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Hands-On With Windows 7's New Features
Barence writes "Microsoft has released the first pre-beta code of Windows 7, and PC Pro has a series of in-depth, hands-on examinations of all the new features. The revamped user interface has clearly gleaned more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, but it goes further than the Apple concept with 'jumplists,' new gadgets and an updated system tray. The much-vaunted multi-touch controls were there to play with, and it seemed to work well. Networking has been given the full treatment, with new features HomeGroup and Libraries. Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy ... or a complete disaster. Finally, several new features could make PCs easier to manage and secure for IT departments, such as BitLocker To Go and Branch Cache." All in all, these features together lead some people to the conclusion that Windows 7 will "suck less than Vista" — that last link from reader ThinSkin, who also points to a related sampling of screenshots from the current iteration of Windows 7.
And what is your objection to using the BSD network stack? A technical weakness? Can't be the licensing, I assume; the whole point of the BSD license is to allow this kind of usage.
I actually replaced Windows Vista with Windows Server 2008 Standard x64, which thus far has played every game I've thrown at it. It's about 10GB smaller than Vista and, with a few tweaks, performs VERY well. Check out http://www.win2008workstation.com./ If Windows 7 shows the same patented buggy, bloatware approach Microsoft took with Vista, I won't be touching it or any future desktop operating system from Microsoft in the future.
On a related note, do you know where I can pick up a copy of Tie Fighter that works on IBM's Extended Firmware Interface (EFI)?
The Windows 95 port ought to work just fine. You lose the MIDI music (as DirectMusic didn't exist at the time of the port) in favor of canned CD audio music edited from Williams' soundtracks. In return, though, you get 640x480 resolution in both TIE Fighter (which may have supported it in DOS?) and X-wing (which definitely didn't).
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
I game on Vista, and it works beautifully. There is no reason to avoid Vista, unless you'd rather avoid Windows altogether (Vista is a good Windows entry, but if you have problems with the product line, it's obviously not going to solve that).
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Pretty much. I was a bit unnerved when I went to Vista about 6 months ago. However, it's been pretty good to me so far.
Actually, it sounds like they will. From TFA: "If it works on Windows Vista, it'll work in Windows 7. The move from Vista to Windows 7 we expect to be seamless."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
processor != core. From http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/multicore.mspx:
How about "everyone"?
I've downgraded something like 2 dozen computers since vista came out, primarily because people were complaining that they run much too slow. Of course, there were other factors too, but that was the biggest complaint I've heard. So, sure, computers will get much faster, but who really wants to spend $2,500 on a top of the line system when they can run an older OS on a $500 machine?
My current hardware specs are good enough to run vista with a "5 star rating", but I swill won't touch the fucking thing. It's slow, I don't like the interface, the constant "allow/deny" requests are annoying as hell, and I can't customize it the way I can XP.
The real question is "do the new features justify the extra resource usage", and in Vista's case, the answer is a resounding "NO!". I'd have no problem upgrading to a bloated OS that had some new functionality which would radically improve my computing experience, but MS hasn't brought anything really interesting to the table in quite a while. Every new "feature" in Vista can be done just as well, if not better, by third-party apps on XP, without slowing your system to a crawl.
With that said, the ONLY reason I would even think of switching to Vista is because it supports video hardware acceleration for the desktop. I just wish I could find an application to do that on XP.
Most of the benchmarks show that Vista is just slower than XP.
Gaming Performance: Windows Vista SP1 vs. XP SP3:
If you were expecting a huge drop in performance as your eyes scanned from the XP to the Vista results, well, surprise! As many a tech analyst predicted, Windows Vista's gaming performance conundrum has largely been solved, and it was mainly due to early graphics drivers.
In fact, I'd been planning to run a few other gaming tests, but the results from these were so uninteresting that further work didn't seem merited. Love it or hate it, Vista is performing far better than it used to.
You were saying?
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
Try uninstalling the KB952287 update. For whatever reason, that seems to have eliminated all of my ATI driver problems on Vista. The chances of actually needing that update installed are next to zero.
This guy's the limit!
Not just that, but an article on /. just a day or two ago talked about how Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 are slower than 7.10... and it took six months to figure out that 8.04 was slower than 7.10.
Hardware is getting faster. Even in gaming rigs, you are just talking about a few fps.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Perhaps they're taking hints from OSX, KDE and Gnome. It'd be a positive thing. Now, for some commentary on their new features..
--HomeGroup. This essentially turns all the Windows 7 PCs on the home network into a combined pool of data and files
I could easily see how one could do something similar on Linux vis automounter and Samba. DHCP could report the client list to Samba, which attempts to use a specially set password to mount other computers. From then, users would have rights as their own user, granting only rights that they natively have. This would provide security along with a standard solution that all Samba-speaking machines could use.
The only gripe with that setup is that data goes from A to server to B, rather than A to B directly, with the server mediating connections. However, I think this could be made around if we allow direct mediation like FTP can be set up for (Server says send file from B to A).
--HomeGroup is its ability to automatically detect when your work laptop, for instance, is being used in the home.
Network profiles would be much more handy, so one could choose which profile where one is. Also, CUPS is much better than the windows counterpart, as it announces service. Announcement is so much more handy in that regard, because so many devices and OSes speak that. Windows is the odd one out, yet again, unless you go through the "advanced configs".
--Music and video streaming
Arguably, Linux already supports this via multiple protocols. If your client computer is beefy enough, one can "stream" the video from the server. Or, if the client is a low-powered machine, you could use a combination of a sound daemon and X to do the heavy lifting. I would say that there might not be enough bandwidth for raw video via X, but it IS compressed somewhat. X settings are easier, at least in my experience. The sound is more tricky.
There's a few ways to get remote sound. One is to use PulseAudio, and follow the instructions here. They work fine. Also, another choice, if your program is ESD aware, you can use a syntax to target output at a certain server. In fact, I can play MP3s like that on my DS vis the command:
mplayer -ao esd:ip_address_of_ds music.mp3
Found here.
It's a bit more of a setup, but Linux can either process the video locally OR remotely. I dont think Windows can do that.
As for the touch-interface, it looks a lot better than what Linux _currently_ offers, however MPX is a big thing to watch, considering is in the main X.org package. MPX is a multi-point server extension that allows up to 16 mice and 16 keyboard inputs, WHILE keeping backward compatibility with non-MPX-aware apps. This is a biggie, as MS could only figure out how to do multi-point and multi-touch with a special OS only for MP programs. All it takes now is Gnome, KDE, and Compiz to natively communicate with MPX so that we can realize the future of Linux over input development.
Add this to the Wiimote, light-pens, and a downward-facing projector, we could create a touch surface for 1000$ or less, and multi-pointer to boot. Things in Linux sure are picking up...
You need to understand the difference between a "soft page fault" and a "hard page fault". The numbers you're looking at are a combination of both -- I would guess maybe 1000 hard faults, and 6.999 soft faults.
So you're looking at completely the wrong number (page reads/sec is a better number, subtracting that from I/O reads/sec).
If you want more information, I suggest you read up on the Memory Management chapter in Windows Internals.