Slashdot Mirror
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."
Did MS ever hear of the bauhaus design theory at all? Last thing I care for is an OS that tries its hardest to blow moonbeams and fluffy bunnies up my ass. If you cant go back to the no-frills win2k classic interface I plan to squeeze every last drop of life out of XP Pro. That is, until M$ does evil things to force people to upgrade, like releasing Vista-specific software and dropping patches for XP altogether.
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
The Intel 900 series graphics chips are good enough to run World of Warcraft. They aren't all that fast, mind you, but it works, I've met a couple people that do it.
I'd wager that at least the GMA 950 will be enough for the more advanced interface, and even the GMA 900 will be.
This is just a way to get large coroprations to spring for the $500 video card on their desktops. No really, this is just like Windows pushing everything to 24 bit color when everyone was doing 8bit. Within a year or so EVERONE was at 24bit. Well, almost everyone, but you get the idea.
Ted
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Great way to get the 'hold outs' to upgrade faster to the nice shiny DRM enabled hardware.
Make it impossible to run the 'trusted OS' that will be needed to run next years applications.
The power wasted in todays applications is almost obscene.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why are 'oooh, shiny!' features the main selling feature of Vista?
I must be missing something. Maybe they're putting something hallucinogenic in the XP interface, which I have completely missed, up to this time. It sure looks hippy dippy from a distance...
oh really?
explain to me again why the dell fpw models are made from panels rejected by apple quality control then?
wow what a troll.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Back in 2004..."
Only a quarter of current desktops could run it (joking)... If they keep up at this rate, by the time Vista is released ALL desktops will be able to run it.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
The point is that one of the big selling points is Vista's new OS X-alike interface. Vista is going to be a tough sell to the mainstream public. Microsoft makes the majority of its Windows sales through computer pre-installations, so they're going to try to work hard to get people to buy new Vista-based PCs despite having missed last year's hardware purchase cycle. A new interface was part of that.
I find it very telling that OS X already surpasses Vista's current interface (what you see in the betas is mostly what you're going to get according to Microsoft) but runs on much less demanding machines, like a Mac mini. OS X Leopard is just going to widen the gap further between Microsoft and Apple in the interface department.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I wonder if this is even supported with the new 3D interface?
...what's the benefit of upgrading other than looks?
In my opinion, there really is only one reason to get a newer version of Windows.
Support.
That is the only reason I have *ever* gotten a newer version. Software I wanted to run would not run on the current installed version...
And, no... I'm not going to call it an "upgrade" either...
(And, no... I've never gotten Windows as an included OS either.)
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
Mac users upgrade within the Mac family, Windows users within the Windows family. In twenty years nothing has changed that equation.
Without a visual difference, casual computer users (ie- not us) would unlikely notice any benefit of Vista over XP.
Sure they would; they'd notice the helpful DRM.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
But that's just not true. Over the last couple of years I've seen lots of normal users switch from Windows to OSX, mostly to get away from spyware. I don't think I've anyone go back, nor have I seen any mac users switch to windows (although one thought he was when he bought an XBox).
*sigh* back to work...
And i look towards ditching XP for Mac OS X Tiger at work.
Honest!!!
yesterday we had a major outage in our LAN due to "unknown" factors. As the only iBook user, i saw the traffic that was the result of a worm. It didn't affect me of course, but i saw my Desktop bellyaching.
Wish Apple would push Mac Mini as a replacement to Vista/XP with Virtual PC bundled in for FREE.
It would sell like hotcakes.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
They tend to only get OS upgrades when they get a new computer [...].
- disasters. They're going to be wiped out. I'm sure that the market will find a new acceptable lowest common denominator, but it won't be as cheap as before.
This is probably the most insightful comment in this entire story. Think about what Vista is going to do to the bottom end of the PC market - the Sempron-and-256M-and-integrated-graphics-for-$300
The benefit of XP is that it runs on commodity hardware from a large range of manufacturers. Now this may not be a benefit to everyone since that can sometimes cause issues. But it's a benefit for me.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
Finally, if you are referring to home built pcs, must people don't do that. Sure slashdot readers can slap a computer together for a few hundred bucks thats quite nice, but my mom or cousin can't.
At the time Apple deems the hobbyist market worth pursuing, they will release products that the hobbyist market will be interested in.
Otherwise, you can assume that Apple doesn't see any money in the hobbyist market; in other words, the market is too small to pursue.
They don't make tablets or PDAs either. I think most reasonable people can infer that Apple's strategy for the past eight years has been to pursue only markets in which they are reasonably sure they can make money. The Cube and the iPod were the only arguable deviances from this strategy, and the soap-bar shaped gamble paid off in spades.
That's pretty much why I like Linux. Linux, and other open source, may have faults and snags, but there's always a surefire way to get to the bottom of every problem, with the source. Microsoft error messages are often vague, and hard to debug without the source code or even a good way to audit what's going on behind the scenes. A little bit of me dies every time I run out of easy options and have to run System Restore, or worse yet, reinstall. Luckily this is rare, but it's something that shouldn't have to happen, ever, for certain, unless there's been a hardware failure or serious user error. Every program has bugs. What can make a bug a showstopper is when the power to fix it is not in your hands (within reason).
If I send a bug report to Microsoft, I can predict with 100% certainty (after rounding) that I'll be ignored, or they'll misinterpret my "just FYI" bug report as a support request. And problems almost never go away. New features are simply added around them, and if the problem is widespread (and isn't embarrasing to Microsoft), an often unacceptable workaround is posted in their knowledgebase.
If I submit a bug report to an open source project, no matter how popular the project is, or how minor the bug, within hours I'll get replies from half the developers, including the well known ones. And bugs get fixed.