"After a disappointing showing by Windows Vista SP1, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (v.3244) delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS. Testing with OfficeBench showed a ~10% performance boost vs. the same configuration running under Windows XP with Service Pack 2."
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Member since:2005-07-06
The issue isn't the lack of 'big improvements' but even *little* improvements. I mean, sure, within 12 months, I don't expect Windows Vista to have a massive leap forward but when Microsoft developers have had over 12 months to tune and optimise Windows Vista - I'm asking, what the heck is happening? I'd expect at least *some* sort of improvement. The fact is, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 benchmark showed *NO* improvement. Not even a small a improvement.
Why compare it to Windows XP? One would assume that by the time Windows XP SP3 had rolled around (5 years of development plus several patches), they had optimised almost everything they could possibly optimise without causing major compatibility issues. Yet, even with all this work, they could still optimise it further.
As for UAC, I doubt it'll happen. I'd love to see Windows become a better platform. It benefits me as an end user knowing that the internet is safe from having millions of drones out there spamming. The issue is that Microsoft has no balls. When it comes to making big decisions, it appears that Apple has been the only one in the last decade who said, "f--k it, our operating system stinks to high heaven, lets break with the past and replace it with something better" - and so they did.
Here we are, after 3-4 years of initial pain and suffering, all the better for it. I'm now got a laptop which multitasks smoothly, the performance is light years ahead of when I first used Mac OS 9 with one of the first iMacs released. Yes, there was pain, there was suffering, but in the end, it was worth it. Now we see Mac OS X go from strength to strength.
Mac OS X has gone from being a cute 'joke' to being a robust UNIX '03 certified distribution with all the perks of a rock solid foundation and a beautiful GUI sitting on top.
Personally, I'd love to see Microsoft drop Windows NT, the whole damn line - adopt OpenSolaris as the core, and build upon it. They have some bloody smart people there at Microsoft, its too bad that internal politics rather than technology, make the decisions. If it were left to technology, we wouldn't have the half baked compromise that is UAC, for example.
Member since:2006-07-04
Microsoft has "no balls" because they didn't completely throw away their old OS like Apple did?
Bullhockey.
1. Microsoft already did break away from their old OS, those old OSes being Win3x and Win9x. Apple took years longer to do that, and finally proved incompetent to do it. You think it was "balls" that made Apple throw away backwards compatibility? No, it wasn't some grand vision, they would've loved to be backwards compatible, but they tried and failed. It had nothing to do with "balls".
2. Apple has 1/10th the user base that Microsoft has (and probably only 1/50th the business userbase), and so can afford to piss its userbase off.
Although do note that Apple's frequent radical platform changes have pissed its developers off, resulting in less software. Not that Apple minds much, since A. their dream is for Mac users to run only Apple software anyway; and B. Apple's most recent platform change finally, at long last, succeeded in locking the big name Mac developers into using Apple's dev tools since those tools are required to make universal binaries.
3. Microsoft has "no balls"? Good gravy, they redid the entire Office UI, which took "balls". They did what you recommend, they said "f--k it, our UI is way overburdened, let's start from scratch", so you're totally wrong to say they don't have "the balls" to make changes when needed. And those Office UI changes are making lots of people that can't stand change piss and moan. Yet now you say they should have "the balls" to piss off their users even more by, for example, building on OpenSolaris, which would buy them nothing? Office shows that Microsoft has "the balls" to make changes when needed, but that doesn't mean they should make changes for no reason at all, and NT is just fine.
Speaking of OpenSolaris, I know you're a big Solaris fan, you've pimped it many times before. But there is no evidence that Solaris (or any *nix) is superior to NT as a base on which to build.
Having said all of that, I'll just add that in my experience, XP is way faster than Panther on similar hardware. So XP also being faster than Vista says nothing wrt Vista vs OS X. It could be that XP is faster than both. If someone wants to trash Vista's speed by comparing it with XP's, that's one thing, but I now see you and others claiming that OSX would blow Vista away too. Maybe someone should do a test regarding that. And in your case, let someone do performance tests on Vista vs Solaris. 
Actually, Deviate_X did post in this thread a Vista vs OSX comparison running on the exact same hardware.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=18965&comment_id=286451
But Vista "won", so the comparison was dismissed. Seems people only approve of comparisons with results that jive with their preconceived notions.
Let Steve Jobs do his famous Photoshop benchmarks (the ones that "proved" every year that PPC processors blew away Intel processors (yeah, right)) with Vista and Leopard.
Edited 2007-11-24 17:34
Member since:2006-04-05
-1 (discussion-wise, evidently not mod points)
(Open)Solaris is optimized for throughput, not latency. It's a great kernel, but still needs to go a long way to really fulfil the requirements of a desktop OS.
+1.
Member since:
2006-09-15
Do take into account L that MS had to scratch their intial code base for Vista and start again mid stream during that 5 year period.
Vista mightn't be all that great but it's an improvement on XP and has one feature that makes it a great improvement, decent account management along the lines of OS-X and Linux. I can now have my users configed as users and an Admin Account and have decent priveledge escallation that I have taken forgranted in all Unix based OS's. This is a great step forward on the Windows Desktop that will help administrators.
XP only has "run as" as an option if you right click the program you want to run or you have to make a shortcut to any installer to get the "run as" dialogue to then install software as an administrator. This has been a real pain in the ass for those of us administering locked down systems.
If you are someone who doesn't give a toss about OS security and don't care about the issues that running full time as an administrator brings, then XP would be fine for you, but in the real world....
Remember this isn't UAC that I'm talking about but actually telling Vista to have users with user priveledges and then having a proper Admin account for system management that isn't logged into.
UAC is MS being a timid POS company in enforcing what is needed in Windows for proper, secure user management. Hopefully, MS will grow the balls to piss of UAC and have proper secure user management in Win2008