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DRAM Makers Suffer Due to Lackluster Vista Adoption
quixote9 writes "We've heard conflicting estimates of how widely adopted Vista has been. Now comes some hard data. DRAM makers ramped up to meet the huge expected demand for more memory needed by Vista. Except the demand hasn't materialized. Now they're suffering. Alternatively, maybe everyone's cleverly hacked their Ultimate Aero Glass Vista to fit on their old PCs."
"This is the beginning of the end for microsoft"
Based on that statement, I would assume that you have never worked in a large corp. environment...
Most of microsoft's money comes from corporate license agreement for Server level OS's, Exchange type stuff and the legions and legions of other business productivity software. Moreover, I don't see anything usurping Microsoft's complete and utter domination of the home PC market; as it stands both Mac and Linux are niche user groups.
Besides, in 18 months computer power and vista resource requirements will be a bit more in sync and we'll slowly begin filing off XP on to Vista. At which point Microsoft will announce it's new home OS, which upon release will have the same problems that Vista had, XP had, Windows ME had, Windows 2000 had, Windows 98 had...
There's nothing new here, save Microsoft proclaiming that they're about to save the world...oh wait that's not new and they aren't the only company to resort to this type of marking.(On a side note, am I the only one blown away by the fact that Apple can get a way with saying that the iPhone is a revolutionary devise? The thing costs nearly as much as a laptop and the only "unique" function that I can see is the digital rotary dialing system....).
It beaucoup, not beau coup. beaucoup == a lot, beau coup == nice hit
Boy, would I be class pissed action if lawsuit I was an investor! Yes, it is quite troubling when I purchase stock for $22.07 and sell it for $31.02 a few months later. Please notify me if you get a response on your SEC filing and I'll join in!
http://www.belshe.com/2007/01/04/microsofts-revenu e-breakdown-2003-2006/
Learn to love Alaska
echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
If you haven't tried Linux yet, plug in Ubuntu, its like Windows only free, and the software is free and it comes with everything and works on more hardware than Vista!
Can I buy a point of sale system for it that is functional? Can I find a real financial package to buy for it? Sorry, it doesn't "come with everything", and it's nothing like Windows.
I don't respond to AC's.
Linux is not "Windows, only free",
and those of us answering questions in the IRC channel would appreciate it if you'd stop saying that.
Thanks.
Haven't memory prices dropped every day since it were introduced?
In fact they have NOT. Memory is, more than any other component in your PC, a true commodity, and it can be a volatile one at that. Like the market for gasoline it can sometimes be open to manipulation in the same way, though the major players are less apt to participate in collusion as petroleum refiners are notorious for doing.
I distinctly remember an incident involving a fire at a major DRAM manufacturing facility which produced a step change downward in global production capacity--this at a time when demand continued to grow at a healthy clip. Prices spiked even faster, and with a greater magnitude by far, than fuel prices did when hurricane Katrina took out all that refining capacity (we are talking doubling and tripling of prices here). In another incident it wasn't a drop in supply but a surge in demand sparked by the first Christmas season with Windows XP-equipped PCs for sale--inventory dried up and DRAM prices doubled.
aybe this is more to do with lifespan of memory than anything, changing design and automatically expiring themselves from the market.
That can have an effect on DRAM prices actually, except that the effect is opposite to what is happening today: when new memory formats come out it usually fuels demand and raises prices. Demand instead has been flat and prices have dropped. The problem is overcompensation to deal with the release of Vista (they were trying to avoid what happened when XP came out). Memory makers are lousy commodity managers in comparison to how those who produce gasoline, grain, metals, etc and really botched up--but MS also botched up and made the problem worse:
* Vista missed Christmas--it was in limited, corporate-and-developer-only release until January. Not only did this mean the vista launch couldn't take advantage of the shopping season, it also meant that the shopping season for computers itself was blunted as shoppers turned elsewhere for gift ideas (why buy a PC with crufty old XP when spiffy new Vista will be out and pre-installed on machines within weeks?). No demand there
* Though XP needs a relatively modest increase in resource requirements compared to its direct ancestor Windows 2000, the vast majority of the first XP adopters were moving from the DOS-based line of Windows (95/98/Me) and of all things what XP wanted the most over DOS-based Windows was RAM. DOS-based windows couldn't even properly use RAM over a certain level and most machines got to a certain level and stayed there because performance was maxed out. With XP, an old Win98 box could be make quite usable for a cheap price by simply plugging in more RAM. This fueled demand, which raised RAM prices.
* XP has been out for a VERY long time, and between all the service packs, updates and the demanding games and applications released in the past 5 years the demand for RAM has increased gradually even as the base OS is little unchanged. As Vista was released the minimum requirements were already met by most PCs up to a year old. This wasn't the case with XP, where so many crufty old PCs running Win98 were not up to the task of running XP.
* Vista is not different enough from XP to matter - turn off aero glass and to the casual user you have XP with a new UI theme--not much immediately useful comes right to mind. When XP came out it was targeted at legions of 98 and Me users, and 98 and Me were great stinking piles of crap compared to XP. Vista IS meaningfully better architecturally speaking but these advantages are only understood by computer scientists and software engineers. Furthermore, in the cutthroat market of PCs most new PCs are equipped with the featureless "home basic" edition, and that is what most users see, and that edition is well served by existing memory configs.
DRAM prices are like rollercoasters--they might have started at the top and will end up at the bottom, but all these external forces introduce "waves" that go up as well as d
This is revisionist history. People did run out and buy windows 95. In fact, they stood in line overnight to get it. Let's face it; the bloom is off the rose. Things have changed considerably and no matter how you spin it, vista has been met with a lackluster reception. It's not that vista is so bad(it is but so was win95), it's that people don't care one way or another, i.e. windows is no longer cool. WinPCs are even parodied in the Mac adds as the dorky guy and everybody laughs. Believe it or not, there was a time when windows was the cool thing, at least in some circles.
Thank you, I'll be using that phrase against a few Ubuntu-users I know.
Actualy, when you show the reasons it's not Windows, it's an easy sell. Yesterday I demo'ed Ubuntu. Our visitors wanted to know what made it diffrent and what's all the fuss about security. I was already booted up and online as a normal user. They were quick to note wow, it runs Firefox. I showed the menu and how it works like Windows and had much the same menu items such as accessories, games, etc. Then I explained the not so same as in Windows everyone is an administrator by default.
I turned over the computer and had them try to change printer settings, internet settings, display settings. I even had them go into another user's directory that was shared and asked them to delete any file. I then showed them the file permissions. I then explained these are the defalt permissions. I then showed how the common Windows exploits such as web pages with a Windows system error look very out of place on Ubuntu and hidden known file extensions are not a problem. There is not much exploitation of running a picture attachment on Ubuntu called MyNakedWife.jpg.exe and why it won't run if clicked on in Ubuntu. It asks if you want to save the file or what program to open it with. It just doesn't install a rootkit with no prompts like what happens to Windows users who only see MyNakedWife.jpg.
They were concerned about replacing Windows due to the many Windows only programs. I then gave them the directions on compressing the Windows partition, repartitioning after booting Ubuntu and dual booting.
In short, being like Windows by having familiar menu's and running Firefox is a plus. Being not like Windows in default security was the selling point. I think they will be dual booting by the end of the week.
The truth shall set you free!
No, about half as much. or even free. like always with Linux.
check out prism, counterpoint, Viewtouch GNU, Volante, brainstorm, etc, etc. Linux has a very strong presence in point-of-sale, several national retail and service chains use it.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Oh, turns out that I do have Glass turned on after all. You have to hit Start and Tab to get the flip 3D effect. No more emails required.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Maybe Vista now has a unified buffer cache, which makes the whole idea of "cache" rather blurry. Take this FreeBSD system for example:
Mem: 1891M Active, 5131M Inact, 240M Wired, 257M Cache, 214M Buf, 243M Free
In this case, the vast majority of "Inact" is made up of cached file data, but such cache will also be spread around "Active" (can be swapped, but would likely to be swapped back in soon after) and "Cache" (rarely used pages which can be freed quickly because they aren't "dirty"). Depending on how you define "memory use" you could say I'm using anywhere from 2.3 to 7.5G. Even these are rather blurry since the lack of memory pressure means the various lists aren't being cycled very aggressively.
NT has file caching since Win2k:
Although you can think of the Standby list as the file cache, it comprises most of the available memory, so it may be more useful to think of available memory as the file cache. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312628
Also note that this article only applies to Win2k and XP. I have not found any Microsoft resources reflecting exact details on what the Vista task manager memory statistics mean. So to the grandparent: those numbers may not mean what you think they mean.