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Aero To Be Unavailable To Pirates
An anonymous reader writes "Users thinking of pirating the next version of Windows may have a surprise in store: no Aero for you. The upcoming Microsoft OS will run a check to ensure the copy was legally purchased. If it comes up short, the shiniest part of the OS will not be available." From the article: "At first an optional program, the piracy check eventually became mandatory for many types of Windows XP downloads, but was not required to run any aspect of the operating system itself. Microsoft has identified reducing piracy as a key way for the company to grow its sales of Windows, which is already used on more than 90 percent of personal computers. But it's not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows' fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won't be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system."
The first thing I do when I install XP is disable Luna and all the graphical tweaks except for show window contents while dragging. XP is nice and snappy and stable when you make it look like 95!
/ uptime.0.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7022/1036/1600
While it's great to suspect some extortion/conspiracy theory, the signed driver requirement is in place so that it'll be much harder for Hacker McPhee to install that driver rootkit on your machine.
i t/kmsigning.mspx:
For a legitimate hardware manufacturer it is not difficult at all to get their drivers signed through a certificate authority. This is not done through Microsoft (and is different from their certification programs).
Here's the text from http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/64b
To obtain a PIC, a publisher must first obtain a VeriSign Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate. Registration with Verisign results in establishing a credential that can be used to establish a Microsoft Windows Quality Online Services (Winqual) account. The publisher can then use that certificate to authenticate itself to Microsoft. If the certificate is valid, Microsoft issues a PIC.
A publisher typically completes the authentication process once a year through the Winqual Web site. The process is completed over a channel that is protected by the secure sockets layer (SSL). Figure 1 illustrates the process of obtaining a PIC. For more information about Winqual, see "Resources" at the end of this paper.
Figure 1. Obtaining a PIC
Important: The process of obtaining a PIC is separate from the Windows Logo Program submission process. The PIC signing capability does not replace the WHQL program. Microsoft encourages publishers to use the WHQL programs such as the Logo and Driver Reliability Signing programs, whenever possible. The primary purpose of the PIC program is to introduce identity into the kernel-mode and driver ecosystem, in cases where participation in the WHQL program might not be suitable. The PIC signing capability does not require the publisher to pass certain Windows Logo Program testing requirements associated with WHQL.
Aero is just a new graphics engine for Windows Vista. Removing it makes Windows fall back on the current graphics engine used in Windows XP. (Well, presumably a slightly newer version, but you get the idea.) A Linux analogy would be xgl (Aero) versus standard X.
Essentially the only limitation is that you won't get transparent window title bars and the icons won't be as flashy. So it's hardly a limitation, unless you like your eyecandy. (And some people do.)
It's not a 3D desktop, it's a plain 2D desktop that uses 3D acceleration to speed the GUI. Chances are that most people will actually find that using Aero will reduce CPU usage and (potentially) lessens memory usage for the graphics layer, since it offloads much of that work to the GPU.
Essentially it uses the 3D graphics abilities of the graphics card to handle rendering 2D graphics. This is practically identical to the way OS X and xgl work - both use the 3D acceleration abilities of a graphics card to render 2D graphics.
As for "will users really miss it" - that's a definite maybe. My dad just spent a good week or so getting xgl running on his desktop to generate Aero-style effects under KDE, so some people want the eye candy. But other people probably won't even notice it's missing. It depends on the user.
Slim to nil. :)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
One of the BFD's about Aero is that apps can be rescaled etc
Ok, might as well post this here, even though I have seen tons of people not know anything about it...
Aero is the 'glass' UI of Explorer and Window Frames, you also get a few functions that are also part of Explorer, like Flip 3D.
However, the scaleable UI of applications and Windows Vista itself have NOTHING to do with AERO.
The scaleable UI and the new graphics subsystem and API in Vista is based on WPF (Avalon) and this NEVER turns off, even if your Video card is VGA Only from 1990.
So everyone please STOP assuming this has anything to do with the Vector composer, the new API replacing GDI+ or any other cool rumor people that know little about Vista want to dig out of the closet.
Here, check out this great site calle Wikipedia.com, it even will explain this to you. Or people could go to www.microsoft.com and actually read this for themselves.
(This post is for all the people in this thread, not just the one I am responding too. If you don't know enough about Vista's Graphics and think it is like OSX's, or think the Aero 'Theme' is Avalon or any other confusing thing, either don't worry about it cause you aren't ever planning on using Vista, or if you might or have customers that might, go check it out so you aren't making silly statements.)