“Microsoft shipped its Windows XP operating system just six months ago, but the software giant is already preparing for the next wave of computing. Microsoft has identified a handful of technology trends likely to reshape PCs and is working to define how Windows XP and its successors will take advantage of them, said Chris Jones, vice president of the Windows client team.” Read the story at ZDNews. “Microsoft invites engineers to converge in Seattle for WinHEC to hear the latest ideas about DVD, audio, video and other consumer computing technology. Bill Gates’ dream that people will build a PC first, then design a home to fit may be just around the block.” Read the special feature at ZDNews.
Microsoft Sees What’s in Tech’s Future
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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MS is trying to get into the digital media game, but they still haven’t addressed the fundamental shortcomings of their OS: 1) no *Real* memory protection or multitasking (MS seems to believe that UNIX will disappear if they wish hard enough) 2) no security.
>> No security<<
Curious, for digital media how much security do you need? Someone going to hack snowwhite and the 7 dwarfs while you are watching it?
Assuming that we are talking about NT/W2K/XP and not the Win9x crap, What exactly do mean by *Real* memory protection or multitasking and no security? Please elaborate?
Interesting read. However, I have to point out, Freestyle is not anything ‘new’ or ‘next gen’. Shareware/freeware/opensource apps to do this have been around for some time. Mine – http://www.media-box.org – has been around for 2+ years.
” but they still haven’t addressed the fundamental shortcomings of their OS: 1) no *Real* memory protection or multitasking ”
LOL … that’s the joke of the month. Thanks for the laugh, Tom Barta… I really want you on my engineering team. You have no clue at all (probably not even what a keyboard is), but at least you’re a fun guy … 😉
” but they still haven’t addressed the fundamental shortcomings of their OS: 1) no *Real* memory protection or multitasking ”
I think he may be right on the multitasking.
I have seen Win 2000 lock up when I moved a big file to the trash. Try it…. drag a big file to the trash and then try doing other things. I wouldn’t call that good mulitasking.
Kon,
I just tried to download the mediabox.exe file from the front page of http://www.media-box.org and the link doesn’t work. The mirrors don’t point to a file, just websites. How do I get this software? I just built a machine for viewing/recording video last weekend, and this would be the perfect suite/manager for it…
Clarification: On security: I meant that their OS and core applications (eg Outlook and IIS) are not very secure; I wasn’t thinking in relation to digital media. Although there are a lot of security issues (generally speaking) that relate to digital media. Win XP is copy-protected, for example.
On multitasking, etc.: I have a lot of hours on Win2000 and I find that it does a generally poor job of 1) staying up 2) prioritizing tasks. I’ve you have had better luck– good for you.
On Keyboards: Yes, I can use them; I’ve got at least two fingers
.
My bad, been out of town, and everything went to hell. You know how it goes
http://www.media-box.org/downloads/mediabox.exe is the latest.
I have found Win 2000 to be super stable. Working 8 hours a day, it 4 – 6 months between crashes, probably more.
The multitasking is not so hot. In most cases it is fine, but you run into quirks here and that I wouldn’t expect using a “true multitasking” OS.
“Curious, for digital media how much security do you need? Someone going to hack snowwhite and the 7 dwarfs while you are watching it?”
That would never happen on a BeOS machine!!!
Just kidding.
“I have found Win 2000 to be super stable. Working 8 hours a day, it 4 – 6 months between crashes, probably more.”
What do you do with it? Unlike Windows 9x, you can leave it running for long periods of time, but when you do anything that taxes the system it tends to crash after a few hours.
I think the longest I have been able to keep a Windows 2000 system running without a reboot is 4 days. That’s a little less that optimal.
“What do you do with it? Unlike Windows 9x, you can leave it running for long periods of time, but when you do anything that taxes the system it tends to crash after a few hours. ”
Personnaly I develop software full time on my PC. And I consider the whole process of
1. Code
2. Run and crash the app
3. Kill the app and associated thread
4. Debug the app, crash again
5. Go to 1
is very taxing for an OS. I’m under Windows 2000, and 4 month is the average time between my reboots. I find it very acceptable.
Ok, now it’s clear 🙂 I reacted to your message saying Windows doesn’t have a *real* multitasking, which is false. Being not the best, even poor, probably. But it’s still a real multitasking.
Again, one of my preferate OS on responsiveness is BeOS by far. It seemed I never had to wait for nothing. The first time I dragged a big files in the trash can, I though something wrong happened because it was SO fast…
Well, you are not doing anything much different than I am. I develop apps in C++, custom web controls in C#, web pages in ASP.NET, Java Servlets and EJBs, and I completely ignore the fact that VB even exists.
I also usually leave my web browser running (usually several instances) and I always have Outlook running since that’s what they use at work.
My experience with this set up is that Windows starts out fine (or as fine as Windows can be anyway) and steadily deteriorates to the point that switching applications, closing or minimizing/maximizing windows, etc. takes almost a minute.
Whether this forced reboot happens at around a week as I have experienced, or 4 months as you have experienced, it is unstable and unacceptable when compared with nearly every other operating system available.
To give you an example, I ran BeOS without rebooting once for over a year (admittedly, I didn’t tax it as much as my other OSes), I have run Linux as both a workstation and server for two and a half years without a reboot (I also kept my programs and libraries up-to-date during this time without rebooting even once – no kernel upgrades though). The only reason it didn’t go longer is because I left Novell and turned it off to move it to another programmers office. The BSD family of OSes also boasts very long uptimes as do others.
I’m not saying that Windows is completely worthless, I think it is a great OS for home use and playing games. I am just saying that it forces you to reboot, whether through degraded performance, a crash, or security upgrade, far too often.
Sorry this got so long.
What is wierd is I find Win 98 multitaking can work amazingly better then you would expect. I have even purposely tried running DOS and numerous Windows applications all at once, and it did rather good. The floppy, which I rarely use, is the weak spot, causing it to get a little jerky. And, running standard programs, I go months without a system crash, [running Win 98 a few hours a day and shutting it down.]
As for Win 2000, I shut down everyday, but use it 8 hours or so, along with a couple of quirky programs. I found it much more stable than NT. It goes months between crashes. The multitaksing is another issue, with Outlook it used to almost lock up and not let me switch to another program. That seems to have cleared up with a recent update, I think.
>>I have a lot of hours on Win2000 and I find that it does a generally poor job of 1) staying up 2) prioritizing tasks<<
Wow. Works pretty good for everyone else. Maybe you should invest in some decent hardware for it to run on. My 2K Pro Box (pure Intel Motherboard) has been up since I built it last July, with only an occasional application crash. Or maybe you need a lesson or two on how to properly tune and enhance the OS.
Is it possible you are running too many background services – like SQL server or something? If you are, you can use the SQL Query Analyzer to perform better by typing in the following command: SELECT * INTO users WHERE CLUE >0
Athlon 1000, KT133 chipset, 640Mb RAM, 20Gb ATA100 drive
Dual Boots 2000 Pro and XP pro
The multitasking in both OS has a major problem with moving large files, such as writing from my data partition to a CDRom with Nero – this crashes the system in Win2K and can bring it close to the edge in XP
Using XPs built in Burning software is a lot slower but because it caches the files on the system drive before burning it wont bring down the kernel.
I’m still waiting for an update to fix this in both OS’
I think your burning problem is nero’s fault. I had similar problems when I retested nero (I have easy cd creator, but a buddy of mine swears by nero so I tried it out). No problem in 98, but in 2k (this was after I switched back from xp) it wasn’t cutting it. easy cd creator has no problems though, I can burn, have seti running the background, have 2 or 3 ie winodws open, outlook and 4 or 5 things in my system tray. I have noticed that there is a little hiccup when moving large files to the trash (just enough to be annoying, but not really enough to slow productivity).