"Microsoft Windows has put on a lot of weight over the years" writs Randall Stross in a recent New York Times blog entry on Windows' legacy code. "Beginning as a thin veneer for older software code," he continues, "it has become an obese monolith built on an ancient frame. Adding features, plugging security holes, fixing bugs, fixing the fixes that never worked properly, all while maintaining compatibility with older software and hardware -- is there anything Windows doesn't try to do?" Does Microsoft have the business savvy or guts to rewrite Windows?
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Member since:2007-02-17
Wow, that's harsh. I wouldn't go as far as calling Vista the Bob of the 32-bit era. There are some design decisions in Vista that I genuinely am starting to appreciate, like the revamped windows explorer. I like the look and functionality of it (it reminds a bit of Nautilus) I didn't lke the changes made to the display properties page at the beginning, but after messing around with it I like the fact that they split everything into a category, do I think they could have maybe thought through it more, sure but its not awful by any means. I like a couple of other things in Vista, which I find interesting. My issue with Vista is that for what it does have it takes away in resource usage. Its extremely heavy on system resources for very little added benefit. I'm a Linux and OSX user, between all the OS's the one with the least resource requirements and usage is Linux by a long shot. Even OSX Leopard runs like crap on a 1st gen Mac Mini with a 1GB ram upgrade. It literaly runs like crap, the UI is smooth as hell but the machine stalls out quite a bit. Leopard is not easy on resources either. I find that it runs much better when you give it enough ram. Hopefully Snow Leopard will make things better. Linux on the other hand can run fine ona 512MB machine, I can do everything from running compiz, to compiling and the machine still chugs away with the occasional stall here and there when I'm getting crazy with the resources and it has to swap ram. I can have FF open with multiple tabs, a commoan line prompt oing some stuff, a couple of Nautilus windows open in Linux and I'm barely cracking 350MB of ram total. OSX right now is actually using about 1.59GB with only Firefox 3 open, 609MB of that is actually wired and 745MB of that is active with 259MB of that being inactive, I find that atrocious considering I'm not really doing anything. Vista on the other hand does use about 745MB of ram from 1GB total but I know it usually gussles all the ram up and distributes it as it sees fit, actually most OS do that anyway so the RAM usage can be misleading in that case. OSX has the added benefit of knowing what hardware its going to run on and if its a newer machine its going to have at least 2GB of ram included by default ( I have 4GB on my MBP). However, like I pointed out OSX's UI stays smooth on older machines with generally modest graphics chipsets while Vista requires far more than is necessary for the UI trickery it does, its also rather slow on more modest grpahics chipsest such as embedded ones, which is rater disappointing considering I can run compiz with far more flair on older graphics chipsets with smooth animation and effects, Vista has issues going to Flip3d smoothly, considering the big hype they had around the UI tricks, they should have ensured that in the least the UI runs smoothly and without issue. A lot of what mkes OSX look sleek and fast is the fact the UI hardly ever stalls and the animations very rarely dip in framerate (unless you use an nvidia card, apparently the nvidia drivers suck. I have the Santa Rosa MBP so its an issue. Ati supports seems to be better becasue I think they write their own drivers then supply them to apple).
Member since:
2005-07-07
I think with Vista they ARE hitting the wall. This whole Windows Vista thing reminds me of Microsoft "Bob" back in the 16 bit era. "Bob" was essentially Microsoft's LAST 16 bit OS/UI system on DOS before putting 32 bit Win 9x on top of it instead and was a monumental BUST in the days when Microsoft was a much more entrenched monopoly dictatorship than they are now with with the assorted Linux distributiuons, the BSDS, OS/X and Sun's Solaris both closed source commercial and open around.
Vista is the "Bob" of the 32 bit era.