it, so can Creative.
In the mean time, Vista 64 bit support seems to be getting there with every other hardware vendor. My Logitech cordless mouse works great with the latest SetPoint download and my MS curvy keyboard is much better supported than when I first started beta testing Vista.
As far as hard drive read, write and access time goes, I was really let down to begin with. Copying files from one partition to another, on the same disk, slowed my system right down to a crawl. After Googeling the problem, I found out it had more to do with my chip set than Vista, so I downloaded the latest drivers, which increased disk access, read and write times to what I was used to in XP.
On the other hand, the new indexing system in Vista will trash to crap out of your hard drive for the first few days and as I was still using the original SATAI hard drive from my previous PC, this soon turned sour. The limited lifespan of hard dives has never become more apparent to me as when I started hearing heavy clunks coming from my new black box. I decided to go for two 300 GB SATAII hard drives in a RAID0 configuration, something I have wanted to do since I bought my new motherboard. All is well until, after reinstalling Vista, I needed to reactivate it. The automatic on line activation failed so I needed to call their telephone activation line and as I live in Luxembourg, the closest activation number to call is in France. I called, was asked to input 54 digits divided into nine times six digit groups by a pre-recorded voice message. After this had completed, I was asked if this was to first time I was reactivating Vista and how many machines this copy was installed on. I was then put through to a customer service representative who asked me the same questions again, asked me to wait until the clearance code came through and after about 2 minutes on hold, told me their system was down and I would have to call back in ten minutes. I promptly hung up without answering.
Two hours later, having sufficiently calmed down, I called the number for Ireland (my home country) and after having input the same numbers and answered the same questions, I was put through to, for once, a really nice guy with a very heavy accent that I still can’t place. After working out what we where trying to say to each other, we managed to get my system reactivated. After all that, I started wondering if it would not have been easer to just crack Vista and be done with it. I am sure other people have thought the same.
I have been reading allot about Vista and DRM and although I have had not issues with DRM so far, I am not at all happy with the path that MS chose. Wasting money on trying to restrict what people can do with what they have purchased is a crime in my honest opinion. The only positive side to this is that no matter the kind of DRM, it has always been cracked. The day that the entertainment industry, MS, Apple and anyone else involved learns this, the better.
The little things make a big difference when I compare Vista to XP. Superfetch does make the system allot more responsive. I find Aero to be more than just eye candy as it does leave the processor free for other tasks, again adding to a more responsive system. I’m sure people will think the 2 GB RAM helps but my last system had 2 GB and in no way did XP feel this snappy.
As far as software compatibility goes, all my favorite application work fine and although the selection I use is not all that large, I am still very happy with this result. Most importantly, all my games run flawlessly now that I have descent SLi support.
I wouldn’t recommend a switch to Vista, especially for Linux or Mac users as you will definitely get nothing new here. For XP users wanting to go 64 bit I recommend waiting for another few months at least but for people like me who want to run one of the latest desktop operating systems you could do much worse than Vista.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
If you buy a new computer.. as you can see, it is some work to upgrade to.
Vista is great if you buy a new computer…
I was thinking the same thing. I do not think I would upgrade my current box to Vista — I currently run XP Pro –, but I am seriously thinking about Vista Home Premium on a laptop. The thing that gives me pause is, how many of my current programs will run under Vista?
“Being a gamer, I often upgrade my PC but my AthlonXP 3200+, although really good, was swiftly falling behind the vanguard of computing and I wanted to make the leap to 64 bit (or so goes my reasoning for spending lots of money on some new kit). I decided to build a new PC with PCIe, SLi and hardware virtualisation, support so I bought a Core2 duo E6600 system with 2 GB of ram, an ASUS motherboard with nVidia nForce 590 chip set and two Geforce 7600 cards. Now that I had my new PC, It was time to look into operating systems.”
If your like the author and have $1000 in disposable income for an upgrade, then sure Vista ‘Aint that bad’. What about the 98% of computer users who already have a patched Windows installation, or a linux install that allows them: to email, browse the web, play flash/videos/mp3s, or seek entertainment? Is Vista “A’int that bad” for them as well!? Vista is an unnecessary evolution of the Win2000 line. If XP isn’t working out and you need something flashy and new, then maybe a flashy and new version of XP is NOT what you need.
Try a linux distro, or (assuming MS hasn’t locked you out of your liscense) reinstall XP! Seriously don’t waste your money.
If your like the author and have $1000 in disposable income for an upgrade, then sure Vista ‘Aint that bad’. What about the 98% of computer users who already have a patched Windows installation, or a linux install that allows them: to email, browse the web, play flash/videos/mp3s, or seek entertainment? Is Vista “A’int that bad” for them as well!? Vista is an unnecessary evolution of the Win2000 line. If XP isn’t working out and you need something flashy and new, then maybe a flashy and new version of XP is NOT what you need.
Try a linux distro, or (assuming MS hasn’t locked you out of your liscense) reinstall XP! Seriously don’t waste your money.
Hmm, depends on what you define as great I guess – if you’ve been a Windows user your whole life, of course you’re going to be impressed by the most basic of enhancements.
For Windows XP – support has been pushed out for another year, SP3 is just around the corner, which will bring to question; why move to Windows Vista? I admit, I moved to Vista, and I will be the first to admit what a mistake that was (have since given the software to my brother for his gaming system) – Windows Vista just doesn’t have it together; if it isn’t for the problem prone drivers, its the buggy applications, and if it isn’t the buggy applications is the slow feeling to it, everything seems to be very laboured when trying to the most basic of tasks.
I’ve since moved to Solaris Express B59, so I’ll forward a review in the next couple of days, all I can say is this; its terrible that the billions of dollars spent developing Windows Vista, the operating system that was apparently meant to set the world alight and herald in ‘new technologies’, is slower and more buggy than the most beta of Linux distributions.
If OpenSolaris is anything to go by, along with Fedora 7 plans on the table, Microsoft should be very scared; *NIX is already eating Microsofts lunch in emerging markets like China and India; when the middle class in China and India start demanding applications for their *NIX boxes, companies will be forced to port their applications – until then, I’m happy with using the opensource counterparts.
While I may agree on the economical argument (get vista with a new pc, otherwise xp works fine), here you have no clue:
Vista is an unnecessary evolution of the Win2000 line. If XP isn’t working out and you need something flashy and new, then maybe a flashy and new version of XP is NOT what you need.
Plain wrong. And no-one is requiring you to upgrade.
What’s more, it’s usually people writing these things about XXX-commercial-product who praise the ‘innovation’ in GNU/Linux for any random feature, be it better than commercial products or not.
Edited 2007-03-13 09:23
Amen.
Vista “IS that bad” for those users…No one wants to buy a dual core, 2GB RAM, 256MB Vid Card PC just to check email.
Microsoft’s formula for this = retarded…if anything, they should have improved efficiency allowing things to run on existing hardware…even with the eye candy. Kinda like metisse, beryl, and compiz.
Still, my Pentium M 1.73Ghz/768MB RAM/Ati Radeon x300 128MB (dedicated) runs Vista just fine and dandy. I’m really interested in what all these people saying Vista needs 2GB of RAM are doing with their computer.
You talk about that like its a semi-archaic! I guarentee >95% of the desktop machines deployed throughout the world are not even that fast! (The most popular OS on desktops is STILL Win98!)
“The most popular OS on desktops is STILL Win98!”
Um, no.
http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox46-operating-systems-ma…
OS share as of Aug 2006:
1. Windows XP 86.80%
2. Windows 2000 6.09%
3. Windows 98 2.68%
4. Macintosh 2.32%
5. Windows ME 1.09%
6. Linux 0.36%
7. Windows NT 0.24%
8. Macintosh Power PC 0.15%
And go to any number of web stat sites, and you’ll see very similar numbers.
To his defence, he was talking about most POPULAR operating system – not market share 😉
Indeed you could have went to any number of websites to give them similar results. OR you could have went to a site that has ACCURATE results.
For example. Linux is in use in roughly 3 – 5 % of the worlds desktops at the minute. If it was the 0.36% that that website says, then how come everyone, everywhere is talking about Linux, and how they have just installed Ubuntu/Suse/Mepis etc..
Windows 2000 is still the OS of choice across all the business users desktops. In fact I do not know of any major corporation that uses XP, apart from the managers laptops.
Everyone knows Mac has 4 – 5% of the desktops.
Now, take these examples you shown us and expected us to believe. Why did you choose that page ? They are selling something. Something that I do not want to buy, but yet, if you have anything to do with that company, you will be using this site to drive traffic and hopefully sales !
“For example. Linux is in use in roughly 3 – 5 % of the worlds desktops at the minute. If it was the 0.36% that that website says, then how come everyone, everywhere is talking about Linux, and how they have just installed Ubuntu/Suse/Mepis etc.. ”
That’s because you hang out on /., or OSNews, etc. We are not a good slice of the average population. Not by a long shot.
“Windows 2000 is still the OS of choice across all the business users desktops. In fact I do not know of any major corporation that uses XP, apart from the managers laptops. ”
Every fortune 500 company I’ve done consulting work for has standardized on Windows XP. The last 100% Windows 2000 shop I worked for was 5 years ago, since then I’ve seen only XP. There are still a lot of NT4/Windows 2000 domains out there, but XP reigns supreme on the client.
It was established, actually, a couple of years ago that the estimated installed base of Linux was around 3-5%, and they said it was either equal or greater than MacOS X.
As for Windows XP, you are right, but it was an easy sell for alot of companies as it provided better backwards compatibility, but Windows Vista is going have a hell of a time; I’m at university right now, and they’ve already number crunched the costs so far; they would have to throw out minimum of 1/2 their computer suite – add to the fact that there is very little in regards to justification of Windows Vista features vs. cost vs. what students and teachers need at university, the question raises is ‘where is the justification’?
>> In fact I do not know of any major corporation that
>> uses XP, apart from the manager[‘]s laptops.
Then try these on for size:
Science Applications International Corp (SAIC)
Lockheed/Martin
AT&T GSI (Government Solutions, Inc)
General Dynamics
Northrup Grumman
SPARTA, Inc
I know of many others in the area where I work, but I will only speak to those with whom I have direct experience. The transition from Win2K to WinXP occured in 2003 for Lockheed/Martin, and sometime earlier for SAIC. I don’t know how long the others in the list of had WinXP installed across their systems. And that’s not to say that some systems were left on Win2K. But to say that it has been installed on only “manager’s laptops” is incorrect.
at my last 3 jobs, at 2 Universities and a Cable company, all desktops were XP. Most places I do side work also use XP. I think your impressions may be a bit off
Windows 2000 is still the OS of choice across all the business users desktops. In fact I do not know of any major corporation that uses XP, apart from the managers laptops.
Sorry, I have to call shenanigans on your last statement. I’ve worked for two major corporations in the past several years (Merrill Lynch and IBM), and both of them use Windows XP Pro as their default desktop OS for all the troops, not just the managers.
raver31: “In fact I do not know of any major corporation that uses XP, apart from the managers laptops.”
Then, in fact, you are not qualified to speak on this topic. I have been in and worked with several fortune 500 companies. The vast majority of those, by far, used Windows XP.
I do not disagree with the rest of the figures you gave, “Windows 2000 is still the OS of choice across all the business users desktops” is clearly bullshit, made-up and untrue. Most “Business” users do not care what OS they use so long as they can get their work done.
The figures seam a bit odd.
For one thing they show 2.32% Macintosh users but only 0.15% Macintosh Power PC. Given that non Power PC Macs was discontinued for over 10 years ago, this seam quite strange.
Unless of course the Macintosh figures refers to new Intel Macs that only have been around for a little over a year. In that case that would mean a very rapid increase in Mac usage that would make Steve Ballmer throw chairs as never before.
And go to any number of web stat sites, and you’ll see very similar numbers.
And they would be equally meaningless, because there is no direct correlation.
Web site statistics measure which browser on which platforms are used for the task of accessing the website, not the installbase of either.
It’s a bit like measuring the market share of car models by taking taxis as the sample for one’s statistic.
A lot of web usage, some people claim that it applies to the majority of users, use work related machines, e.g. office computers, to do their web browsing, so this kind of configurations end up being counted more often than privately uses machines.
For example most day-by-day statistics show a sagnificant drop of Windows 2000 visitors over the weekend, since Windows 2000 is quite common in office settings, but not very common in homes.
Interesting. These figures are from MarketLink; they’re a bit more recent.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2&qpmr=15&qpdt=1&…
According to these folk, Vista has already surpassed Linux on the desktop. Not bad going, considering the false starts, bad press and a marketing strategy that can only really be described as ‘subtle’.
“And go to any number of web stat sites, and you’ll see very similar numbers.”
Because website stats are like, really reliable.
It’s all the matter of sample taken. In Poland, all big websites and many smaller ones use one analysis company — Gemius. Their report covers nearly 100% of polish internet users. For March, they report now (in percents):
Windows Total 90.9
Windows XP 80.0
Windows 2000 4.8
Windows 98 2.9
Unix Total 9.0
Linux 8.2
MacOS X 0.8
FreeBSD 0.1
Interested parties can look for detailed stats at https://www.gemius.pl/Engine/Main.php
You talk about that like its a semi-archaic! I guarentee >95% of the desktop machines deployed throughout the world are not even that fast! (The most popular OS on desktops is STILL Win98!)
You’re right about that; even in ‘first world nations’ like Australia and New Zealand, don’t be surprised to see people still running PIII/PII with less than 256MB RAM, and a 40GB hard disk.
For my machine, its what I would consider ‘top of the line’ for its price range, and given its specifications, I was shocked at how terrible it ran Windows Vista – and this is a ‘Vista Capable’ Laptop btw; installed Solaris, Linux, Ubuntu, and it was a speed demon; loading in a few seconds, effects without sluggishness, applications loading snappy.
Windows Vista seems to be a product looking for a problem to solve; yes, it has some good technologies, but the whole thing is castrated in terms of performance for the sake of providing backwards compatibility – Microsoft should have said 5 years ago that they were going to throw away all legacy crap; Windows Vista was going to be new, legacy free, and designed for the future – Windows XP support coninued for another 4 years plus give away Virtual PC who need compatibility with “Windows Classic applications”.
My Core 2 laptop had 1GB of RAM and, when multitasking, Vista was quite slow. I had to move to 2GB to keep myself from pulling my hair out. Previous I was running Windows 2003 on my laptop with 1GB and things were just dandy.
I agree. Things are great over here with 1.5 GB (minus ~128 for intel integrated graphics). I was pretty frustrated when I had 512 MB.
He bought those items obviously to play games. Who needs 2 7600’s in SLI for email? Not even vista is that resource hungry (vista is about 10% slower across the board compared to XP, with re-architectured brand new drivers none the less)
“Most importantly, all my games run flawlessly now that I have descent SLi support.”
Why doesn’t Aero run on older hardware? Because it takes advantage of DX9 shaders to improve the efficiency of drawing windows. Beryl (which I also use) is much better about allowing any driver with basic opengl (and appropriate aiglx/xgl support) to render the windows, but you trade efficiency for CPU driven effects (for example I can’t run Blur because I don’t have shaders, while Aero is always using a blur).
That’s just it, it can run on existing hardware.
The Dx9 card spec for Aero Glass is to allow developers to have the freedom to do anything a Dx9 card can do and not have to limit their application to anything less. A Dx8 card can be forced to run the full Aero.
Considering how AWFUL OSX 10.0 ran Vista really isn’t that bad.
Now what I would expect an OS to do is not something Microsoft ever does in the development process so…
In my eyes, it should be a major .0 release adds features and such which require more hardware, and then the .0+n release should get more and more efficient until the next .0 release.
Considering how AWFUL OSX 10.0 ran Vista really isn’t that bad.
You cannot compare Vista with a >5 year old system. Vista is DISMAL.
“You cannot compare Vista with a >5 year old system. Vista is DISMAL.”
By that statement, it wouldn’t be fair to compare it to XP then, but amazingly that’s just what everyone is doing. So that being the case, it’s perfectly fair to compare it with early releases of OSX.
Yes, they are comparing it to XP, which is wrong, as it is 5 year old.
Instead they should compare it to XP SP2, or they should compare it to how they think it should be……
“One mans food is another mans poison”
And why not? It is a similar upgrade as far as the actual scope of what’s new, etc…
Vista takes no more hardware than the current OSX.
And why not? It is a similar upgrade as far as the actual scope of what’s new, etc…
Vista takes no more hardware than the current OSX.
Hmm, this is news to me. I run OSX 10.4 on a 5 year old PowerMac G4 with NV17 very well. So I can smoothly run Vista on a 1GHz cpu with a NV17 video card? Great 🙂
G4 is eqivelant to late P3’s/early P4’s, and yes.
G4 is eqivelant to late P3’s/early P4’s, and yes.
So you mean I can run Vista fine on a P3 1Ghz with an NV17 as smoothly as OSX 10.4 runs on my powermac G4 1Ghz? Hmm, tempting.
No, PowerPC chips do more operations per clock than P3’s, and especially P4’s (read, the megahertz myth).
No, he is refering to when MacOS X 10.0 was first released vs. Windows Vista when first released – what the original poster deliberately ignored is this; firstly, many of the technologies in Windows Vista have been running on Windows XP in one for or another, and secondly Microsoft has billions where as Apple back in the 10.0 days had millions to spend.
Also, add into account that MacOS X was a clean break; not only did they have to port Darwin to PowerPC, they had to develop Carbon, get classic working, bring a whole new heap of technologies such as display pdf and the likes – all this will be heavily unoptimised; but like I said, it is a completely different situatin with Windows Vista, which was an evolution, meaning, we shouldn’t see the massive performance and stability problems we see now – I could understand if they completely gave it an overhaul, but lets be honest, Windows Vista is nothing more than Windows 2003 Sp1 + nice gui + add ons that already existed on Windows XP as seperate downloads.
You obviously don’t know what Vista is, then.
Microsoft had to develop WinFX (new API, same as carbon was a new API). Classic is nothing more than a virtualized environment, nothing that had really requires to “get working”.
Display PDF is akin to XPS (which does include display stuff, not just a file format), and Microsoft developed XPS from scratch, not so with Apple. Completely new network stack, completely new presentation layer (not just a GUI, everything about how it works is different).
None of this already existed on XP as a separate download and all of it is brand new.
“massive performance and stability problems”…. Where are these massive performance and stability problems?
Which performance problems are you talking about?
The UI itself actually performs much better than pre-Vista ever did, is that a problem?
Am I saying that there are no performance problems? No. File operations took a hit, gameing has taken a hit (which it is yet to be seen whether that is driver, OS, or both, as there is a completely new driver architecture, forcing nVidia, ATi, etc… to start from scratch).
Stability problems? Please, oh please, show me these stability problems. Been running Vista final since the code was available to testers and (contrary to past Windows experience) things have gotten better over time, rather than worse, though it may still be too early to tell if the system will degrade like all other versions of Windows.
I suggest instead of spreading crap around that you’ve heard from other posters (ie, Vista is XPSP2+fancy UI, or 2k3 SP1 + fancy UI) you actually learn about it before you open your mouth (or, rather, start typing).
None of this already existed on XP as a separate download and all of it is brand new.
Nice that Redmond reworked their APIs and introduced some new formats nobody waited for. But from an end user’s perspective: so what?! It’s not my problem if MS has troubles with their old APIs and must replace them with new ones. As a user, I don’t gain anything.
New code means new bugs. Frameworks, APIs and formats are no consumer electronics. They start to become interesting when they mature and stand the test of time – not when they are shine and new.
Based on that, you must not be using any modern OS as they all constantly get new code, new bugs, frameworks, APIs, and formats. And it’s those items (except the bugs) that make it possible for new applications to appear that benefit the end user.
Which was the entire point of my original post…
Why do people such as yourself just sit here to bash something that doesn’t even matter?
Microsoft had to develop WinFX (new API, same as carbon was a new API).
And interesting, none of Microsofts applications are WinFX native, they’re still win32 based applications – so much belief in their new technologies.
Classic is nothing more than a virtualized environment, nothing that had really requires to “get working”.
Integration between the host and native operating system so that things can more or less be copied and pasted between applications as one would see between two native applications.
Display PDF is akin to XPS (which does include display stuff, not just a file format), and Microsoft developed XPS from scratch, not so with Apple.
How does creating/re-inventing the wheel make it automatically better than Apple, who took a proven technology and adapted it to task.
What is the purpose of XPS? what does it actually achieve? what does it do better than PDF; comparing the two, PDF does everything XPS, but is open and available for others to implement without smarmy bastards like Balmer refer to its competition as ‘cancerous’ and ‘communists’ – clue to Balmer, its 2007, McCathy calls, and he wants his ‘reds under the beds’ rant back.
Completely new network stack, completely new presentation layer (not just a GUI, everything about how it works is different).
Interesting, I look on NetBSD, and their stack outperforms Windows, I look at Solaris, and it has a more higly scalable network stack.
None of this already existed on XP as a separate download and all of it is brand new.
.NET 3.0 = WinFX – read up about it.
“massive performance and stability problems”…. Where are these massive performance and stability problems?
Which performance problems are you talking about?
Stability, constant hangs when running Windows Vista, applications ‘pausing’, explorer ‘hanging’; the performance is crap when compared to Solaris, which boots in 1/10th the time, and without all the necessary crap and fanfare.
The UI itself actually performs much better than pre-Vista ever did, is that a problem?
Under what metric? I certainly didn’t see a visible improvement.
Am I saying that there are no performance problems? No. File operations took a hit, gameing has taken a hit (which it is yet to be seen whether that is driver, OS, or both, as there is a completely new driver architecture, forcing nVidia, ATi, etc… to start from scratch).
Who ever’s fault it is, Microsoft needs to act like a leader and address it; consumers don’t care whose fault it is, just get it damn well fixed.
Stability problems? Please, oh please, show me these stability problems. Been running Vista final since the code was available to testers and (contrary to past Windows experience) things have gotten better over time, rather than worse, though it may still be too early to tell if the system will degrade like all other versions of Windows.
Great, same degrading performance – and to think that Microsoft had fixed that problem; maybe someone needs to make them give up the registry addiction.
I suggest instead of spreading crap around that you’ve heard from other posters (ie, Vista is XPSP2+fancy UI, or 2k3 SP1 + fancy UI) you actually learn about it before you open your mouth (or, rather, start typing).
I ran the damn operating system for 3 weeks; open your damn eyes and look – or do you post crap without researching into the background of the poster?
Kinda hard to develop applications that are already out with a brand new API.
I never said that “re-inventing the wheel” made them better, but I did say that Microsoft actually developed their version. Also, there are several videos on channel9 showing the advantages of XPS over PS and the like.
What does NetBSD or Solaris’ network stack have to do with the fact that Vista has a brand new stack?
Also, perhaps I’ve just missed it, but I’ve not seen any numbers on what you stated.
Even more, what does that have to do with comparing the scope of changes in OSX 10.0 to Vista?
Again, show me where these apps are hanging as you say. Obviously they are never going to be perfect and will probably hang once in awhile (happens no matter what OS you are using as neither the hardware nor the software is perfect).
Yes, WinFX = .NET3, what exactly is your point?
Ok, so Solaris boots in about 7-10seconds? I’ve not run it on my system, but somehow I REALLY doubt that.
The UI is more responsive under the metric of just that, responsiveness. The UI moves, it doesn’t get stuck like GDI did, it doesn’t tear, etc…
So, Microsoft needs to fix a problem in their brand new OS…. gee, who would have thought, thanks for letting everyone and Microsoft know that, now they will get working on it.
The fact is that the technology is new, and the drivers that invoke said technologies are new and it takes time to work that stuff out.
How did you get degrading performance of Vista in what I wrote? I actually wrote exactly the opposite.
Ooooh, you ran the OS for an entire 3 weeks did you? Good for you, I’m sure you know it in and out…..
Just from your idiotic post (or perhaps you are just trolling?) I know that you don’t have a clue about Vista.
Which, I don’t care about, just don’t go off lying about something you know nothing of.
I never said that “re-inventing the wheel” made them better, but I did say that Microsoft actually developed their version.
So re-inventedthe wheel and re-implemented new stacks and still it is outperformed by the competitors? I don’t know what else can be called a loser if this is not.
Yes, WinFX = .NET3, what exactly is your point?
So who mentioned that these frameworks are not available to win xp?
The UI is more responsive under the metric of just that, responsiveness. The UI moves, it doesn’t get stuck like GDI did, it doesn’t tear, etc…
Any currently available 3D UI engine can do the same or even more than vista, and has a much less requirement for video cards and CPU and memory. So you want a smooth UI and more eye candy? you have put bet on the wrong thing again.
Stateing over and over that the other stuff out there outperforms Vista’s new stacks doesn’t mean anything unless you can back it up with numbers, which I have yet to see. Also beyond that, this stuff is brand new and needs revisions, so I wouldn’t even expect it to outperform other stuff.
Microsoft is the only company that people scream at when the very first version isn’t as fast as the older stuff, yet virtually ANY 1st version of ANY product (in any market, not just software) is going to be in need of tweaking.
I never claimed that .NET3 wasn’t available on XP, I did however say that most of this stuff was not available in XP as a separate download, and most specifically, not available for some time, as the original poster said.
Please, tell me where you got the idea that other rendering engines can do more than Vista’s?
It’s actually quite the opposite. No other engine supports shaders, no other supports actual accellerated animation in apps (inside of apps, not just the surface of the app which the OS handles), save for OSX and CoreAnimation, which just came out in the most current version.
Vita’s rendering engine can be run on lesser hardware, heck, you can go into the registry and force it to run if you like, but the spec is a Dx9 capable card min. to give developers freedom to do much more.
Lets do a laundry list:
Direct X 9 = Yeap, worried about Direct X 10? I wouldn’t, vendors can’t even get their Direct X 9 drivers up to a reasonable standard.
Media Player 10 = Free download
Internet Explorer 7 = Free download
UAC = Limited User Account, the information is on Microsofts website on how to apply it to Windows XP SP2.
Windows Live Messenger = Free download
WinFX/.NET 3.0 = Free download
WPF/Indigo/etc = Will be available as a seperate download, either in full, or atleast minimal/plugin to allow vendors to provide .NET 3.0 applications for both platforms (Vista and Windows XP).
As for the rest, alot of it could be downloaded from third parties (Thunderbird for mail, Firefox for web browsing) or simply ignored as it adds nothing to the desktop experience other than to be an annoyance and/or distraction – Ultimate Extras being one example, around NZ$100 or so more than the bottom version, and yet, very little to justify the extra costs given that, for example, Services for UNIX which comes with Ultimate can be loaded onto Windows XP Professional for free, for example.
WCF/WPF/etc… are just API’s, the actual stack that sits under these API’s is not being ported.
IE7 on Vista is different that on XP, as the process runs in it’s own environment and can’t get outside the process (makeing any possible exploit basically moot).
UAC =! Limited User Account. UAC allows applications that just simply won’t work under limited rights, or even with the run as command to run properly in Vista. It will also intercept file write requests and such for files that apps aren’t supposed to be writing to and creates a file that the app can write to so that it will still work.
UAC is a huge improvement that is not available in XP.
Live Messenger isn’t even part of Vista.
Dx9 drivers are just fine, I don’t know what you are talking about. Dx10 is another issue, Dx10 cards are just now getting driver support in beta versions of the drivers, etc…
But still, don’t know what that has to do with anything we are talking about. XP doesn’t and will not come with Dx10.
WMP11 (not 10) actually runs a lot better in Vista.
Dx9 drivers are just fine, I don’t know what you are talking about. Dx10 is another issue, Dx10 cards are just now getting driver support in beta versions of the drivers, etc…
But still, don’t know what that has to do with anything we are talking about. XP doesn’t and will not come with Dx10.
Your expectations must be very low, because the current crop of Nvidia of drivers for Windows Vista are crap; talk to customers who have the latest 8800 graphics who don’t have SLI support, the buggy support over all.
Interesting though, Nvidia’s support on *NIX is fabulous, and better still, throw on XGL/Compiz/AIXGL, and you get all the great GPU powered effects without the complexity ‘promised’ by Microsofts new driver model, which has pushed driver development behind the eighth ball.
WMP11 (not 10) actually runs a lot better in Vista.
Hadn’t noticed, they ran ok on both operating systems.
But like I keep saying, for *me* Windows Vista wasn’t worth the pain and missery which ensued from from purchasing it.
Dx games actually work pretty well, though, the problem is with the OpenGL ICDs. Not to say that Dx9 stuff is perfect or even on par with XP, it’s just isn’t that bad.
They have had SLI support for about a month now.
All tweaks will take time though. With the new arch. comes haveing to throw away 7-8 years worth of driver development/refinement.
Also beyond that, this stuff is brand new and needs revisions, so I wouldn’t even expect it to outperform other stuff.
No I have no problem with that fact that a .0 release needs tweaking. I have the problem with someone who comes up with a new inferior implemention and still claims victory.
No other engine supports shaders, no other supports actual accellerated animation in apps
Somehow I have heard that AIGLX (and probably XGL?) + beryl supports shaders as well? Oh, AND accelerated indirect rendering?
Vita’s rendering engine can be run on lesser hardware, heck, you can go into the registry and force it to run if you like, but the spec is a Dx9 capable card min. to give developers freedom to do much more.
Sure. So how come OSX 10.4 still supports NV17 on my 5-year old powermac (which works fine accelerated) while providing support for the latest and greatest, but the genius MS with billions $ at hand cannot?
Its like MS built a huge and gas-hungry 140HP engine that takes up every empty space under the hood, and claims it is better that small and efficient 135 HP engine in my car. No thanks MS.
Edited 2007-03-13 22:12
“Microsoft had to develop WinFX (new API, same as carbon was a new API). Classic is nothing more than a virtualized environment, nothing that had really requires to “get working”.”
WinFx ambition of replacing Win32 APIs was “killed” 3 years ago. Part of it was somewhat used in .NET 3.0 which is .NET 2.0 plus 4 Frameworks: CardSpace,Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows communication Foundation and Windows communication Foundation.
.NET 3.0 is available on XP.
WinFx ambition of replacing Win32 APIs was “killed” 3 years ago.
It was not killed. WinFX provides APIs for most parts of the system, reversing the interop story in many cases so that unmanaged code has to call into managed to use new functionality because there are no unmanaged equivalants. MS achieved their goals with WinFX. The only piece that didn’t make the initial release was WinFS, yet it has evolved to be more general and flexible than the initial vision, as the items model became the entity model, object spaces became LINQ, and there’s now a common language and representation for data wherever it’s stored. And they added APIs like CardSpace and Workflow, which weren’t in the original plans. WinFX was never supposed to replace the Win32 API in full in the Vista timeframe. It was to be the API for new application development, but Win32 would sit alongside WinFX for legacy support and coverage for unmanaged code development much as the situation was with Win16 when Win32 first appeared. As then, Vista now provides the basis for a shift in application development from Win32 to WinFX.
Also, add into account that MacOS X was a clean break; not only did they have to port Darwin to PowerPC, they had to develop Carbon, get classic working, bring a whole new heap of technologies such as display pdf and the likes – all this will be heavily unoptimised; but like I said, it is a completely different situatin with Windows Vista, which was an evolution, meaning, we shouldn’t see the massive performance and stability problems we see now – I could understand if they completely gave it an overhaul, but lets be honest, Windows Vista is nothing more than Windows 2003 Sp1 + nice gui + add ons that already existed on Windows XP as seperate downloads.
Windows Vista is as much of an overhaul as OS X was, and though MS had 1 reset, Apple had 2 or 3 before moving to the NeXt codebase. For Vista, in brief, the deployment and boot architecture is new. The kernel has received new scheduling and memory management subsystems, I/O, security, and power management enhancements, support for transactions. The IP stack is new. The display and printing architecture (driver model, graphics API, window manaager, etc.) is new. The audio stack is new. The driver, application, and update installation architecture is new. The application development stack is new. Of those, only the applications stack was ported downlevel, not all APIs are available, and you will have reduced performance vs. Vista in some cases due to the lack of similar architectural changes on downlevel OSes.
An interesting tidbit is that for some .NET 3.0 applications, you get a slight performance advantage from being on XP since you have more optimized DirectX drivers there and it doesn’t do as much anti-aliasing and attempts to lock display update rates to animation rates. This is what I’ve heard, at least.
On the other hand, all of this stuff was developed for Vista and only backported to XP because MSFT wanted to encourage developers to build stuff soon before Vista has time to saturate the market.
An interesting tidbit is that for some .NET 3.0 applications, you get a slight performance advantage from being on XP since you have more optimized DirectX drivers there and it doesn’t do as much anti-aliasing and attempts to lock display update rates to animation rates. This is what I’ve heard, at least.
This can be true, however as you said, it’s mainly because most Vista GPU drivers are nowhere near as optimized as their XP counterparts. This is steadily changing as better drivers become available for Vista. Vista, even with current drivers, is likely to perform better when multiple accelerated applications (e.g., WPF or D3D apps) are running simultaneously as GPU resources may be shared across processes, have better command scheduling (assuming support of the advanced driver model) and apps aren’t limited by the GPUs onboard memory.
Also, add into account that MacOS X was a clean break; not only did they have to port Darwin to PowerPC, they had to develop Carbon, get classic working, bring a whole new heap of technologies such as display pdf and the likes – all this will be heavily unoptimised; but like I said
What?
Basically, they ported an old Unix clone to PPC. The display engine was pretty much there already, because NeXT used a similar system licensed from Adobe, called Display PostScript. It was also as buggy as hell for about two years. The biggest thing they added was widgets; which looked suspiciously like Konfabulator to me.
Basically, they ported an old Unix clone to PPC. The display engine was pretty much there already, because NeXT used a similar system licensed from Adobe, called Display PostScript. It was also as buggy as hell for about two years. The biggest thing they added was widgets; which looked suspiciously like Konfabulator to me.
Obviously you know very little about the differences between Postscript and PDF; if it were that easy, then it should have been released in 1998 rather than 2000.
Oh, and btw, like I said, Apple had millions where as Microsoft has *BILLIONS* to spend on developers, R&D, QA and the likes.
Money does not = timely or quality development.
So you’re saying that the billions Microsoft spent were a waste? I could have told you that, I and I sure as hell wouldn’t have costed millions in ‘consultancy’ as Microsoft would have paid for that perl of wisdom.
No, I’m saying that money does not translate into software, which of course you just restated which kind of makes your entire other post moot about Apple having millions and Microsoft having billions.
Seriously, grow up and stop being such a mindless drone.
No, I’m saying that money does not translate into software, which of course you just restated which kind of makes your entire other post moot about Apple having millions and Microsoft having billions.
I don’t know where you took your economics 101. But a company spent 1000 times more and came up with something not competitively superior is something to be proud of?
And no, they cannot get the same ratio of revenue, even if they have a monopoly at hand.
This is not what I said at all… where did you drop out of the 4th grade for your reading comprehension?
And actually, a lot of the stuff in Vista is superior to the technologies currently in OSX, we will see what is in Leopard, though.
This is not what I said at all… where did you drop out of the 4th grade for your reading comprehension?
And actually, a lot of the stuff in Vista is superior to the technologies currently in OSX, we will see what is in Leopard, though.
Come on, to implement a comparative technology that requires a high end video card while others can do the same with a very low end card is superior?
Man your 4th grade English teacher will be proud of you!
Please, never compare Windows Vista with Mac OS 10.0. Never.
It’s like comparing Bush to Hitler. Many people do, but it’s not nearly backed by history.
2GB and so on, purely nonsense. Try it first before bashing it. I do know it’s lot of fun, but it’s most of the time just noisy. I have to use it at work, together with applications like Statistica (same machines as before).
Btw. I’m a FreeBSD user, with a decade of Linux experience too, but I can divide between mere bash and reality. It’s a bad system because of DRM, closed-source, the whole mumbo jumbo. It’s maybe equal to XP, with some small advancements and therefore you don’t need to update. Urban legends make me just sick of this so-called opensource community.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html
Uh, beware it’s a Windows guy, but with knowledge :o)
I’m writing this on an Athlon XP 2600+ running Vista. Don’t recall exactly when I bought this computer, but judging by Wikipedia it should clock in at about four years by now.
Runs completely fine. Performance isn’t noticably different from the time I ran XP on it. So I’d say the rumours about hardware requirements are a bit exaggerated. 🙂
Looking at it another way you just payed €199 (~£135 or ~$260 USD) for a piece of software which, under the terms of Microsoft’s EULA, you will lose the right to use when you buy your next PC.
Do you think this was really worth it? You’re a gamer and as such presumably upgrade your hardware fairly regularly. Aren’t you risking de-activation if you upgrade too many components in your system? Personally I wouldn’t want to feel restricted like that.
Coincidentally, I’m not anti-Vista. Although i’m a Linux user 95% of the time, I dual boot with Vista Business Edition (also 64 bit and having no problems, although I did plan my last build to run Windows XP x64). Fortunately for me I got it for free vis the Microsoft Academic Alliance and as far as I know there are no OEM-esque restrictions on my copy.
That said (again) Microsoft require that you ring up and explain you are installing on new hardware with a retail copy anyway. Why they don’t offer a de-activate or transfer activation feature is beyond me.
I agree whole hartly with your statement and actually pointed out something along those lines in the article. Although I don’t mind paying this once, I would rather not have to do it again. If I do run into problems with re-activation, I will crack the system, no holds barred!
As I stated, this is the first time I have payed for any version of windows and although it’s a hefty sum, considering all the years I have got out of them (MS), it’s a fair trade.
The next time I spend any money on an operating system it will be for a Linux distro or worthy hobby OS.
So some guys (companies) have a hard time selling “too good to be true” while others can easily get away with “ain’t so bad”… Sad, really.
“I called, was asked to input 54 digits divided into nine times six digit groups by a pre-recorded voice message. After this had completed, I was asked if this was to first time I was reactivating Vista and how many machines this copy was installed on. I was then put through to a customer service representative who asked me the same questions again, asked me to wait until the clearance code came through and after about 2 minutes on hold, told me their system was down and I would have to call back in ten minutes. I promptly hung up without answering.”
Next time just download PCLinuxOS.
Windows95, although quite problem-prone at the release time, was a huge leap over Win3.11 and delivered to consumers a glimpse of what the future OSes will be like, so people happily upgraded.
Windows98 delivered more (useful) features and more overall polish to the Win95 base without noticeable lost in performance, and so the people upgraded.
Windows2000 was slower than Win98, but it delivered much needed NT kernel and NTFS to the mainstream computing, and so people upgraded.
WindowsXP delivered a lot of minor improvements to Win2k (faster DirectX, fast user switching, proper support for multi-monitor, integrated support for ZIP format, remote desktop, system restore, etc.) without any significant performance penalty over Win2k, and so people upgraded.
The only thing Vista delivers that is worth of mentioning is DirectX10. However, such factors as…
a) Most PC users don’t people games
b) There are no DX10 available at the moment
c) Available DX10 video cards are insanely expensive
d) Looks like there will be no DX10 cards for AGP
… makes DX10 alone a very weak incentive to buy Vista for an average consumer. All other Vista’s features are borderline laughable, especially “ReadyBoost”. Also, the fact that MS didn’t add build-in spelling and grammar checker into the OS (where it belong) and left it as a part of MS Office package clearly shows that this company is still not technology, but marketing driven. And, of course, all the DRM “improvements” are not exactly the strong selling points as far as consumers are concerned.
To sum it all up, with all previous MS OSes it was easy to see where the “up” part in the word “upgrade” is coming from. With Vista, however, I am afraid that is just not the case.
Whoa, whoa. XP did so introduce a number of performance penalties, particularly SP2.
System Restore, Windows Firewall, the security console, automatic updates, ‘automatic’ wireless, remote assistance, that Luna disaster (well, in my opinion
)… etc. are all not “free”. They suck RAM and cycles. A default XP/XP-SP2 install takes a while to lean out to the point where performance equals or minorly exceeds W2K. The extra stuff exceeds performance enhancements.
Multiple monitors, wireless, digi-cam’s, etc. under XP may not have the benefit of XP’s OS-based support; however, where applicible, that’s all supported in drivers. (XP never accepted my quad-screen setup, either.. only under linux ;P)
W2K was the best thing you could do in a Win95/98 world – because of the huge reduction in random crashes. XP was a lame offer – pretty colours and a dog that “helps” you search (and takes up a whack of your screen). Atleast Vista, while issuing in the next generation of DRM expansions, offers a proper accellerated desktop (Aero) and a snazzier colourscheme. It looks better, and hardware be damned, that will catch up – in a way it’s almost forward looking.
“Whoa, whoa. XP did so introduce a number of performance penalties, particularly SP2.”
Could you please provide links that backup this claim? From what I’ve read and based on my own experience there was no significant performance difference between XP and 2K, and SP2 didn’t make much of a difference either.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2001q4/os/index.x?pg=9
“Toss aside the WPA, the bundled services, and the new GUI (especially the new GUI) and you’re left with this fact: The numbers don’t lie. Regardless of how you feel about all the aforementioned goodies that Microsoft claims make Windows XP better than its predecessors, based on our tests, there’s no reason to call XP a performance dud.”
http://www.short-media.com/articles/does_service_pack_2_slow_you_do…
“The test PC equipped with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 was an average of 0.5% faster than the same hardware with Service Pack 2 installed. The percentage difference between faster and slower is insignificantly small.”
As for the proper multi-monitor support, I was referring to the fact that 2K did not support multi-monitor video cards properly, i.e. if you had a single video card that supported multiple monitors, you could only have a single desktop span over them, but not multiple desktops with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color depth etc. Matrox was the only company that figured out how to hack its way around the limitation by tricking the device manager into thinking that there are two physical cards installed, and kudos to Matrox for that, yet still it does not take away the fact that there was this limitation in 2K which was removed in XP.
One and a half cheers for Vista.
The only issue I have with UAC is not actually UAC itself but that most ISVs have been let off the hook in Windows, at least as far as security goes, and every installation or attempt to update trigger the UAC dialog. I promptly turned it off awaiting a more Vista compatible time.
Vista’s only hope is for users to succeed at running as limited users. Otherwise, viruses have full reign. Yet, most articles I read start out with “next I turned off UAC”. Wassup with that?
Wassup with that?
People using Windows are used to not having to authenticate for anything (due to Microsoft not forcing proper security practices with NT from day one), and so when they try Vista, which asks permission for exactly the same things as does Ubuntu or whatever other Linux distribution, they get annoyed, and turn it off.
It’s really stupid, but understandable, as well.
Except.. Unlike linux, Microsoft made the really stupid mistake of letting the user turn it off in the first place.
So true!
Another difference is you don’t have your whole system taken over by the security prompt with either Linux or Mac OS X.
So true!
Another difference is you don’t have your whole system taken over by the security prompt with either Linux or Mac OS X.
I think this was done for a reason. The UAC runs in a separate ‘account’. This is to prevent someone from accessing the system by spoofing the login dialog box. I thought it was overkill, until I read this:
http://alastairs-place.net/archives/000079.html
Which is probably why MS went for a more secure implementation.
Edited 2007-03-13 00:33
It’s really easy to do in Linux.
Edit /etc/passwd and set your uid to 0.
Sure, it’s insanely stupid. But you can do it. Easily.
when they try Vista, which asks permission for exactly the same things as does Ubuntu or whatever other Linux distribution, they get annoyed, and turn it off.
Except that on any Linux distribution you only need to authenticate once in order to update all of the software on your entire system. With Vista, each individual application requires another authentication. The lack of a centralized software update system for Windows (no Windows Update doesn’t count) is a major difference between routine administration of a Windows box versus a Linux box, and this is also one of the primary sources of UAC annoyance on Vista.
Vista is like any other MS so-called “operating system”. It took **five years** to produce, and MS STILL can’t make an OS that doesn’t crash!
The **highway-robbery price**, the DRM, the bloat and general poor quality… it’s amazing that anyone buys it at all…. 🙂
Edited 2007-03-12 19:24
Although I thought the article would get a few comments, I didn’t realize they would be quite so ‘heated’ 😉
I agree with what allot of people are saying although I think some should actually read the article before they come out with such beauties as follows-
Try a linux distro, or (assuming MS hasn’t locked you out of your liscense) reinstall XP! Seriously don’t waste your money.
Next time just download PCLinuxOS.
Apart from that, thanks for the feedback! 🙂
“The little things make a big difference when I compare Vista to XP.”
Exactly. I’m hardly a windows fanboy (in my day job I’m a UNIX admin with a heavy penchant and bias towards linux desktops), but I’ve been running vista enterprise here at home on my not so new dell I got as a hand-me-down from work and rather liking it. It’s still windows all in all, but there’s a lot of nice touches and refinements they’ve put into it now which does make using it a nicer experience than XP say. (also using Office 2007 on it which I’m increasingly appreciating as an excellent office suite)
In terms of the machine I’m using, the only variable which is beefier than your average store bought system today is the RAM, 2GB, so I’m not seeing any real slowness there (if anything it feels faster). The machine uses an older onboard video, so no Aero for me yet, but even so, aesthetically I find the layout nicer than before. Shoot, I’ve even kept the default wallpaper still up, don’t really feel the need to tweak at much things.
It’s still windows all in all, but there’s a lot of nice touches and refinements they’ve put into it now which does make using it a nicer experience than XP say. (also using Office 2007 on it which I’m increasingly appreciating as an excellent office suite)
I couldn’t agree more. My main desktop is PCLinuxOS, I just wish they would finally release a 64bit version. As for Office 2007, the betas where really cool. I run OpenOffice on Vista at the mo mainly cause I’m broke. €1500 later and it’s become a very expensive upgrade 😉
I feel bad for desktop linux users. Why do they settle for less?
I feel bad for desktop linux users. Why do they settle for less?
They don’t. Only someone who as never experienced the power afforded by a Linux desktop would even consider Linux to be less.
I don’t know if you have tried Linux but if not, I suggest you give it a whorl! 😉
“I feel bad for desktop linux users. Why do they settle for less?”
You are Right, we do settle for less:
Less DRM
Less Activation
Less WGA
Less System Requirements
Less Pricing
(quote)
“I feel bad for desktop linux users. Why do they settle for less?”
(end quote)
(Supreme Dragon)
You are Right, we do settle for less:
Less DRM
Less Activation
Less WGA
Less System Requirements
Less Pricing
Yeah!! Spot on, Supreme Dragon!!
I would add (when it comes to Linux and *BSDs – they have –
– “fewer crashes”
– “more speed”
– “more security”
– … and they’re more fun…. 🙂
Less apps.
“Less apps.”
You are right, I guess those virus and spyware writers had better get busy.
.. and games now I think about it.
Oh, and drivers. I forgot about the drivers.
“.. and games now I think about it.
Oh, and drivers. I forgot about the drivers.”
As Linux market share increases from people fleeing the Windows monopoly, more games and drivers will become available for Linux.
Drivers you say……
From this statement it is clear you have not tried Linux and are talking out of your ass.
More hardware is supported out of the box under Linux than it is under Windows. Fact.
More hardware is supported out of the box under Linux than it is under Windows. Fact.
That’s a ridiculous statement. In 99.999% of scenarios, Windows ships with OEM drivers for the particular machine upon which it’s preinstalled. There’s no need to hunt for drivers or depend upon low quality reverse-engineering; for example, wireless NIC drivers under Linux are pathetic. I could care less whether Linux ships with a driver on the disk which claims to work with my hardware. Unless it actually WORKS with my hardware (which isn’t the case with most wireless drivers, having it on the disk is completely useless).
“That’s a ridiculous statement. In 99.999% of scenarios, Windows ships with OEM drivers for the particular machine upon which it’s preinstalled. There’s no need to hunt for drivers or depend upon low quality reverse-engineering; for example, wireless NIC drivers under Linux are pathetic. I could care less whether Linux ships with a driver on the disk which claims to work with my hardware. Unless it actually WORKS with my hardware (which isn’t the case with most wireless drivers, having it on the disk is completely useless).”
No, his statement is clear “out of the box” more stuff works on Linux.
That is not the same as *works* or *drivers available*. The reality is Windows98se and now XP have hit that point in there life cycle that they are the standard. None of this applied to Vista.
Not it is true that Linux supports a greater number of CPU’s, and often supports products *beyond* that of the manufacture.
Vista had poor support for hardware currently with graphics cards running slower on it than XP. Sound cards with reduced functionality…and this is now.
That is not to say that this *may* be fixed in a revision, but you will have to “hunt for drivers”.
frankly I find it strange that you point out a wireless NIC, which you can get a compatible one for about £7 while defending a £300 OS and lack of support for expensive components £150 and £80 each.
Remember Vista is not XP.
They arn’t settling for less. Linux runs Linux, MS-DOS and Win32 applications natively. Wine is an API not an emulator. Mono and it’s new C#/VB compilers will bring more .NET apps to *nix, Java is gaining first class support, Web 2.0 will open the doors to cross-platform web applications.
Even if Linux sucked in every way imaginable, it would still be a haven for all the Microsoft haters in the world.
I personally don’t hate Microsoft and use Windows often (Linux/BSD more and more) but there are many people who do and refuse to use any MS products outside their workplace.
Edited 2007-03-12 21:11
Yeah, people who value their personal data.
Less hard disk usage?
Less memory usage?
Less time waiting for the system to boot?
No rebooting?
I mean, if they are the ‘less’ what you’re talking about, then you can keep your vista eXPerience 🙂
It’s like: if vista doesn’t *completely* suck you should feel compelled to run out and buy it right away.
Not being a completely brainwashed msft zealot, I have a different standard: if it ain’t broke, don’t “fix” it.
Like most end users, I have everything to lose, and nothing to gain, from a vista “upgrade.” All my hw and sw works just fine, it’s fast and stable, why upset the apple cart? Why spend all that money, and go through all that trouble to get -at best- nothing?
Yeah, I know, the raving msft fan-boys will start posting that I might as well use a horse and carriage. It’s a stupid analogy. But, okay, whatever.
Vista provides me with absolutely nothing, at best. IMO: those who scream: “but it really doesn’t suck all that bad!!! It really doesn’t!!!” just don’t get it.
It’s like: if vista doesn’t *completely* suck you should feel compelled to run out and buy it right away.
That’s not what they’re saying.
An OS is a critical part of a computer (along with such core bits of hardware and peripherals as the CPU and memory). If you’re running everything you need to run, you have no need to upgrade — but if you need better, you need to shop for alternatives. That’s what’s happening with Vista. They’re saying it’s a good upgrade, not that it’s a mandatory upgrade.
That’s what’s happening with Vista. They’re saying it’s a good upgrade, not that it’s a mandatory upgrade.
Emmm…. who is saying it is a good upgrade ?
I honestly have not seen a decent review of Vista that says it is a good upgrade.
Depending on the situation, I’m saying it’s a good upgrade. The biggest problem I see so far is to do with drivers for the new Audio/Video frameworks and DRM.
As I stated in the article, good drivers are either already out or are well on they’re way. As for DRM, it will be cracked. There is no way any form of DRM is bullet proof.
Vista is far more responsive than XP. Maybe not as performant, but definitely more responsive.
Actually, most people won’t buy it; it’ll come with the next machine they buy.
Just because your ‘getting’ it with your new PC does not mean you are not buying it. Why do you think your new PC costs as much as it does? Bulk hardware costs are no where near the amount you pay for new kit and even including man hours and the very low profit margin gained by OEMs, you still come out short. That discrepancy is the OS.
My understanding is that Vista is Microsoft’s way of trying to kill off SGI and OpenGL in the marketplace (and beating up on Mac/Linux at the same time).
I’ve read there is no default/any OpenglICD for Windows Vista, instead, all calls being run through directx 10, which is WRAPPING the calls… and then getting a 50% or more degradation of performance.
ID Software, most FP-Shooters, many flight sims, etc., should all be howling mad over this. It’s a huge blow to Vista, and one that I think may keep people away.
OpenGL on Vista is no different than on previous versions of Windows. Vista continues default acceleration of OpenGL via D3D which was introduced in Windows XP. Vista also continues support for OpenGL ICDs that allow for direct hardware acceleration and support of IHV-specific features and extensions.
It is different. It is stuck at OpenGL 1.4, when the rest of the world is on OpenGL 2.1
So you install an ICD which supports GL 2.1. What’s your beef?
beef is, they are not yet available…
I tried the latest drivers I could get for nvidia, and enemy territory still ran as if it was in treacle.
It is not different. XP sans ICD is limited to OpenGL 1.1 or 1.2. The key is that prior to XP, OpenGL was software rasterized when there was no IHV-supported implementation present. With XP and continuing in Vista, it is hardware-accelerated OOTB (i.e., OOTB OpenGL support has steadily improved). ICDs have always, and continue to be the mechanism for support of vendor-specific features and newer versions than what the OS provides.
What i dont get is, people who have not used vista, and know, less then nothing about it spewing about.
Vista has lots of major changes to it under the hood. and plenty more little things within the OS at the user level that make it worth it. everything form the kernal on up has been improved. not to mention that all drivers now run in user space and have a framework. so if a driver go bad or hicups it can be restarted automaticly withOUT a crash or even sometimes even noticing.
sheesh….
-Nex6
Edited 2007-03-12 20:59
Modded up for excellent use of Sheesh.
Thats what Microsoft keep telling you but it still blue screens with drivers, just look at Nvidia and creative drivers.
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=86550
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85490
If your force fed the same crap for years it becomes believable, I guess you people buy cars with bad tires all the time.
becuase the venders have not updated there drivers is microsofts fualt how? esp when vista has been a public beta?
its not a matter of being “forced feed” i have 1000s of machines where i work. I create the images, and in my experince there very rarely is a random crash. if there IS, its driver or hardware(most of the time). and if its driver, again how is that microsofts fault if ATI,Nvidia, create… whoever | if there, drivers suck, thats MS’s fualt how?
Its not that i am some sort of MS zealot, i consider my self a professional and as such I learn the tools I use. thats happens to be both windows and Linux, icreate images and systems for both.
-Nex6
becuase the venders have not updated there drivers is microsofts fualt how? esp when vista has been a public beta?
Interesting, so when *NIX doesn’t have a driver, its apparently *NIX’s fault, but when Windows doesn’t have a driver its those ‘evil lazy hardware companies fault’.
Could we please have some consistancy when bashing something.
They’re both hardware companies fault.
The first one is being not releasing the hardware specification (or the same ‘evil lazy hardware companies fault’)…
no, no, no:
its not Linux, or any distros fualt if the venders dont provide quality drivers. its the venders fualt. venders should provide quality drivers for there hardware. AND: if they do not provide quality drivers they should provide specs and or docs for others to write them. and that goes for windows and Linux, freeBSD etc.
-Nex6
Edited 2007-03-12 23:26
Interesting, so when *NIX doesn’t have a driver, its apparently *NIX’s fault, but when Windows doesn’t have a driver its those ‘evil lazy hardware companies fault’.
Could we please have some consistancy when bashing something.
Who said it’s Linux’s fault. Folk may say ‘I can’t run Linux because I can’t get drivers’ but no-one blames the OS. Oddly enough, Windows users don’t appear to be in the habit of attaching ‘evil personas’ to operating systems.
No sonny Jim, it is more, “Linux sux0r because I can’t get my bum-tickling-widget working!”.
The reason it’s *NIX’s fault (at least Linux’s) is that they don’t offer a stable kernel-mode ABI for drivers to plug into, for whatever reason. Now, you could say that they’re doing the right thing (if you look at Jeff Atwood’s blog entry about >3GB RAM on Windows, you’ll see one of the ills of black-box drivers), but if there’s unsupported hardware because the unwillingness to allow binary plugins then you can blame the vendors and promoters of the OS.
I didn’t say is was Microsoft’s fault, what I said is that the person who I responded to claims drivers dont BSOD in Vista because of them being in userspace.
In the end Windows has a history of bad drivers and letting you bypass this is in itself Microsoft’s fault. Microsoft maybe warning you your about to burn yourself but let you burn yourself regardless.
Vista has lots of major changes to it under the hood. and plenty more little things within the OS at the user level that make it worth it. everything form the kernal on up has been improved. not to mention that all drivers now run in user space and have a framework. so if a driver go bad or hicups it can be restarted automaticly withOUT a crash or even sometimes even noticing.
We haven’t said that there have been no improvements; the problem we have is that these improvements have existed in *NIX land for years – proper user/root seperation? old school. Minimal kernel module sitting in kernel space for graphics? been there done that. The ability for applications to be killed off properly rather than hanging around hogging memory? kill -9 on *NIX has been around since god was a teenager.
Its not that we don’t accept improvements, what erks many of us is that these features *should* have been in there since day one, and now Microsoft is trying to pawn off what I would consider ‘I’d expect it to be there’ features as new innovations; or worse, using marketing hype like “ready boost” to hack around crap quality algorithms and poor programming which results in terrible performance (if one didn’t employ those short cuts).
I don’t see how inventing a predictive caching algorithm is a “short-cut.” What would the long route be over that, pray tell?
Some of the features that “should” have been there from the start were probably not possible before due to the limits of the machines of the past. Now that things become possible, Windows can do things in a better way.
About User/Root separation, have you ever operated on a Domain machine that was properly administered?? I was under the impression that you’re an admin yourself, so you’d know that it’s possible to have user/root separation on a well-administered box. Before XP was released, it was far more convenient for normal users to just install apps and use them in a single-user environment. When you don’t have an admin and you’re just a normal user will you understand a dialog box that says “Access Denied” or “Please ask an administrator to do this for you?” This sort of behavior is downright insulting to average users. The single-user model died with the birth of spyware and the cesspool of internet crap. The solution for Windows is UAC, which is like UNIX sudo. It is innovative in a couple ways though: it attempts to run software in low rights by virtualizing their admin-requiring registry and file system tasks (*NIX doesn’t have to do this because apps are designed right) and it takes pains to ensure that its dialogs cannot be spoofed (this could be a problem on *NIX, right?).
The new kill features are built on a fairly big piece of infrastructure to improve IO cancellation. This is mostly an effort to deal with one of the ills of binary drivers: uncancelable synchronous IO. As you know, there’s a tradeoff for everything. And Linux has this problem too. Processes can become zombies there as well if their parent does not wait() for their termination or if one of their IOs gets stuck in a driver (as is the case for these Windows operations). kill -9 may not kill these either: http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec6cantkill.html.This isn’t as much of a problem in linux, because drivers an be ensured not to have synchronous IO issues since they’re all open source.
I don’t see how inventing a predictive caching algorithm is a “short-cut.” What would the long route be over that, pray tell?
When you have one that takes the route of a ‘short cut’ and another operating system that used to be slow, but now is faster by virtue of improving the status quo rather than employing a work around (aka pre-link), then there are some problems.
If Microsoft has to employ ‘ready boost’ one has to ask; why was there a need to invent another piece of technology rather than just simply fixing up the underlying technology which caused the bottle neck in the first place? its akin to increasing the water flow into a tank rather than fixing the hole which is causing the loss of water.
Some of the features that “should” have been there from the start were probably not possible before due to the limits of the machines of the past. Now that things become possible, Windows can do things in a better way.
What has a proper kill command have to do with ‘hardware limitations’ – apart from a very small number of experiences in the past with Solaris, I’ve yet to come accross an application that was resistant to the power of the -9; Windows, however, it seems that every damn application that seems to get stuck, one hell of a time is spent trying to kill the damn application but without much success.
And if the application just doesn’t die, you end up with a constant barrage of system messages which no matter how many times you press ‘cancel’ it seems to repeatingly appears over and over and over again.
About User/Root separation, have you ever operated on a Domain machine that was properly administered?? I was under the impression that you’re an admin yourself, so you’d know that it’s possible to have user/root separation on a well-administered box. Before XP was released, it was far more convenient for normal users to just install apps and use them in a single-user environment. When you don’t have an admin and you’re just a normal user will you understand a dialog box that says “Access Denied” or “Please ask an administrator to do this for you?” This sort of behavior is downright insulting to average users. The single-user model died with the birth of spyware and the cesspool of internet crap. The solution for Windows is UAC, which is like UNIX sudo. It is innovative in a couple ways though: it attempts to run software in low rights by virtualizing their admin-requiring registry and file system tasks (*NIX doesn’t have to do this because apps are designed right) and it takes pains to ensure that its dialogs cannot be spoofed (this could be a problem on *NIX, right?).
But with Windows, now you end up with trigger happy UAC clickers who will get into a habit of simply ignoring the dialogue and ‘continue’ just to simply get the damn thing out of the way.
There needs to be a way of forcing the user to read the warning and making them manually put in their password as to allow them to actively get over those stubling blocks; its like signing several documents rather than simply one, ensuring you know the full impact of what you’re about to participate in.
Internet Explorer 6.x employed and warned people that an application had requested to be install, and yet, people simply became ‘install’ happy; no matter how damaging it was, they just went ‘install’ as they were more concerned with getting the dialogue box out of the way rather than reading it and thinking about what it might do if one were to press ‘install’.
I understand the attempts by Microsoft, but it is a noble attempt at that; Microsoft needs to make a decision; do they want security or ease of use or compatibility, they can have one, but not all three – to me, Microsoft has chosen the most easiest, half assed way of going about it.
For me, I’d sooner have less applications on Windows Vista in favour of having a hardcore secure and stable machine which demands from software vendors that they employ proper user seperation for their application settings, and that their applications are multi-user aware.
The new kill features are built on a fairly big piece of infrastructure to improve IO cancellation. This is mostly an effort to deal with one of the ills of binary drivers: uncancelable synchronous IO. As you know, there’s a tradeoff for everything. And Linux has this problem too. Processes can become zombies there as well if their parent does not wait() for their termination or if one of their IOs gets stuck in a driver (as is the case for these Windows operations). kill -9 may not kill these either: http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec6cantkill.html.This isn’t as much of a problem in linux, because drivers an be ensured not to have synchronous IO issues since they’re all open source.
But ultimately, however, I don’t see the killing problem on any other operating system, whether it be MacOS X, *BSD, Solaris (which I am running) or Linux – sure, that occasional zombie process might hang around, but it pales in comparison to the hung applications, the dialogue box deluge and processes that just won’t die no matter what.
You can’t honestly tell me that some how the other operating systems some how have ‘special’ drivers, and Microsoft is getting shafted somewhere in the process; sure, I can understand how some zombie processes can occur, and I can accept it, but when it is at the frequency that I see on Windows, there really is something wrong.
Less Spyware
Less Virus problems
Less maintenance
Less worry
NO price (usually)
Less LESS LESS LESS!!!!!
He is right!
“Sheesh!” is a slurring of the name “Jesus!”. Don’t you *KNOW* that is is only proper to use names of OTHER deities in today’s PC (Politically Correct) world?
So, we must now say “Muhaaaaa!” (Muhammad) or “Ahhhglaaa!” (Allah) or even “Buhaaa!” (Buddha).
Oh, wait… my mistake… you can DEFAME the name of Jesus (or Christianity in general), however you like, but you can’t mention (disrespectfully) ANYTHING to do with another religion…
Afterall, we must ALL be tolerant of ALL religions, as long as it’s NOT Christianity.
Ok, that’s enough side-tracking… I’ve had my fun for the day, bringing up a totally irrelevant point, just for the sake of something that seemed funny only to me.
Feel free to now mod this comment down into oblivion… 😀
funny…..
the new car engine is not 1m bigger than old one. the new engine is smaller. this is progress. for me vista is not progress. vista is not the future!
Vista is bad. I’m sure things will get better but right now Vista is very bad. A lot of software does not work with Vista including games. The new networking stack is awful. Vista has a lot of trouble connecting with wireless networks, especially encrypted networks. Vista is just as easily borked as XP. I love how explorer crashes, then auto-restarts, then crashes again, then auto-restarts, and so on and so forth. If you don’t kill it at just the right time in the task manager it just goes on and on and on. Printing has been a nightmare for a lot of people to. A lot of very recent printers do not have drivers or only have basic drivers provided by Microsoft. AOL, Earthlink, etc all have special versions of their software that work on Vista. A lot of customers are confused by the update and purchase or download the wrong version of the software they need and end up with problems they just don’t know how to resolve. There have been similar problems in the past when Microsoft has upgraded its operating system but I don’t think it was to this magnitude. I have never seen so many people buying copies of XP to install over their Vista installations as I have with previous Windows upgrades.
EDIT: I forgot to mention DEP. It crashes programs left and right and most people do not know how to disable it for their applications.
Edited 2007-03-12 22:40
I don’t know what kind of system you are these people where running but I have only ever had one crash while running vista, even with full DEP (all programs and services). This crash was due to a bug in nVidia’s beta drivers to do with DVD playback.
Explorer is far more responsive for me in Vista than XP ever was and as for people not knowing which version of they’re service providers software to download, I hardly find that surprising. Every new operating system has issues related to older software.
Wireless runs flawlessly for me and my Ethernet network connection is allot less hassle after I found out where the settings were to be found. I know this has allot to do with drivers, again, but hardly that hardly makes it Vista’s fault.
I can understand non technical users having issues with Vista as I have found that non technical users have issues with every operating system, full stop.
I don’t know what kind of system you are these people where running but I have only ever had one crash while running vista, even with full DEP (all programs and services). This crash was due to a bug in nVidia’s beta drivers to do with DVD playback.
You’re lucky then. DEP tends to crash a lot of installation routines for some reason. I believe Microsoft has an article about it.
Explorer is far more responsive for me in Vista than XP ever was and as for people not knowing which version of they’re service providers software to download, I hardly find that surprising. Every new operating system has issues related to older software.
Explorer is much more responsive…when it is working. When it is borked though it is much worse than XP. As far as old software is concerned, there seems to be a much bigger problem with Vista than there was with XP (compared to 2000, not 98).
Wireless runs flawlessly for me and my Ethernet network connection is allot less hassle after I found out where the settings were to be found. I know this has allot to do with drivers, again, but hardly that hardly makes it Vista’s fault.
Then why is there so many problems with wireless out of the box? I’m not talking about my experience with my home PC. I’m talking about thousands of retail computers. Computers that the majority of people buy. Ultimately this is what matters to people.
I can understand non technical users having issues with Vista as I have found that non technical users have issues with every operating system, full stop.
I am a technical user with years of experience with multiple operating systems. This isn’t a simple matter of how intuitive the operating system is. Except for the DEP issue I mentions, this is about problems with performing basic operations necessary to run the system. Networking is just fubarred. Wireless, as I mentioned, along with network transfer rates, and even wired connectivity does not always work properly.
Personally I’d leave it alone until SP1, or maybe even SP2. About the only thing I find incredibly useful about Vista anyway is the integrated search.
My partner and I decided to upgrade our systems. I used Vista Home Premium and ordered the 64-bit DVD. It installed fine and ran – until I grabbed the latest ATi driver. Then it would boot, I’d hear the nifty startup tones and get a blank screen. Oops. I reinstalled and left the “old” driver that actually works. Other than that little glitch, it works fine, HL2 and Far Cry run in 64-bit mode with no issues. I disabled UAC right away. I thought Apple was being a little mean in their “Security” ad, but it really is that annoying. I will admit that the PC is mostly a gaming box and I use my MacBook for most everything else. To me, Vista seems like XP with window dressing. It’s prettier, but I’m not yet feeling the “Wow”.
On the “old” Dell, I installed Ubuntu. Other than X not properly detecting my display resolution (1440×900), everything has worked well. I could see myself using it for 90% of what I do, but gaming on Linux still has a ways to go.
Why reinstall? F8 while Windows is booting (just start slamming it after you clear POST) gets you the menu that gives you Safe Mode. That’s all you need in order to revert the drivers.
Turning UAC off may be a good idea for power-users. But if you’ve ever gotten a piece of spyware before unwittingly, then I’d say that UAC is worthwhile for you. (I run it myself and only rarely run into the consent box: maybe once a day at most and never when I’m doing real work with my computer and not just playing around).
thats what it should be called because its big and annoying and useless, download linux or wait for ReactOS to mature.
i used to think XP wasn’t so bad till i used Vista, they should of called it Windows Victa, not only chews your Grass but also chews Memory to
Note: Victa is a lawnMower in Australia
Possibly the saddest, most desperate attempt at a pun that I’ve ever read on line.
I’m going to mod you up because you obviously worked very hard to get the ‘in crowd’ approval round here.
I was going to say it should be called Windows Licker….. but when I think about it, that name should be reserved for the people that use it :p
I’ve got Vista dual booting with my PCLOS installation at home. It’s installed on a pretty reasonable system, and it is SLOW.
It’s not so much the opening programs, or folders. It’s the new Windows Explorer. In my own non-scientific tests, I have worked out that Vista is about 30% slower than my linux install at copying big files (> 500Mb) around the local filesystem.
It is also slow when opening or searching network locations. In fact the new search deserves a special mention, as it is slow beyond belief (when searching non-indexed locations).
Hopefully service packs will address these issues. Still, my wife likes the pretty windows :-), but I’ll stick with PCLOS.
PCLOS how does it compare with lets say Fedora what is it based off of Debian?
A friend of mine was looking for a new laptop top so we went looking and I had a NEW laptop blue screen with the same Windows error (irq < >) and I was wondering this is the same stuff that has plagued Windows forever buggy drivers.
Windows XP Pro SP2 is the closest to decent MS has achieved Vista is a step down in many aspects the UAC for one. The same problems exist with Vista the ability to run programs as a regular user not as admin when will MS ever figure this one out. With any Linux distro you are a ‘user’ not root how hard can this be?
I guess MS wants it to be easy but Vista popping up prompt boxes all over like popcorn is not going to make an end user happy. It is going to get turned off and the same problems will continue to exist. Spyware installing or viruses taking over. Same old problems with the same code base (WinNT). Until they can throw it in the trash the Win legacy will be a mainstay forever…
PCLOS is a Mandrake based distro. Although, it forked from Mandrake quite a while ago …
In my opinion, PCLOS is far better than Fedora as the hat people have really jumped on board with the whole Gnome philosophy. That is that heaps of configuration settings are missing.
I don’t really mind if things are this way with Gnome, after all that’s what Gnome is all about and that’s fine. But Fedora have taken the unusual step of hobbling the KDE window manager that they bundle. That’s just unforgivable.
Windows Vista is the last OS based on NT code that MS can continue to develop because of the fact that Technology is now considered not important in the United States today. It can be sent overseas to be performed at 1/16 of the cost in the market today.
Online apps or even an online Office applications are terrible that is the last thing I would trust or even want to use some online junk through a web-browser.
Microsoft has to develop something new outside of this codebase to win back the Corporate users and home users. They tried to put security first but it is impossible because the underlying code was developed for apps to be ran as administrator why I have no idea. They made Internet Explorer a huge security risk because the ‘Internet’ was the next big thing well that bubble has burst and the only thing left was viruses, spyware and pop up windows. I think from the MS point of view they were trying to make computing easy however not everyone likes to play by the rules and criminals ruined most internet time with viruses and the like.
I tried out Vista in the store and I was not impressed but I have to give them some credit for trying. In the end I will continue to use Fedora Core and let someone else use MS products.
I’m a linux fanboy but Vista 64 Home Premium really is pretty nice. It fixed sound driver issues I had under xp (even though its the same driver it actually works under Vista 64, go figure). Everything in my Dell Dimension 5100 “just worked” and the system is FAR more responsive with my 1.5 GB RAM than it was under WinXP MCE2005. I only wish more of my software (multimedia ones particularly like divx converters etc…) was 64 bit capable. As it stands now nearly all of my software is in the x86 Program Files group (32 bit).
Tests I’ve ran under Linux64 (Ubuntu edgy eft and OpenSuse) show divx and .mp4 conversions to take the same amount of time under WinXP 32 bit so I want to try a 64 bit conversion time with Vista to see if it’s again the same or faster.
Ubuntu or Vista ? It wont matter. At the same cpu clock speed, the 64bit versions will of course run far slower than the 32bit ones. Fact of computing.
It is just that the figures look in favour of 64bits because they have a few more cycles on them.
64v32 bit is the same as this…..
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm
but for cpu instead of cameras
Although I understand where your coming from, what you are saying is an over simplification. If you want the real score, not just one sided verses the other one sided argument, check out the following
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#32_vs_64_bit
All in all, the difference between 32 and 64 bit processors, application and OSs is nothing like pixel count on cameras.
Ubuntu or Vista ? It wont matter. At the same cpu clock speed, the 64bit versions will of course run far slower than the 32bit ones. Fact of computing.
It’s not that simple, and Doom9, Anand, etc., probably have tests to show this. 64-bit native apps also get more available registers to use and less resources taken by the OS, which can lead to better performance.
“allot” is not a word but it is used 3 times in this article. Argh.
Sorry – it is. (in the uk, at least)
It means the same as allocate, e.g.”Go to your allotted positions.” “Carry on with your allotted tasks.”
There are (uk) “allotments”, patches of land rented by the year for growing vegetables on. They have been “allotted” to people.
allot
Main Entry: al·lot
Pronunciation: ə-ˈlät
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): al·lot·ted; al·lot·ting
Etymology: Middle English alotten, from Anglo-French aloter, from a- (from Latin ad-) + lot, of Germanic origin; akin to Old English hlot lot
Date: 15th century
1 : to assign as a share or portion <allot 10 minutes for the speech>
2 : to distribute by or as if by lot <allot seats to the press>
— al·lot·ter noun
merriam webster online dictionary.
It’s a word. Argh
It’s just a flesh wound!
How often do we need a review about the same os?
Can we please focus on something else please. Thank you.
How dare this guy say that “It wasn’t so bad”?
It could have been something like:
– I had to buy a new computer.
– I had to buy a new HD (over my new Computer’s one) because of Vista shreading it.
– I had to reactivate after a few days (involving two calls to the support center where I am presumed guilty of software piracy).
– I have hardware issues.
– I can play and email… so It’s not that bad.
WTF? Did a miss a part of the article where he said Microsoft sent a bunch of strippers to his home to deliver the Vista DVD? I just don’t get it!
Edited 2007-03-13 15:41
How dare this guy say that “It wasn’t so bad”?
First off, I can say what I please, thank you very much!
Secondly, If you had actually read the article without instantly jumping to conclusion you would know that I did not have to ‘buy a new computer’, I wanted to.
Nor did I have to ‘buy a new HD (over my new Computer’s one) because of Vista shreading it’, I in fact was using my old HD from my previous system which by the way was very much on it’s way out.
Now instead of trying to score points by kicking up a fuss with uninformed drivel, why don’t you write an original article and tell us all why you don’t like Vista?
OK, OK… keep your shirt on. 😀
I’m sorry about misunderstanding those few points… however if you look at my comments track record, you will see I try mostly to get a smile from readers, and this comment was no exception…. I’m sorry I didn’t get it with you. 🙁
PS If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to keep vista off my vista (sight in spanish).