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Windows Vista, More Than Just a Pretty Face
Nash writes "Ars Technica takes a look under the hood of Vista, discussing the need for a new API and comparing the graphics engine in Vista to that of Mac OS X. 'With Windows Vista it will be possible to implement Exposé properly-with live window updates and low system overhead. That said, it doesn't thus far look like Microsoft will be doing anything so useful as Exposé. Though the blurred glass effect is rather attractive, it's not exactly useful. Other visual effects include miniature window previews when the mouse cursor is hovered over taskbar buttons and an upgraded alt-tab device, and Flip3D.'"
Vista's a whore!
It's kind of unfortunate that the Glass effect is transparent. If you take a screenshot of a single window, it will pick up whatever is behind the window.
So, say you have something you don't want to show up in your screenshot, but it's behind the Glass effect. It will show up in the screenshot.
Not normally that big of a deal, but it's kind of annoying taking a screenshot of a "single window" and picking up content from other windows.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
here we go again... poor slashdot servers.
MeTheGeek
Of course, OS X also does live updates of windows in Expose, don't know why the article suggests otherwise.
ugly body. I think this would be the first instance where a paperbag princess would have her whole body except her face covered by a paperbag.
I don't know if Vista is a "train wreck" but I don't see any reason what-so-ever to upgrade.
I know some idiot is going post some "why don't you just use a horse and carrage" message. But, really, specifically, why on earth should I spend all that money, and go through all that trouble, for nothing?
W2K runs all of hw and sw. It's fast, and stable, it's not obtrusive, I know how to use it, and I don't need a new PC to run it. Not only do I not need that "eye candy" I hate it, I want my gui to look serious, not like a toy. W2K does not have all the DRM, WGA, and authentication cr@p.
So what does Vista do for me? How will Vista make me more productive? How will Vista save me money? Seems like paying money for an additional annoyance. I am not saying msft sucks, I am not saying vista sucks. But, this seems to be the worst "upgrade" imaginable.
seen this article before?
Oh, I know it was on OSNews.com... yesterday.
and big boobies too! Oh wait... we're talking about Vista?
Talk about bait and switch! It says that is more than just a pretty face but shows nothing but the history of Windows APIs and Eye (and maybe Ear) Candy. I will summarize this 8 page long article for you (emphasis mine):
...)
Page 1: This is Part I of Ars Technica's three-part Windows Vista review coverage. In the coming weeks we will be expanding on this coverage, culminating in an official review when our testing is finished.
(... history of Windows APIs, why Vista does graphics and audio better than XP, yada yada
Concluding remarks
The new APIs and all-new graphics stack are not the only things new in Vista. There have been major improvements in Vista's approach to secure computing, and many low-level changes to improve the experience of using the OS. I'll talk about these--along with some of the much-vaunted features that didn't make the cut after all--in my next article.
There already is an Expose clone for Vista using the Desktop Windows Manager (though of course not an official Microsoft one), here (performance is apparently rather poor on that version, but there's a new version coming out soon that improves this).
:)
If you want something a bit different, there's another Vista DWM addon called Smartflip that presents the windows similarly to Apple's FrontRow.
I imagine as more and more people switch to Vista (or, more likely, get new PCs with Vista preloaded) we'll see more and more third-party addons to the DWM. Fancy-Effects-Eye-Candy war between DWM addons and Beryl, anyone?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Vista does live updates. Not only in thumbnails when you hover over the taskbar, but in the 3d window browser and the Expose-like tiled preview mode. The system requirements are pretty horrible, but it does look very nice when its running properly.
...but it's still a pig, and you're still not going to want to kiss it.
Unless you're in to that sort of thing...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Its actually a well thought out article. I especially enjoyed the comparisons to similar features in OS X. Unlike for of the literature I read when both these operating systems are involved, the author seems to have no agenda but to inform. Its a nice change.
Nicer still I'm liking the comments here (so far). Unlike the site where i first heard about this article (Digg), people can argue without using excessive caps, exclamation points or using the word 'fanboy' over and over again.
I'm pretty distressed about the new audio stack in Vista, traditionally using onboard sound slowed the computers other functions (for games and such). It kind of sounds like theres now no difference between using a soundcard and using the onboard equivalent. Does anyone know if this is true? Moreover does this mean games will be that much slower?
Gee this same article, *and your exact comment*, word for word...
...were posted at OS News yesterday: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17521
Well, in fairness, if you pick a topic like, "How Vista is more than a pretty face," you'd have a hard time staying on topic too. It'd be like if I set out to write a factual article titled "The Easter Bunny's trip to Mars".
My laptop does all the effects mentioned in the article summary and more, even though the specs of it are far below what Vista requires. And I owe it all to Ubuntu, Gnome and Beryl.
There's no easy to find minimum required specs for Beryl, so I thought I'd just try it anyway and see what happens; I only really wanted it for Exposé anyway, so I wasn't too worried whether the rest of it worked. It works better than I had hoped and all effects work with no noticeable stress on my system.
Ubuntu, Gnome and Beryl, more than just a pretty face. I'm very happy with it all.
News for the amnesiac. Stuff that mattered.
Common errors in english [tinyurl.com] + FF 2.0 auto-spell. No more excuses! -- thank you ;-)
I get to make this article burn in flames!!!
I just never get tired of it!!! (27th time and still going!)
Are you even reading the links you post? The first one mentions "ugly" as a cultural reference, and all it says is ugly is the price. It explicitly calls Vista pretty -- that's the first goddamn entry in "The Good".
Your second link just errored. Did you really mean to cut if off at 56 there?
Your third link doesn't really address whether Vista is attractive. It mentions "eye candy" once when comparing performance to XP. It also mentions "view settings"
I'm not going to re-read the preview articles and look for mentions about visuals after that load of crap.
Take it from a Vista user -- it's pretty.
Here's what I think is not pretty: IE7 looks like crap to me. I don't know why people like it. The new Windows Explorer also looks ugly, but in its case that's partly because it is far more functional than it used to be and the ugliness is in the information overload.
Last visual thing: I hate the way the start menu doesn't fly-out anymore but instead rearranges itself over the same goddamn column. You can switch it to classic view, but then you lose the search field. WTF? Why should I have to choose between flyout menus and SEARCH?
Every other change I can think of: pretty. This is obviously subjective, but then again, you're full of shit, and subjective trumps full of shit.
if you've ever used Beryl you've already seen some of the eye-candy and features Vista(Aero) is trying to incorporate. nice try, though, but too little too late and not nearly as flexibly as Beryl.
While there were some interesting notes about the history of Windows API, it hints at the real motives of Microsoft. It seems that at every turn, MS has created a proprietary technology to force vendor lock-in. Rather than use OpenGL, MS has developed DirectX. Rather than use Adobe's PDF printing subsystem, they developed XPS. While there might be technical reasons for those decisions, the pessimist in me says part of the reason was for vendor lock-in.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Yawn...
It will be a long time before people write a lot of code that ONLY runs on Vista. Hell there are companies still using W2K just because it works, is as secure as XP, and doesn't use as many resources as XP. XP will be around for years and people will want to sell software to people that are still on XP for years.
Welcome to the world of Windows.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It'd be like if I set out to write a factual article titled "The Easter Bunny's trip to Mars".
I'd read it!
This guy's the limit!
I am a developer for a small software company and started using Vista on my workstation about a month ago.
I just switched back to XP sp2 for the following reasons:
I/O performance for File Copy (HD to HD) was 5x slower than the same box running XP. No kidding. I was copying about 10Gb of files from one disk to another, and it took over 45 min to complete (and this was from a 10,000rpm RAID-0 striped drive to a SATA drive)
Usability is total CRAP when UAC is turned on. This is the feature in the Apple commercial where the suit asks "Allow or Deny" at every exchange. This is NO JOKE.
Something a simple as changing the DPI of your screen fonts requires that you click "Allow" on a dialog box before you do anything else.
When you want to view processes from All Users in Task Manager, you have to do the same every single time.
Copying or into a Program Files folder or Renaming a file requires 2 confirmation dialog boxes!
Drag and Drop to some applications is disabled when it is "Run as Administrator", which you must do for some things to work correctly. This means no more double clicking on a txt file to edit it in notepad if that file is in a Program Files directory. Nope. You must launch notepad using "Run as administrator" then use the File-Open menu item to open the txt file.
I would disable this but we develop software for enterprise networks and those machines will most likely have this 'feature' permanently disabled. I switched back to XP for my main workstation and I'm running Vista in a VM for now.
Vista more than just a pretty face, it's a GIANT pain in the A$$ as well.
They're still busy consulting their mothers on how to spell complex words like "defective"
The author rants on like Vista is wonderful but it must be terribly badly structured internally, as
its performance is terrible compared to XP and its a terrible resource hog too.
After running my own tests, I found most 3D-accelerated games run around 20-30% slower under Vista than XP. XP takes about 2GB of hard drive space, Vista takes over 12GB. I have 2GB of ram, but Vista uses about half of it without any apps running at all!!.
Furthermore everytime you do almost anything in Vista it keeps popping up this REALLY annoying dialog box asking for your permission to do what you just asked. That get old really fast.
After trying it, I decided not to even bother with Vista in the end, as for all that pain it really has no benefits over XP, and a lot of disadvantages, such as heavy DRM.
I now very happily use Linux for everything except gaming, which is the only valid reason I still have dual-boot (XP not Vista).
Nice puff piece. Lot's of eye candy - no meat and potatoes. Seems to be little more than a ploy to force you into using .net if you want vector graphics, although they certainly could have done that for a native API. The rest is security-cover-you-arse pop-ups and we all know who well that's going....
What I don't understand is why MS went through so much trouble to implement Aero, only to leave the functionality which sits on top of Aero so lacking. That 3D window-flip thing is just nowhere near as useful as Expose, or something like it. Why would I want to put my windows into a serial line and then flip through them, one by one? I don't understand the usability win there. I feel like they could have harnessed the power of Aero to do something much more impressive.
The only thing that seemed useful in Longhorn was the database file system. BeOS gave us a preview of what that would could be like, and it was Good. But all they delivered was security closer to industry standards (well done), lots of consumer-hostile features like DRM/spyware, and, oh yeah, they're aping Mac-like eye candy. Thanks, got that on the mac, got that in Linux with Beryl. I guess you can't expect thousands of highly paid programmers to deliver a commercial product to compete with a few geeks who hack in their spare time because they love what they do.
The solution is naturally to bring out "Classic XP" again half a year after the New Taste of Vista, and use a corn-based substitute for the commandline.
Short answer, "Yes".
Long answer, games that use HW acceleration via DirectSound3D will see no benefit from having a dedicated soundcard anymore. However, games using OpenAL will be able to use the hardware-accel provided by your soundcard.
Creative Labs has a project called Alchemy for wrapping DS3D calls to OpenAL for "legacy" games.
The Alchemy page also has a lot more info on this topic.
The article made a big deal about how Win32 and GDI are obsolete in Vista, and all the cool apps use WPF on the .NET Framework 3, and this makes them vector-based, so they're DPI-independent and magnify cleanly.
.NET Framework really the native API for this? Not a great way to encourage existing applications to be ported to WPF, as "managed code" does not play well with compiled languages like C++ (they can't even marshal bool properly, for heaven's sake).
I use Vista every day at work, and I have never seen such an app. All the built-in Windows apps look just the same as they did in XP (with the notable exceptions of Minesweeper and Solitaire, which still appear blocky under the Magnifier).
Does Vista even come with any WPF applications?
And is the
Well the great thing about Windows is you can always change the theme. Just about everything about the appearance is customizable.
Do you like the "Windows 2000" look? Use the "Windows Classic" theme.
Are you kickin' it XP style? Use the "Windows XP" theme.
Want to roll your own? Make your own custom theme, and save it. That way if you make changes you don't like, you just jump back to that theme. And you can even share your themes with your friends.
About 99.9999% of the Windows things Slashdot complains about can be easily resolved, and most of the time by just opening a help file and doing a search. It actually takes more effort to complain than it does to get answers.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
at least not one that's part of the OS.
Of course there is one huge feature that I need.
All of my current music is in mp3 and flac, things that can't be properly protected by Windows XP. But Vista can take those crazy hacker formats and turn them into better control WMP format so that my music is protected against everyone, including me.
Dirty hackers.
1) Take a leftover machine somewhere, the cheapest one you can find, then install Ubuntu onto it. Install Beryl and configure some of the nifty special effects.
2) Put this box in your boss' office without asking. Demonstrate the cool factor of Beryl's whizbag h0tness. Show the practicality of how OpenOffice can read/write an MS document. Entertain him by playing a flash video from YouTube. Five minutes will be enough for a low-level demonstratation that Ubuntu+Beryl is functionally superior to Windows in many ways and comparable in most ways.
3) Then explain to him the cost savings. X * $300 (Vista license) compared to $0 (Ubuntu)
4) Then explain to him the cost savings. X * $500 (Office license) compared to $0 (OpenOffice)
5) Then explain to him the cost savings. X * $large (hardware to run Vista very well) compared to X * $small (hardware to run Ubuntu very well)
6) Bottom line savings during the acquisition period for X machines (office-wide) = TOTAL COST SAVINGS $huge
7) Put the numbers on paper. Leave it with him. And leave him the computer for the day.
Now he's touched Linux, not read about it. Remember: money talks. Whether or not he bites on this particular upgrade cycle, he'll at least think about indelible impression you've made.
X won't load at all on my machine (drops to a command prompt and gives me some cryptic error that no one on the Ubuntu forums had a real/working answer for.) It runs Vista fine though...
I figure I'll give linux another go when fiesty fawn is released.
There's already a great exposé clone available at http://insentient.net/
Games will run slower until Vista becomes more mature and the game companies learn all the ins and outs. When people went from 98 (lets forget about ME) to XP it was the same complaints that games ran slower. Then after awhile the issues where resolved and games ran better under Xp the 98.
When OS X came out people complained it was slow, had issues, etc. Now its a smooth OS. Why people assume a new OS will not have issues is beyond me.
I'm not sure about the audio stack, but the audio imporvement I want to see is application level sound control.
File x-fers on my test machine are easily 50% faster than those on an identical machine running XP.
Oh, and don't get me started on the network performance. Vista is leaps and bounds ahead of XP when it comes to transfering files accross the network.
In your opinion....what do people state subjective things as facts?
Can we please stop this b.s.? I know I'm not the only one that thinks it - Vista is ugly!
In my opinion, and that of others I have talked to, the thing looks like some group of interns were dropped into the GUI group and told to use every new eye-candy feature they could in every place possible. It's overkill and makes Vista look like one of those old Floridian women with too many pieces of jewelry and clothing in more colors than South American art.
There's a list of WPF-based applications here.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
"but the audio improvement I want to see is application level sound control."
Really? what type of improvements? I thought it was fantastic that you can control the sound levels of individual applications vs just turning the master volume up and down. What were you looking for? Thats really all i could ask for regarding 'app level sound controls'
I have ubuntu installed, but the GUI doesn't work at all. It drops me to a command prompt and says there's something wrong with x. I'm afraid that the only linux knowledge I have is from trying to get it working and I've never had much luck with getting the GUI functioning though.
Come on you couldn't read between the lines of my poorly formed and not clear sentence? :-)
I meant to say: I am looking forward to using Vista's application level sound control feature.
Why oh why can't we have Flip3D and the mini-tab-previews without Aero?! Please don't tell me it's not possible to render the classic theme with WDM!
My computer is over 3 years old and I dont have any issues for any of the effects on vista. Regarding the memory issue, it uses loads of memory if available for cache, anyways if you needed it back for a game or something, its releases it back for you. This is a very good thing :)
In regards to multi-desktops, I'm using Vista Virtual Desktops, which is brilliant. you can get more info here http://www.codeplex.com/vdm.
I like vista. Speak soon Linux/Mac lovers ;)
My boss asked me to start testing Vista here at the office to try and find any incompatabilities with any in house and other common applications we use (none yet), and in my testing one thing that was a noticable improvement is network performance.
I have since installed it on a few machines at home where I have an external drive hooked up to my PC with all of my ripped CDs shared so my wife and kids can access it from their machines, and where iTunes would lockup in the past when I tried to open it from another machine with the library mapped back to the shared drive it now works flawlessly.
Okay, I get it. Vista is better. Better security model, better UI, better API's...that's as much praise as I'm willing to heap on it right now, but overall I think that's pretty fair. And, all things being equal, I think Vista would be a good investment for a lot of companies.
But all things aren't equal. That pretty face comes with a pretty steep price tag and some pretty draconian restrictions. On top of the higher costs associated with Vista, you're STILL paying for anti-virus and firewall protection. For a business you still need all the overhead that goes into supporting XP. So, where's the win for business users with Vista? If by switching to Vista you could do away with the anti-virus subscription, that's a win. A big win. But you're still paying the anti-virus subscription with Vista on top of the higher costs for the base OS. And installing Vista is hugely disruptive. That will likely change, but today installing Vista would be a major productivity hit on an enterprise.
On the other hand if you switched to Ubuntu, you probably could do away with the anti-virus subscription. Ubuntu costs you $0.00 for the license and isn't any more disruptive to install than Vista. You don't need new hardware to run Ubuntu and there is a raft of very functional productivity software available.
This is not the first time Linux has come out on top of a fair TCO comparison. But the TCO margin with Vista is so big...at least right now...that Linux not only wins but it wins buy a huge margin. The justification for staying with Microsoft, at least in a business setting, is getting harder every year. And that completely ignores the shockingly one-sided MSFT EULA and ratty little snitching MSFT products do routinely in the background.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I do not see what the big deal is other than Microsoft is catching up with what Mac OS and GNU/Linux GUIs can already do. In particular, the open source Compiz and Beryl projects that are utilized by operating systems. These offer 3D rotating desktops, transparent windows, shrinking all open windows simultaneously so you can select another application quickly via XGL.
It's nothing new, but there is all this excitement over Microsoft's eye candy that you will shell out 250 bucks for that is already being perfected for free while Microsoft is still working out the bugs. I just do not understand; if someone else does understand then feel free to enlighten me.
Ubuntu is terminally easy to use.
+++ATH0
As the article states, it's straightforward to write an Expose clone in Vista. I've done it and my biggest headache was implementing a linpacking 2d algorithm to layout the windows in a manner that's pleasing to the eye. I assume Microsoft didn't because they were afraid of stepping on one of Apple's numerous patents.
There is a problem with Vista's thumbnail API, btw. After a window has been minimized for a while, Vista's unable to render its thumbnail and instead it just renders the non-client portion of the window and sticks a large window icon at its center.
I assume they are doing that to minimize the process' working set, but it still sucks if you want to support advanced Expose functionality like drag and drop.
Someone has already implemented Expose for Vista:1 /08/11485.aspx
http://blogs.labo-dotnet.com/simon/archive/2006/1
I'd rather someone screw my wife, then install vista on my computer.
I completely agree. Microsoft have spent five/six years on producing a 'pretty face'. Personally, i think vista looks rubbish, there is too many colors and they look awful. Themes on sites like gnome-look and kde-look (etc...) look 100 times better, and they've mostly been developed by average users in there spare time.
Operating systems such as OpenBSD claims to have had 'Only two remote holes in the default install, in more than 10 years', these guys have nowhere near the amount of core developer's that Microsoft do. Then why, after so little time (or long) after vista's release, is there news about loophole's in vista's activation services?
Well done M$ for screwing up again
It's an ad supported site; when they submit an article to Slashdot, they are generating revenue from all the little Dell, Google, and who knows whatever other ads they have.
I'll make an even shorter summary for you. The wait for Vista was long, and not much has come from waiting, except a little "me too". But you already knew that. I recommend not bothering to click through if the summary is lame, and the article sounds like traffic-generating fluff.
I've been pleased with quite a few features in Vista. I'll outline and expand on them for you below:
- file transfer rate. This is the first Windows OS to do this. It shows the actual data transfer rate when moving or copying a file.
- copying files. I don't recall WinXP or any other versions of windows doing this, but if you're copying files to a location where files of the same name exist, it will give you the standard options to overwrite, not copy, but it will also give you the option to copy and rename the file at the same time.
- search bar. If you have a lot of programs installed and their respective start menu shortcuts are installed, looking through them can be tedious. The search bar on the start menu is nice for this reason (for people who use the start menu frequently to open programs, I prefer rklauncher)
- sidebar. I love the sidebar. I have a floating widget that monitors/graphs my cpu usage and speed (PowerNow is great). On the right side I can glance at the weather and calender, I can glance at these before I leave for work to gauge what clothes I should wear.
- favorites bar. This is a favorites bar in explorer that gives a quick list of folders you can select.
- I know you mentioned the pretty new theme, but as others have mentioned, the glass effect is nice.
I'm going to go further than what the original poster requested: now, Vista isn't perfect; my number one complaint when you compare it to any linux desktop environment is no integrated support for virtual desktops. I'd also say the fact it doesn't support programs into categories in the start menu like Gnome does is a real let down, too. The fact that I don't have a fully functional command line sucks as well (which is why I have sshd setup on my Gentoo server). I also don't have anywhere near the programs available on windows that I would have on linux.
Still, when it comes to bleeding edge hardware (there aren't even drivers available for my video card yet), Windows operating systems (in general) win. Some might argue unless more people use linux there won't be better driver support, but I'm not going to be one to do that. I'm perfectly happy with running Gentoo linux on my server and Vista on my desktop. Vista for play, linux for serious stuff. Since I use Vista mostly for play, it's my best choice for a desktop OS. I use my server for QoS and performance graphing of my cable modem connection (and I use it to help me do my job via ssh).
And for this they want me to ditch my WinXP laptop?
Look, if I want all the effects, I'll install the Mac OS on my Intel motherboard myself, or buy a new machine from Dell with Linux preloaded.
But a few years late and a resource hog does not make me want to get it.
However, as the article points out, you can now port (finally) to a Microsoft OS a lot more easily than before - provided it will run WinVista in the first place.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
problems in Windows and then REALLY whine once there are mechanisms to protect sheepy users from those problems. Semiliterate users never did open attachments, leave firewall off, not use a virus checker, etc. but Vista at least comes right out of the box with most of the past vulnerabilities boxed out. MSFT is durned when they do and durned when they don't. Face it - most MSFT haters just can't get over their love of the shell prompt - The Dark Place.
Complain all you want about Vista(I hate it!) but here's the reality:
Someone important to you will buy a Vista-loaded machine, things will crash constantly, and you will be called in to fix it. If you don't know how to fix it, you'll look like you don't know what you're doing. Happened to me when I tried to resist XP. Linux/Mac are great, but what are you gonna tell this person... "Hey, return this laptop and buy a Mac/Linux-loaded one just because I don't know how to fix Vista". That will make you look even worse! It wasn't always part of my job, but knowing how to fix Windows PC's has opened many doors for me(personally and professionally).
The moral of the story for most of us in IT is this: Love it or hate it, Vista is here to stay. You don't have to use it yourself, but unless you work at Ernie Ball or Google, you should at least be prepared to support this platform and its shortcomings.
Microsoft, why the hell can we still not move items around on the taskbar (without 3rd party software)!?
How damn hard is that? I know many people that are freaks about the way taskbar items are organized (this is especially true in call centres), so why can we still not do it?
I know lots of people who have wanted that feature since anybody even knew about resolutions larger than 640x480... get on with it!
it is a pretty face in the first place...
Vista = ugly.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I shouldn't constantly be staring at the stupid green bar at the top of Explorer waiting for Vista to finish displaying the files in a directory. I love it when some of the photos never get thumbnails. Explorer in Xp for all of its warts is noticeably faster at displaying directories and copying data around.
You just know there is some insane DRM checker running 50,000 a second to check to make sure that your actually allowed to view you own files.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
1999: Oh my God, Windows is so boring looking. Here's the upcoming OSX, look at at how good the desktop looks.
2007: What's with this eye candy in Vista? We need a simple (i.e. boring desktop).
Finally:
Posting as AC (even though I could use the Karma) to further illustrate the source of that strength.
It works...on a Mac- you can use the app Grab or just CMD-Shift-4 then press space. This will turn your cursor into a camera- hover over the window you want and click. The screencap is a png bounded by the window that includes all the transparent niceties like anti-aliasing to clear on rounded corners, drop shadows and transparency (try a transparent terminal window!). You can even snap windows that aren't focused or windows that are occluded and it will get the whole thing. Try it on Dashboard Widgets and Dock Icons too.
Pretty Handy. I'd be surprised if there isn't a way to do this in Windows Vista (since aero presumably doesn't use old school screen buffering)- though it may require some shareware. Good luck!
~Edified Ed.
Vista /w Beryl
OSX
Linux (say Debian/Ubuntu)
Compare on similar hardware, and use categories such as UI attractiveness, usefulness, hardware consumption (RAM/disk-space/CPU/GPU) etc
Personally, some of the best things I've seen have been with Beryl. The "ripple" effect when a tray icon flashes is rather good for grabbing attention, but less annoying than your standard speech-bubble popup, the varying eyecandy is impressive, and it does enhance ones ability to multitask in various aspects. I've also heard similar good things about Vista's ability to organize folders in a 3d fashion.
In a slightly different note... First I heard people on the /. say "there is no visual difference in Firefox 2 compared to Firefox 1.5. Why the hell would I upgrade?" And then I hear "there is too much visual difference in IE7 compared to IE6. Why the hell would I upgrade?" Holy crap my ear bleeds from all this whining. Seriously.
That's the answer you're fishing for right?
Good God, it's the same crap every week from you.
Vista uglier than Ubuntu? Uglier than seven-shades-of-fleshy-brownish? I've had infections that look better than Ubuntu's default desktop. I rendered fonts better than Ubuntu back when I was in kindergarten.
So you're saying that your OS wastes you RAM and that's a good thing?
Lucky you. I can't even get x to work on mine (I know, "I are a luser nub").
Vista runs without a hitch though...
I'd love to see Windows make a clean break with the past; by dropping backwards compatibility, the codebase would become much smaller (and hopefully more secure). This could be done if you booted to a hypervisor and then ran new apps in one VM and old ones in another. A "seamless windows" mode such as is offered by Parallels would even allow old and new windows to live together on the desktop.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
That "marshal bool properly" problem was simply a bug (God forbid, that a bug could occur in software!!), not a design issue. Furthermore it was over three years ago and has since been fixed.
You get an F in FUD'ing.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Yes, Gentoo is not recommended for beginners. That said, if you are computer-literate, going with Gentoo can be informative and interesting.
+++ATH0
But ugly goes right to the bone.
Have gnu, will travel.
I barely ever read the articles (ha ha), I just go straight to the comments. I've learned so many things and have been exposed to a lot of different viewpoints by reading the /. comments. Slashdot comments are definitely the strength of the site.
I don't know that it's the graphics eating CPU, but *some* part of Vista must be eating something, or things wouldn't be running SLOWER than in XP. Hell, even Ars has pointed that out.
Frankly, having used it, I can say that it is a piece of crap. There's no way in hell I'm upgrading to Vista.
You want eye candy? Run Beryl on Linux. Vista makes me want to put my fist through the monitor every time it pesters me with [ Allow ] or [ Cancel ] (not my machine, so I can't turn of UAC). That is, when it's actually mostly working, which is almost never.
Windows XP has had Indexed Searching for years as part of the Search Companion - it's poorly documented, and not nearly as flashy as Windows Desktop Search (or whatever it is that Vista uses), but it does the whole indexing thing just fine. After it's finished searching the index, it'll do its regular old-fashioned search, too, so you're getting the best of both words.
Here's how to get started.
Here are some more advanced intructions. Searching for particular properties, boolean operators asf; stuff that's in the Help File but, like I said, poorly documented.(You don't need to use that program)
If you've installed WDS, but would like to go back to using Search Companion by default, John tells you how.
Cheers!
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
I have a 4 year old desktop that's running it fine (1.4GHz and 1GB of RAM with the video card it came with.) Must be my leet 'doze skills...
While I'm sure you're quite happy with your shiny new OS, millions of people have installed and started using Vista since it came out. The desktop install base probably already dwarfs linux. It's amazing to me that somehow millions of semi computer literate people can somehow muddle through the upgrade/install process and end up with something that meets all of their needs, yet people who clearly aren't idiots when it comes to computers can't seem to get it working...
There's usually a few hundred cached megs on here. That's fine. I was counting the in-use RAM, which is usually ~500mb. I'm not saying that Vista's stuff was in cache. It was all IN USE. Vista was using so much memory doing *something* that it couldn't render a screensaver properly. I have no idea what it could be using all that memory on, because I can't even get online at school with Vista, so Firefox's memory issues can't be doing it. Either that, or Vista's not so good at releasing cached memory.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
It's a bug that never should have made it into a shipping product, let alone gone unfixed for two major releases of the compiler (VS2002 and 2003). The fact that it took more than three years to fix a bug that completely b0rked unmanaged/managed interoperability shows how high a priority this must be to Microsoft (i.e., not very high at all).
I CAN'T GET ENOUGH! MORE! PLEASE!
Did you ever reconcile with your parents, APK? I promise they love you, you just have to give mom and dad a big hug.
Good luck with your profound case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
+++ATH0
Because the longer I go without answering it, the more of your time I get to waste, and the more I get to laugh at you, obviously.
If I had written any useful software (and I'm not saying I have or haven't), I CERTAINLY wouldn't tell you about it, because that would completely ruin my fun.
You're still incredibly narcissistic, btw. Please call your parents tonight and tell them how much you love them and need them to love you back. You really will feel better, I swear.
+++ATH0
Another classic APK trope: questioning the poster's manhood.
Hey, dipshit: how do you know I'm MALE? Maybe I SHOULD be acting like a woman because I AM one.
Hm. Hadn't considered that, had you?
And what "faulty logic" did I use?
+++ATH0
A retard AND a misogynist!
Stop trying to pick me up, APK.
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