Slashdot Mirror
More Evidence That XP is Vista's Main Competitor
Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista."
will 2008 be the year of vista on the desktop? stay tuned to find out!
Microsoft now has proof that consumers have choice!
I think games might be the key for Microsoft to increase Vista uptake.
Vista is the only operating system that supports DirectX10 at the moment. if it stays that way and games start making use of DirectX10 features then games will have no choice but to use Vista.
There is also the small matter of "Vista only" games such as Halo 2 and the eagerly awaited Alan Wake from Remedy, the makers of Max Payne. that too will be a "Vista only" title.
... for your next operating system, please use Windows XP as a benchmark and starting point. Create a product that beats Windows XP in relevant categories (note that "amount of eyecandy" doesn't count - usability, speed, resource usage and security do). I'm sure you will have no problem selling that.
OTOH, people and enterprises are slowly but sure upgrading to vista. The university where I work just took the step and upgraded 25 computer labs (30 computers each) from XP to Vista. Our departments are now slowly migrating as well. There is no rush... Why do we need to rush if XP was working great for us? If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
But now every new computer we buy, we get it with Vista. Seeing the users that have Vista just make the rest of us realize that Vista is not the horror that somepeople seem to be. Knowledge is the best medicine, so people see "oh, it works well", "oh, UAC was not THAT bad, it barely comes up when you work and don't install things"..,so slowly, more and more people are willing to upgrade. This is our case, and i think this is happening everywhere.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
integrate Microsoft Bob into SP3. problem solved.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you already have a PC, you'll run XP (or in my case W2K SP4) 'cos it just works. If you buy a new PC, you'll run Vista.
That's basically it. A few people will have bought a Vista upgrade - maybe they're ahppy with it, maybe not. If not, they'll either live with it or revert. It's not to do with competition, it's to do with a saturated market.
The only story here is: people sometimes buy new PCs.
Until there is a killer app that only runs on Vista, I can't see why most people whould make the change.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Of course the enterprise market isn't moving to Linux they're ass slow to move to ANYTHING. These companies are so huge that it takes years to change the way they work.
What I want to know is the made up (because you know what stats are like) figures of Linux growth in the Small to Medium businesses since they make up a larger majority of businesses then a couple of giant mega corps..
For the "Apple charges for service packs" bullshit.
Lemme clue you in, sparky:
10.4, 10.5- Major versions (Paid upgrades)
10.4.1, 10.4.2...10.4.10, 10.4.11, 10.5.1- Service packs (Free downloads)
Halo 2 AIN'T a vista only game. It has been hacked and works just as well on XP. That isn't really suprising, it is an ancient game that ran on a P3, what the hell would it need DX10 for?
Other games like the recent system cruncher, Crysis, also can be tweaked to run with "disabled, DX10 only" settings on XP.
It seems more and more that a lot of the DX10 games just ain't there, some day there may be, but so far they are not.
MS could afford to force Halo 2 to Vista only, how many game developers can afford to be Vista only? MS better be handing over a huge sum of money to make a game just for Vista.
The problem is that a LOT of hardcore gamers are people who build their own machines, and are also the ones who need the top end Vista version, so they are faced with a very expensive purchase and for what? So that all their games run slower and take more memory?
It will be intresting to see what happens, I personally have little doubt that MS will survive this easily, but their mighty fortress has shown a tiny crack.
IF linux does indeed get DX10 support as some have claimed in the past via Wine like projects, then MS might be in real trouble.
That is a HUGE if, but in theory it is possible, already companies like Blizzard have to deal with the fact that a portion of their players are on linux and that they have to accept this.
It will be intresting to see how the Vista only titles sell in the near future. MS titles don't count, MS can afford to loose money, regular developers can't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
does anyone see Bill and Company significantly improving Vista before they stop supporting XP?
Microsoft Support Lifecycle
No one I know wants to upgrade from XP to Vista; the only person I know that had Vista hated it and downgraded to XP. Now, I remember when XP came out lots of people loved it immediately because it was more stable than 98 -- apparently, not that many had 2000. I got 2000 myself soon after and didn't upgrade to XP until SP 2 came out. Many /.ers have said that XP was none too great until SP2. I wasn't on /. back in those days and I don't know how XP was regarded on the "nerd sites" back then. So, was it like this with XP before SP 2?
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
I too work at a college. And we will be resisting Vista until the performance is better. What is funny is how the students are continually downgrading to XP. (they will find a way) And with gaming consoles students are less likely to switch to Vista. Macs have made a surge with our students but so has Linux. (which I'm happier about) Oh and before I forget. We also offer free computer support to the students. With all the machines we touch, we have yet see a Vista machine perform better than an XP machine, even brand new out of the box.
As in most religions, it's the followers that turn people off to the religion. And Mac users are the worst.
Are people considering Linux/Mac desktops/servers and adding them to the environment. Windows 2000 Active Directory made it hard to add the non-MS LDAP/Kerberos machines to the network, Windows 2003 has made it harder, though Win2003R3 has apparently helped. This certainly helps lock in, but assuming Redhat/Novell decides to make it trivial to add a machine in time by creating a Win32 Program to add things to AD, and Win2003R2 added the SFU Schema Extensions by default, and all of a sudden, adding Linux services can help, a lot.
One of the things I loved with OS X Server was that their Kerberos/LDAP integrated solution worked great, and adding non-Apple Unix systems was pretty easy... authenticate against LDAP, accept Kerberos, and just Add Principal (host, HTTP, whatever) and export a Keytab. It helped that Apple used MIT Kerberos which is the best documented solution.
The thing is, if the computer market is growing at say, 8% a year, Microsoft needs to be grabbing a larger share of computer wallet to hit double-digit growth. If Linux/Apple grab extra growth, say 4% of the market each, Microsoft will see either a decline in revenues or need to increase fees, which will force people to look elsewhere.
Win2K/Win2K3 made things much tougher for small businesses compared to NT4, Active Directory is MUCH harder to setup and use than a simple NT 3.51/NT4 Single Domain, but the well priced SBS solution provided a reason to keep them in the market. However, if someone with an Enterprise Play like Redhat/Novell made an effort to make it EASY to install a Redhat Server with LDAP/Kerberos authentication for both the server AND the webserver and whatever else, you start seeing it easy to migrate Web Apps to the Unix land.
Microsoft's marketshare doesn't have to plummet for them to hurt. If they consistently lose 1.5% a year to Apple/Linux, that makes it really hard to grow Revenues and requires them to cut costs to keep up profit growth. That alone limits their ability to just walk into markets and destroy them. When Microsoft "cut off the oxygen" for Netscape with a free browser to stop the Netscape Server package from becoming a threat, they could easily eat the costs of the browser because their newly established desktop/Office Suite monopolies were furnishing massive profits.
If Microsoft managers start obsessing over hitting the numbers, and budget constraints become an important part of the Microsoft bonus structure, then you don't see Internet Explorer projects... You don't see $10-$20 million dollar blackholes on the budget to maintain monopolies.
The loss of Bill Gates also hurts, not because he is an irreplaceable manager, but because he alone had the clout to do strange things. When Apple fired "professional management" and brought Steve Jobs "back," he had the clout to do whatever he wanted. He pushed projects out the door, canceled others, etc., and could be a one man show with control of the business. Founders have MUCH MORE political capital than professional CEOs.
If Gates said, "we must destroy Netscape, regardless of costs" (or Java, or any other technology that he found a threat), he could turn the company on a dime as Founder/major Shareholder.
If Ballmer says, "to hell with profitability, we must destroy Sony PS3/Nintendo Wii, I don't care what we lose in the process," I don't think that he can do it. The heads of the gaming and lifestyle division will go ballistic that they won't make their numbers and get a bonus, and will find people on the Board to back them and get hep. If Gates said that it was a priority, it was a priority, and he could probably change the entire management incentive structure to make it happen. He could create budgets out of thin air for what he called a priority.
Any loss in marketshare for MS is a disaster financially because it destroys profit growth, and the current management lacks the complete control of the company necessary to move the way it moved under Gates.
I've been sitting on Vista since it nearly came out on my home PC. The primary reason was because of my job repairing computers. I knew that users would get machines with Vista pre-installed. I've wanted to switch back to XP and just live with that but I managed to talk myself out of it not because Vista is better, it's because most everyone that goes to the store will buy a Vista machine.
If the manufacturer of drivers are the problem then those people need to get their acts together. Either way I'm tired of having an OS that is suposed to be newer and better then XP but is anything but up to sub-par to XP. Get the damn thing fixed, jeeze people pay enough for that thing.
One last thing, take the dang confusion out of the 7-9 different flavors. Have two like XP and don't relabel everything just cause it's NEW. I still have a hard time finding Add/Remove Programs.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Posted this the other day, and it's at least as applicable to this thread. I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior. To expound just a bit so it's not pure copy pasta, GE seems to be more conservative under Jeff Immelt than it was under Jack Welch - not necessarily a bad thing, just a difference in leadership style. The only software that they update to the newest and greatest on a regular basis is SAV. I would be incredibly surprised to see Vista rolled out on a site- or business-unit- wide basis, let alone across the entire company. More likely is that the W2K computers are migrated to XP over the next 12-18 months.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
That report is so misguided. Yes, Vista _IS_ slower, but think about all you get for it! You get free popups, chunks of your data archived at MS for NO added cost or CPU time other than the base Vista install, and the assurances that your software is genuine. With XP, you probably would have trouble sleeping at night not knowing for SURE if your software is genuine, or that your config and IP data wasn't safe in the hands of security conscious redmondians.
So Vista _DOES_ run slower, but the security and peace of mind is well worth it. Were it not for the added speed, you might be a victim of software WMD or something, they are out there you know. Boo.
-Charlie
Microsoft competing with itself?
Someone quick invent a boomerang chair for these situations
Its just going to take time to implement, integrate & upgrade everything to support it. You would have to be kidding yourselves to think MS just made up vista without regard for its core customers. The business version includes encryption, AD, GPO, security, performance, reliability that business users demand and to think Vista isn't an upgrade over XP or 2k in these regards is simply foolish. Auditing, Reporting, Authorization, Policy Management and Manageability have all increased 10 fold if not 100 fold over xp "out of the box" - THAT is what Corporate America wanted - and got! Lord knows They will have to implement the hardware to support it as they would with any other demanding project but that isn't a fault of MS or windows. There isn't an out of the box linux distro within ear shot of a Vista Business & Windows 2008 in end user support & management - everything would be left to 3rd party systems, agent based management and user trust.
XP is nice and all, but it only has support for 3GB of memory.
There's always XP64, but last time I checked driver support was pretty sketchy.
I run Vista for this reason alone. Any performance decrease relative to XP is more than made up for by the fact that I'm not running out of memory and swapping.
Not to troll, but it's not always a mistake when a company issues a new operating system that is slower than the others. Unless their benchmark is rediculously unoptimized, it's difficult to increase functionality AND speed. The issue that I keep on hearing (since I haven't tried it yet) is that Microsoft created a slower operating system with less functionality. Time will tell if this is true or not. Oh wait, it's been out for a year already and we're still hearing the same complaints....
Actually, it's the whole business/enterprise functionality that most slashdotters either don't know about or conveniently choose to overlook.
Active Directory + Group Policy Management (server and client side) is the most single integrated solution from client to server that exists. There may other systems that reproduce similar functionality (like samba for instance), but nothing exists as an integrated top-to-bottom solution like Windows AD.
The only other system that came close (and some would argue was better) is Novell Netware, but that doesn't really exist any more.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I was using vista on my laptop, an athlon 64 dual core with 2GB ram. All I used it for was playing WoW when I'd go to my gf's house, and after several rounds of BSOD's with no solution in sight, I did a little searching and found that I could in fact install XP on there by using a quadro driver for the onboard nvidia graphics. (the vendor did not list any XP compatible drivers, but apparently it has the same motherboard in it as another model). Now, I no longer have to run WoW at 1024x768 but can run at 1280x800 widescreen, with all the mods I want and it flows effortlessly where before it would chop and lag horribly. Vista is pretty, yeah, but I need my laptop to do more than sit there like a prom queen ;-) When I hear of them fixing the performance, I might consider switching it back.
actually XP is incapable of running true DX10 applications because DX10 removes directsound. Because of buggy graphics card drivers, Directsound was all too often a cause of crash bugs. Vista, rather than talking to sound hardware uses a software layer to interface with soundcards so software makers never actually get direct access (and are less likely to crash because of this). This is what you're supposed to use instead of directsound and XP doesn't offer anything like this.
...until it is slower than Vista SP1!
Bearded Dragon
But when MS looks at this question, they see no reason to do it. In fact, it would cost them one of their main reasons to upgrade to vista.
As far as someone else doing it, unlikely. The most logical candidate for porting outside of MS is a game company, and as part of their licensing with MS they can't. Also, for any third party, it's not just a 'port' but rather a complete reimplementation since MS isn't going to share source. I think nobody who would do a good job will find value in doing such a port, so don't hold your breath.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Let's face it, the majority of the consumer Windows market is just not about high-end gaming rigs, able to play the latest games with all graphic options maxed out. They like to browse web pages, chat with friends, send email, utilize office productivity apps, and mess around with their photo/home video collections. For these purposes, just about ANY operating system in current use is adequate. The differences comes down to security, stability, and usability.
For my part, I make a point of keeping an Ubuntu machine going in my house at all times. Friends who come over and want to use a computer to check something while we are waiting for the football game to come on or the pizza to arrive invariably comment on the OS, which leads to questions, which leads to me usually offering them a burned copy of a LiveCD to take home with them. I don't spew a lot of technical jargon at these folks, nor do I assume a fan-boy posture (given the other machines in my house are Apple). I simply "make the sale" to them and answer their questions clearly, responding to their complaints regarding Vista and even XP, at times.
This effort has resulted in about 30% of my friends moving to Ubuntu, with the remainder being split almost evenly between Apple computers and Windows-based rigs. Those who remain on the fence usually sit there because of the singular issue of gaming. Quite frankly, I can think of NO reason for an average consumer to even need to pay for an OS aside from being able to play games.
People are paying MS either way, so why should MS care which way people go?
Table-ized A.I.
Tungsten Graphics (the people who get paid to develop OSS drivers for Intel's GPUs)
are creating a new technology called Gallium3D.
Basically it's a middle layer that rests between Mesa3D (openGL API) and DRI/DRM (low level drivers) and whose job is to export basic building block available on most modern hardware (shaders, etc.) in a standart way.
The thing is Gallium3D isn't restrict to Mesa3D for the API. A lot of people are speculating about the possibility offered by a potential WineD3D running natively on Gallium. (Instead of being an D3D -> OpenGL translation layer).
TGI's powerpoint presentation in fact contained an illustration where Gallium3D was used between a thin DirectX layer and low level drivers on Windows.
(Maybe, Intel could pay TGI so they also make DirectX/Windows drivers for their GPUs)
In the end such kind of technology could bring :
- Working DirectX10 on Windows XP (similar to Alky/FallingLeaf but using a thin DX10 Layer on Gallium3D backend).
- Working DirectX on Linux and ReactOS (either expanding a potential Intel i9xx D3D driver, or building a better WineD3D for Gallium3.
- Easier OpenGL 3 (which differs a lot from OGL1 and 2 - Instead of needing Mesa to be able to understand 2 radically different APIs, OGL3 could be handled by just having another API Layer running on Gallium backend)
- A nicer and simplier framework to get a 3D stack through OSS for any small player (Non-mainstream hardware maker, open hardware project or opensource team creating drivers for unsupported hardware). Up until now there was only MESA that did offer OpenGL 1/2 API, and required a lot of duplicate work inside the various hardware-specific libraries.
So, to go back to the discussion, Opensource projects (including contribution from Wine) starting to play an important role in game deployment : this is something that may become a reality sooner that we may think.
(And it's not that game developers are deeply against OSS : OpenAL, OGG/Vorbis and similar have already poped up un commercial projects from Id, Epic, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Seriously, Vista has a higher required system spec, it has more security. Any time your doing more, whether more GUI, more levels of process security etc. there will be a performance hit. It is very very rare this won't be the case with a simple app, when you add all the complexity of an OS you are vertially garranteed it will be the case.
I'm a Unix sysadmin. I got a new work laptop today, still on XP. I asked the IT guys if we were in any danger of Vista. They said "XP is supported for years yet!" And we all exhaled.
We have worked out that if we are ever threatened with Vista, we promptly (a) pump up the Gutmann (b) write a whole pile of in-house apps for ourselves that only work on XP. The latter already worked wonderfully for us in making an instant business case for staying on Firefox — make sure your in-house web apps are written for Firefox and SeaMonkey, and specifically break in IE. (This is easy: just write to standards).
So: to stay off Vista, stock up on in-house apps that don't work on it. Then you have the business case you need.
http://rocknerd.co.uk