“At its recent WWDC, Apple sought to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder by releasing just enough details of its next OS, Leopard, to make an early comparison to the forthcoming Windows Vista possible. Staying true to form, then. More here. Also, Vista’s dual Mode support allows resistive devices, such as touch screens and electromagnetic devices, to work with any computer that uses a digital tablet. Finally, Vista has already hit the pirate boards, along with an activation hack.
Vista vs. Leopard; Tablet Tech, Cracking on Vista
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I am now writing this on windows vista final Build 6000, and I can tell you, that It’s as slow as a bull dog.
The system I used for testing was P4@3 Ghz and 1GB Ram dual channel, and Raptor 10,000rpm WD HDD and a Gigabit ethernet and a Gigabit switch.
Transfering Starwars Attack of the clones 1080p 11GB file with .ts extension was slower than even fedora 5 which scored 13Mb/s while vista transfered it with 5MB/s
Playing the file consumed 30% of CPU just for the video while audio codecs were not installed; Graphics Card was GF 6600GT which is good enough.
Scores of PC:
Total: 4.2
CPU:4.2
RAM:4.5
3D:5.6
2D:4.7
HDD:5.9
Playing chess titan resulted in a popup window to tell me to switch the graphics engine to more basic mode to overcome congestion. Playing mp3 file with visualization produced 12% average.
5 seconds you have to wait for a blank window till User Account Control pops the window which will ask you for the permission to execute a program and another 5 seconds to understand your reply!
RAM usage was at 460 MB without any window open!!!and peaked to 74% usage on 1GB with 4 windows native applications open!!!
Playing chess titan + watching movie on the background + transfering many GB files over LAN produced CPU at 100%!! untill I switched to basic theme, which reduced it to 70%!!
Network usage and HDD usage was not smooth and continous but rather dome shaped on “permon.exe /res”; unlike in fedora or ubuntu or OSX 10.4.6!!!
windows and popup messages got corrupted, teared and jagged after changing dpi of screen to support 110 value because I have a high resolution monitor 1920×1200!
Sound get interferances from just moving the mouse or scrolling a window all obtained from a highly sensitive headphones, unfullfilling Vista Audio Team promise to solve it!
windows media video gets brief stops while palying video files even with low CPU!!
Windows PID I tested carried PID or 236 and I choosed ultimate version during the installation steps.
There are many many more things to report but It’s enough for now; I cannot believe what MS did for vista, they should have taken more time to mature this product before releasing it! OSX cannot be compared with vista because each version or subversion just adds more performance and features, while windows degrade them! Sad.
I have the following system:
os[Linux 2.6.18.2-petnython i686] distro[Debian testing/unstable] cpu[1 x AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+ @ 2.20GHz] mem[Physical : 1010MB, 79.3% free] disk[Total : 146.99GB, 88.00% Free] video[nVidia Corporation NV36.2 [GeForce FX 5700]] sound[]
Vista is indeed dog slow.OSX leopard is a far better OS than Vista.
looks like you have bad quality hardware or drivers because i can tell the opposite experience – playing MPEG4 AVC movie only consumed 5-10% of cpu (mobile core duo @ 1.66Ghz) and nothing was slow or sluggish.
so either you are trying to spread fud or you are incompetent in configuring windows. i would guess the latter.
looks like you have bad quality hardware or drivers because i can tell the opposite experience
Hardware that, presumably, worked very well under XP and works well under other operating systems as well? And suddenly it’s bad quality when you run Vista? Wow.
Pull the other one.
playing MPEG4 AVC movie only consumed 5-10% of cpu (mobile core duo @ 1.66Ghz) and nothing was slow or sluggish.
Good for you, but that is pretty meaningless. It’s become pretty clear reading around on other sites that people are having a fair bit of trouble running Vista smoothly where they had no trouble with XP before.
so either you are trying to spread fud or you are incompetent in configuring windows.
Firstly, look up the definition of FUD. It doesn’t apply here. Secondly, what exactly is there to configure?
Well, actually I’ve been running Vista RTM since yesterday on a virtual machine using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Beta with hardware Virtualization and it works like a charm! Even though i only allocated 384 Megs of RAM to it! Sure, Aero isn’t activated (how could you using a VM), but all the “basic” stuff like IE, Firefox, mailing, ICQ, works how it’s supposed to! Booting is a bit slow, though.
I can’t give you detailed Performance scores for this Setup, because after installing the VM Additions, the Performance Wizard always crashes, giving the message that some driver doesnt work well with it.
My Rig is an Asus A8JP Notebook, Core2 Duo 2.0 Ghz with 1GB of RAM (however, only 384 for vista in the VM) and a 5400rpm SATA Drive.
Edited 2006-11-12 12:25
An AMD 64 3000 actually runs at 1.6 GHz, comparable to each of the two 1.66 GHz cores in your system. So you may be comparing apples to apples but in this case his one apple to your two. No wonder your system is faster.
so either you are trying to spread fud or you are incompetent in configuring windows. i would guess the latter.
Your ASSessement shows that you aren’t conducting yourself seriously, merely taking yourself seriously and apparently with no sound basis for doing so.
Hmmm, weird, Vista runs just fine on my two machines. A laptop with a 1.73Ghz Pentium M, 512MB DDR2 RAM, and an Ati Radeon x300 with 128 MB of dedicated RAM; and also my aging desktop machine with an AMD Athlon 1600+, 512MB RAM, and an Ati Radeon 9000 with 128MB RAM.
So yeah, I declare FUD on your post.
“Hmmm, weird, Vista runs just fine on my two machines.”
There is nothing weired here but your post. I didn’t say that vista will not work fine; but I said it will not tolerate a vigorous test exerted on it, like the one I did by showing how it chocked under 4 very heavy tasks.
Alot of posters here would popup to say but my vista installation is OK (on more faster systems than I used).
Well, then they did 3 mistakes:
1.They expect me to get same results of performance out of an older system as their, when their hardware are newer.
2. They just talk about testing with so simple methods and without pushing their systems to the limit. (Like: I can email my friend, browse the internet fine and play my mp3 files, and copy 2MB file all at once)[pentium II can do that]
3. They fail to monitor their workstation with performance monitors and Task manager after tweaking it to show every aspect of vista asphyxia while on the test. (eg they fail to show how vista is inefficient than linux while transfering single file with 11GB size over a gigabit ethernet; or how HDD read/write I/O operations/s activity goes while running P2P networking application like Azurues with 30 concurrent opened operations and 40 on que; or maybe watching 1080i/p wmvhd movie or .movhd or .ts files with at least 16000kbps audio+video combined bit rate and watch how HDD scheduler fails to guarantte the resources for it unlike what MS promised of resource management improvements.
I wish people here to post what they encounter and tell us about what kind of vigorous testing they exposed vista and other OSs on the same hardware, then we might believe them that they are not naive or ms supporters.
Thanks, and forgive us!
I declare disagreement 8)
I doubt such bad results on a nice machine but I would not go as far as declaring F.U.D. .
There have been enough posts on the net saying that performance CAN be surprisingly bad – so there there must be some validity to it .
Is there an all encompassing mega test out there – Vista on all kinds of hardware ?
There was the test last week or so with 3 df systems – concluding 512MB RAM as certain minimum & quite mixed results with Vista seemingly less scaling to the hardware but somehow picky in its performance .
And there is Thurrot’s review .. but hes just a third done .
EDIT :
Reading people’s comments about pirated versions & cracking I again remember reading that most (60+%) computers are sold to businesses – & I doubt they will run pirated software .
Edited 2006-11-12 14:01
Well, take a look at Vista system requirements. And see the reviews of Vista. It _does_ have issues with being bloated codewise. Since your system is different from the original poster, you cannot call FUD. You could do that _IF_ you had the exact same system.
BTW: I doubt you are using Aero on your “aged” system
EDIT: Fixed a typo
Edited 2006-11-12 14:19
BTW: I doubt you are using Aero on your “aged” system
Long live the registry and hacks for it. Yes, I had Aero.
Well, take a look at Vista system requirements. And see the reviews of Vista. It _does_ have issues with being bloated codewise.
I prefer to stick with what respected reviewers and websites have to say (besides my own experiences): Ars for instance. Yes, Vista is heavier on resources than XP was (duh) but not NEARLY as bad as some of the anti-MS folk try to make us believe.
Long live the registry and hacks for it. Yes, I had Aero.
You’re right about that – except I don’t like the way it is used – but that’s a different thing.
Yes, Vista is heavier on resources than XP was (duh) but not NEARLY as bad as some of the anti-MS folk try to make us believe.
There is no particular reason why Vista should be havier on resources. Considering the amount low level work a lower resource usage could (and should) have been expected.
I don’t think the original poster belongs to the anti-MS group. Besides that “anti-MS group” is pretty much undefined. One could be against MS due to many reasons. It could be from a technological POW, or from a ethical POW or from a license-related POW. There are some good things in Vista (like ditching .dbox for .eml – a wonderful choice, and very logical), and some very bad things (that’ll be the resource usage – something I care a lot about – license policy is secondary).
I declare FUD to your post too.
Please also declare FUD to my post.
Thank you.
It might be upgrading. Did you do a clean install, and did he upgrade? Ars says it makes a huge difference, though no-one seems to be sure quite why.
Sorry, not buying your post at all. I’m running Vista on 3 machines here and I’m not seeing any of the results that you’re claiming. Perf is good. Based on the fact that you’re touting OS X, I can only assume that you’re spreading FUD.
“Sorry, not buying your post at all. I’m running Vista on 3 machines here and I’m not seeing any of the results that you’re claiming. Perf is good. Based on the fact that you’re touting OS X, I can only assume that you’re spreading FUD.”
Why does the cult keep modding this down:
“Sorry, not buying your post at all. I’m running Vista on 3 machines here and I’m not seeing any of the results that you’re claiming. Perf is good. Based on the fact that you’re touting OS X, I can only assume that you’re spreading FUD.”
the ‘cult’ is probably modding-down the fact that this guy is calling the original poster a liar, by claiming that they are spreading FUD. That can be classed as a personal attack.
Why does your denial of any performance issues in Vista not surprise me?
BTW. This is why you get modded down:
“the Firefox trainwreck destorys us all..”
“OSS fanatics are like Russians during the cold war”
“makes us feel like westerners visiting Eastern Europe during the cold war”
“I think you should pull your head out of your *ss. ”
“the insane to indulge in their anti-Microsoft conspiracy theories”
“Lying is a bad way to start an article.”
“GPLv3 wants to recreate dll hell.”
“stole its IP”
“Linux has zero chance of catching Windows.”
“Linux is way more bloated.” [than Vista] hahaha -ed.
“Are all OSS fanatics this cheap? ”
“Java is a con game”
“Security by design? Linux? OSS? I laugh!”
“Of course OSS stole IP. Thats what they do! ”
“What a load of bull you are spewing.”
“Nah nah nah nah … nah nah nah na”
“25,000 bounty to the family of suicide bombers for killing lots of jews.”
“OSS lie … Debian’s been cracked.”
“making stuff up to cover up incompetence”
“OSS fanatics” “OSS crybabies” “Linux fanatcis” “cultists” “cults” “cult” “cult” “unethical” “hypocracy” “cultists” “Communist” “cultists are all hypocrites” “excommunicated” “cultists” “cult” “cultists” “cultist” “cultists” “slavery” “mentally ill” “Slavery” “cultist” “cultist” “cultists” “cult” “cult” “nutbar cult” “cult” “cult” “cult” “cultist” “cult” “cult members”
“You cultists are a laugh!”
“Stop behaving like a cult”
“tiny little heads of OSS fanatics explode.”
“Firefox is old and tired and full of security holes.”
“they stole the Mosaic code”
“Picking a distro is a crap shoot.”
“Firefox is a sieve.”
“another bullsh*t myth”
“open source is thievery. ”
“How long have you lived on Fantasy Island?”
“OSS is just a loony cult.”
“excommunicated” “excommunicated” “excommunicated for dealing with the Devil”
“You really know nothing”
“ignorant anti-Microsft FUD”
And I did try RC2 in a Virtual Machine and it wasn’t too bad at performance (given the environment it was running), but then again, about all I could run was some ball game.
It’s the P4, it sucks, I’ve experienced the same on a friend’s P4 machine, 2.4Ghz w/o HT. Vista runs fine on my 1.6ghz Centrino.
Your high def video CPU usage sounds normal… A lot of machine can’t play video at that quality, with any OS.
Sounds like an exaggeration. I bet Vista is a bit slow, but your use of exclamation marks make it sound slower than it is.
On a different note, i don’t care for Vista because it still uses the same windows UI and guidelines. And Leopard will rock, hard
I guess not many people will know what hit them.
about this article is it’s just thinly veiled Mac propaganda. How many times are they going to refer to a feature in Vista as “planned”. They make it seem like Leopard is the OS that just went gold and Vista was still in Alpha.
It’s just more of that “who knows what MS is going to cut” writing that we’ve seen from Windows bashers for the last three years.
Vista went gold a few days ago so it’s time to stop all the BS about it being slow, taking too long to develop, the system requirements being super high (so people need to buy new machines), or that more features might cut. Now, that Vista is actually here we know that stuff is either not true or it doesn’t matter (in the case of how long it took to develop).
So many sites used Vista negativity to up their ad revenue so what will they do now. I wonder how long it will take the Mac, Linux and Windows press to start getting back to writing honest and insightful articles instead of the crap linked to here.
“They make it seem like Leopard is the OS that just went gold and Vista was still in Alpha.”
Mac OS is a mature operating system now, Vista is new, untested, and by the looks of it, not greatly optimized. OS X.0 was an absolute dog, it reminds me a lot of how Vista is now, and it took five revisions before Apple got it into a mature state.
Leopard might not be out, to compare with Vista, but Mac users still have Tiger, which is already as good as Vista. There is much to look forward to with Leopard.
“The worst thing about this article is it’s just thinly veiled Mac propaganda.”
I beg to disagree, if anything this article throws FUD about the Mac OS, particularly evident in this excerpt:
“Which brings us to stability issues. Although XP is considered to be the most stable version of Windows yet, Apple has been in the news recently after a number of its customers found their MacBooks were inexplicably crashing.
No mention about it being a hardware/firmware problem with some machines (processor temperature sensor incorrect readings causing the firmware to initiate a forced shutdown), NOT an “OS stability problem” like the article claims.
(Typing this from a MacBook which never had any issues, btw.)
“”So many sites used Vista negativity to up their ad revenue so what will they do now. I wonder how long it will take the Mac, Linux and Windows press to start getting back to writing honest and insightful articles instead of the crap linked to here.”””
Honest and insightful? looks as long as you mention OSs…. you’ll never get honesty! its a lot like politics!!!!!
Hmmmm .. interesting observation above reg Vista performance .
You have to back that up with proper test data for me to believe you – assuming the system is configured properly .
Sorry for doubting your post – but if your 3GHz 10000rpm disk system with nice graphics is struggling on multitasking then – well .. Vista will be a one task at a time OS .. hmmmm .
& I agree with ashan’s comment on exclamation marks .
Good for Linux & Mac – but poor Vista users if that is true .
BTW has anyone build a system which gets 10 in all Windows performance categories ? – Is it even possible
?
& I just have to moan about those arrogant Linux posters in the comments section on APC – Linux is an alternative not the ‘holy enlightenment’ some may want it to be .
Office already pirated … maybe they will introduce extra measures in the future .
Allover the Mac – Vista comparision was with little content – vague & unspecific IMO .
Mmmh yeah come back proper articles .
EDIT : Observation : Comments which prove Vista to be slow get modded up
Edited 2006-11-12 11:41
BTW has anyone build a system which gets 10 in all Windows performance categories ? – Is it even possible
?
Not yet, I believe. If I understand it, in a coupl’a years, there will be hardware with 10 values, but not yet. I think that 7 hardware is planned for next year.
You must wait for the first indexing to be completed.
Only after that you can infer the real performance of VIsta.
So you claim the indexing in Windows is so primitive you cannot use the system while indexing is running in the background?
I doubt the indexing service in Vista requires more resources than the indexing service in earlier versions. If the indexing service can be felt, it is simply configured incorrectly.
So: The indexing cannot possibly be the reason.
Indexing runs with the lowest possible priority.
MS probably left this loophole intentionally (I mean, it is enough to just replace a file? Where’s hash checking, ABI incompatibility for old dll version etc?).
Only a naive person would think this is an accident. MS wants people to get used to Vista which will only accelerate it’s adoption, and later (after RC2 testing period expires in 6 months) lock the OS and allow user only to input their credit card number to purchase legit serial and continue using it (by that time, however, I believe people will find a way to completely get rid of activation crap).
The cost for not allowing people to use pirate version is:
a) Windows XP stays mainstream
b) Other operating systems (OSX and Linux) getting new users.
I don’t see anything wrong using the RC2 key (which IS time-limited) for the RTM version… until my RC2 Key expires I can go and get myself a legit version of Vista
I think it really somehow helps adoption if you’re actually able to work with the final product for a few weeks before going out to buy it… it did change my opinion on vista… so maybe this really isn’t an incident at all, maybe MS wants people to get to know the Final better after all that RC/Beta bashing in the media.
However, for me Vista doesn’t feel like Windows anymore… it somehow feels more like a mix of XP and Linux/OSX
RC2 keys do not work with the RTM version.
Has actually opened my eyes some. Running on a Sempron 3000+ socket 754 shuttle, 160 gig ata 133 drive, dlink wireless g, and a radeon 9550… oh and 1 gig ram..
Window movements are pretty snappy, full aero, the only thing that wasn’t initially installed was the nforce 250 audio which was found on an auto update. I can’t believe how fast it shuts off, 3 seconds and about 7 to boot after bios. This comp has had many distro’s on it as its my extra little testing box. Linux has always felt like its in alpha stages, I have to use the command line way too much in ubuntu, drivers for my radeon and dlink card are pitiful. The user index on this machine is 3.3.
I’m not a huge fan of windows after all I’ve been supporting pebcaks since it was released but this seems easy.. fast.. A week ago I didn’t think anything of Vista because the Beta 2 was such crap, but this is pretty nice and polished.
just my 0.02.
First, I must ensure the reader of my posts that they are aware of my biased against MS and Windows, in general.
I started life in the IBM PC/8086 PC1 ( 8″ floppies, no HDD, MS CPM/80). From there I went on to the Tandy some years later, not finding much in any other technologies being sold as used equipment (so I could afford it, I was about 12 and using my lawn mowing money).
From the Tandy, I learned to build PCs, and ended up with OS/2 thanks to the local computer shop’s owner. From within OS/2, I went to BeOS, only ever flirting with MS offerings, though not really on purpose, just happened. I have, however, used ( in the truest form ) every version of Windows from 2.1 IM (Interface Manager) to Windows Vista RC2 ( haven’t received my FREE gold copy yet, an advantage still somewhat left from working at a large PC OEM a year or so ago).
I have tested Windows Vista on a dizzying array of machines. Mostly, the performance on any given machine was just barely acceptable, but the machines were a bit older, so I decided to throw it on a really fast machine to see if it could make up for anything in usability. While Vista was usable on all machine, yet unacceptably unstable for a such an ultra-high-maintenance Desktop OS, but I disregarded the stability and about .. say.. 10% of the performance issues while testing, simply because it was RC2, and not Gold.
;; The times below for boot are from boot loader, to welcome screen!
Login is from pressing enter to JUST being able to get the Vista menu to open with the mouse… ONCE.
Machine #1
: Athlon XP 2000+, 768 MB.400mhz DDR, Radeon 9800 Pro 128, AGP 8x, Crystal SF + onboard, RTL8139C network + VIA Gigabit (Rhine), 2×120 GB ATA133, 8MB buffered ea@7200RPM.
Vista Performance Rating: 1.0 (on RC2, Gold will be >)
Boot time: ~85-120 seconds ( odd result, see below )
Log-in time: 31-90 seconds
Performance on the above machine was abysmal! Oddly enough, the machine is now running Serenity ( Dano/Haiku-OS hybrid ) and Fedora Core 6 (with all of the X.org and XGL goodness) and startup times are 6 (yes, six) seconds, and 48 seconds respectively ( always, never changes except by about 1/2 second on Serenity in the event of an FS-check or pre-sync from any undone journal tasks.
Also, Serenity is a hardware-specific setup, ATM, only working on this machine (drivers have been limited to ONLY what I have, as I want to change some things about Haiku’s driver loading.. but not sure how to go about it
). As such, 6 seconds should be viewed as the fastest any modern graphical OS could ever start. Also, 6 seconds is just to when the app_server (graphics and application engine) has completely started and handled the loading of ONE app during the boot sequence. This is timed from Stage 1 boot loader, which is called from the boot manager, directly.
I only have FC6 for going to YouTube and showing off some 3dDesktop eye candy 🙂
Vista was unable to Run Aero with any sort of acceptable performance, but that was ATI’s fault, not MS’s that I could tell ( ATI Vista video drivers would not install on Vista… heh ).
I gave up on Vista until I had a customer’s machine with a failed HDD come in, and they wanted the latest software, AND the previous software. So, I dual-booted the system after replacing the HDD and recovering the data from the old by modifying the PCB’s voltage to motor.
So, I installed Vista….
and this… is where things got weird:
Machine #2
Intel Celeron 1.7, 512 MB DDR 333, 80 GB ide 7200, Geforce4 something or other (on-board).
Vista Performance Rating: 1.5 (uh… wha?)
Boot Time: 35-40 seconds ( nice.. but how?? )
Login Time: 5-7 seconds ( actually decent )
Aero worked flawlessly, and everything just seemed to work quickly! I mean.. FASTER than XP, which took under about a minute to load on the same machine (and that is with years of usage silt + MS’s code silt, so to be expected for this case).
Only problem I had here was trying to figure out why the same imaged software install ( Vista is ALWAYS imaged, then post-configured, which is still stupid, but better than it was ) performed better on older, slower hardware, then the CONSIDERABLY faster Athlon system.
My only idea was try it on some more machines( I have about 15 customer machines here weekly, and 6 of my own ), so the next test…
I installed Vista RC2, by itself, on Machine # 3 (below) machine and started becoming a little suspicious of some possible anti-AMD or anti-ATI work by MS in Vista, or maybe related bugs in the RC1/2 vers.
Thankfully, though, this time I have the gold Vista, with activation “crack”! So we should be better off this time…
Machine # 3
Athlon XP 2800+, 1GB DDR533, ATI Radeon AnW 8500 DV, 250 GB IDE ATA133.
“Performance” Rating: 2.6 ( AND aero is usable thanks to ATI’s newer drivers now ).
Boot Time: 100 ~ 140 seconds ( terrible, terrible! )
Login: On first install, never would, on second, boot times stabalized to about 100 seconds, and login times ‘only’ took about two minutes.
For the life of me I could not figure out why these machines are performing like this! It didn’t make sense!
So I did the only sensible thing I could… format, start-over.
Same machine, same DVD, same version of Vista, new fresh install ( again )
Boot time: 41 seconds ( about time! )
Login: 1 second ( screaming! )
THIS time, everything is PERFECT!
I was confused, but at least happier…
I can’t say for sure what the problem is, but I think it may be a bug during installation that may or may not show itself, if it does it just so happens that you hit file aa9973.xxx (fake) at a time directly divisible by pi or something as equally confusing and seemingly erratic.
Well, Windows XP came with spyware bundled… why couldn’t vista come with a virus or something?
Doubted it really, RC1, 2, and Gold would ALL have to have been infected in the SAME manner to give me such consistently inconsistent results, regardless of those results (bad or good doesn’t matter, repeatability and reliability does), and no infections were found on any of the installations that were working right.
Which got me to thinking… XP came with Alexa or whatever its called, but it doesn’t really do any harm, simply snoops your financial information from MS Money (if installed) and sends acct #s to Bill Gates (read: sadistic joke).
I would not be surprised if MS has to re-issue Vista with an installer patch, or maybe the problems can be solved post-install… meaning, expect to see a patch that makes these extremely poor-performing machines suddenly perform right…
I have installed Vista probably about 20 times now, and only experienced the massive slow-down four times on three machines ( Machine #1 never did work right ). However, this seems to be something that is in fact real and fairly common from my, google-‘assisted,’ research. ( search: Windows Vista major performance issues ).
Most notably:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Hardware-Consid…
I, for one, would like to see the problem(s) resolved, as Vista COULD be good enough for me to *WANT IT*. But, for now, I will sit back and enjoy the ride, waiting ( and sometimes playing ) for some news on this front.
–The loon
P.S. The 64-bit port seems to have more issues related to this.
perhaps our first commenter should check his drivers specifically the video card if its not properly utilized he would see results like that, i once had linux not see my video card the difference is night and day
Nope. Not really. Just more sensationalist titling. If you read the article, you discover that somebody simply replaced the RTM licensing components with the Beta/RC1/RC2 licensing components — and then use the beta activation key.
But that’s not going to work for long. The beta key is going to expire pretty soon, Windows Update will stop working and, thus, this is just a temporary hack. Microsoft will undoubtedly lock out the activation key(s) in question from its servers, so it’s a waste of time to install the “crack”.
I think 5.9 is the max you can get in anything.
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160×160
Make MacOSX available for every PC. Not just the ones Apple builds.
selling os x to every noname junk pc would get it to crash like windows me and support costs would skyrocket
selling os x to every noname junk pc would get it to crash like windows me and support costs would skyrocket
Well, XP manages fairly well in the stability department. So there goes your argument. Oh, and my PC might be hand-built, but it is by no means ‘junk’. Each one of my Macs (iMac G4: dead logic board, iBook G4: casing started to fall apart after less than a year, MacBook Pro: hot like an oven) had problems, but my desktop x86, which I bought like 5 years ago, is still performing mighty fine, without even ONE thing breaking down.
I’m not saying Macs break down more often, I just wanted to show that ‘noname’ != junk, and that ‘name’ != quality.
Edited 2006-11-12 20:27
most noname pcs are made of the cheapest parts that they can find
Me again..
Just wanted to augment my previous, but not entirely related, so did not edit and insert instead.
It must be noted that it can be promised that NO OEM machine with Vista pre-installed will perform poorly… a least shouldn’t. Why??
IT Imaging… i.e… DELL:
A full team is assembled to handle creation of images based on machine lines for the OS. The image is debugged, optimized some, if possible, and customized by some IT people based on corporate policy regarding said product line.
Meaning the Windows installation method is not used, albeit something pretty darn similar, so if that is where the issue really is, there should be no problems for OEMs ( all MS likely cares about, though they pretend to care about the little people by saying pirating somehow hurts them, which it doesn’t.. not really measurably anyway ).
Flame-Protect:
I say there is no impact, measurably, to MS from pirating because those who pirate Windows would NOT buy it, about 99% of the time.
So, say 1 % of pirated software usage results in lost revenue ( some field tech installing pirated versions at a multiple locations for customers, saving their customers a little money, at the cost of MS ).
Most Vista pirated copies have been downloaded about 1000 times according to some various sites 🙂 We can SAFELY assume that AT LEAST 10 % of those downloads were re-tried and thereby double-counted… but let us pretend we have 100% accuracy with 1000 downloads, and let us go ahead an assume 1000 pirated versions around, and that this cycle repeats itself every week (which is not true at all).
1000
*1000 = 1,000,000 stolen copies / week
1 % of 1,000,000 = 10,000 pirated copies that may have
otherwise been purchased.
So, 1/4 mil in revenue every week, right? Well… yes and no… But revenue is not everything! Profit matters more, honestly.
1/4 mil / week ASSUMING $250 price tag. OEM-to-Joe Sixpack will likely run $100 or so, so $100k/week or so.
To be fully accurate we would need to know and take into account the cost of developing Windows on a per-copy basis. Incl. license costs and development time, I would have imagine that Windows is an expensive beast MS would probably not mind toooo much getting rid of, if it could do so and maintain its monopoly in other areas ( which it could not without Windows, making it a product that enables their oher products, thereby something vital to have and keep people using, but no something vital to be profitable by itself.
So… let us assume each copy of Windows costs MS $30 for development costs per copy, and $30 in license costs per copy (depends on sales, obviously). $40 per copy profit.. so $40k/week “lost” now, approx…
BUT, we have to take into consideration even more factors! MS has a web-site to support, Windows-Updates, research projects related to Windows, and many other support costs… BUT… where does the money really come from?
Assuming MS even makes a profit on Windows sales to individuals (personally, I bet they do, just not much per copy.. maybe even something like $5/copy in reality, but I have nothing to support that, so we are assuming much higher profit margins in this sector), the entire sector pales in comparison to partners and business accounts.
I saw a figure here that says about 60% goes to businesses.. HAS TO BE MORE! I’d have to say about 90% of all copies of Windows are oem pre-installs. 8 % are OEM copies purchased by an individual for private use, and maybe 2% are retail copies some idiot saw at Wal-mart and purchased for double or more what they should have paid.
So, pirating effects that 8%, not the 2 % retail, or 90% OEM, so we have an overall piracy effectiveness of 8 % only towards their business, at only 1% or so aggression levels… meaning Microsoft is probably losing something like 5 REAL_SALES/week, per 10,000 pirated downloads.
Okay, so there is money there, but enough to spend who-knows-how-much creating all of these anti-piracy measures? Not likely. Even in the worst case, MS is losing the value of one mail-clerk’s monthly salary every week. So, fire four mail-clerks and be done with it, right?
Heh, no. WPA exists for OEMs! BUT, NOT just to prevent them from pirating Windows by simply trying to those copies from being placed, by normal people, onto other computers. THAT costs MS money! Why?
Person A buys a fancy new Dell with cool software. Person B comes over to visit, sees A’s new Dell. Wants her computer to look ‘that cool,’ or whatever, and Person A, not knowing any better, just looks for the CDs that came with their computer and loans them to Person B.
Before WPA, Person B would just install, copy the disks ( maybe even take the machine to a shop to do the work ). No problems at all! This is more difficult with some OEMs ( such as Dell, actually ), because they force-load drivers fairly often, or require a full hd format before installation ( trust me, that can almost always be circumvented by a tech, but not someone with little knowledge ), but that is not enough for MS’s core diet.
Microsoft spends a LOT of money developing Windows, and most likely have very slim profit margins on the product. To them, the product should try to at least break-even, and hopefully make then money within a certain time-frame.
A slow release cycle keeps operational costs down, AND ensures they can make more money from it down the road, simply because they haven’t done any massively expensive re-engineering to make a different system just because a bunch of people are screaming about it.
This, naturally, also lends towards Microsoft not really caring about Windows from its true technical prospects, only its economical prospects matter. They will say and do whatever they feel needed to keep Windows on everyone’s system, and will do whatever is needed to make sure this product doesn’t cost them any more money than needed.
I promise you, some people at Microsoft would probably not mind if Windows were completely rewritten or replaced. Bill Gates doesn’t seem to mind running his house off alternative software 🙂
my $700 or so…
–The loon
I don’t care whether the pirates would have bought the software that they pirate (be that an OS, office suites, games, video editor, photo editor, etc), they still suck. Companies spend millions of dollars developing software and for someone to use it without authorization (i.e. payment, in the case of commercial software) is to give the developers the middle finger. It’s basically a slap in the face, saying, “I don’t give a damn about the time and effort you put into making this product, I’m using it for free! Screw you sucker!!”
These pirates have no respect or consideration for anyone but themselves. They are the epitome of selfishness, and one has to wonder if their mothers instilled any values in them whatsoever.
I have more respect for someone that goes into a store and shoplifts a software package than I do for those that download warez. At least the former admit that they’re in the wrong and have some guts, while many of the latter claim that they’re fighting some moral crusade while they cowardly leech the work of others.
Anyway, I think it’s just a matter of respecting the work of others; you don’t use someone’s work without authorization from them. That’s simple decency among people. Whether the pirates would have bought the software or not is immaterial to whether they suck; they do! 😉
Edit:
I don’t consider those that continue using the RC2 key on the RTM version until that key expires to be amonng those that suck. But I saw one of digg’s threads on this, where there’s dozens of people pirating Vista and many are saying that, “I assume a permanent crack will appear before the RC2 key expires, so I’ll just use that crack when it appears.” Those guys do indeed suck.
Edited 2006-11-12 19:43
…”and one has to wonder if their mothers instilled any values in them whatsoever.” <– is that about the pirates or the members of the board in the unethical behaving profit-seeking companies?
Both parts are equally bad, and I support neither part.
From checking out an OSX86 forum (major curiosity), it’s obvious that making OSX available for whiteboxes would cause a lot more work for Apple.
On the one hand, getting OSX to work with some hardware is often simply a matter of editing a text file in a .kext (Apple seems to whitelist hardware, excluding stuff that would otherwise work just fine if it didn’t happen to have a slightly different model number)
On the other hand, a lot of stuff just doesn’t work. Now, in some cases Linux (and other open drivers) can be leveraged. USB cameras are an example. If it works on Linux it can be made to work on OSX. Still, the boards are rife with examples of stuff that won’t work.
Apple could perhaps maintain an HCL and only support installations running on that hardware. That adds work as well though, and it still wouldn’t look good when OSX doesn’t work on Joe Sixpack’s whitebox. They have an image to maintain after all.
I just don’t see them ever selling it for generic PCs. Closest they might ever come is licensing their OS like they used to, and letting Dell or someone sell boxes with OSX preinstalled, boxes with tightly controlled and homogenous components.
Microsoft should simply STOP producing Windows!
That’s what other software companies do, when piracy get to be too much of a problem. Microsoft should follow this fine example as well! Windows piracy would stop and we could be happy knowing that Microsoft isn’t losing any more money!
I mean, afterall, Microsoft isn’t made out of money! Windows piracy is really hurting their bottom line… they could go bankrupt from this!
SERIOUSLY!!! 🙂
I have used Vista RC1 for a few weeks now, and I have given it a fair chance. I was used to a Gentoo Linux with KDE 3.5.x on a AMD64 X2 4400 with 1 ‘Gibibyte’ of Random Access Memory and a lot of different hardware.
I did have a lot of issues setting up my Linux to the state of ‘everything works 91% the way I want’ and although I wasn’t always satisfied with performance (kernel flakes, failing hard disks), mostly I was pleased with the power of my hardware.
My Vista eXPerience was not that pleasant. It is all done in the typical ‘Windows way’: illogical, incoherent, unintuitive, obstrusive. Some things DO have improved (Internet Explorer 7.0 gets a 76% rating), some cool opticals are there. But stuff is broken a lot of times, I have already had those stone age problems with leaking of limited GDI resources (first contact: Win95b+IE4 beta, result: no object can create any new GDI objects. No context menu, new apps display only half of the stuff and totally messed up) and, most importantly, it gets in my way. UAC sucks and is doomed to fail; users will turn it off and still install trojan and malware. Activation has been cracked already. And performance can be good at times but is not dependable. And it feels like bloated badly designed code steals machine power. While I wouldn’t switch back to XP, I much prefer modular open software and would definitly not conisder it a fair deal, none of the editions. Starter Edition is a hoax. That MS will work with Novell is a courageous step, but they will not benefit from it. Windows is doomed to die, erst recht at that price. Looking forward to booting back into my Linux OPERATING System, giving me full control over the hardware I OWN. MS just can’t get shit right.
have used Vista RC1 for a few weeks now
RC1 is ancient history and not that good and hardly an indicator of the performance of the RTM version.
I’m running RC2 as my Media Center PC and it runs just great on an Athlon XP 3200+ with a gig of ram and a 3 year old FX-5200 video card.
…running well?
It damn well better run well on that CPU. The fact that 99.9% of the industry isn’t running Core 2 Duos is the problem.