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Microsoft Plans WinXP "Reloaded"
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Microsoft changed their minds and are planning a new OS release before Longhorn. They are calling it XP Reloaded."
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if this OS will have full 64bit compatiablity? As if it doesn't it could seriously slow down 64bit sales, as I for one was waiting for Longhorn to upgrade to 64bit, and I know a lot of my friends were.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
My guess is that the Longhorn will not be out soon enough for those who bought XP under software assurance program. By having a forced update out, MS can claim that the software assurance program is indeed a good buy.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Nope, sounds more like 98SE to me (that one was free, btw).
Real big architectural changes a-coming (64 bit CPUs, PCI-X, BTX (more of a form factor but i believe ties into OS controlled temp and whatnot), etc..), and the current OS doesn't support them, and the next OS is too far off.
I wouldnt be surprised if they merged the 64bit and 32bit code trees, or something of the sort.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... that Longhorn will be even more delayed. As others in the thread have noted, this is exactly what happened with 95 (B and C) and 98SE and ME's entire reason for existance.
Today we have learned that "new intermediate version" means "omigod, I am up to my eyeballs in delays, and I don't want to look like an ass to my users^W customers"
The previous sig has been removed due to
Well the idea of the 3d accelerated desktop is that your video card will be able to do all the work. Considering how simple the graphics are on a 2d desktop (versus something like doom 3) i imagine almost any mediocre graphics card will speed things up immensly.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
but not by that much. it looks like windows reloaded really kicked some arse, though.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Umm... the Macs don't. The macs use display pdf which can be scaled much like vector graphics that longhorn will include. However Longhorn will do almost all of that on the card (Which macs are starting to do (Quarz Extreme which still does some things in software (CPU)).
Nor will longhorn be a '3d' desktop for the most part, instead it will be more like doing 2D acceleration in 3D spaces, which most cards cannot do efficiently. They mostly flush the render buffer for every switch & the 3D part is still seperate from the 2D portion with the end 3D buffer being blitted to the 2D buffer when it isn't full screen. The main benefit is: vector grapics (which can be done in 2D easily, (example: kde's crystal svg icons) but all 3D apis provide this accelerated if the hardware does it.) which allow smaller sized icons which can scale up & down better than bitmaps, and is useful for high resolution windows so that even if you need large things (poor eyesight) it can only look better running at higher resolution (by having the computer calculate how to display something at 200dpi to a monitor which was at 100dpi (it isn't hard, and if you don't use vector graphics, it is essentially just pixel quadrupling, however with vector grapics & aa, it looks better)
And for anyone who doesn't think cards need a lot of ram: my current desktop is using more than 12MB, and that's only going to go up.
Look at Quartz Extreme on any AGP equippen G4 or G5 Mac. It is heavily 3D accelerated and looks 2D. The built in scaling and other acceleration tools that the 3D hardware brings to bare makes the OS extremeley snappy and responsive.
And it's not wastefull at all. It is simply taking advantage of commonly existing hardware that didn't exist when the original 2D API was created.
The reality is that unless you buy a Matrox card, the 2D acceleration that your video card brings to the tape hasn't improved that much at all in the last five years. The 2D core is more than good enough to do what's required of it so most video card companies don't bother expending much energy improviing things. 3D acceleration, on the other hand, has improved at rates that throttle the imagination.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Alright, I believe in a couple years we're going to start seeing some serious version hell. For example, in the future how will we know what is "newer" than the other when we have:
Windows XP
Windows XP Reloaded
Windows XP Revolutions
Windows Xtreme
Windows Xtreme Unleashed
Windows Opposing Force
Windows Blue Shift
Does that stuff mean anything? No. With letter versioning and now this word versioning, to know what is newer than the next the user is just required to know. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, it all makes logical sense. Words, unless they come up with alphabetical names (which would be kinda cool, but still limiting) mean nothing other than "this one is kinda different".
Complie that with other pieces of software which will follow suit (Look at all the software using 2 letter naming convensions for their versioning already) and we'll have very little knowledge what version is actually what.
Additionally, a benefit to number versioning was it allowed us to say "ok, this is 1.0, this software is really new and hasn't undergone any revisons," or "alright, this is version 3.2, they've taken a couple cracks at it and added some fixes." What if I told you I just made Gigawhop Reloaded. What the heck is that? Unless you knew the name of the software already, is it called Gigawhop or Gigawhop Reloaded as a whole? Is Reloaded actually the version? What does that even mean to me? Is it my first release? Second? Third? Tenth?
You have been warned...
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language