Jeff Atwood explains why Vista uses so much memory. "You have to stop thinking of system memory as a resource and start thinking of it as a a cache. Just like the level 1 and level 2 cache on your CPU, system memory is yet another type of high-speed cache that sits between your computer and the disk drive. And the most important rule of cache design is that empty cache memory is wasted cache memory. Empty cache isn't doing you any good. It's expensive, high-speed memory sucking down power for zero benefit. The primary mission in the life of every cache is to populate itself as quickly as possible with the data that's most likely to be needed - and to consistently deliver a high 'hit rate' of needed data retrieved from the cache."
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Member since:2005-07-27
"Windows checks to see what it can use. It uses what it has available to it, but uses it in such a way that it can be immediately vacated for any user-initiated processes. What's wrong with that?"
If you have a system with 512Mb of RAM and Vista takes all of it (which it seems as though it would)... what wrong with that? Sheesh... to think we neven NEED to have THAT much memory in computers these days! Ah, the days when *512K* was sufficient...
"Back when we only needed to run one task at a time?"
It was never 'we only NEEDED to run one task at a time'. It's that TOS/GEM was only capable of that because of the way it was written. Afterall, do recall the Amiga was a *multitasking* computer, so the 80's were not just 'the single-tasking era'. It was all to do with the OS at the time.
"I kind of miss the days when I could type in LOAD "*",8,1, then go make lunch and finish it before my program had loaded."
Was that with or without the Epyx FastLoad cartridge? :-D But, seriously, as slow as computers were back then (the Apple II's totally blew the C64 away, in disk load speed... we had both, in classes at Passadena High School), they were more fun to use and technology was EXCITING back then! From 1MHz to 4.77Mhz. From 8Mhz to 16MHz, etc. When demos would push hardware to levels you never imagined, when voice synthesis was amazing on a C64, etc.
How things have changed... and gotten slower and sloppier, all the while. :-(
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2007-02-22
Your attacks don't merit answers, but on your technical comments...
I don't care WHAT people say. Any OS that eats up 512MB for *ANY* reason, is a steaming pile of Brie.
Windows checks to see what it can use. It uses what it has available to it, but uses it in such a way that it can be immediately vacated for any user-initiated processes. What's wrong with that?
Remember the days when an OS could fit into ROM? You know, like the Atari ST?
Back when we only needed to run one task at a time?
When "TIGHT" and "FAST" were the norm.
I kind of miss the days when I could type in LOAD "*",8,1, then go make lunch and finish it before my program had loaded.
I dare anyone to write an even fairly modern OS (basic functionalities expected today) that can fit in 192K (or even up to 512K) of ROM nowadays.
See MINIX, Wheels, Windows CE (if you take out any unneeded options in your compile) and others. I'd mention open-source projects, but the size of open-source projects increases exponentially with the number of people who think they are the most important person working on it.
Closest I've seen, recently, is RISC OS (it's in ROM at least. Maybe not 192K, but...). I think SkyOS or Minix 3 could possibly come in 2nd.
As awesome as SkyOS is, I don't think it's quite a mini-OS. SkyOS's kernel includes several complex, code-heavy options, and it's a 32-bit operating system, requiring the attendant code size and memory.