InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy has been using a converted Windows Server 2008 as his primary OS since hitting a wall using Vista as a Visual Studio development platform four weeks ago. According to Kennedy, the guerrilla 'Workstation' 2008 OS has turned his Dell notebook into a well-oiled machine that never gets sluggish and rarely needs to reboot. Those interested in making the switch should check out win2008workstation.com, a clearinghouse for 'Workstation' 2008 tips and techniques. Kennedy also offers a link to a Windows 2008 Workstation Converter utility for quick conversion.
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Member since:2005-07-06
granted... you can to a tad more than me...
Member since:2005-07-09
BeOS is definitely faster but because I am running pretty decent hardware I have a feeling that could possibly negate it? 
But all kidding aside, I have heard legendary things about BeOS and have never really bothered doing much research about it. When you say BeOS you mean Haiku right?
Member since:2008-06-17
I bet you're right. On my computer, 32-bit XP SP3 is a little bit faster than Server 2008 x64, even though the 64-bit version can take advantage of the 4GBs of RAM. Of course that's not a great match up for guessing the difference between XP 64 and 2008 64 unless there's a handy conversion between XP and XP64 performance . Also 2008 is running a fair amount of junk (debug versions of DX, terminal services to allow VS debugging, assorted other junk at startup) and the XP is pretty minimal and nLited, being used only for running games (without StarForce though).
So it might not be too surprising that my XP is faster. That said, it isn't *much* faster, less than 100 points in 3DMark 06 (and Vantage would only run on 2008, obviously, though I haven't tried it), and 2% or less average FPS in most games. If you consider 2008 to be Vista without the annoyances, I think the advantages of 2008 make up for the slight performance drop, and if you add in the handful of games where 2008 is faster and the even smaller handful where DX10 can or must be used, I think it's a better choice (if you have both available and aren't going just for raw numbers). Plus Vista 64-bit drivers seem to be pretty easy to find nowadays, which I gather isn't always the case with XP64 drivers. Really the only reason I keep XP around is because GameTap isn't 64-bit compatible and because GRAW 2 has problems with 2008 (on my computer -- I should really try reinstalling it and using a new profile to make sure it doesn't have some leftover settings that are messing it up).
Member since:
2005-07-09
and it is highly nLited with SP2 and some post SP2 updates slipstreamed into it. And I have a sneaky suspicion that even windows server 2008 wont be able to be as responsive as my setup. Just my 2 cents. I also agree with the poster who mentioned the price to performance for this OS. Its laughable really..