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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
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
"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.
Comparing full install size of Vista to a large Linux distro is apples to oranges.
Yes, some of the large Linux distros are huge, multi-CD behemoths. But they include just about every piece of free software under the sun. For your comparison convenience, here's a list of programs usually included with a mega-distro:
That's a fraction of what you get with a distro like Suse, Mandriva, or Debian.
Now, a list of what you get with a full Vista install:
Notice something? Nobody uses Paint. Nobody uses Wordpad. Nobody uses Notepad. Nobody uses Outlook Express. Nobody plays Solitaire and Minesweeper. For most intents, Windows is just a 10 gig OS. If you want to do anything useful, you have to install other programs.
A full install of a large Linux distro has programs for just about anything someone might want to do on a computer, and it's actually useful software. If it didn't include AbiWord already, I'd go download it. If Windows didn't have Wordpad, I wouldn't care.
But I run Slackware. It's 2 CDs - a full install is less than 3 GB, and comes with word processors, latex, compilers, debuggers, network tools, 4 window managers, XMMS, and some other stuff. It's very useable, comes with a hell of a lot more stuff than Windows, and is less than 1/4th the size for a full install.
Maybe not
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?
Nobody plays Solitaire and Minesweeper
You obviously don't have relatives.
I have nothing to say.
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!
Ditto for OS/X.
Not true at all. The default install for my G5 was well over 10 gigs on OSX 10.4.x.
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.
The software our company writes uses the registry to store settings. However, the customers that buy our software like to lock down their users to where they have to 'write' access to ANYTHING, especially the registry.
The two are incompatable. It's a constant barage from Customer Support trying to tell Development to "get the heck out of the registry."
Of course, our other product writes to text files...and we are constantly having to tell people to give write access to those text files. And finally, another product writes to files that are stored in the users space. (Flavor of the day is "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\application\" Have fun walking a non-techy user through checking that. (Especially since it's typically hidden by default.)
I guess there's no way to win...but we've definitely 'lost' the most when using the registry.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--