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Tom's Overly Detailed Vista Review
prostoalex writes "The weekend is here, and several software sites have published extensive reviews of Windows Vista for your reading enjoyment. Tom's Hardware is running a 500 hour Windows Vista review that spreads out 40 pages." From the article: "This new operating system is huge: it has more than 37,800 files, taking up a total of 10 GB. Part of this size stems from the fact that the current Beta is for the so-called "Ultimate Edition", which contains all available components, including complete versions of both Tablet PC and Media Center capabilities. In addition, many applications have been compiled in debug mode, so some space savings should occur for final versions once that debug switch is turned off. For our Windows Vista preview, we used Build 5381."
Let me save you some time, this is a dupe.
As a "subscriber", I get the preview of articles with the blurb: See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor. at the bottom. This gives opportunity to correct errors (doesn't happen much) and more importantly help stem the tide of dupes. I replied, told them "DUPE, BIG TIME", but alas. (It's a dupe of Tom's Hardware Looks at Microsoft Vista Beta.)
So, since it's a dupe, and I already posted to that story, feel free to read my post again.
(I don't mind the occasional dupe, I wonder why a mechanism to prevent them is offered if it isn't used. Sigh.)
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
5 hours? I don't think so: that spreads out 40 pages on Tom's Hardware means about 300 words plus 5Gb of adverts and screen clutter.
Virtually serving coffee
Seriously, this is getting out of hand. He's already had 2 articles today, every one of them linking to a different site of his. Did Slashdot's contract with Roland expire or something? This guy is clearly using Slashdot to pad his various semi-scammy sites. Something smells rotten here(and it's not RMS without a shower...).
Maybe the extensive review is a tribute to the OS in question: Bulky and unnecessary.
All I have to say is http://www.nliteos.com/ (nlite Windows software) to the rescue.
You can read the original thread here
And if you don't like clicking through 40 pages, there's a print view here
My MythTV HowTo
im mean really mandriva is 12gigs total debian is 12 gigs i think that just about all the big distros are that big
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html
All you have to do is append print.html to the end.
Someone needs to tell Tom's that you can fit more than 10 article words per Web page, even if 99% of it is advertising.
we will end no whine before its time
Thanks a lot dude for the simple trick !!s ta/print.html
The link you gave didnt work though.
Here the right one.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vi
Why does yahoo do this
I tried going directly to the printer friendly version and was redirected to the standard version. Tom's Hardware seems to be checking to make sure that people are coming only from their site when they try to see the printer-friendly version. So if you're running into trouble, try manually changing index.html to print.html.
10GB for just the operating system is just plain ridiculous. Take practically any Linux distribution, you will have a full installation of the OS, assorted userland utilities, scores of server and desktop applications (hundreds if you count them by component), and a whole slew of games and still struggle to reach 10GB. Ditto for OS/X.
Okay, so the beta as ships is compiled in debug mode, so the final release won't be 10GB; assume an average of 30% overhead for debug hooks (that's a generous figure). That would still give you 6.6 or so of disk consumption for the OS itself. Now, let's remove the extraneous files you never need - all the readme files, the install logs, and so forth - all the junk text files Microsoft leaves in %windir% - that's maybe 50MB or so, if you're very, very generous with rounding up for each file before adding them together. It's still around 6.6GB or so. Let's be more generous and call it 6GB just to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.
That's just ridiculous. It's clear from other, better-written reviews that Vista is much more than a simple update to Windows XP, but does the increase in functionality actually justify occuping over 6GB of disk space? Is the 6GB the result of extremely inefficient, sloppy code (which would explain Vista's minimum requirements compared to Linux+XGL or OS X's much more modest minimum requirements for similar eye candy capability), or is the entire thing written in VBscript and run through an interpreter at runtime? 6GB just seems to be a bit much, and if 10GB is closer to reality for the release mode build, it's even more absurd. They bundled in Media Center functionality - so? ATI's media center application and *nix's MythTV are far smaller than MythTV, and in the case of MythTV, does far more, without the DRM emcumberment - and highly extensible due to the source availability, if you are so inclined. They included tablet functionality? Well, I have that capability (pretty much screen rotation and handwriting recognition) with my PocketPC, in only 32MB of ROM, so that does not explain the tremendous size of the OS. Networking? OS X and Linux and BSD all include far more network stacks, drivers (Well, OS X does not include many drivers due to the limited hardware support matrix), etc. right out of the box and still takes far less space than Windows Vista.
Just what exactly is adding the bloat?
Regarding the review: Tom's "review" is not a review, but a glorified screenshot gallery - I didn't get past page 13 because I want a review and not just a bunch of screenshots spaced out over 40 pages for the purpose of generating billable ad impressions. If you want me to view the ads, give me worthwhile content.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This one is the revised version - no unnecessary pull for Ubuntu 6.06
Not only is this story a repeat, but it is worth mentioning that the Tom's review is basically pictures of the OS with almost NO technical details on Vista. They even are incorrect on features of DirectX 10 in the review.
All these 'wonderful' reviews running around on Vista, and still none exist that talk about the OS itself, all the reviews are doing is throwing up some pictures of the desktop and talking about AERO.
For example have you yet seen a review that mentions key points of the new OS of things that changed, like kernel changes, new memory management, new process scheduling, how the Video Driver is moved up from kernel level to user level, but still getting kernel level performace or even anytyhing on the vector based composer that is behind the AERO or WPF?
Nope...
Until you see these types of reviews, all you are going to get is a taste of the freaking eye candy and nerds going, "Here is the control panel" (Picture)
There are a few Firefox extensions that have done that for a while.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
"it has more than 37,800 files"
For comparison: my Mac (Mac OS X 10.4.6) has:
- about 78000 files in
/System
- about 100000 files in
/Library
- about 40000 files in
/usr
- about 65000 files in
/Developer
- about 110000 files in
/Applications (this includes third-party apps I installed)
The lesson you should learn from this is that the number of files is not really a meaningful indicator of the complexity of a system.Really, a 10GB install isn't that bad, considering that I can get a weenie 250GB drive for $80, and it doesn't even make a dent in the new 750GB drive.
Laptop users may have a valid whine, with low-end drives at 40GB, mid-range at 80GB or so, but I'd expect that a notebook install wouldn't take that much on a low-end product.
I'm not fond of the Microsoft Vista Ultimate Extreme De Luxe Ultra version that's a complete system-resources orgy that wants a few GB or so of RAM or a UI that makes my Geforce run at a good % of max for a good slice of time et cetera.
On the plus side, MS Vista will be shipping (eventually) with a copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
Every goddamn article in Tom's is stretched out over way too many pages, no exceptions. Until they change that policy, they're dead to me. I have better things to do with my time than banging on the Next link like an ADHD 6 year old in front of a whack-a-mole game.
Tom's Hardware is running a 500 hour Windows Vista review that spreads out 40 pages
Another Tom's Hard-On review with two paragraphs per page that stretches out to 40 pages is supposed to be thorough because it is long?
You think MAYBE it has something to do with the thick coating of ads all over TH's pages? I mean, they could have put it all on two pages or even one if they'd wanted.
Is somebody at Tom's paying you guys to post these dupes about hard-to-read articles that add little insight to the pool of knowledge about Vista?
I learned this from a post on another Tom's related link on /.
Just append print.html to end of the Tom's URL and get the one page print article.
I figure if the article is a dupe, might as well dupe any useful comments, right?
You might want to look at foXposé. Pretty much the same thing for Firefox. I've never actually used it, but if you like that feature and you use Firefox, you might like it.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html
Someone in a previous Tom's Hardware thread pointed out that adding "print.html" to the end of any TH article will magically give you a ONE Page article.
Thank you fief (12961). It looks like you've learned a thing or two since getting that low UID .
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Lots of pictures but not a lot of text... If he removed the screenshots, he could have fit it all on one page! Of course some people *LOVE* screenshots. So, I guess you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Damn you, Tom!
There's essentially no text - it's just lots of pages of screen shots. (Well, up to page four or five anyway, I got bored and stopped at that point.)
It's amazing that a "hardware" company like Apple can roll out a new OS nearly every year while it takes a "software" company like Microsoft seven to steal all of Apple's ideas...
I think this review sucks but for you guys who want to read it..s ta/print.html
:) and much more readable.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vi
Tada!
Its on one page
My experience with Vista started with build 5308, then tried 5365 and now 5384. Typically in Windows, I run firefox, thunderbird, battlefield 2 and starcraft as my main apps. Then there are the various media players, winamp with the clearone beta theme, itunes, and windows media player. My Windows XP experience has been relatively flawless. Sometimes I yearn for Mac OS's zen like simplicity and features like expose, but otherwise XP runs great on MY computer, meaning my computer doesn't run anything else with all the hardware supported very easily. Now, Vista Beta 2 is definitely an improvement over 5308, but it's still pretty damn raw. In 5308 I couldn't run BF2, but now I can. All it requires is that you run it in administrator mode. Performance at first was pretty bad, but after checking how much RAM was being used, I saw that Windows with nothing else running was up to 850 megs. I don't remember all the services I turned off, but it had a lot of unneccessary services running, stuff like tabletpc functionality and remote assistance (which ill never use). After turning off UAC and all the unneccesary services, I got it down to 400 megs, aero turned on, but usually DWM service and svchost.exe start climbing up as you basically just move your mouse around. So, it climbed back up to 500. BF2 then ran pretty well but it still wasn't as good as in XP. Ok, no problem, it runs, its playable, Vista performance hopefully will get better. NEXT, the game I absolutely can't live without, I fire it up when I'm stressed or generally feel like escaping: Starcraft. My god, this game runs great on a 166 mhz pentium 1 running Windows 95. Shit, well... under Vista if you don't select any compatability settings, the colors are all inverted upon first boot up. SO, enable 256 color mode and 640x480 and it boots up ok with colors all correct. BUT the game runs at a crawl when you actually get into any games. Starcraft in Vista at its current form is basically unplayable. And I wonder what other games are unplayable under Vista.
Next, WINDOWS VISTA WIRELESS NETWORKING SUCKS. 5308, 5365, 5384... all of them had the most horrible wireless networking i've ever experienced. I got a signal, connected fine. But my connection would only stay active randomly. Sometimes after 5 minutes it would be dead and I would have to disconnect and reconnect, which in 5384 usually fixed the problem (it didnt previously) But after reconnecting sometimes it would die within 30 seconds again. horrible, i hope they fix this.
Next, the UI is PRETTY PRETTY PRETTY. nice effects and hopefully they will allow modders and skinners to make some awesome add ons that could be quite nice. BUT the UI design scheme, having like 50 control panel items in classic mode (i know its not what they recommend but it's the advanced mode isn't it? it's too many seperate items in one folder) Welcome center is good, personalize menu sucks. This is one place where they should have copied OS X exactly, just put everything in one menu and like their laptop configuration menu, make it transition to the other control app in one window to other items. Not new windows for every control panel.
well those are my assessments, I have others, such as Firefox not being able to be made default browser no matter what i have tried with default apps configuration (same with thunderbird) and i dont know why they changed this, but it seems to be making it harder to use apps other than those that were configured to be used as default (Iexplorer, Outlook...) so thats lame. Also, firefox can't play imbedded media player anymore, the plugin wouldnt work and i couldnt figure it out. Long story made short, Vista needs A LOT of work. More than i thought previously. I'll be surprised if it is ready for Jan. 2007. I won't be surprised if it's released, but I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere near polished until 2008/9.
Instead of restricting reporting dupes to subscribers, they could restrict it to those with good Karma. That way only the people that seem to add something to /. can report problems.
Was it the screen captures? Maybe all that cutting and pasting took 500 hours.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Windows isn't a generic OS anymore. You can't program your own devices. You have no control over what drivers are loaded. You can't delve into the inner chamber of ring 1 or 2. Vista means 'You can't get there from here'. Welcome to the world of centralized computing. A Mainframe on your desktop/laptop. Instead of being controled by IT, your computer is controlled by Microsoft.
Its not a personal computer if you don't have full control over it. Its a Microsoft approved appliance.
My two cents.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Seriously, Tom's Hardware could crank out 40 worthless pages reviewing a fucking toothpick these days. I eludes me why anyone continues to try and read that shit. The thing hasn't been worth looking at in over 5 years.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.