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Vista is Slower, But XP Is Still Dying
An anonymous reader writes "Though the Redmond software giant may be extending the lifetime of XP on low-end laptops, the end is nigh for the aging OS. That extension makes perfect sense, as recent studies have shown XP is far faster than Vista across a number of platforms. Still, Microsoft is 'sticking to its guns' when it comes to drop-dates for most other uses of the XP operating system. 'There are several dates that apply, but the one you're probably thinking of is the June 30 deadline that Dix referred to. That's the last day when large computer makers -- the Dells, HPs and Lenovos of the world -- will be allowed to preinstall Windows XP on new PCs. It also marks the official end of XP as a retail product.'"
You have to follow a few links in the first link to get to this fine article where they explain that in 2007, XP's share went up in the enterprise. Since we know the end is nigh for Vista as well there seems little motivation to feel this pain.
That's telling, isn't it? And that's actually from Forrester, whose bias is legendary in favor of Redmond.
I should think some Vista evangelists aren't getting their bonuses this year.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
As it stands now, virtually none of ham radio applications run on Vista, and chances are slim that they will be updated. FlexRadio's PowerSDR, for example, works on Vista only if you have one of two supported $300 audio "cards" (external FireWire boxes, to be precise.) On XP it works with any audio card, even unsupported.
Honestly, I think that would work. There's a proverbial snowball's chance in hell that it could happen, and it would delay Windows 7 considerably, but in the long run it would work. Wine is already shipping with the default setting to use XP, and given the relative development rates, it's catching up at an alarming rate. My guess is that by the time Windows 7 rolls around, XP apps on wine will be near-perfect, and Vista apps will run with only a few problems. With theoretical access to the existing Windows code and support from Microsoft's deep pockets, Vista support could be done by 2009. But unfortunately, it will never happen.
You mean office 2007 doesn't run under WINE? Well, it will eventually, though why you'd freakin want to use it over 2003 is beyond me. As for Visual Studio, if you're developing for Linux (MS truly ending XP sales will be enough to push me and other IT managers to start using Linux on all machines that don't *need* Windows-only apps - for general office uses Linux is fine, though as Autodesk don't do any CAD apps on linux then I'd have a real job switching over our engineering dept..) then why would you need visual studio anyway..? Current games tend to work okay on WINE, and as for next gen games.. well, consoles are getting pretty darn similar to PCs these days, so for people like me, I'm happy to game on my PS3. I'm hoping that GTA IV and other new games involving shooting support mouselooking - then I really wouldn't miss PC gaming at all, since the latest generation of consoles can also download extra content and updates just as PCs can. I know that the graphics capabilities of current PCs probably already outstrip a PS3 (though the CPUs definitely don't yet), though they also cost about twice as much - and now it looks like gamers will have to put up with Vista on their shiny new machines. Do you actually like Vista? You are happy with your OS needing 10GB HD space and 2GBs of RAM just to run the display manager properly? Yuck..
which is totally what she said
So what you're saying is, "I'm an inflexible monkey who has committed all my mental capacity to memorizing how to use a few specific products and is incapable of switching to similar products with comparable functionality, because they aren't the *exact* products I already know how to use."
You're welcome to spend the rest of your life paying Microsoft's ignorance tax.
I remember an article some time ago about Microsoft incorporating Gnu tools into windows. Since Windows7 is being rewritten from scratch and without any backwards compatibility (I am sure for the few "but I LIKE Vista" morons will be excited about), I believe it may already be in the works.
Ignoring the Microsoft PR BS for a moment, internal documents leaked from Microsoft (See Halloween Documents on wikipedia) say that Microsoft has been trying to play catchup with Linux since 1997!!! DirectX10, Great! DirectX10 > OpenGL, maybe... Compromising the functionality, security, privacy, and dignity of your entire system to realize those benefits, really just to play a few new games that suck so much they don't even ge the attention of the Wine Devs? Hellz to the Naw!!
Want to know why your crappy airport/wintel card that sucks under Windows doesn't work under Linux? Because real techs buy Linksys/Cisco products.
Why would anyone waste their time developing a driver for a products that anyone with half a brain or experience would tell you not to buy in the first place? 'Linux compatible' hardware works better under Windows too. A good lesson I learned before I made the switch.
Oh yeah, and as far as Microsoft supporting Wine (directly), ask Novell about Microsofts great third party software development support for their API.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
What matters is what goes on in the trenches. When major corporations still prohibit the installation of Vista on any machine that connects to their network, Microsoft will continue to sell XP. My Corporation is Fortune 10 and we still prohibit Vista installs!
Oh wait, sorry, my misunderstanding.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Your complaints don't make sense. Nobody uses Microsoft Office with the specific goal of using Office. They word process, or work with spreadsheets, or make a presentation. All of which can be done under Linux.
Same with games. Just because you can't play some specific Windows only game under Linux doesn't make Linux bad. It's like arguing Windows is bad because I can't play a PS3 specific game on it.
Linux isn't Windows. Some of the shit you're used to on Windows isn't going to work under Linux. If you can't deal with that, stop complaining and just use Windows.
Maybe not
CPU benchmarks:
XP with SP3: 2053
Vista with SP1 Aero disabled: 2018 (change: -1.7%)
Vista with SP1: 1994 (change: -2.8%)
So, basically, your machine will be imperceptibly slower if you want all the whiz-bang 3D and transparency of Vista's UI. Go figure.
Other results from the linked article:
- XP boots about 30 seconds faster.
- Vista copies a large file about 30 seconds faster.
- XP might run faster on machines with 256 MB of RAM. Obviously a huge concern with memory costing about $20 per GB.
I don't mean to challenge anyone's world-view, but the people I know who run Vista are quite happy with it. That includes my wife, who runs Vista Home and Office 2007 on her 6 year old laptop with half a gig of RAM.Fine.
Use those products.
As others have pointed out, there's no reason you can't use those under Linux anymore.
See: Wine, Cedega and Citrix
Windows NT makes the fundamental assumption that kernel mode programs have direct access to user-mode memory. The kernel is in the same address space as user-mode programs. Kernel drivers can directly read user-mode parameters from the same address that was passed in from user mode. This offloads parameter checking from software to the CPU's page table, a nice performance increase.
This prevents 32-bit drivers from ever being possible in NT. A 64-bit user program would pass in a 64-bit pointer in an ioctl and a 32-bit driver would have no way of accessing that address. The kernel can't translate because it does not know what ioctls mean, and they can contain pointers.
In contrast, Darwin's kernel has a separate address space for user mode and kernel mode. Switching between user mode and kernel mode is a full page table reload, and access to user memory from the kernel is done through special accessor functions. This is a additional cost to kernel calls in Darwin compared to NT.
As for video card drivers not needing to be 64-bit... The extra 8 general and 8 SSE registers do help in the inner loops written in assembly language for some operations that the cards don't support directly.
By the way, have you heard of Windows XP x64 Edition?
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
There are a lot of advantages to Windows in a VM.
Windows XP is still available. You can stock up on enough copies to meet your VM needs.
You can keep an activated VM to roll back to when your Windows VM becomes corrupted, as all of them do, with less trouble than imaging a real machine.
It doesn't have access to your real hardware unless you let it.
That Vista isn't pleasant in a VM is a good reason to avoid it. In case you haven't heard, avoiding it looks more and more likely these days. If you're doing development and have to test on Vista then you're already using it in a VM or you're stupid.
In many cases, XP runs better in a VM than it does natively. Imagine that.
When it's time to retire it, you can drag the XP VM to the trashcan where it belongs.
Keeping the status quo is not an option. Microsoft is forcing the migration whether you want it or not. The question is, since you're being forced to migrate would you prefer to not be forced next time? If so, then where you should migrate to should be obvious.
The idea of XP in a VM or in Citrix is to smooth the migration to an open system where control of your IT is up to you, not to a corporation with a profit motive to keep shuffling you along the upgrade path and tying down your options and artificially limiting your choices.
Keep saying "we can't" and eventually you will believe it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Photoshop runs fine with crossover, and has since at least 2003.
Google have hired Codeweavers to develop improvements for Wine specifically to enhance the performance of Photoshop.
They don't appear to be quite there yet with CS3 but all previous versions up to CS2 reportedly run well.
Read my blog.
Actually, it's fairly well known that every new release of OS X has been FASTER and leaner: specifically 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4. (This is backed up by my experience on personal machines and production studios of Macs.)
In particular, 10.3 is noticeably snappier on G3 (even beige) compared to 10.2.
Can't speak for 10.5 as I've had limited exposure, but few are complaining - maybe because the Intel Macs are so fast out of the gate anyway :)
you had me at #!
The difference between MSDOS and XP in this instance is that XP gets the job done.
- Want to browse the web, XP does it.
- Want to watch full screen video, XP does it.
- Want to edit video, XP does it.
- Want to sync your iPod. XP does it.
Functionaly, XP has it. What new functionaly does VISTA really bring? I know, it is suposed to have some things that make it easier to administer in a business environment. I have not seen anyone who has said that is enough of an upside to take on VISTA. So in functionality, VISTA is preceived to be no better than XP.Aesthetics, is in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone is in love with Aero. There are plenty of "Vista Ready" laptops that can not run Aero in all of its glory. I think of Areo, and I think of how hard it is to find anything in the Vista control panel(s) hell. I don't know that Vista wins because it MAY be possible to have translucent window decorations, and a fancy alt-tab.
Hardware support, XP has it. With support through 2014 from Microsoft. With the number of people and businesses NOT moving over to Vista. Hardware support is cleary in the XP camp and staying there. Since so many end users and business downgrade to XP. The quickest way for a PC manufacturer to shoot themseves in the foot, is to not provide XP drivers for their systems. Try googling "vista only". The only thing I saw come up is DX10. How much aftermarket stuff is VISTA ONLY? Not enough to make a difference. XP wins for hadrware support.
Security, Vista might have it. In exchange for this "security" you lose compatibility with many apps that you would want to run. UAC on is a pain in the butt. UAC off lowers security a notch. I am not sure how much less spyware a vista machine may pick up. I don't know anyone who ran it more than 3 weeks before switching to windows. I think the security ends up being a wash. Once you have to install antivirus, spwyare removal and keep them updateded. Watch what you click on and where you browse. Deal with UAC. How much more work is XP than Vista for the same level of security? How much more insecure is XP for the average user?
The bottom line is XP does everything users want to do with decent performance. MSDOS, Winodws 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows Vista do not. Windows 2000 almost does for most users.
So depening on your needs you have 1) Stick with XP 2) Take a perormance hit and go to VISTA for no apperant benefits.
Most folks are opting of for 1. Even if it means pulling out their old OEM CD of XP and installing it over Vista.
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