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Performance Tests Show Early Windows 7 Build Beats Vista
The Other A.N. Other writes "How does the latest build of Windows 7 stack up against Windows Vista? The answer seems to be very well if the benchmarks run by ZDNet are anything to go by. If Microsoft keeps up the good then Windows 7 should be head and shoulders better than Vista. 'What we have here is one set of data points for one particular system, but I think that the results are very promising. The fact that Windows 7 comes out on top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed. The boot time and PCMark Vantage results are particularly good.'"
Microsoft still has plenty of time to slow it down.
Let's all give MS a pat on the back for clearing such a low bar.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
NT4 is faster than vista.
So there.
NO SIG
First Post! But I posted it with Vista, so it may actually show up a bit later.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
It is sounding more and more like Vista really is the newest generation of Windows ME. People hated Windows ME. But Microsoft didn't shove it down anyone's throat so people danced around WinME without concern. But now, removing other alternatives aggressively, people are really getting annoyed with Vista. This is all good for Mac OS X adoption I suppose, but frankly, even though I am a Linux user, my professional life would be much better if Microsoft would either extend the availability of XP or get something better than Vista out the door soon.
Indeed. I think the question isn't how it compares to Vista but how it compares to XP. Anything else is simply following the Microsoft's red herring.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Could this be the version of Windows that will finally get me to switch? Stay tuned!
-- thinkyhead software and media
By the time they release it, they'll have fixed this bug.
Great Intellect...
From my tests, not all Vista drivers were 100% compatible with 6.1 (I refuse to call it "7"). I tested some "Vista certified" graphics drivers, and they were real edgy in the latest (leaked) Vista beta. I wonder if the new !backwardscompatible DirectX has anything to do with it, or if Microsoft plans on doing the same to the new WDM.
Then again, it was a beta, and other than that most of my personal kernel code ran fine. Maybe the big-time driver overlords just need more time to catch up with 6.1.
It will be about as difficult for Windows 7 to be a better OS than Vista as it is for Obama to be a better president than Bush!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Wouldn't it have been a lot more fun for the author to do the benchmarks on an Intel 915 chipset? We all know that Intel 915 was claimed to be Vista certified, so if Windows 7 is indeed faster, shouldn't it work as well.
And wouldn't a great benchmark be "UAC dialog boxes per hour" instead?
I am surprised he was able to publish the benchmarks, usually there are a lot of license restriction on what you can do with pre release code. Perhaps in this case, since it was favorable to 7, maybe he got permission.
It will be slowed down so folks don't tangle the keys.
Since its both "quicker", AND "pre-beta", I think it's probably more like the premature ejaculation scene from American Pie. All the fanbois watching via their webcams, and ... OOPS! AW!!! UCK! Shit, dude, you are SUCH a LOSER!
Things are improving. Or at least, the rate at which they're going to hell is decreasing.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
and not shipping it. Vista was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and now it's only been 2 years since Vista. Typical to keep people to consider alternatives. With Vista, they set the bar so low, that almost any inevitable improvement in performance gets hailed. Who cares, wake me up when it's the final product and not just some build in the middle of product development cycle.
I think Microsoft will eventually be undone by their long development times unless Windows 7 starts becoming the trend rather than a frantic exception to counter the Vista stigma. Ubuntu and OS X is certainly improving much faster due to relatively short development cycles.
...from non-final versions of Windows. The early publicly released betas of Vista performed better for me than the later RCs and the finished product, so I have a hard time getting excited about Windows 7 performing great in an early release.
I've been running it x64 for a few weeks and the reports are true. Even when you turn on the aero services and attempt to run it in the more bloated desktop vista config, it is faster.
Just like 2003 ran faster than XP. XP later got 2003's new heap manager, etc, in SP3.
I'd bet Windows 7 performs like 2008 server.
This were actually another Mojave experiment prank, played on ZDnet?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The tablet has a 1.3 PIII & 512 of ram.
http://geekpi.com/?p=38#more-38
Boot time and synthetic benchmarks are poor indicators of an operating system's performance and usability. It'd be like me comparing the zero to sixty time as the sole metric to judge a vehicle's fitness for use by, say, a college student. Perhaps Miles per Gallon might be better? Or even the number of cup holders? I'll believe Windows 7 is an improvement when it passes the Mom Test... Which is to say, we sit our mothers down at a computer and ask them "Is this better than XP?" But not your mother of course, because she's crazy. ;)
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Exactly! Why compare to Vista, which ranks slightly above Windows ME and slightly below Windows 3.1 for DOS? "Extra, extra! The new system we're making is better than the previous one --we think! But we're still running tests to make sure."
Good job, Microsoft! Or were you referring to Ubuntu 15.04, a.k.a. Vociferous Vista?
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
People still defragment hard drives? NTFS isn't resistant to fragmentation?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Make something that just utterly and outright reeks, so whatever comes next is deemed so much better, no matter whether it's really better than what you had before the stinker.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, this definitely sounds like it happened.
The interesting thing about Windows 7 is that it'll be released surprisingly hot on the heels of Vista. From a consumer perspective I'm sure they're hoping to encourage a lot of people to upgrade from Vista. However, corporate users are likely to postpone upgrades until Win 7 is available. It's like the Osbourne Effect, except in software, "Hey, look! The super-cool new model is just on the horizon, so don't buy our current stuff!" If MS blows their timeline, they're going to end up with a horrendous drop in revenue over the short term. Ah, well. Ubuntu should be rolling out Lofty Lemur for me by then, anyway.
This is all good for Mac OS X adoption I suppose, but frankly, even though I am a Linux user, my professional life would be much better if Microsoft would either extend the availability of XP or get something better than Vista out the door soon.
I'm running into the same problem. I've got so many customers that are running either specialty or legacy apps that simply will not run on Vista - or they run into stability issues with apps that are supported by Vista. Then, they basically shoot the messenger and make my life a living hell - since I really have no other alternative for them. When I could offer them XP, I could offer them a stable, working solution that they were happy with. Microsoft has stripped me of that option. I really don't see the light at the end of the tunnel with Windows 7, either. To me, it just looks like what the final release of Vista really should have been. Yes, it may be more stable and have better performance - but that doesn't help me when I need to go and install said specialty or legacy apps on it.
I am basically at a crossroads where I have to take a lot of clients into a completely new system, with completely new applications. And let me tell you - after what Microsoft's done, I'm not about to set them up with another Microsoft solution that railroads them into situations like this again. As long as I'm having to redo entire enterprises, I might as well roll out open source solutions or Macs.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
come up with a 7failure tag and apply it? I mean, Win7 has 0 market share, so why not? Fuckin retards...
Vista SP1 is consistently slower than Vista, so expect the final Windows 7 will be slower than "early-stage" as well.
When Windows7 is thrust upon the end users as the default OS
for new PC's, it will most likely not yet be supported by the
tens of thousands of 3rd party apps.
Vista was pushed out and the only real apps on the market were
a wet version of MS OFFICE2007.
I don't look forward to the new PC's arriving to my office, with
a new unsopported OS. Going on a hunch that Microsoft will
take the opportunity to remove more legacy support, I can
assume that more of our proprietary 3rd party apps will not
work on Windows7,
Our building automation (environmental controls software), our
gas pump management software, or hydro metering subsystem,
and dozens of other apps are doomed on Windows7 as they
currently are with Windows Vista.
Read between the lines that we are still on WinXP and Win2000pro.
MACs are appearing in the office, and people really like them.
XP runs well on them to boot (via vmware fusion).
Microsofts big challenge is going to be convincing the worlds
3rd party developers to embrace this new OS. And to do it
without threats or forcefully pulling support agreements, etc.
MS's typical business practices are their legacy.
Windows7 is akin to GM tossing a hybrid engine into a CHEVY Tahoe. It is still Vista under the hood, with a new skin on the
outside.
Good luck.
And please remember to extend the life of XP for another 5 years. Thanks.
(Apologies to Tycho and Gabe)
Two years ago, much the same was being said about Vista. It was powerful, it was redesigned with wonderful new features. About the only hones thing that was said about Vista was that it would not work with much of the hardware that currently in use. This is why people stayed with XP. MS claims that it has many more device drivers, and if the shipping OS is faster, that will help also. But given history, I must wait to see the proof in the pudding.
In any case, I would much rather see MS support standards, rather than micromanage hardware. I mean, is it not a bit ridiculous that I have to download a new driver package everytime I use a different USB drive?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
But way to go staying on top of teh 'Microsoft red herrings' for the rest of us!
Thanks for stopping by to give us your views, Mr. Ballmer.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
AGAIN!!?!
Can't really say how it compares to OS X since no one but Blizzard puts out games for the overpriced niche platform Apple for some reason still bothers to make.
As of this writing, Newegg has 72 Mac games for sale, and none of them are Blizzard titles.
The article just means Microsoft released Vista way too soon. It was half baked and needed to beat on it some more. Apple held up the release of OS X Leopard and put in the quality.
A friend of mine bought a brand new HP system recently. It came with Vista 64-bit. None of his engineering software runs on it and his software costs thousands of dollars. He was hoping to get a faster machine to do his job and naively assumed Vista would just run his software. After spending a couple days fighting with Vista, he is now trying to return the system and get his money back.
This page contains all the test results (including XP test) instead of spreading it to 6 pages. It does not have the specification of the system used or a brief description of each test though.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
poor performing Mach message queues
[citation needed]
Mach messaging is highly efficient, in my experience. What kind of problems are you seeing?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The title is so funy.... ROFL xD
Here is the crux. Vista didn't provide enough reason to switch, and the interface was so poorly designed it aggravated users. Every screenshot I've seen on Windows 7 looks just like Vista. 7 will have multi-touch support, but I don't have a touchscreen.
Until I see a reason to switch (ie serious advantages over XP) why would I?
I run openSUSE 11.1 and Windows x64 and I'm happy with both.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
And yet.... there is still time for both(W7 and Obama) to fail miserably before they even start. :-)
Early Windows 7 build shows performance ups and automatically they are viewed as stupid tests, anything can beat Vista, etc.
Oh well. Even if it beat Linux or OS X or every other OS on the planet at speed, the naysayers would still say that it doesn't matter because it's unstable, or too easily compromised, etc.
Basically, if you want to find fault, you will, and can. Unless you find fault with Linux, then you are obviously flamebait and don't know what you are talking about. :)
The article you link is an opinion piece, which cites no actual examples of performance issues on Mac OS X.
Care to try again?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...is how long it takes for the first security hole to be found...
Which douchebag is going around tagging every story about software with the ubuntu tag? What does a comparison between 2 versions of Windows have anything to do with any other OS? Shuttleworth, is that you?
Maybe people will figure out that throwing random tags around isn't the best idea when they go to do a search for stories tagged "ubuntu" and get presented with a load of crap that has nothing to do with Ubuntu.
This is honestly insightful, because the more they work on it, the more it will suffer from the heavy weight of feature creep. I hope their claim of 'modular' is still in the plans.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
I think that microsoft could rescue vista by releasing Windows 7 as "Vista Service Pack 4", to keep with Windows' tradition of offering a stable product around service pack 2 or 3. That way, they could attract users to their product, and not force people to switch OS's again. But how do you make money like that?
Yeah, including such stellar titles as Wingnuts 2, Jeopardy Deluxe, Drop Point Alaska, a brand new Star Wars adventure titled Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (/endsarcasm), etc. Don't ever dare compare the OS X operating system to windows or even Linux with WINE in terms of gaming ever again. There are some relevant games in that list, but most of those are years old. There's a reason why Mac geeks who also happened to be gamers rejoiced when Boot Camp came out. So they could finally play some good PC Games.
Don't ever dare compare the OS X operating system to windows or even Linux with WINE in terms of gaming ever again.
I'm curious.. Do you actually expect people to comply when you issue a demand like this?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
and....was written in 2002.
The fact that Windows 7 comes out on top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed.
then they should have waited. Vista always seemed a bit premature.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What Windows users need is a decent OS offering backwards compatibility and some real improvements over XP that will justify its adoption.
Seriously, other than some improvements over a badly coded interface that got its butt kicked by Compiz, and besides the pervasive use of DRM and other techniques to block its usage or spy over the user, what else can 7 offer?
you must be new here. welcome to slashdot!
Don't ever dare compare the OS X operating system to windows or even Linux with WINE in terms of gaming ever again
What nonsense. Name one game that runs well with WINE or Crossover on Linux that doesn't run under WINE or Crossover on OS X. Name one commercial game available for Linux but not OS X. You might be able to find the odd open source Linux game (Frozen Bubble 2 comes to mind) that hasn't been ported to Mac, but they are pretty rare.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I seriously doubt any OS can outperform Vista. I mean, really guys, come on.
Apple has done nothing to bring OS X up to the same performance level as Linux and Windows since then.
Do you know the difference between supporting a claim and merely repeating it?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I wonder if the inimitable Stephen Fry would like to test it. Then they'll know they are making progress.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Anything that can reduce Mr Fry to describing anything as "cunting" and give up in despair ("I can't put up with this sort of arse") must be far beyond terrible. :D
Aw, bless.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is what passes for insightful on Slashdot these days? Seriously mods, this guy thinks Microsoft made Vista that way on purpose as some sort of genius grand plan!
Heh, not quite. Vista isn't the success Microsoft hoped for. From microsofts point of view, Vista has been a dismal marketing failure, possibly even a commercial failure - they pushed too much change all at once, and the market dug in its heels.
However, when all is said and done Vista isn't really a technical failure, and so Windows 7 isn't going in a new technical direction. So windows 7 is just going to address the market failure, which it will be able to do, since the failure of Vista was too much change too fast. Windows 7 isn't going to have much change, and is just going to build on Vista which will have already 'broken the new ground', so the strategy for 7 will likely succeed.
He says Vista isn't ME-2, but provides no reason -- except opinion -- for it. This would never have been modded-up in my day!
Vista isn't ME-2 because:
1) ME was the last of its code base and it died off; its successor was a completely different code base.
2) Vista is the first of its code base, and its successor will be little more than a refinement of it.
That pretty much makes Vista the opposite of ME.
Name one commercial game available for Linux but not OS X.
I can name one: Hopkins FBI.
But that's quibbling; your basic point is 100% correct. Hopkins FBI isn't exactly up there with Doom or WoW, and I don't think any new games are coming out for Linux but not OS X.
This is Adrian Kingsley-Hughes we're talking about. He's a Microsoft fanboi and probably on Microsoft's payroll.
The only question I got is when are we going to get some real benchmarks and not marketing dribble reposted by this douchebag.
Windows 7 did better only on boot time. The other tests don't show much, if the author had taken a more probabilistic approach I think we'd see that neither t-test or z-test would be conclusive with a good confidence. If we take into account that what slows down the boot time is the several services, it may mean that window 7 just doesn't have all the services yet. Trully weak results here.
Stop feeding the troll. There are people in this world who will spew bullshit till they are blue in the face if it will get them some attention.
Anyone who's opinion matters knows he's full of bullshit.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
This is great! I love my DRM to be nice and speedy!
This is weird, jcr is responding reasonably despite being subjected to childish name calling, curiously a number of people seem to think he is just laying into various a/c with a side dish of logins.
What did jcr say that was so jerkish? anywhere in this thread?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Stop feeding the troll.
But it's fun!
Ok, I'll stop. He's not a very good troll, anyhow.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's great and all, but I need a version of Windows that doesn't poop on itself when it tries to do two things at once, before I upgrade my PC from XP Pro.
Ok, at first glance it looks good. It won 75% of the tests right? Looking over the pretty charts, its not so great:
1. Boot time: Windows 7 is slightly better (by 10 seconds "woo") and WTF on Vista SP1 being slower than Vista RTM? (I thought it was suppose to offer huge performance gains?)
2. Passmark Test: Only slightly beats out Vista (and again, SP1 is slower?)
3. PCmark: 500 points higher than Vista(s) (about a 10% gain, not bad.)
4. Cinebench10: 500 points worse. and *again* Vista RTM is faster than SP1.
so it seem to balance out. and at the current rate is Microsoft going to keep slowing down Vista with each service pack to make the jump to 7 seem even more promising? "Looks its 700% Faster than Vista SP3!" (and about the same as Vista RTM, and would have been slower then the 'evil' XP that we had to kill off...)
I'll wait till 7 RTMs before I make my final call, but after all the games they played with Vista, it had better make serious strides in usability ...
jcr is responding reasonably despite being subjected to childish name calling
Thanks, Hucko.
I usually shrug off name-calling like that because it's more effective to put the troll's behavior into sharp contrast than to respond in kind. If they persist, they only make themselves look worse.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Nope. Your claim, your burden of proof. It's up to you to show that any "absurd performance problems" exist in the Mac OS X Kernel, not for me to prove a negative.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Microsoft is the only company I know that can get its customers to pay for a downgrade.
It doesn't matter how fast or slow it is. Whatever Windows 7 is, like Vista, people will have to accept it, because MS will make sure no one has any choice.
2) Vista is the first of its code base, and its successor will be little more than a refinement of it.
If we stick with your circular logic, ME would have been head and shoulders above Win98 and SE. So which is it? Do Microsoft products get better or worse as they mature?
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I really don't see what all the complaining has been about. I have never had any problems with Vista At All. Not One. It runs just as fast as XP did, crashes less, is more secure. etc........
Will I like the fact that 7 is fater, heck yes, but don't jump on the 'hate Vista' bandwagon just to be on it.
And yes I know this will be unpopular and flamed, so go ahead-flame away
Still like Linux better
What's really surprising is that it's only faster in 3 out of 4 tests. When you're competing with Vista, the bar's about as low as it can technically go. Heck, they could be 90% as slow as Vista and it would STILL look good.
Since when did Vista become a point of reference? Why don't they compare it to XP, so we can see how dog-slow it really is?
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
No, Microsoft dug themselves into a hole by taking five years to upgrade XP.
Had they stuck to their usual 2-3 year product cycle, XP wouldn't have become entrenched to the point of irreplaceable.
Is it just me, or am I the only person that didn't understand the usage of "edgy" in the parent? Did it enter mid-life, shave its head bald and hang out in hipster bars? That kind of edgy?
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
That would require people to have an open mind, which we know isn't the case.
Yea, that's not a bug, that's a feature.
What so we know of Win 7's lineage? Is it a revamp of the Vista codebase?
I don't see how it'd be possible for Microsoft to have cleaned up all of Vista's problems in less than 2 years.
I may be wrong, but I bet that they built Windows 7 on top of one of the XP service packs. How else could it possibly perform and be as usable as XP?
Seriously, if I were a betting man, I'd wager that they abandoned Vista entirely...
Huh?
Don't bother flaming me for telling you this. If you can't see what I do by now, you will be one of the nine or ten percent of users that...
post on Slashdot and aren't Twitter sock puppets?
Anonymous Coward
> Whey I did not comply, they modbombed me to oblivion.
Can you please provide evidence that you were asked by Microsoft to do something,
and evidence that they modbombed you to oblivion? I'd be very interested in
seeing that, and I'm sure many people here would.
Can you please also comment on all your other accounts, which
also seem to have been "modbombed". Did they suffer the same fate?
> Ultimately they want Slashdot and free software to just go away
You seem to use the word "hate" there a lot. I don't see a direct relationship
between what you claim those people are doing and "hating" free software, Slashdot
or even you.
> great big piles of coke
I'm sorry?
I must have missed where I called him a name. I just said don't compare it to Windows or Linux w/ WINE for gaming. If I wanted to call names, I'd have said "Don't compare it to Windows for gaming you pussy!" And it was tongue in cheek anyways.
Winesweeper.
Who cares. I just threw Linux in there to placate the people who would wine (haha, get it) about Linux not being mentioned. But show me a successful commercial game available on the Mac and not the PC? I'll show you dozens that are available on the PC and not on Mac.
I guess the "this thread" was a mistake. Was originally referring to my pp but ended up including other comments against jcr.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
everyone has already expressed how underwhelmed and disinterested we all are.
If we stick with your circular logic, ME would have been head and shoulders above Win98 and SE.
Not really, if you knew how ME was put together you would understand why there were so many issues. Basically, they grafted parts of Windows 2000 onto Windows 98 while trying to hide what was left of DOS from the end user.
The end result was that it amplified all that was broken in the 16/32 bit Windows code.
I wonder what Microsoft will change in licensing or some other "Feature" that will make it so that it won't get redily adopted... I personally have more of an issue with the changes to Office in the 2007 version. (This is forced upon me at work). I actually use Vista in my personal environment and find it reasonably workable...
Name one game that runs well with WINE or Crossover on Linux that doesn't run under WINE or Crossover on OS X. Name one commercial game available for Linux but not OS X.
Actually running Ragnarok Online (to name just one example), especially with private servers, is nigh impossible on OSX but pretty easy in Linux, and there are quite a few more. OSX's wine doesn't support OpenGL without compiling tons of external things (and lots of upgrades to Quartz et al), and even then it isn't detected correctly by many programs without yet more hideous modifications.
I can't name any more examples because I gave up after trying that game and would just boot into Linux if I needed to use Wine for anything that needed sound or 3D.
Okay, so I probably deserve a troll mod on this, but for chrissakes why do we still see submissions referencing articles by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on /.?
Even *Adrian* can't figure out whether he's a Microsoft apologist or an MS shill, which is presumably why he flips back and forth between the two modes.
I know, I know. I don't have to read them - who reads TFA on /. anyway? But it's like this grim fascination which, once it's been presented to me, I can't resist; out of body, I watch myself, horror struck as I click through to TFA, start twitching when I see it's AK-H, screaming gibberish and invective until I run out of lickspittle ...
And to top it all off, he's got a hyphenated surname, pretentious ginga that he is.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
ATI/AMD and nVidia come out with thier bloated display drivers, that should slow it down some..
No decent shell? It's not a *real* O/S.
If I can't have grep, xargs, awk, sed, etc. in my operating system, then it is but a toy.
And Window is... make no mistake... simply a toy.
Let's see: Windows 2000 brought the NT kernel with integrated Explorer desktop (and unfortunate MSIE integration) but performed extremely well on single processor and SMP workstations. It was fairly lightweight, and supported everything up to DirectX 9.0c, MSIE 6.0, and Windows Media Player 9. Everyone loved Windows 2000. It also had a very small footprint, considering it supported Win16, Win32s, Win95, NT, OS/2, and POSIX.
Windows XP brought more eye candy, a larger foot print, and some DRM. It ran a bit slower than Windows 2000, but did include a few extra system tools, as well as a command line defrag (let's ignore how pathetic Windows defrag is). Driver availability was a pain in the neck at first, and many Windows 2000 drivers had to be hacked (extracting from CAB files and modifying INF files) to hopefully force driver installs, but eventually everyone started supporting Windows XP. Windows XP was teh devil. However, one thing I have to say is that wireless networking works a lot better in XP than Win2K become it came with an interface that was somewhat standardized, whereas Win2K did not natively understand WiFi. The install footprint was also reasonable, even on a laptop. It was widely regarded as a bloated Win2K with eye candy tossed in to make it saleable. A pig with lipstick.
Windows Vista? It's a huge step backward. Why on God's green earth should Windows' footprint increase to 6GB to 8GB and not even include the features that were to be its biggest selling points, ESPECIALLY WinFS? While NTFS is a good deal better than FAT, there are F/OSS filesystems which are FAR better than NTFS from every perspective. Also, why the heck should listening to MP3s slow network performance by over 90%? Why should "minimum recommended" memory requirements be 1GB? Why is the "3D" desktop limited to the paged task switcher? For all of the hype around aero I was expecting a big change during the beta cycles that would make Vista match or exceed XGL/Beryl/Etc. and OS X, but it basically caught up to OS X circa 2005. It's three years behind the times and rapidly falling behind KDE 4.x, OS X, and Compiz-Fusion. Oh, and the newest revision of the Explorer file manager sucks. Microsoft, check out Konqueror and Dolphin on KDE if you want to get some good file manager ideas, and also glean a few ideas from the Mac's Finder while you're at it. OK, you ripped off Mac OS Classic. We get it. You're still copying a 20+ year old OS. Time to enter the 21st century, guys! Oh, and the BSOD is a thing of the past? Drivers can't crash it like XP? Wrong again. It handles driver and memory faults every bit as poorly.
I do have Vista installed now. I have it installed just for games, and I keep "AndLinux" installed on it to make the environment tolerable (konqueror is hands-down THE best file manager).
Now, this isn't to say that Vista is all bad. Thy now include REALLY good tools on the install CD. They followed Apple's and Linux distros' suits by including not only a memory test utility, but an actual Windows Repair feature which isn't just "install over everything and hope for the best" but a program which checks the registry, file system, MBR, and so forth and intelligently/selectively repairs key boot components. It actually works REALLY well. I just wish the rest of Vista's quality matched that of the install and repair routines. Their release engineers really were on the ball with Vista. Sadly, I can't say the same for their product management and GUI/human factor engineers.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I need to see a comparison with a non-crippled version of Windows. Vista is a non-OS....
I'm a contributing member to slashdot,
Well, let's just get you a gold star, then!
unlike the person I'm heckling.
Wow, that would really hurt if I had any reason to value your judgement.
Like I said, I'm having a bad day, and I have karma to burn.
I'm having a great day, and I've had karma to burn since sometime in 1997.
I call out assholes who dont contribute
I'm sure everyone is highly impressed with your diligence. Gosh, how did /. ever get along before you showed up?
I must say though, that from a quick glance at ~Hadlock, I'm not too impressed.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Hang on a minute, have you played Frozen Bubble 2? Obviously not or you'd realize it is well worth making the switch.
Name one commercial game available for Linux but not OS X.
Sacred. Serious Sam and its sequel. Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Jagged Alliance 2.
You should never say "name one", as there's usually at least few around (and Wikipedia has handy-dandy Category: Linux Games. To be fair, though, I suppose the above list is like 80% of all games that fill your criteria.
Chronologically late.
I gave up after trying that game and would just boot into Linux if I needed to use Wine
Ok, all right, I've got to bite.
You're going so far as to dual boot your machine, why the hell just not boot into Windows??
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
It's not hard to make it faster than vista...
Where are the benchmarks comparing it to XP, Ubuntu and OSX?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
"If Microsoft keeps up the good then Windows 7 should be head and shoulders better than Vista."
Nice, after that they'll only have to tackle the arms, hands, torso(s?), legs and feet.
Maybe there are still some spare parts lying around from other OSs.
Perhaps he doesnt want to waste the money to buy window and all the required third party junk?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Don't ever dare compare the OS X operating system to windows or even Linux with WINE in terms of gaming ever again.
You do realise that WINE is available for OSX? It's working pretty well so actually OSX has parity with Linux plus the advantage of quite a few native titles being available.
I also hear that cat shit smells less bad than dog shit. Feh.
I thought vista was from NT family, thus being the same code base as XP and not a totally new system.
MS just need to collect money every three years. They upgrade the OS telling people they get new and shiny technology. The truth is that there is no real compelling reason to upgrade from 2000 to XP to Vista. No real gain. They just throw new "functionalities "which only annoy the user, but which real intentions is either piss them off into migrating (cancelling support for legacy applications) or create new benifits "for them" instead for the user (DRMzation). I think instead of waiting for Windows 7 or migrating to OSX, I will just wait for Google OS ;-)
Linux been second option (Kubuntu)
I believe that this Slashdot crowd has LLS... much the same as LMS. You have Little Linux Syndrome... much like Little Man Syndrome. Linux works great for server stuff, but for a desktop... about as many apps full blown apps run natively in Linux as in Windows 3.11. I tired of hearing your ungrounded Linux claims while blasting Microsoft for everything they do. Secondly... I don't see Linux desktop stuff implementing all the advanced policy control that Windows does in an enterprise situation and yet you continue to pretend to be making a direct comparison between Windows and Linux. Linux has strong points, so does Windows. Sadly in an enterprise situation, Linux still stinks as a desktop for application support and true enterprise management capabilities. Sorry guys and gals :)
If I will have to buy an antivirus for it I wouldn't buy windows 7. MS might need windows 7 I may not need this.
And then I am modded as "Troll"? WTF guys, just read the article.
Oh, I get it, Microsoft zombies roaming the boards....
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The best hardware in the world, perfectly driven, is useless when you want to record American Gladiators and the damn software says you can't.
... and they said that there where no advantages to DRM?
MS lost me when they came out with VISTA. Before Vista you had to have MS product to work and play in the electronic world.
Yah performance was an issue with VISTA. But so many more things are wrong. Performance in the case of a successor to Windows is actually a bit of a 3rd tier issue.
- Blatant lies when it came to VISTA capable
- DRM infection to the point where my own videos were crippled in rez and sound
- UAC nag from hell. Essentially made the Windows experience equate to cat sitting on the key board demanding my attention CONSTANTLY. And as such rendered my time on the computer less productive.
- Next to nothing when it came to 64 bit drivers
- Still very few safety and repair products run under 64 bit. At launch there was NOTHING for 32 or 64 bit.
- File operations over network painfully slow.
Vista was a marketing nightmare. As a result the competition has gained advantage on so many fronts. This is a good thing.
- Linux is actually usable by the common man. Thank you Conical. Ubuntu and all of the new Debian variants are really rather good.
- Apple leveraging on the success of the iPod product line came out with some killer product specifically in the lap top range. A laptop that fits into an envelope is a killer product.
- Open Office matured and is now easier to use than MS Office. ( I'm speaking from the perspective of bloat )
- Firefox/Mozila showed the world that you can create a browser that works really really well. This soon followed by all the webKit browsers, Safari / Chrome.
- Sigma systems created a chip that is used in most PVR's and media players. So no longer do you need a PC to play computer files. AKA MS media center is now swiftly becoming an expensive after thought.
- Google has done amazing things with the browser. maps / gmail / docs etc. Basically this opened the door for the onslaught of micro sub $500 PC's.
I have to say MS is going to have to pull out of there A$$ the killer product of the 21st century to save them from a slow painful demise. Lets face it, Microsoft just doesn't have that cool hip tag that Apple / Google / any kid on the street has or has had. A killer product Demands a degree of brand Nike Swoosh-stika coolness to get it off the ground.
So. Woop Dee Doo if Windows 7 is currently performing well. It's only got 1,000,000 other things to fix before it will succeed.
( Thank you all for listening / reading this old mans rant )
I heard they had announced the release of WinFS...
True. ME sucked. Vista blows.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
How will it perform after they add back the error checking code?
IBM and Microsoft had a competition to build the fastest implementation of the HPFS file system for OS/2. They brought the two implementation into a room and ran some benchmarks. Microsoft won, and their implementation went into OS/2. IBM engineers then had to go into the code and add the error checking that the MS guys left out...at which point it was much slower than the IBM codeline.
I wouldn't trust these 'benchmarks' for squat.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Alright, I'll give you that. Then refer to comments by others that WINE still has issues and that almost no game works flawlessly in it. I'll just take my PC for gaming over either OS X or Linux any day of the week. Note I'm not saying I think the PC is better overall, but for gaming, it sure as hell is.
Don't flame you for posting absolute BS?
Sorry to break it to you, but prior to Vista, their release schedule was 3-years between releases. They are simply going back tot heir normal release schedule.
Vista was the first iteration of a new platform (Think Win3.1, win95, Win2k). Win7 is the second for that platform (Think WFW3.11/Win98/WinXP).
Did the 95-98 break a few apps? Yes.
Did the 2000-XP break a few apps? Yes.
Will the Vista-Win7? Of course. ...and saying Vista didn't do anything about security? One has to wonder what kind of crack you are on.
Fair play, if I wanted a gaming rig then I'd probably have a PC running XP or Vista. No, scratch that, I'd actually quite like a PS3, well worth the cash just for the BlueRay / media centre aspects ;-).
And it would be even better if Microsoft got all of the DRM crap out W7 that never belonged in the operating system in the first place!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well if we compare a very slow dinosaur against the speed of an elephant the elephant is FASTER. This does not mean that the ELEPHANT is fast only faster as the big, slow and waiting for extinction dinosaur. (hey I being nice with vista)
What are you talking about? I'm running Mac OS X 10.5 on 8 years old hardware just fine, and it works better than the OS which came with the box. (Given it was OS 9, that's also a very low bar to pass.) Admittedly 10.6 won't probably run on said G4's any more because Apple stops supporting PowerPC hardware, but for comparison try to run Vista (or even XP if you like) on 8 years old hardware and compare that to the performance of my Macs of the same age.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Oh yeah, Windows 7 is better than Vista, but is it better than Windows XP?
Have both, and my only disappointment with the PS3 is there is still a noticeable lack in great games. But it is a good system given the right software, no doubt.
MS really needs to create/have a Windows Gamers Edition for Windows 7, or at least multiple profiles you can choose from at install (one being gamer). A profile that strips the OS down to bare bones game function. No backup, no syncs, no offline files, no unnecessary process outside of sound, video, internet, and the ability to install a game. It's the only reason why a lot of people are still committed to using Windows. If it wasn't for the gaming, I would be using Ubuntu for Internet and Media.
Maybe then the Gamers edition would be just the best preforming edition of Windows.... so make it the default edition, and if I need anything else, I'll add the service ala carte from my install disk/internet.
You're going so far as to dual boot your machine, why the hell just not boot into Windows??
Why would I? It has nothing I need. All my favorite development tools are on Linux, and the few games I occasionally play run fine in wine.
I kept OSX around because it came with the machine and seems like a waste to delete it, but I don't really use it very often.
Vista is a continuation of the NT codebase and is nowhere near the first.
OSX dock can be anything from a couple of giant icon (get rid of all apps and maximize it) to a tiny barely readable row of icons taking up much less real-estate than the Windows taskbar, so calling it a "big ass dock" depends on how you customize it. Sure it defaults to big, but right click the divider on the dock (Control Click if you don't have a "real" mouse) and choose Preferences, then make it big or small, mess with effects, magnification, etc.
Incidentally, when I used NeXT Dock it was limited to square icons and was not resizable or scalable, but that was a while ago and I'm not sure what modern features are in later incarnations. In fact, it behaved like many other desktop managers in how it minimized, but it did have those cool animated icons and put everything in a box (as opposed to other Window Managers which usually ran them in a row along the left side of the desktop)
I can only assume Windows will be fairly flexible with their dock using hardware accelerated scaling and dock scaling based on options.
Vista is a continuation of the NT codebase and is nowhere near the first.
Sure Vista is a "continuation" of NT. It just doesn't have much in common with it. Different kernel. Different driver model. Different networking stack. Different scheduler. Different memory manager.
Now compare windows ME to windows 98. All of those above swtich from 'different' to 'same'.
Regnum Online
http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/
but will it be better than XP?
XP and Vista are the end of Windows. Both added bloat and anti-features that dragged down progressively more capable hardware and neither did anything about security issues that truly destroy performance.
Not exactly. Yes, for the average /. geek and corporate user who was having already an NT-based OS, going from the already sturdy Windows 2k to a Windows XP Pro which didn't bring anything new or interesting - this was a big disappointment.
*BUT* the story is completely different for average Joe-6-pack. For the average home user Windows XP Home with all its imperfection, was light-years ahead of the previous thing that the users where forced to endure on pre-installed home PC : Windows ME.
Windows XP met success despite being not that interesting, because WinXP Home saved lots of home users from the pains of WinME.
On the other hand, Vista doesn't have a single argument in its favour.
- Businesses don't like it and downgrade to WinXP Pro at the first opportunity.
- Home users aren't rushing to buy-/upgrade to- Vista because their current WinXP Home is pretty much good enough for them.
So in end, Vista is even a worse product than WinXP.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You mean you look through their posting history for anything you can wilfully misconstrue, take out of context, massively blow out of proportion, or just plain lie about.
What about all the Quake games, UT, WoW and so on? Sure, Windows has more games but you're just trolling when you omit the world's most popular games and throw out games so old, even Mac users don't play them any longer.
Marathon.
Go to any store that carries a reasonable selection of PC Games, and count the number of games that play on both PC and Mac. The games you listed are nearly the only ones that do so natively. Most games have to be ported, and in most cases there are not enough Mac users for them to do so because they have to make enough profits to make it worthwhile. You simply won't see many titles that are made for the Mac, and it has nothing to do with hardware or software, it's about market share.
Forgot to mention, how big of a percentage of WoW users out of the 11 million worldwide do you honestly think play it on a Mac? Maybe 5%? I'm curious if anyone has solid stats on this, because I have a hard time believing it'd be more than 10-15% at most.