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Well, those performance and stability issues were not present in XP, so at best you could say Vista was a step backward when it was first released. It's pretty safe to say that they released it before it was ready.

I think I've seen 1 or 2 BSOD's in the 6+ years I've been using XP. As long as your drivers and hardware were good, it just didn't happen enough to even comment on.

Edited 2009-01-12 01:56 UTC

I think its safe to say the same with Vista as far as BSOD's, I only had a handful of blue screens with vista, some related to faulty ram timings, some related to creatives drivers, but went away completely when they were fixed. I know people who have had no issues, know people who have had many, and same boat with XP. Everyones experience is unique.

Well, those performance and stability issues were not present in XP, so at best you could say Vista was a step backward when it was first released. It's pretty safe to say that they released it before it was ready. I think I've seen 1 or 2 BSOD's in the 6+ years I've been using XP. As long as your drivers and hardware were good, it just didn't happen enough to even comment on. "

Windows XP RTM also sucked hard. XP didn't become half decent until SP1, and it wasn't until SP2 that it really came into it's own.

But, now you always get SP-1 ... so Vista BSODs are pretty much gone ... and actually, i never got them pre-sp1. So, not everyone experienced it as a "step back"

Edited 2009-01-13 16:51 UTC

I think you need to look a little further than the confines of your own home, and your own country. I'm talking about the total energy costs of computing generally to a society. That includes businesses and institutions and the giant server farms run by the likes of Google. The amount of energy used by IT is enormous (add in indirect costs, like cooling and air conditioning) and governments are starting to turn their eye to it. In the EU, for example, there is already a determined attempt to reduce energy consumption of electronics via legislation. If you think this isn't going to become a big issue all over the place, you are in for a surprise. Since Microsoft is the prevalent provider of operating systems they are right in the firing line.

Secondly, I was not referring to the stability of Vista. FWIW, I run Vista64 and it is perfectly stable, if rather clunky. I was thinking more of Vista's appeal to corporates and institutions and of its hardware requirements (as was, on release), compared to XP. Even the most rabid fan of Microsoft must admit things here do not seem to have gone exactly according to plan.

Edited 2009-01-12 05:44 UTC

As opposed to having massive libraries of printed books on dead trees, many copies, with all the distribution costs (energy wise) and using transportation again and again (cars or public) to get to those resources ?

Reducing energy consumption is important, so are some proportions.

Now for power consumption, yes large server farms do use a lot of power, but they pale in comparison to other things. If we say that on average, the (very) roughly billion people in the world use 200W of power continuously per person on computers, that will total 200 gigawatts or 0.2 terawatts. Given that the total world consumption of power 16 terawatts*, that would mean that computers consume just over 1% of the world's energy. Yes it would be nice to reduce that but hey, in the big picture, it doesn't really matter. Airplanes, for example use well over twice that.

*Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

"I was thinking more of Vista's appeal to corporates and institutions and of its hardware requirements (as was, on release), compared to XP. Even the most rabid fan of Microsoft must admit things here do not seem to have gone exactly according to plan."

OK, that makes more sense to me. But then even the hardware requirements aren't too bad; any desktop computer made in the last 3 years should run Vista reasonably. I'd have to agree that Vista is indeed clunky. Some of those dialogs it displays are a total mess and disaster from a UI standpoint, and that's just one of its flaws. But then, nothing is perfect (not that I'm saying that better things aren't out there because they are).

Personally I think any power consumption over 50W is excessive. Video cards in particular are shockers.

Why can't we buy a powerful 2D multimedia video card that only uses 20 watts for under $100? Most people aren't gamers but many of us want smooth blu-ray playback and fast video encoding without needing a quad core $500 CPU.

Good point on the power hog modern GPUs. Those things are ridiculous. Okay, I admit, although I'm not a gamer I do like to have high-performance stuff. That includes a high-quality GPU.

But come on; they went from weak but efficient, to more powerful and requiring a bit more power, to even more power and requiring their own fan(s), to even MORE power and requiring their own power supply cable, to the (IMO) completely unnecessary "SLI" (two power-hungry video cards with unnecessarily high power). Who knows what additional power/temperature requirements are on today's cards.

I'd just like to *have* that extra horsepower when I want it (which is rarely). But most of the time I just want it to run nice and cool and not waste power doing basically nothing (ie., displaying the same static image or watching a video). I don't like integrated-anything (included graphics), so that's completely out of the picture for me. Other than GPUs, I can't think of a single other piece of hardware that I absolutely despise for their inefficiency.

Even the processor (as innefficient as the x86 is) at least has been gaining efficiency modes.

A Radeon 4350 does HD playback and has a price tag of 30€ (Germany). Okay, it needs 25 Watts but it's pretty close to what you want.

Back to topic:
Vista may run ok on new Hardware, but it broke compatibility with a lot of old apps AND with a lot of old Hardware. Both of which is bad for the corporate guys. They wouldn't throw out perfectly good stuff just because an OS update requires it!

OTOH, Vista didn't break compatibility enough to finally get rid of all those old design flaws. Most of which date back to NT, 95 or even Mess-Dos...

If you run a ac then the power consumption for your computer just doubled. because most energy in the pc transfers to heat which means that your ac has to work harder to remove that heat.

I don't think that is completely true at all, although I can see how you might come to that conclusion.

The way we use AC in our Boston suburb home is to set the cooling temp high around 80f, the AC is only really removing the humidity and after that, the 80f dry air is quite tolerable. The AC only has to work a fraction of the level I think it would otherwise if set to 65f chill. Our summer electric bill is quite modest. The PCs may be pushing up the room temps a bit but spread over the house, no big deal. If you set the AC temp to 60+ then of course all the added heat would have to be pumped out as well and the AC would be working much harder. I bet work offices though have it much worse as they usually set the dial pretty low.

I would urge folks to get a power meter (about $20 or so) to get a handle on what their true energy costs really are. My workstation is 140W, 21" CRT 140W, 24" LCD 40W and so on. It is clear the replacement of CRT with LCD is the best 1st move but I'm waiting for this last CRT to die off. After that replacing the 90um P4 and GPU with a 45nm equivalents will surely drop to half again.

Of course if you own a large Plasma or LCD TV with multimedia gear or drive a large vehicle those are far worse excesses.

Now it is also well known in the industry that since PCs went from 80s ownership levels to current levels, electric utilities have seen a large spike in usage (about +20% IIRC), but that should go down with newer PC units and with crossover use of laptops, only to get replaced by large digital TV units.