!@$*&%$(+)~?<>_ VISTA

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Nov 27 2007, 08:42 AM) [snapback]544722[/snapback]</div>

I'll surprise you by standing up for Vista on this one point.

Operating systems get slower and slower as the computers they run on get faster and faster. My first computer was a Kaypro 2X. It ran at a speed of 4 kilohertz. CP/M on that machine ran as fast as it needed to do. The floppy disk drives slowed down certain program operations, as it had no HD. But the OS never slowed down the computer. My next computer was a PC-AT running at 10 megahertz. DOS was a piece of s**t, but as far as speed, DOS ran great on the computer.

Now, try running ANY OS today on a 4 KHz computer, or even a 10 MHz computer! Won't work. Vista runs slower because it's intended to run on a faster machine than XP.

That said, I am so happy I'm running Leopard instead of XP or Vista. My stress level is lower, my blood pressure is lower, and all's right with the world, all because I gave Bill the boot. (I run Linux on my travel computers, where my needs are lighter than on my home computer.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jeannie @ Nov 10 2007, 12:17 PM) [snapback]537698[/snapback]</div>

You'll have trouble finding "firewire" in any Microsoft documentation... because "firewire" is a trademark of...

APPLE!

When looking for "firewire" help for non-macs, you may have better luck referring to it as "IEEE 1394" which I think we can all agree is a pretty catchy name.

As for Vista, my opinion of it is unchanged. Telling me that I need twice as much RAM and twice the number of processors to do EXACTLY the same set of tasks only slower than I do them in XP doesn't sound like a convincing argument to me. If the differences between XP and Vista were comparable to the differences between CP/M and XP, there might be an argument there. Sure, progress is incremental, but I see no sign of progress in Vista, just a bunch of crap loaded on top of a previously decent OS, making it unusable.

If someone can show me one way in which Vista does something that XP can't, which makes it worth the extra hardware investment just to be able to run it at a reasonable speed, then I might considering taking another look.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ichabod @ Nov 27 2007, 12:47 PM) [snapback]544784[/snapback]</div>

At my workplace, we have a common need to open a dozen windows at the same time. You're busy doing normal assigned work, then someone comes over with a server problem to immediately check up on. I routinely watch coworkers give up, closing then reopening windows simply because they become too hard to find them.

Vista easily solves that with the 3 new preview methods... none of which are available in XP. It's a major improvement for those with the need.

The "Recent Places" and "Recently Changed" folder/file options are handy as heck too.

 

Leopard lets me set up as many desktops as I like. Typically, I have Google Earth on its own desktop, games on another, and everything else on a third. If this was a work machine like John speaks of above, I'd have a few desktops sitting empty so an urgent project could be opened at any time on its own desktop, without changing any of the others.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 28 2007, 02:07 AM) [snapback]544963[/snapback]</div>

I have been using multiple desktops for 15 years on a variety of platforms. I even had it in the old days of Windows 3.11, using a little freeware program that did the trick.

But I haven't been using it anymore for years. The reason is simple: now I use one big desktop, spread over three 21" flatscreens. With two dual-head nVidia adapters in my computer, I even could add a fourth screen. But 3 makes more sense: one in the middle for my main work, and one on each side to put other stuff in. It really works very comfortable and is a real boost to your productivity. For example, if you need to debug an application, you can have the application run on the left monitor, and your debugger in the center monitor. Especially if you need to debug drawing-related code, it is extremely helpful. For editing photo's, I have the bitmap full screen on the central monitor, and all the controls and palettes on another one. This still leaves the third one for some stuff you want to keep an eye on, or to try something.

For anyone who is interested in such a setup, I would really recommend UltraMon because it makes managing all the windows on the several screens much easier. But it is not strictly necessary.

 

vtie, i've had a similar setup at home for a while now - back in college it was amazing (what with all the coding and projects and research i had to do). 3 monitors gathered over time (a 17, a 19, and a 21 widescreen that could flip to vertical), running on dual nVidia cards all over DVI. I didn't need any third party software to manage the screens, either - any window could just be dragged where i wanted it, even if it split across screens. There was also built in "application memory" where certain applications would open in certain windows every time. Overall, a very nice setup that made it pretty easy to have several putty windows open at once when working on distributed computing on the cluster...


daniel - What you're saying is true to a certain extent. However, one of the things you aren't taking into account is that every new OS you used that required a higher speed processor brought with it certain new capabilities. You could use a hard drive for the first time - that required additional processing power. You could use a GUI for the first time - again, additional processing power. In most every case a new OS brings with it certain new capabilities, and those capabilities are what require additional processing power. My question stems around what new capabilities does Vista provide that requires the additional processing power? Do we get some stunning new ability with the OS that we didn't have before, something that justifies the additional demands on the processor and the slower performance for everything else?

john1701a did point out a few items that Vista brings to the table, but i'm not entirely sure they're all that great. Here at work, i have a dual core machine (I know, it's so last year) running XP - threading works just fine on it for me, never had a problem or a time where things would slow down and both cores weren't working their hardest. Vista might improve on threading, but for applications that don't need threading, should this really cause things to run slower? As for power management... I've read that it's actually more of a pain with Vista than with XP.

http://www.news.com/2100-1044_3-6181366.html

Basically, if you want all the pretty window dressing, your battery life suffers, and from what i read you don't get vastly improved battery life over XP if you turn those features off. Now, some of the changes to hibernation settings and such might be a big benefit, but again, i never had that problem with my XP laptop - just close the lid when i was done with class, open it when i got to the next one, everything just worked. I could even leave it "on" in my backpack over night or over a weekend without any serious battery drain.


From what i can tell, these "new features" are really just incremental steps up from what we have in XP, and don't really provide any new functionality that, in my mind, justifies the pretty dramatic slow down some tests are showing.

 

Just an update to the article i posted yesterday:

http://www.betanews.com/article/XP_SP3_out...sion/1196208954

It seems that the testing company didn't exactly do an "Apples-to-apples" comparison initially, so the 144% slow down for Vista wasn't an appropriate measure. However, they've been pressured into doing it properly, showing instead an 82% slowdown for Vista. While thats certainly much better (and it would seem to show that SP1 for Vista will improve performance significantly), I still am left questioning if Vista provides end user benefits that justify the increased requirements and slower speed when compared to XP.

I've read elsewhere (i can't find the article now) that Microsoft really needs to improve its marketing for Vista, as it may be the case that the new features are there, just no one knows about them. I know that Leopard for my Mac was certainly a good upgrade, and brought with it several new features that i felt were worth it - and on top of that i haven't noticed any significant slow down on the machine.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Nov 28 2007, 05:52 PM) [snapback]545236[/snapback]</div>

One of them certainly is search indexing. A tool similar to Google desktop is now built into the OS. It does consume some CPU time, though. But it's a great tool.

Many people claim that, unlike XP, Vista "uses up all the memory". That's what they see in the task manager. But they don't understand that Vista has a totally different approach to memory than XP, because of a mechanism called SuperFetch. You can think of it as some kind of hard disk cache in the RAM memory. Applications that are frequently loaded and discarded are kept permanently in that cache. As a consequence, Vista claims much more memory in use. But the reward is that applications load much faster (if you have enough memory). In fact, this is a good thing. Unused memory is waisted memory for cache. But I have the feeling that MS hasn't worked out the details very well yet. Sometimes, the background thread managing it interfers with other CPU intensive applications running.

Vista certainly needs more resources. In fact you need 2 gig and a dual core. But it does give you some things in return. And, on a sufficiently capable machine, the OS is much more responsive than XP.

Now, a real problem with Vista is the OpenGL performance if you have the Aero look switched on. Because Aero uses DirectX, MS funnels all OpenGL commands through a common layer, giving a horrible performance hit. That's why, for graphical workstations, XP still is the only choice. Or you need to switch off Aero.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Nov 28 2007, 07:20 AM) [snapback]545192[/snapback]</div>

*sigh!* I was trying to say something good about a Microsoft product, or at least defend it from one of the charges against it. I should have known that anything good I could say about anything from Microsoft would be wrong.

As far as multiple monitors, that would be extreme overkill for my use. The only actual work I do on my computer is translation, and my single monitor is plenty big enough for two full-text-width windows, one each for source and target. Other than that it's email, web browsing, PC, and a few games. Leopard's desktops is all the program-type segregation I need.

But I did have something very like that in the old days: When I was running AT&T System V Unix on my PC-AT. It did not support the kind of windows we have on computers today, but it allowed four virtual terminals, each one of which could have one foreground application and a theoretically-unlimited number of background apps running. In practice, the CPU didn't have enough speed, or the computer enough RAM, for a lot of simultaneous programs. But I could have my editor on one terminal, my debugger on another, the program I was developing on a third, and a Unix prompt sitting on the fourth for when I needed to kill the program because it had hung up. I only had the one monitor, but a function key would switch between virtual terminals.

 

We have dual monitors on our main desktop PC... the one we rarely use.
When I was part of the corporate slave culture, I was introduced to dual monitors as an incredibly effective way of doing the work that I did.. Content management, creation, and editing. Source content on one screen, content editing tool on the other.
Now, I spend most of my computer time on my laptop. it works. I did upgrade to XP, though, as Win 2K doesn't have the "fun and games" capability that I wanted.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Nov 28 2007, 09:30 AM) [snapback]545254[/snapback]</div>

I tend to believe that by the time everything gets sorted out, Vista will require something like 4Gb of RAM to sustain the OS plus a mix of open applications. It is such a resource pig. Right now, the h/w manufacturers are trying to figure out how to 'sell' the concept of dramatically more memory than they have spec'd in their offerings.

My prediction: Sometime around the end of 1Q or beginning of 2Q of 2008 (but I wouldn't be surprised if it slips to 3Q either), there will be a 'patch' released by MS that dials back some of the resource pigs (like SuperFetch) of Vista in the absence of sufficient RAM. In the end, Vista SP1 will be basically XP with a pretty face on it and a revised security model. The features that were supposed to be the real sizzle of Vista (SuperFetch and the like) will require 4Gb of RAM. Gotta love the folks at MS for their arrogance.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hycamguy07 @ Nov 27 2007, 09:17 AM) [snapback]544741[/snapback]</div>

I hope it remains fixed for your sake. No one should have to endure serial tech support calls. One thing you might consider if your computer goes south on you again - Lemon Law action. I don't know what the Lemon Law of Florida is, but if it applies to all consumer products, you could have leverage to get Dell to send you the XP CDs at no cost. Or, to exchange the failing notebook for one that doesn't fail....

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(apriusfan @ Nov 29 2007, 12:44 PM) [snapback]545740[/snapback]</div>

That is already available. I noticed a big difference when physically swapping between 1GB of RAM and 512KB. Certain graphic features were automatically surpressed when there was less to work with.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(apriusfan @ Nov 29 2007, 07:44 PM) [snapback]545740[/snapback]</div>

I simply don't believe that. If anything, future service packs will make Vista slightly more efficient. Also, given the current price and price trend of memory, why would anyone even bother about 2gig in 2Q 2008? This will very rapidly become the standard, whether it makes sense or not. Quad core and 2Gbytes of RAM will be the default configuration in 2008. And Vista runs very happily on that, making good use of all the memory using SuperFetch. Within one year, very few people will complain about the resources needed by Vista. It's insane, but that's just the way it is.

Besides, there is a very simple and clever way to make Vista run more efficient on a machine with less memory, but few people seem to know about it. Vista can use an USB memory stick as a kind of memory expansion to be used with SuperFetch (a technique with yet another silly name: ReadyBoost). The file cache is then not stored in RAM, but on te stick. It's slower, but usually still faster than the hard disk as long as you have a fast stick. But you need to explicetely configure Vista to allow it to use a memory stick for these purposes.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vtie @ Nov 29 2007, 11:54 AM) [snapback]545789[/snapback]</div>

Nothing like accelerated depreciation. In the consumer market, if you can convince the buyer that they need to dump the system that they bought last year for this year's latest and greatest, bully for you. MS seems to have made an art form of that practice - release a new game that is the 'must have item' and the fact that the new game requires 4Gb of RAM is just a detail - at that point, it is all about the game. I am overstating things, but the basic concepts (slight of hand) still apply.

One reason that corporations are taking a slow, deliberate approach to migration to Vista is so they don't get burned by the hardware requirements of the O/S. Dropping a $100 million on inadequate hardware in the current context of Sarbanes-Oxley jeopardy is not something that a publicly traded company in the U.S. will do. MS had no choice but to extend the point when XP was going to be obsoleted. Their corporate customers told them there was no way they were going to accelerate replacement of systems.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(apriusfan @ Nov 29 2007, 09:13 PM) [snapback]545796[/snapback]</div>

Hey, we do need to realize our 2% annual economic growth, remember?


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(apriusfan @ Nov 29 2007, 09:13 PM) [snapback]545796[/snapback]</div>

Businesses will only phaze out XP when they replace the hardware. Why would they do anything else? Why would they replace the OS by something new on a fully functioning PC that does all it needs to do, and is known perfectly well by the IT department? That wouldn't make any sense. Even then, most IT departments will be very reluctant to accept Vista, just because it is not as known and the usage in the company is not as polished by time as with XP.

My business is a bit different. Since we develop software ourselves, we need to have at least a couple of stations with the latest OS.

 

Since there seems to be some question as to what kind hardware will run Vista well, I'll post the specs for my (now working) desktop: (These are pulled directly from the Windows Experience Index Score on my system.)
Component - "Windows Experience Score"
Processor Intel® Core™2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz- 5.3
Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB- 4.8
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS- 5.9
Gaming graphics 256 MB Dedicated 1023 MB Total- 5.9
Primary hard disk 75GB Free (233GB Total)- 5.4
Windows Vista ™ Ultimate

As you can see, this is a pretty insane system. It cost about $1200 (without monitor) when I built it back in April. You can now get a better pre-built desktop from HP for less money. I also have a Sony VGN-FS660 (if you care to look up the specs) from 3 years ago that runs vista ultimate just fine. (Windows score of 2.7, avg 3.5)

As others have said, Vista will run slower on old machines because it is new. The search and netowrking funtions in vista are more than enough reason to upgrade. Readyboost is also an option that gives older computers a fighting chance to run vista, I have a 2 GB memorystick being used as ram in my laptop plus the 1 GB of fixed ram. On a final note, if you do decide to get Vista, don't bother waiting for SP1. Just about everything new for SP1 will be handed out in automatic updates to us non-SP1 users at the time of release (whenever that is).

 

Sooner or later someone is going to come out with a application platform with NO operating system running NO software. It will boot up instantaniously and run all the common applications (browser, e-mail, word processing, etc).



Laugh now, but the technology exists....the real mystery is why so many smart people tolerate incredably poor engineering.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hv74656 @ Nov 29 2007, 04:58 PM) [snapback]545846[/snapback]</div>

SP1 is already in beta-test, with anticipated release in first or second quarter of 2008. The automatic updates seem to have everything I need at this point, since I went from frequent crashes to no crashes beginning sometime last August.

 

Believe it or not, these computers do already exist. Here's an example of one:
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9807133-1.html


I had read about another that stores the entire "OS" in built in flash memory and loads into a guest account similar to the one described above, but also gives you the option of loading an OS (like windows) from a disk if you want...

~Eagle33199 (until i get my main account back)

 

I believe this is not possible. A computer needs an OS, even if it's built into flash memory or ROM. And the only way to avoid software would be to build the apps into ROM and call it firmware, and you would not be able to upgrade it when bugs are discovered. Or you could have the software in flash memory to load faster than from a HD, but that's just a faster storage device; it's still software.

What someone could build would be a computer running a 1990's style OS and software, on 2007 hardware. The resource requirements would be so light that the hardware would appear to boot up and load programs instantaneously.

We are paying in wait times for features that I, for one, have no need for. Limit OS features to what's actually useful and get rid of the fluff, and everything would happen faster on a given piece of hardware. Instead, as hardware becomes faster, they bog down the OS and the software with useless glitz.