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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
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.
Of course, OS X also does live updates of windows in Expose, don't know why the article suggests otherwise.
From TFA: "The scaled windows that Exposé shows you are not merely static screenshots of those windows; they're the actual windows themselves, just scaled down. This means that they update live, and any changes in a window are immediately apparent to the user."
How do you read that as suggesting otherwise?
This guy's the limit!
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.
OK, so the summary of the article suggests otherwise then....
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.
I read the summary as indicating that previous versions of Windows couldn't implement it properly, but that Vista would now allow it to be done right. I can see how it could be interpreted the other way, though.
This guy's the limit!
...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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even that given, though; considering it isn't yet installed on most XP machines, there are already a surprisingly large number of WPF-only applications. Copying-and-pasting from here:
Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista - New IM client (SCREENCAST).
New York Times Reader - Next-generation online reading experience for the NY Times (MSI).
Microsoft Calendar Printing Assistant - Generate printed calendars from your Outlook schedule (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Blend - Designer tool for building WPF experiences (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Design - illustration and graphic design tool (MSI).
Microsoft Windows Live for TV - 3D access to Messenger contacts from Media Center or IE (MSI).
Electric Rain Standout - High-end custom presentation software (SCREENCAST).
Wikipedia Explorer - 3D exploration of related articles from Wikipedia (APPLICATION).
iBloks - Mashup application for creating 3D movies (MSI).
RikReader - RSS Reader that integrates with Internet Explorer 7 (APPLICATION).
Nostalgia - Yahoo! Flickr browser and photo manager (APPLICATION).
Cine.View - Netflix movie queue manager (APPLICATION).
Cool Text Vector Draw - A vector drawing program with 1200 fonts available via a web service (XBAP).
Forbes.com Reader - News Reader Application from Forbes.com (APPLICATION).
Actipro Wizard - A control for building wizard dialogs in WPF (XBAP).
UniveRSS - A 3D Vista RSS reader (APPLICATION).
Xceed Datagrid for WPF Live Explorer - Hands-on demo of Xceed's free new Datagrid for WPF (XBAP).
DominoKen - Artistic 3D XBAP demonstration from Microsoft Japan (XBAP).
Denounce - Stand-alone podcast listener and blog reader (APPLICATION).
British Library Turning the Pages - British Library's 'virtual viewer' for some of their most precious books (XBAP).
ITN Hub Player - Video clips and news stories from ITN (APPLICATION).
Evolution Media Center - HTPC Front-end with stunning animations and dynamic XAML-skinning (ZIP).
OTTO - Online clothing shopping (APPLICATION).
Seattle Post-Intelligencer PI Reader - News Reader Application from Seattle P.I. (APPLICATION).
Roxio Central - Windows Vista Technology Preview - CD and DVD Burning application (APPLICATION).
Metaliq - Snowboarding data visualization (ZIP).
WeatherNews - 3D Weather visualization (XBAP).
Shiseido - Make up online shopping (XBAP).
DOSV - Computer Configuration (XBAP).
Warner - Movie Previews and Showtimes (XBAP).
Notescraps - Random information manager (MSI).
Valil.Chess.WinFX - Chess game (XBAP, APPLICATION).
NetAdvantage for WPF - Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 controls (APPLICATION).
fnac.com - French retailer shopping experience (set system to French locale to run) (APPLICATION).
DevComponents WPF Ribbon - DevComponents Office 2007 Ribbon for WPF (APPLICATION).
Daily Mail eReader - On line reading experience for UK Newspaper Daily Mail (APPLICATION).
The North Face In-Store Explorer - Retail kiosk (MUST GO TO STORE TO EXPERIENCE).
Windows Vista Magazine - Using the same viewer as the British Library app (XBAP).
TempWorks fx - Staffing industry line of business application (SCREENSHOT).
Ricciolo PaperBoy - A complete RSS Feed Aggregator (APPLICATION).
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
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
A Windows tech asked me if I was running Vista when he saw Beryl. He tried to claim Vista could do all that stuff (cube, burning windows, Expose). Obviously, he was wrong. He was also shocked by how low my RAM usage was.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
There's a list of WPF-based applications here.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
He tried to claim Vista could do all that stuff (cube, burning windows, Expose). Obviously, he was wrong.
Sorry, but technically he's right. Vista has all the infrastructure (3d hardware accelerated GUI) and the APIs (DWM) to do it - it's just that Vista doesn't come by default with these effects (cube, exposé) available. But it can, in theory, be easily implemented by third-party applications. In fact, case in point, a good example is the Exposé functionality: That functionality doesn't come by default on Vista, but there are already a few applications available for Vista that adds this feature to the desktop, properly using the new video infrastructure on Vista to do it just as OSX and Linux+Beryl does: with the scaled Windows updated in real-time, with negligible performance hit. It's just a matter of time or will from developers to make other fancy new effects available.
According to TFA it's not a public API and MS doesn't have any intentions of opening it up. I'm sure it'll be hacked, though.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
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.
>> First of all he probably didn't bother installing a display driver(cause he sounds like that kind of person)
Jeez you are so wrong and also uneceessarily passimistic.
I'm a gaming nut, a perofiessional Software Developer, and all areound tech geek.
I built my own PC. Dont you think, after spending over $1600 just on a couple of watercooled 8800GTX GPU's that I'd at least know enough to download the latest drivers from nVidia?
>> because my games play excellent on Vista usually with the same or up to 10% better frame rate than xp.
Well your findings are completely contrary to what everyone else on the internet is saying, and also what all respected tech review websites like Tom's Hardware and Anandtech are reporting (which is the same as I'm finding... a 20%+ performance hit for running vista).
>> Also Vista takes just under 8GB for a full install of the Ultimate version which contains all of the features from all the other versions combined.
Not true. I installed the full ultimate version and the windows directory alone is over 11GB.
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