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One In Two PCs Won't Run Vista's Interface
ThinSkin writes "While integrated graphics seem to handle Windows XP and 2000 just fine, they won't be able to handle Vista's 3D 'Aero Glass' compositor, which will prevent roughly half of all PCs from running Microsoft's new OS. Performance class cards that can handle DirectX 9.0c are up for the challenge." From the article: "After years of delays and several feature revisions, one of Vista's main selling points is the Aero Glass interface. However, as Peddie notes, users already have the ability to start constructing a PC that should be Vista-ready before the OS even ships. Microsoft also said this week that it would reserve its Halo 2 videogame for Vista."
Jeez, it seems to me that Microsoft should be very careful about the marketing of this, because if ya gotta buy a new box to run Vista, then why not just simply make the switch? After all Aero Glass is mostly based on developments seen quite a while ago in OS X.
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I say this can be a good thing. We'll finally either:
A) Get some decent integrated graphics systems (or see NForce boards take off in popularity)
or
B) See big computer retailers putting at least adequate graphics cards into their base systems.
This will do wonders for the ability to play games on cheap laptops.
The people with older graphics systems that can't run Vista? Chances are most won't need to upgrade anyway, and XP-compatible consumer software won't be going anywhere for a long time. Sure, they won't be able to run Halo 2 PC, but hell, if they can't meet Vista specs, they sure as hell can't meet the game's specs.
Not only is it inaccurate summary, it's pretty trollish too... sure running Aero Glass takes some horsepower, there is nothing preventing a user from turning it off and running it in a more 95/98/2000 style and not have the benefits or eye candy they could have if they had a more powerful system
Hell, go back to 2001, I remember knowing many people whose PC's ran awful slow when running XP in Fisher Price mode, so they'd revert to the classic look and things were fine until they had a slightly better PC a little later.
Same will happen here.
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But the slick 3D interface is one of the primary selling points of Vista. Without a visual difference, casual computer users (ie- not us) would unlikely notice any benefit of Vista over XP.
Sigs are for losers
All I have heard about aeroglass is that it makes the windows desktop look like the OSX desktop. Why does that take so much horsepower? I'm running OSX on an old Imac G3 450.
Why does the desktop requre more graphics calculations than a modern video game? Somebody please whack me with the cluebat.
When you're faced with a hostile audience (e.g. Slashdot), it can be tricky to slip your PR messages past the filters. After all, you aren't AMD; you don't want to have your own Slashdot Vendors section to give you a straight feed to the PR bin, since you know that skeptical readers will just ignore your message.
So what you do instead is construct a message that seems threatening for about forty-five seconds -- just as long as an editor will review it in the pending articles queue: you say, hey, my new software product is going to have really stringent hardware requirements. Oh, the editors say, this is perfect! It's interesting, controversial, and definitely front page material.
What they don't see is the second touch: you subtly phrase the article so that the impression left on reader is not that your product is incompatible, but that it is exclusive. Oh, they think -- I have a high-end system! I've got to try out this Vista thing on it!
Suckers.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Never is a long time.
Unless you are still running win3.1, eventually you will 'upgrade' if you want to use windows. Drivers wont exist for old machines, software wont run.. They will win in the end.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd reason that a lot of people who just play games and surf on their pc will embrace vista. To them it's just the latest and greatest eye candy. But for many who use the PC as a work tool as well, having a GUI that consumes so much of the PC's resources out of the box will be an annoyance, and will likely be avoided like the plague. MS has *never* been able to supply bang without the bloat.. Vista will be no different.
Without a visual difference, casual computer users (ie- not us) would unlikely notice any benefit of Vista over XP.
:)
Without a visual difference I'm not sure there's much left even for -us- to notice much benefit of Vista over XP.
who won't. what makes you think that average joe will want to install an OS where they can't:
buy software (games, office - and no, not openoffice) in stores
make sure that any software is compiled for that build of linux
v 2.4 or 2.6?
will want to go in a command line to just type in something like rpm -i [binary]?
or if they need to upgrade with rpm -u [binary]?
detect a correct widescreen resolution?
etc etc etc
linux is good but don't delude yourself into thinking that it's anywhere ready for the mainstream. and i'll be you 100$ that once it is, all the linux peoples who championed it will say it has sold out and now just a cookie cutter OS.
Performance class cards that can handle DirectX 9.0c are up for the challenge.
Should something as simple as a UI require as much horsepower as a top of the line first person shooter?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I clicked "Windows Vista Capable PCs and Customer Benefits" on this page and couldn't find any. What are they again?
Um... that's because that page is talking about the customer benefits of having a Windows Vista-capable PC, which are simply that you get to run Windows Vista with all the eye candy turned on. Maybe you should look for a relevant page, instead of complaining that an irrelevant page is irrelevant?
As for your actual point, the advantages of Vista over Windows XP seem to me to be roughly equivalent to the advantages of OS X Tiger over OS X Panther: eye candy and some upgraded OS components. In which case, a lot of people will be quite happy without it. But then the majority of the Mac users I know haven't seen the point in upgrading to Tiger either, and that doesn't stop Apple fanboys proclaiming it like teh greatest OS evar.
Simple. Every OS Sucks:
http://www.deadtroll.com/video/ossuckscable.html
Problem is it's *not* and it won't be. It will run on any chipset with drivers and hardware that conform to what is needed.
Please, enough with the fearmongering. FUD is no better when it goes against MS than when it comes from it.
Wasn't the purpose of operating systems to run the hardware, and not the other way around? When did the shift arrive when you were expected to change your hardware to run a new OS?
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
Since so many users (especially businesses) will continue to use XP Pro while it's still under "extended support," I'm sure third-party software will continue to be written for XP if many of the software company's customers are still using XP. Only Microsoft has an interest in shutting out a large number of existing XP users (so users will upgrade to Vista).
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Casual users rarely notice any difference between this OS, and that OS until marketing or minimum requirements kick in. The majority of people run the latest and greatest for the same reason they buy only new cars.
Why then are they only releasing it for Vista, when it should run just fine on the same platform as Halo for pc?
Uh... because they think that will be a selling point for Vista. Not that it makes sense to me but they seem to be pretty clear about it. Come and buy Vista because you'll need it for Halo.
The only logical explanation...
Logical explanation? It's a marketing strategy. "Drooling fan boys, come pay hundreds of dollars for a new OS so you can buy Halo!" They're as good as screaming it in your face.
He specificly mentioned when alttabbing between games. As someone with dual monitors, I know how much pain there is in trying to switch between a game and typing into an im window on the other monitor, when in reality it should be a simple context switch but instead involves redrawing everything, a resolution switch, some disk swapping, etc.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
zonk is a fucking idiot
Faced with such a choice, I think I'd just stick with the fully-functional system I already have. Luckily, there's no such issue anyway, as for 99% of Windows users, Vista doesn't require a new box to run at all.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Making people spend additional money in order to be able to do the same things they already do today does not "help" the economy in any sense. It just decreases efficiency and increases expenditure without creating new wealth.
I watch with glee and hope that M$ suffers tremendously at the hands of large companies and regular consumers that are just not willing to upgrade their hardward to Captain Amazing levels, and are pretty pissed that they get to have a threadbare UI as a substitute.
Thank God I'm switching to a Powerbook on my next purchase. Maybe I'll get an inexpensive linux laptop, too just because I can and look at pretty windows with E or Gnome or whatever. I just can't imagine that M$ will come up with a new UI so amazing that I will start shitting bricks immediately when I see it because I need it so badly.
Pretty windows or sufficiently functional windows and $1000 in my pocket? Gee. I just can't decide.
"I'm not surprised someone with a name like "NetAvenger" is a walking MSDN brochure. Sheesh! Windows Presentation Foundation will always be slower than the native Quartz because WPF is running in Microsoft's completely arbitrary and pointless intermediate .NET layer and based on XML, so now all these great new dual-core processors we're getting will be slowed down again by Microsoft! It sucks that the first thing they do when we get faster chips is add another abstraction layer to slow it all down again."
.NET happens to be a very elegant framework to program for and is fairly efficient. Outside the initial windows forms "draw" (that little graphics delay you first get when starting up a .NET app), all the .NET apps I've coded run like butta. The abstraction layer is worth it if it makes apps easier to code. I mean, what did you want to them to do? Keep MFC?
MS's first job is to cater to developers.
As for Quartz, it's had it issues, too. Remember the "pre-Quartz Extreme" days, when genie effects ran like crap on the fastest video cards? When the windowing process would cause the spinning beachball of death? Heck, even the original version of Keynote tried to get around Quartz and write directly to the graphics hardware (causing kernel panics in the process).
By the way, I'm noticing a trend in your posts. I understand your points, but if you want people to take them seriously, you must at least make them more objective.
While it may wipe that demographic out, who's to say that other hardware generally considered useable won't take its place? I'm not especially looking forward to the day that a mid-range Athlon XP with 512 MB RAM and a Geforce3 is dissed as being marginal for the purposes of running an operating system.
What a nasty kludge...
Such bad programming should have been discouraged in the first place, instead of letting it propogate and creating such a situation.
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Bad example. Windows is getting a hardware-accelerated composited desktop for the first time ever. OS X had this when it launched, but not in Mac Classic OS. Its more accurate to say its like going from 98 to XP. Don't forget, Apple ships a new OS X every 18 months or so but Vista has been in the works for a loooong time. Its going to be a big upgrade.
But then the majority of the Mac users I know haven't seen the point in upgrading to Tiger either, and that doesn't stop Apple fanboys proclaiming it like teh greatest OS evar.
I counter your anecdote with my anecdote: I know about a dozen people on Macs and every single one of them has upgraded to Tiger (in fact most of them are on iLife 06 even). And yes, they do think its the greatest OS ever. Whatever works for you.
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