Microsoft has delayed a special slimmed-down version of Windows XP for legacy PCs, which is based on the Windows Embedded code base. The Redmond company had expected to make the operating system available to Software Assurance customers this month, but now says Windows Fundamentals will ship 'in late 2006.' Windows Fundamentals can run on older machines that do not support XP while providing the same level of security.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-06-29
"This is just silly and this is why gamers play games and not design operating systems."
I'm also very much into programming, you never know what I'll be doing in a few years :-) .
Oh, and I'm hardly a gamer. I suck at games but I still play them for fun on occasion. I also get good grades in school and I'm doing a fine job of learning how to program independently with nothing more than books. The reason I want a stripped down version of Windows for gaming only is because I can use Linux for everything else, I could get Cadega but that takes a while to become compatible with games and doesn't always get there with some.
"your game get's 100% of the cpu if it's the only thing contending for the cpu"
The other guy replying mentioned the pre-emptive multi-tasking taking away processor time, and I doubt many people use Windows without a firewall and Anti-virus software. I for one don't trust it that much.
"If your system is fast enough to run XP at an acceptable pace your system will not benefit a lick from being "slimmed down""
That only deals with one point, the others being that it would be much more affordable, it would need much fewer Windows updates, it would take a few minutes to install and it would take a fraction of the maintenance. It would also be advantageous to Microsoft since I've met my share of real gamers (or at least far more into gaming than I) who did pirate Windows because they thought the 200$+ CAD price tag for something they only see when starting up or shutting down their computer was too much to pay. If those people could get Windows stripped down to being no more than a game launcher for 25 to 50$ CAD they'd be much more likely to pay for it, and if they still pirated it at least it would only be a stripped down Windows XP that's useless beyond the scope of gaming.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2005-07-08
This is just silly and this is why gamers play games and not design operating systems. If you had a properly designed OS then "stripping it down" wouldn't be necessary.
While it may sound stupid at first, your game get's 100% of the cpu if it's the only thing contending for the cpu. Unless something is processing in the background(anti virus, defrag, whatever), every single app on the desktop should be on the wait queue waiting for input(mouse over, mouse click, etc) before it ever even gets an oportunity to use any CPU time ever again.
The other thing that happens is any memory other apps are using is swapped out to the disk and into the swap file where it waits until the program requests that memory again, hence your game should get as much memory as is available to the system. This is of course assumes that haven't done something brilliant like disable the swap file. Unfortunately Windows does a crappy job of managing memory and it's vm system seems(I have no scientific proof) a bit slower than the linux vm system. You could in theory have 80 thousand firefox windows open using 99.9% of all your memory in windows and the only affect it would have on a game is it would take some extra time to copy the memory firefox is using onto the disk and back when the game is done.
If your system is fast enough to run XP at an acceptable pace your system will not benefit a lick from being "slimmed down"