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First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1
The other A. N. Other writes "It seems that Microsoft couldn't keep the lid on Windows 7 beta 1 until the new year. By now, several news outlets have their hands on the beta 1 code and have posted screenshots and information about this build. ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 column says: 'This beta is of excellent quality. This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with. Even the pre-betas were solid, but finally this beta feels like it's "done." This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled.' ITWire points out that this copy has landed on various torrent sites, and while it appears to be genuine, there are no guarantees. Neowin has a post confirming that it's the real thing, and saying Microsoft will be announcing the build's official availability at CES in January."
The sound of ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 writers blowing their loads over this is deafening.
Now the fate of 64bit future is being determined...
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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There are no new features in this build. If Microsoft has any new stuff lined up for the RTM then we're going to have to wait to find out.
All this talk about stable beta's seems a bit pointless. If you change the name and theme on the product, you can't real muck it up too bad. What's the point of this other than to try to put the name "Vista" in the grave?
Anyone know what these people are so excited about? Couldn't get much real info from the article. They comment that its snappier than other betas. How about compared to XP? That would be the real comparison I would like to see.
I am a linux person myself - Ubuntu on the computer I am posting from, but I did use Windows on my laptop before wiping it. I am also not opposed to having windows installed if I gain any benefit. That is what I want to hear from people, what are its compelling features (I don't play games).
When all else fails, try.
And we can start quessing which of the mentioned fine features will actually be in the release version of Win7. This has happened so many times before.
Remember when during waiting of win95 many magazines were worried what will happen to McAfee and other virus-scanner companies when the new windows is fully virustolerant?
They delegate Wal-Mart's selling the IPhone to a side note and instead are more concerned with Mary Jo's "Windows Name Of The Day" stories. ZDNet is the Enquirer of IT news.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
I don't see why this is surprising. This is just Windows Vista service pack 3 after all. Naturally the beta is going to be more stable than the initial Vista beta.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Everyone seems to have the opinion that Vista was a failure. My wife (a non-techie) hates Vista because her ancient accounting app periodically crashes ever since switching to Vista. I assume many other people had the same sorts of issues with many other apps.
But now three years have gone by, and many of those apps have been patched, become obsolete, or replaced with working alternatives. That means the remaining apps are now in an ideal position to work correctly in Windows 7. Is it possible that Windows 7 could be exactly the same crap as Vista, but because so much time has gone by it doesn't matter as much?
I think we saw the same thing with the transitions from Windows 98 to Windows ME to Windows XP.
John
Are Magazines/Tech review sites/Editorials real anymore or are they just industry backed reviews (aka advertisements)? Is advertisement driven content real journalism?
I remember almost every tech journal I picked up a couple years ago reviewed Vista as the "New Coming". Yet, a year later these journals are bemoaning how Vista "sucks" (which it does btw).
Excuse me for being cynical but I will take this review with a pinch of salt as other reports show that, at least benchmark wise, there is absolutely no difference between Vista and Windows 7.
As for Windows 7 feeling "so much more responsive".. well, depends who is paying you to write that review innit?
"This beta exceeds the quality of any other Microsoft OS beta that I've handled."
Is this person a politician because that is saying nothing.
Too bad 2009 is going to be another year of hearing Microsoft lies and exaggerations regarding yet another Microsoft OS release. BFD, is what I say after 20 something years of the same junk year after year after year. I gave up when Windows 2000 came out and they started shoveling more user level stuff into the kernel and they never fixed the security system. That was in 1999, over 8 years ago and they still are trying to build an operating system worth a hill of beans. Well, it's all about marketing at MS so what you see in print is not what you get and never has.
in 2009, I'll be wading through the MS marketing drivel for what's going on in the embedded, netbook, and MID areas with regards to the ARM Cortex chips and especially the A9 dual core versions. A8 is amazing on the performance front and power front. This should prove very interesting along with what Android, Ubuntu, and others do on these platforms.
So long MSFT, 2009 is probably going to be another tough year of marketing against real solutions. And though you may have smashed the OLPC and dashed their plans of helping millions of children, they kicked off a resurrection of the light weight small form-factor device you just can't compete on. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Rather than wasting our time with a new GUI, I'd like to see Microsoft get the ball rolling on full, proper migration to 64 bit. Perhaps I'm a "power user" but for a sound designer, this 2 gig limit per app/~3.5 max feels more and more like 640 kb all over again.
(Unfortunately, the existence/popularity of 32 bit windows precludes the vendors of software such as Cubase and the likes from actually doing a proper job of putting out 64 bit software).
I record my sleeptalking
The task bar needs quite a bit of work. I bet that is one part of the OS that will change quite a bit from Vista. Looks like it is still a work in progress because right now it looks boxy and ugly.
It also looks like Aero wasn't turned on for these screen shots. Probably a driver thing. Vista without the glass doesn't look nearly as good.
I think like Vista, this version will be a lot of little things that improve the OS not huge ones. Then you'll go back from Windows 7 to Vista and go "jeez... how did I live without this Windows 7 feature" just like when you go back to XP and get pissed how crappy the taskbar is, how "in your face" the windows were, how crappy the file dialogs were, how crappy taskman.exe was, or how generally insecure the default setup was. Vista is a huge improvement over XP but it is hard to describe what improved. Just a lot of little annoyances are gone or smoothed out. Windows 7 will probably be the same.
And can I rant for a second? Look, I know why the ZDnet guys are doing this, but we live in Web version 2.0 these days and they could easily have made it so their gallery didn't require a complete page-load between images. But like I said, I know why they do require a page-load.
Comparing Windows 7 to Vista is useless, at least to someone like me. I love XP, having never had any serious problems with it whatsoever. It's by far the most stable OS I have ever used. Tell (and prove to) me that Windows 7 is better than XP, and I will show great interest in switching. Tell me 7 is better than Vista, and you don't have a chance.
What are the improvements? Have they added in WinFS yet?
All that being the case, why on earth do we care about Windows 7? If Microsoft couldn't get people to migrate off XP with benign economic circumstance and ready availability of credit, why do we think it's going to happen this time?
ian
Finally it looks like Microsoft are doing what they should have done with Vista. It's more stable, they've finally fixed the taskbar, got rid of the ridiculous sidebar and seem to have made it a lot quicker, according to the reports I've read. I've not used it myself yet, but after the disaster that was Vista, as they say, things can only get better.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
File name: Windows.7.Beta.1.Build_7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso [MSDN iSO]
Size: 2,618,793,984 bytes (2.44 GB)
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2123650
Looks like a step back in the eye candy department. Maybe the author of the screenshots had the aero stuff turned off? It looks awfully flat and plain.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
I just had to repair a friend's Vista PC which had 3 Trojan programs running that had taken control of her internet even though Kaspersky antivirus was installed. The Trojan had worked its way onto her computer via a P2P program that her daughter was using to get music, and that stopped Kaspersky from being able to update its definitions, which it was set to do every day. I couldn't even go out to Microsoft's Windows Update site to get Windows updates, and Windows Defender (which was also installed and running) was disabled by one of the Trojan programs. It took me over an hour to clean it all up and get her machine running properly again.
Not even 2 antivirus programs could stop this from happening on the latest Windows PC.
This is what is stopping me from being even the slightest bit excited about Windows 7.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
I think their plan is to mimic the look and feel of Gnome or KDE, you know, to ease the transition for mom and pop when they switch to linux
_-_-_GSLUG_-_-_
I'm no fan of MS, but what exactly do you propose they do? They offer 64-bit variants that can run 64-bit applications of their supported platforms. They provide the platform to allow this specific thing. They provide the tools to develop for this.
What you have is commercial application providers flat-out ignoring 64-bit capability, as it is easier to target the 32-bit subset that works both on Pentium 4 and such and new. You have to make the vendors release 64-bit enabled builds. Linux suffers from this as well, to a lesser extent. In the OSS world, they rebuilt 64-bit readily. However, Acrobat, Flash, Sun JRE all took a long time or are still taking time to completely support 64-bit. The commercial world just has a hard time justifying bothering where there is backwards compatibility and 99.9% of their usage won't exceed the limit per process restrictions.
MS could have not published any 32-bit platform to accelerate ubiquity. Imagine the backlash at not supporting Core and Pentium 4, requiring those users to go to Core2 or Athlon64. Even then, it wouldn't have alleviated the issue as these vendors would still want to sell to XP users. MS could have omitted 32-bit compatibility, completely shooting backwards compatibility in the foot.
So while I'm not crazy about Windows, their x86_64 bit strategy is not any worse than other platforms, it's the commercial third-parties that cause your grief.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
My local Linux advocate told me so!
Even with amazing projects coming out of the Microsoft labs like SeaDragon and Photosynth, we're offered up the latest generation of Windows with the same, exact model of desktop, start menu, icons, folders, etc. It just looks like next genetic descendent in the Windows line to me -- the only difference is smoother palettes and corners to mimic 'whats hot' in computer UI design these days.
One could say that the 'future' of desktop UIs was paved by Enlightenment which truely started branching away from the Windows and Macintosh genetic lines, but we need something more.
We need the equivalent of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Remote Apple remote for desktop management, not the shape, size or number of buttons -- but the idea that less is more, context is key and that it's about providing the user with enough to get their work done, not providing so much that they get lost.
I don't want eye candy. I want functionality that makes sense because it couldn't be any easier.
Why not compare with 2K ? Also, 2K is better than XP by the same metrics you mentioned. Then why are you running XP?
This space for rent.
Sure, MS may be right about driver and application incompatibilities. But, when I bought a brand new laptop, pre-loaded with Vista, that has the Vista logo on the box, I don't want to hear that it's the fault of the network chipset provider that the wireless network works marginally at best. MS and the hardware vendors need to get their shit together, so that they don't tell me that a computer is "Win 7 Compatible" or comes pre-loaded with Win 7 when it really isn't.
If you're trying to install a new OS on an old machine, that's one thing. You definitely need to do your homework to make sure that the off-brand network card you bought will work with the new OS. However, a new machine pre-loaded with the OS should run. If MS can't make sure that the OEMs have working machines before they slap a "Vista" or "Win 7" sticker on the damn thing, they should stop making software, period.
I installed Windows 7 yesterday and it seems that this is the OS
that Vista should have been. Much more responsive and boots a lot
faster. Haven't tried copying any large amount of files though...
I am going to try installing Steam and Crysis tonight and check gaming
performance (if the games work at all, that is).
I can understand somebody wanting the pirated version of a video game, or even a release-version of an OS, but who in their right mind would tie up their Internet connection for a day and risk the legal trouble and possibility of a virus/worm/backdoor to download a beta copy of an operating system that's built on the most reviled version of Windows since WinMe?
2. In a story about Macs, mentioning that you use any form of Windows will take you to karma hell, praising OS X will get you modded up, mentioning Linux will affect your karma based on your luck of draw moderators depending on which kind of fanboy they are. In any case, you will get a ton of long highly modded up replies about how OS X is better
3. In a story about Linux, mentioning that you use any form of Windows will take you to karma hell, praising Linux will get you modded up, mentioning OS X will affect your karma based on your luck of draw moderators depending on which kind of fanboy they are. In any case, you will get a ton of long highly modded up replies about how Linux is better.
4. In any other story, mentioning that you use any form of Windows will take you to karma hell, and praising Linux, OS X, BSD, Plan 9, OS/2, BeOS etc. will take you to karma heaven.
Anyone wanna make a graphical represenation of the above to make it easier to understanding on a glance? So, Vista/Windows 7 stories are the only opportunity for Windows users to come out of the woodwork and not pretend they like other OSes. It's amazing how many of them there are actually are around these parts.
This space for rent.
Please, that's almost as bad as Microsoft using 7 as their marketing term at the same time as Intel makes the "i7". All we need is AMD to make a "7" processor and we'll be completely full of useless marketing.
you didn't think that was a coincidence, did ya?
There is no such thing as Windows 7. This is not a new code base, it is not an overhaul of Windows framework. Windows 7 is Vista Service Pack 2. The Windows 7 bullshit coming out of Microsoft's propaganda machine is a concerted and direct effort to bury the name Vista and all the bad press associated with it. That anyone has bought into this crap is astounding. Vista was several years delayed. Now we have hordes of people believing that MS got a new OS out the door in 18 months? Wake up already.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
I'm curious to see benchmarks. I've read a couple articles recently from windows reviewers who in the past have been painfully biased, but none show anything other than screens and "It's Snappier" ... or "Works on 512mb ram". If I remember right, Vista was suppose to work with 512mb ram too, but with pretty much any of the features turned on, it's useless.
I think the better question is ... is W7 actually "snappier", or in the past 2 years have more people simply upgraded their computers?
Why are we so concerned about eye-candy? How about the actual system underneath?
Is it stable, scalable, administrable? What sort of resources does it need? Ram? CPU?
Sure, 'pretties' are nice ( especially for the end user ), but its a lot like a cake: If the cake is full of holes, lopsided or not fully cooked, does it really matter what flavor the icing is?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Kind of like how AMD came out with the Athlon XP line around the time that Windows XP shipped?
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
It's apparent that Windows 7 represents a radical name change from Vista. A bold new direction in OS branding.
And people say innovation is dead in Redmond.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You can write javascript that enhances a page. One can quickly write an implementation that keeps each image a standard page (good for SEO, good for multi-tab) but can also swap the image and not reload the page. Then you can right-click "Open new tab" or just click on it and not refresh the entire page.
Javascript = good.
Shitty Javascript = bad.
> This is the kind of code that you could roll out and live with.
Yes, that is the definition of a beta. A beta should find bugs of minor importance which only appear in real use cases.
The final version does not have the "you could live with" phrase in the end.
<span style="background-sound:britney.ogg">Maybe that mainstream is not that good at making choices?<span>
The "Mojave is really Vista" campaign was one of the most embarassing marketing campaigns I've ever seen. Here is a company that willingly admits that the reputation of their OS is so terrible, they have to dupe people into trying it by renaming it something else. And now the same "I'm so embarrassed by my product I won't even mention its name" continues.
What happened to Microsoft's cojones? They should stand up and fight for Vista until its reputation is at least partly restored. Then they could introduce products under new names, without the overhanging cloud of shame.
As for the "review", this part is enough to make me laugh uncontrollably: "Here are some screenshots to whet your appetite:". What is this, a review of a new cellphone skin for teenagers hanging out at a mall? What is happening to ZDNet? Not that it ever was a source of great knowledge, but this?
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista? As someone else pointed out, a name and theme change does not really qualify as substantial change. Ok, so WinFS was never promised for this version. What exactly are they offering this time besides a fix to the taskbar? I have yet to see an article that outlines changes outside the UI. Is this an elaborate prank?
[alk]
A female kind. Probably underage.
Those are hard to get rid off. It usually takes years before you get the ship em off to college or marry em off.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What failed was developer training, not user training. Developers could basically assume a user was running root. That let them take shortcuts like writing shit to "Program Files" or messing around with system files.
You have to understand the history as well. Microsoft grew up as a single-user OS and slowly morphed into a multi-user OS. They didn't grow up with the culture that unix-like systems have where the system was assumed to be multi-user.
Bottom line is we will always need some variant of sudo (aka UAC). UAC is actually the best sudo implementation there is so far, at least in my opinion. Granted, there is still room for improvement, but that mainly lies in "integration". For example, the common dialogs need a way for me to load notepad.exe, edit "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\Hosts", and give me a UAC prompt when I save the file. That way I don't have to remember to load notepad.exe with elevated privileges. Let me write a new file to a protected directory and UAC me then instead loading the app with elevated privileges. That kind of integration will make the new world of "dont run as root" more enjoyable. The goal is to make it so there is no excuse for nerds to disable UAC (thus running as root 24/7).
Microsoft changed the interface of Office 2007 to make it much better all around(atleast for casual and new users). Look at the bad rap that it gave them on here and elsewhere for being unfamiliar to power users and people who are used to toolbars and 'File,Edit,View' menus. Look at what happened to KDE 4.0 And you want MS to radically alter the UI of a OS with 90% market share? Can you imagine the comments here starting with 'My grandma who used Windows since 95 got Windows 7 and.....' ? I bet the ribbonish interface itself in Windows 7 will not be well received by some people.
This space for rent.
I can't help but shake the same feeling that I had when the Wall Street was being pushed through Congress... the first time around, EVERYONE hated it (except some of the Dems) but the second time around they "marketed" it better, the media said "oh it's SOOOOO different this time, you'll LOVE it" and then people said "well, I guess it's ok. let's try it" Isn't that basically the same thing that's going on here? MS says "Oh, pox on Vista, you want Windows 7, that's where it's at!" Whoever it was that earlier said they turn off all the UI snazziness on XP -- I totally echo that sentiment -- I use "classic view" and pretty much the only reason I switched to XP was for some of the performance and native-driver issues (and for software compatibility). Having a flashy OS doesn't make me want to buy it, because if it did, I would buy Mac. (Or install Ubuntu again)
... seems to be off.
Just bring up the DOS prompt and fix it using time and date commands. It is faster the clicking around through the program manager.
Current date is December 28, 2008. Not sure about your local time.
You might have some small problems convincing your computer that it is 2008 if it is not Y2K compatible though.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Some how create a way for .NET apps that are compiled as "Any CPU" to call libraries compiled as x86.
If you compile a .NET app as "Any CPU" the runtime will take your MSIL and compile it to the native instruction set of the CPU. That means if you are running 64-bit, it will compile 64-bit. If you run 32-bit, it will compile 32-bit. The problem is, a 64-bit library cannot call a 32-bit one. Thus if you compile "Any CPU" and try calling a 32-bit library when you run on a 64-bit system, .NET will throw an exception.
So what do most people do? Compile their .NET apps as 32-bit. Then they know it will run everywhere.
Now, I'm no expert in 32/64-bit issues, but it seems to be if Microsoft had a way for .NET apps compiled for "Any CPU" to transparently deal with 32/64-bit libraries, you'd see more 64-bit apps. Again, I'm no expert and there are probably some pretty good reasons this is hard, if not impossible, to do.
If I was boss, I'd also make it so a single 32-bit installer could detect what CPU you've got and install 64-bit binaries or 32-bit automatically. From what I can tell, right now you pretty much have to ship two installers--one for 64-bit and one for 32-bit.
Most nerds seem to turn it off assuming it is "flasy useless eye candy". Little do they know they basically turned off hardware accelleration. You do know that Vista, with Aero enabled, will delegate most of the window drawing to the video card. In fact, the more ram on your video card, the better, Vista stores all the window data on that instead of your system RAM.
If you've got a card that does DirectX10 it will even hand the fonts to the video card and let the video card deal with font rendering and caching. Once you turn off Aero, the video card is just an old-school video card. Since a certain set of nerds seem to hate nice looking things, I bet most of them turn off the one thing that makes Vista way more snappy than XP--Aero.
You bring up a good point, but my assertion isn't that we need to necessarily change the environment from what it is to something else entirely or partially.
Providing skinning abilities, or UI modularity (ala Glade for GTK and NIBs for OSX), such that you could eliminate or add elements to your UI -- the buttons and widgets simply pair up with under the hood events that get fired off based on events.
That way you could ship the 'same old' for the people who like it, and individuals could experiment with what they like 'more'.
Office 2007 probably isn't the best example of 'new design' in terms of success or failure -- Office long ago stopped being anything more than a dumping ground for committee sourced features that have nothing to do with providing a functional word processing environment -- rather catering/pandering to the perceived marketing requirements of the entire spectrum of users from amateur to pro. (Although for your post it's a good example of 'Hey you guys changed my thing!')
What you ask exists. Vista Virtual Store. Basically, if your crappy app writes to "C:\program files" in vista and you are running as a standard user, Vista will do exactly what you describe... it will redirect the file IO to a place owned by the user, not the system.
Over 100 comments and we still don't have a concise list of substantial features Windows 7 offers over Vista?
Features New to Windows 7.
Enjoy!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
No I'm telling you video cards from 10 years back already provide hardware accelerated blitting (even translucent), filling, rectangle drawing, etc. So your desktop _is_ hardware accelarated by the video card without anything Aero, and it has been like this for years.
Of course you don't get all the fancy shader tricks but like I said, not everyone actually appreciates those.
To answer your questions:
Yes, I feel that the iPod is just eye candy. The UI is abysmal, that damn wheel is annoying, and whatever happened to something as logical as what my Sansa c240 with Rockbox uses?
The iPhone is useless glitter. Sorry, but I don't want a phone that isn't a clamshell. I also want a phone that can take a beating like my Samsung A640 and A900 did. The 900's been kicked across a four lane road, thrown down a stairwell during an argument, dropped, juggled, and all around beaten. Thing lasted nearly two years before I finally managed to crack the bottom of the chassis and decide, "Yeah, time to use the replacement plan anyway."
The Wii would be interesting, since it's different, but I'll leave the WiiFit to the others.
And finally, yes, I would rather drive a Geo Metro instead of a Honda Civic.
As for things like semitransparent windows... I'll let someone else use those. I'm not a fan.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
It is called "sudo" and if your theoretical linux games would need root access to install mods as well. Or do you run your linux box as root all the time?
Heya, Obvious Troll! How's the obvious work these days? Economy treating you well?
Your first spraying of words-before-a-period, while it contains quantity, amazingly lacks what would be needed to form an actual coherent sentence. But from what I can salvage from it, I'll answer that almost all Linux games I've seen have two sets of data, one stored in the global settings (where you need root to do stuff) that applies to everyone and one in your home directory (where you DON'T need root to do stuff) that just applies to you as a user. Stepmania can read songs, characters, movies, and all other mods from ~/.stepmania. Any Q3A-engine game (Q3A itself, OpenArena, World of Padman, etc) can read its mods from its respective home directory entry without being root. Any Unreal-engine game can read its mods from its respective home directory entry without being root. Freeciv, BZFlag, Frozen Bubble, Puzzle Pirates, anything. Any decently-written Linux game (so, not cheap ports of crappy Windows games) will understand this and won't write to the root-owned stuff unless you very specifically tell it to. Why on earth Windows has to do this is beyond me.
I'll admit, I run as root most of the time in Linux too, at least when I'm in a GUI. Know why? For most of Linux's history, it was a pain in the ass to not run as root. Only until recently have they had a good way to elevate privileges in the GUI.
Linux: Ur doin it wrong. Exactly what is it you needed to do that required non-stop elevated privs in a GUI environment? No, "constantly reconfigure my hardware" doesn't count.
vs
"I own an iPhone" vs "I own a RAZR v3". "The new iPhone is sweet" vs "The new Samsung A610 is sweet".
Anybody else notice the difference?
Let's just stop here because you obviously don't know much about how video cards work. You can 'cache' anything you like in video RAM without using the 3D capabilities at all, just like you can DMA stuff around without taxing the CPU, and draw stuff to the screen with just a few FIFO commands, it is not, (I repeat: it is NOT) what makes your system 'slow' unless you want to blur title bars, wiggle windows when you move them or add all kinds of other visual effects just because you can.
The only valid point you make is that with a full-blown GPU-accelerated desktop you can throw in much more eye candy without slowing down the system. My point is, that if you don't need/want/care about this eye-candy, about everything essentially already _is_ GPU-accelerated, even without Aero. Windows Vista doesn't NEED anything besides age-old window drawing, it just offers you the option to throw (in my opinion) useless eye at you that only distracts from the actual GUI.
Also I doubt your claim that Aero actually does TTF rendering on the GPU, do you have any references to back that up?
And let me add just for clarity that I'm only respondng to your own comment that said you will slow down your computer when you turn off Aero, because the desktop is not GPU accelerated anymore (note again: these are your own words). I'm not passing judgement on the 'coolness' or necessity of such features, because of course it is pretty obvious that you can use the GPU for cool stuff, it's what Linux and OS X do as well (albeit better/more functional, especially OS X), and that's what I use on a daily basis. So please keep your comments about 'narrow minded techies' on '80 character displays' out of this.
Ask and ye shall receive:
Source: Optimizing Performance: Taking Advantage of Hardware
Source: Graphics Rendering Tiers.
Source: ClearType Overview
See also: Typography in Windows Presentation Foundation
How the hell did you get a +3 Insightful after spewing such nonsense?
Run as root most of the time? On most Linux distros you have to ignore warnings, some repeated multiple times, about using the root account. Sudo is installed by default for a reason...because running as root on a desktop is just plain absurd. Making excuses to cover your own incompetence at sudo only highlights your utter lack of security focus. How hard is it to open a terminal window (or use a Gnome applet which puts a terminal line on your taskbar) and type "sudo system-config-display" or whatever you need to run as root?
Sudo cannot be like UAC since sudo came first.
Sudo also offers about a bunch of additional features and controls that UAC can't even comprehend. Restricting commands that users can run as root? Check. Grouping commands? Check. Enforcing environment restrictions like requiring a valid tty and dropping non-standard environment variables? Check? Granting commands to groups of users with a single line? Check. Allowing users to edit specific files with sudoedit? Check.
Have you even used sudo?
who could have seen that coming? :D
Actually if you wanted a real replacement to previous versions of Windows wouldn't you suggest ReactOS?
You just got troll'd!
Windows Vista's performance "problems" have nothing to do with DRM. If you aren't playing back a DRM'd file, then there is no DRM-specific code running, and no penalty of any kind. The idea that Vista had any more DRM code running than Windows XP was a myth propogated mostly buy people who knew it wasn't true, and others who were gullible and believed anything that sounded bad about Vista.
If you don't want DRM, don't buy any DRM'd media. Having support for DRM'd media in the OS (like BluRay / HDCP / etc) has absolutely ZERO impact on people who don't use DRM'd media.
Vista had its issues and they are well understood, there is no reason to make up myths to blame them on.
Heresy! 2009 is the year of the Windows 7 desktop!
Considered how this type of prediction has proven to be self-defeating (kidding kidding, please don't hit me with the correlation!=causation stick), it's the only way to ensure the true coming of the year of the Linux desktop! Muahahaha!
You just got troll'd!
> It is called "sudo" and if your theoretical linux games would need root access
> to install mods as well. Or do you run your linux box as root all the time?
Firefox on Linux doesn't need root access to install add-ons. Neither does Battle for Wesnoth. If the software is designed correctly, add-on content can be installed on a per-user basis, and you only need admin privs to install it system-wide. This should be true on Windows as well as on Unix systems.
But the big difference between UAC and sudo is that Unix systems have had privileges and security from day one, and it has been the normal expected thing that the user does not log in with administrative privileges for normal day-to-day activities, since the seventies. So most software is designed so that it doesn't *need* root privs. So you only get gksudo prompts when you try to do actual system administration stuff; the rest of the time it leaves you alone. Stuff that needs to happen in the background with root privileges is run via a mechanism that can provide that (e.g., cron), *not* out of the logged-in user's desktop session.
With Vista the notion that the user is normally unprivileged is a totally new way of thinking for many software developers. They were *supposed* to build software for Windows 2000 and for Windows XP under the assumption that the logged-in user might not be an administrator, but even quite major developers like Symantec (and, indeed, even Microsoft) never really got this completely right, and there's a lot of software out there that gets it very BADLY wrong, to the extent that some software simply CANNOT be run from a limited account at all. (Ostensibly educational games are particularly bad for this.)
This was a problem before, including under XP, but Vista forces the issue because the user *can't* work around it by just logging in as Administrator all the time (which they *shouldn't* have been doing all along, but people were). This is what needed to be done, but it'll take a while for all the third-party Windows-based software developers to update their whole way of thinking and finally get this right.
UAC, in the long term, is good. It's necessary, and it's the way Windows *desperately* needed to go. But yes, it's going to cause some pain for a few years until all the third-party software gets redesigned under the new way of thinking. Seven isn't really going to change this one way or another, because it's the application software that needs to be updated to fix the too-many-UAC-prompts problem.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
You are telling me that I should WANT an OS that requires the freaking GPU just to draw the desktop without running like a slug? Really? Let us not forget people: We are talking about an OPERATING SYSTEM here, not the latest bloateware 3D game. I just want the OS to freaking boot and then get the hell out of my way so I can run MY programs. I don't need nor want your "flippin 3D super desktop search live enabled web 3.0" crap in my OS! Just freaking start and move! Is that really so freaking hard?
I ran just about every kind of Vista out there, from beta 1 through SP1. And do you know which one WASN'T a giant resource hogging web 3.0 bloated piggy? A freaking pirated version where they had stripped the living hell out of it so much the entire OS fit onto a CD. I might have stayed with it if the driver support for my hardware didn't suck. Instead I'm using good old ever reliable WinXP Pro. But if Win7 is more of the Vista "We want to be Apple so damned much it hurts!" crap I have a feeling I am going to be running XP for a LONG time. I am just glad I build my own desktops and getting motherboards with 2K/XP drivers is pretty much standard issue.
And if any of the guys from MSFT are reading this: STOP trying to be Apple! If I would have wanted a freaking Apple I would have bought one,okay? You are a business company, NOT a home entertainment company. Make a decent low resource using business OS and stop trying to be "Steve Jobs Jr" because frankly it is embarrassing. Allow me to make a prediction: If you force everyone to get rid of their quicklaunch and taskbar and replace it with a freaking dock(gee, I wonder where you got THAT idea from?) then all you are going to do is severely piss off your customers who will either: Stay with XP,move to a Mac,or go to Linux. And I apologize if this came off a little ranty, but ever since that monkey Ballmer took over it seems like they are going out of their way to destroy themselves trying to be Apple. Vista, Zune,I'm sure others can point out even more Apple envy. They are really turning what was once a solid business OS into a giant media oriented mess. And give up the crazy MPAA DRM already! They are NEVER going to pick you over Apple because EVERYBODY has a freaking iPod!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think you need to read those links again.
Read the description of Redering Tier 2, the highest level of acceleration. The TTF fonts are NOT rendered on the card. Instead, in ClearType mode, the raw pixels are sent to the graphics card in a format representing 3x normal horizontal resolution, and are then edge blended with the existing pixels for a convincing anti-aliased look on LCD displays.
Also note, they're talking only about DX9 there with no mention of DX10, and note the restrictions about what *isn't* accelerated.
Did you perhaps mean to give us a different link with relevant information?
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Sure, all they need to do is show a slot machine, showing that if you use 3 7s, you win, if not, you're screwed and lose all your money. Apple would LOVE that "Windows is a Gamble" opening.
BTW Steve Jobs, you now owe me $5,000 for that idea, large bills please.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Providing skinning abilities, or UI modularity (ala Glade for GTK and NIBs for OSX), such that you could eliminate or add elements to your UI -- the buttons and widgets simply pair up with under the hood events that get fired off based on events.
That way you could ship the 'same old' for the people who like it, and individuals could experiment with what they like 'more'.
Office 2007 probably isn't the best example of 'new design' in terms of success or failure -- Office long ago stopped being anything more than a dumping ground for committee sourced features that have nothing to do with providing a functional word processing environment -- rather catering/pandering to the perceived marketing requirements of the entire spectrum of users from amateur to pro. (Although for your post it's a good example of 'Hey you guys changed my thing!')
I'm confused. Isn't glade somewhat like the old VB or MFC? You could skin your application in Windows from a long time ago. Remember Winamp 1.0? Are you talking about OS UI or program UI?
And I wasn't talking about the features in Office 2007 like you are. I am just talking about the user interface which I think was the most major rehaul ever since the first version. And for that, MS got some major bitching around the place from previous Office users. Never mind that almost every new and casual user simply loves the new interface. And we had people on here saying that OO.o was much better for the Office 2003 folks to transition to, because it was more familiar.
This space for rent.
Once again, it's not Windows' fault, it's the software makers fault. Windows NT has had limited-access accounts since forever, it's just that old habits (Writing games for single-user Windows 9x environments) die hard unless you go out of your way to enforce limited user accounts like Vista did.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
Just one of 97 windose 7 torrents right now at that site.
How hard is it to open a terminal window (or use a Gnome applet which puts a terminal line on your taskbar) and type "sudo system-config-display" or whatever you need to run as root?
How hard is it to click a button when the UAC UI pops up? Still we have a lot of bitching about it going on. Users, especially non-power users, don't like anything that gets in their way of installing smileys.exe
This space for rent.
Yes, I feel that the iPod is just eye candy. The UI is abysmal, that damn wheel is annoying, and whatever happened to something as logical as what my Sansa c240 with Rockbox uses?
Well, I must first admit that I have not used a Sansa c240 or Rockbox, so I cannot speak to their interfaces. However (and yes, I do a lot of work with user interfaces), the interface of the iPod is sheer genius. Every person I know who owns the iPod picked it up quickly and naturally without having to read the instructions (and these are non-tech people I'm talking about). That, right there, defines an excellent interface.
As for driving a Geo Metro over a Honda Civic...well...I have to wonder if you have actually tried to drive both cars and compare them, or if you're just arguing for arguing sake.
Even without "UAC" (gui-integrated sudo) temporarily gaining root access via a GNU/*nix gui is simply a matter of running the executable in question via sudo from the command line (i.e., sudo nautilus, sudo thunar, sudo systemsettings, etc.). That's been the case for the past decade or so anyway.
Windows is all the rage. Was then, is now, will be then. God Damn! It's Good to be KING !!
Anyone know how the new beta compares (in terms of speed, etc.) to Server 2008? I ask, because some people used Server 2008's "Desktop Experience" thing as a replacement for Vista, and says it runs a lot better.
Was just wondering ...
IMHO MS just "doesn't get it" and is doing stupid things by design, maybe the problem is too much "design by committee" or something.
The problem with Vista / Win7 / etc. wasn't that they tried to do TOO MUCH, it's that they tried to to TOO LITTLE. They're about 10 years BEHIND the current hardware (the mainstream CPU has been '64 bit' for YEARS even on low end parts). Given Moore's law it'll be even more pathetically inadequate in 2009/2010 when we're supposedly to be using Win7. By then we'll have at least cheap 16GB RAM, 64GB SSDs, 2TB HDDs for a song, 8 core 64 GFLOP CPUs, 2 TFLOP GPUs, better HD screens, 4Mbit/s+ broadband into more and more houses, and still we'll be stuck with .... notepad .... and corrupted registries and driver cleaner / crap cleaner / applications that won't install / uninstall / backup / transfer properly most of which being 32 bit.
Now for netbooks / mobile internet devices, OK, yes, for those, design a lean efficient low bloat OS. That is not the same product as your desktop / laptop offering.
I have relatively little problem with 'bloat' if it gets me major new generations of CAPABILITIES. Wake up, the HARDWARE we use today is LIGHT YEARS ahead of the SOFTWARE's capabilities to even USE it in 99% of the cases. Lack of 64 bit applications and applications that intelligently use RAM is one example -- 8GB of RAM costs as little as $40 today. Every one of my family's desktops has 8GB installed now, and if it wasn't for the stupid limitations of the motherboard / chipset, I'd have put 16GB or 32GB into the heavily used machines for these kinds of (commodity) RAM prices.
My quad core CPU is still something like 90% idle doing most OS / web / desktop stuff even under Vista with all the eye candy on. If I complain about it being *slow* it is probably because it is ALGORITHMICALLY broken in some buggy brain damaged way (like the horrible network throughput when you're playing audio or something) not because it is inherently trying to do something that exceeds the capabilities of my actual hardware given well designed software.
The main problem is that we can't even take good advantage of the multi-gigabytes of RAM, multi-terabytes of disc, multi-cores of CPUs, multi-teraflops of GPUs we have. A typical 'power user' desktop today exceeds the compute / RAM / storage capabilities of a 'supercomputer' in the 1990s, yet we're using a OS design / implementation that is BARELY any better than what we had then -- e.g. NTFS, FAT32, 32 bit OS being the most common, et. al.
I wouldn't care too much if they wrote vast portions of the whole OS in something uber bloated / slow like VB or JAVA as long as the performance critical bits were fast and the overall thing was well designed for reliability, stability, and easy extensibility to take full advantage of the system.
There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like filesystems (say start with ZFS then migrate MOST EVERYTHING to use a full featured relational database model on top of that with MAJOR emphasis on metadata, schema use, RDF, et. al.). There needs to be a REVOLUTIONARY improvement in things like BACKUP. Ever had a 1.44 MB floppy or CD go bad on you and lose valuable data? Didn't that suck? The average joe in 2009 will be having 1TB drives! Can you imagine losing a LIFETIME of data in one catastrophic event -- ALL your family pictures / movies from maybe 3 generations of family, ALL your documents, ALL your personal files, et. al.? That's going to be a common occurrence due to viruses, hardware failure, or whatever, and the OSs like VISTA are just PATHETICALLY mis-designed to help people manage their storage / data / metadata, do backups, do searches, synchronize, transfer, etc. -- basically they're beyond uselessly bad at giving storage management resources. Heck not a day goes by that I am not even limited by the silly 128 character 'path length' 'limits' even in the latest VISTA 64.
No, Windows Home Server is not a solution. Forget backwa
How many of you have friends and family that call you before ordering a computer? Personally, I make 50 to 60 recommendations a year. Always the same--order from the web, order from the small business section, and pay extra, if you have to, to not get Vista.
I build my own machines. Dealing with the Vista WGA was too much of a pain in the ass for me to ever want to switch to XP. For this reason, I tell people if they do get a machine with Vista, not to call me with their problems.
Of the 50 to 60 people to whom I make recommendations, with how many do those share the advice to steer away from Vista? How many other resident PC guru's are making the same recommendations to their circle of friends?
Forget about in the office. Recommending a switch to Vista tends to be a career killer... There is a reason MS hasn't been too forceful in stuffing Vista down the throat of businesses.
UAC pops up asking you to elevate to delete a shortcut on the desktop, and then annoys you a SECOND time, asking if you're really sure you want to delete it. In Linux, you don't need root to delete a shortcut from your desktop.
In Linux I get prompted for a password to change system settings or install software. That is basically it.
Also, the parent above was saying Linux didn't have an easy way to elevate privileges in the GUI. KDE has had kdesu for ages. You also don't need a terminal. You can just run command "kdesu kcontrol". It has worked great for years.
Or you just install a service menu that allows you to elevate to root with a right-click.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
--Instead I'm using good old ever reliable WinXP Pro--
I can't believe I'm reading that. I was in the tech support industry when XP came out. It was a *NIGHTMARE*. It seems that MSFT's way of business is to have a product in beta for 3/4 of it's "service life" then when they FINALLY work out all the bugs in the damn thing THEY DON'T SUPPORT IT ANYMORE.
I agree with you on most of your points though. I still miss the days when winblows was exactly what it should be now : AN APPLICATION. Leave the OS to do what it's supposed to be doing...BEING AN OS instead of a one-click bloated pos.
A.A.M
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
The only problem with your logic is that you assume that modern 3D graphics cards are just as good at 2d rendering as they are at 3D. Unfortunately this is not the case. Both ATI and NVidia concentrate on what gets them good reviews, and that is good 3d rendering for games. Quite frequently this is at the expense of 2D performance.
A modern high-end graphics card is optimised for its 3D pipelines, so I personally would try and use them whenever possible. Hopefully the driver does that all automatically but if it is true that you change the way windows renders stuff by disabling aero then you are probably not using your PC to its fullest. A better idea might be to keep Aero enabled but turn off the eye candy you don't like on a feature by feature basis.
Of course I still don't use vista and I dont have to support it at work so I have no idea how it works in the least.
I dont read
As I write this, the parent is modded Off-Topic for responding:
They never left. I use Vista, and it's as snappy as XP ever was.
To a DIRECT QUOTE from http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1074689&cid=26250025 that was at 5 as I write this.
That seems patently impossible.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
How do I get past the blue screen at startup?
Aside from being a tool, what you're talking about is called DirectDraw and it was part of DirectX from just about the beginning.
It's the 2D equivalent of Direct3D. And yes it does all that.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
damn, why did i post that anonymously?
There's a bit more to it than that though. I'm not sure how it works in non-Aero Vista, but Windows XP only draws the sections of a window that are not covered by another window, meaning that only visible window portions are drawn.
More modern window managers (Apple's Quartz, Vista, Compviz on Linux) render the entire window to a texture and then use the GPU hardware to render them to the screen. The advantage of this is that you can move the windows around without having to repaint them. When you draw a menu over the top of a window, you don't have to repaint the window below when remove it. Also, it makes the rendering more simple. You don't have to paint the window in lots of rectangular sections, you just paint the whole thing.
Having said all that, modern processors are sufficiently speedy that it probably doesn't make that much difference any more. If I drag a window around on my little XP netbook I can just about see the window underneath having to redraw but it's so quick that it doesn't really bother me.
Can it copy files from one place to another in a reasonable amount of time now? Without tweaking?
Does the interface still hang for no apparent reason when browsing for files?
Are they still using hard links for the user profile directories?
I've tried Vista several times and as of a few weeks ago, with the latest beta SP, it's still crap at some of most basic things an operating should be good at.... navigation and pushing data around.
I agree with you on most of your points though. I still miss the days when winblows was exactly what it should be now : AN APPLICATION. Leave the OS to do what it's supposed to be doing...BEING AN OS instead of a one-click bloated pos.
You mean like Windows Server 2008 Core? It's where the thing installs to like 300MB or something and isn't even CAPABLE of doing most of those tasks you don't think an OS should be doing.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
"It is called "sudo" and if your theoretical linux games would need root access to install mods as well. Or do you run your linux box as root all the time?"
No, no it's not. It's nothing at all like sudo.
Sure, it pops up a box once in a while asking for extra permissions. That bit is like sudo, or graphical sudo, but that's not all that UAC does, nor is it the annoying bit.
UAC blocks you from running programs at system startup on your own computer. It helpfully says that your administrator has set up a system policy to disallow it (lies). And I'm buggered if I can find a way to allow things to run that windows hasn't decided *on its own* that I'm not supposed to.
Add to that the pissing annoying virtual store technology that silently redirects activity aimed at files under Program Files to a directory under the user's private data area, without telling/warning/stopping anyone and screwing up multi-user uses of the machine (other users see a different version of the file). It doesn't ask for root, it just makes a total fucking mess. If they wanted to have restricted areas maybe they should investigate some goddamn file permissions. There is no dialog. It's a SILENT process that screws a lot of stuff up.
UAC sucks balls and is NOT like sudo.
As for the rest, if you couldn't function as a normal user in linux until graphical sudo came along, well, you were doing it wrong. Consider it a test, if you can't figure out how to go to a prompt and type sudo then perhaps you shouldn't be allowed near a computer.
Whose fault was the single user Windows 9x environment again?
WTF? Are you just trolling for mod points like most of the people posting here or what? UAC prompt to delete shortcut from desktop? Uhh?
This space for rent.
Yes, you can skin your program in Windows (And OSX, and whatever else), but there's a level of 'ease' in which it's unattainable to most folks.
I wouldn't be surprised if we at some point see the concept from NeXT where the UI is structured drawing, NeXT tried postscript, I think they'd try SVG this time around. All old ideas become young again when reinvented.
And thanks for the clarification on Office 2007, I misunderstood.
Neither of you is completely correct. In Vista they dropped hardware acceleration for GDI. Anything that uses GDI is drawn by the CPU.
Of course, it's not quite that simple because a window is a mix of system elements (hardware accelerated) and program elements (possibly not accelerated).
AFAIK turning off Aero doesn't disable hardware acceleration though - non GDI window elements are still drawn by the GPU, and apps which don't use GDI at all (e.g. .NET based) get full acceleration.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
UAC pops up asking you to elevate to delete a shortcut on the desktop, and then annoys you a SECOND time, asking if you're really sure you want to delete it. In Linux, you don't need root to delete a shortcut from your desktop.
You misunderstand why the UAC dialog pops up. It's not the act of deleting the icon from your desktop. That doesn't require admin privs. What you fail to realize is that is a side effect of a feature of Windows called a "common desktop". Icons in the common desktop are shared with all accounts, they are meged with the icons in the users profile to create a single view.
If you delete an icon from only your set of icons, no elevation is required. If you delete an icon from the shared desktop elevation is required because it affects multiple user accounts. The same feature exists for the start menu, in which you can have "shared" and "non-shared" shortcuts. You can delete the non-shared ones without elevation, but you can't delete the shared ones.
I find the majority of people are like you. They simply don't understand why the UAC prompt is coming up. Perhaps that's a failure of Microsoft's, but one user should not be able to affect other users without elevating privilegs. It's working the way it's supposed to.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Not at all. 2D acceleration is a solved problem. The 2D engine takes up a fraction of the die space on a modern ASIC. Removing the 2D acceleration hardware creates more work than just leaving it the hell alone. Even if it hasn't improved since the R300 days, 2D acceleration on a Radeon (for example) is still more than fast enough for any normal windowing and compositing operations your desktop might want to do.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
The fonts are not rendering on the GPU. Anti-aliasing is accelerated.
Again you are mistaken.
You cannot store arbitrary data in GPU memory without incurring significant penalties, in particular if you ever need to read from something stored in video memory as you'll stall the GPU pipe. The cases where it is beneficial are when that data is in a format that allows the GPU to actually do work on the data, where the data won't ever need to be read back into system memory. For rendering a desktop, the 3D acceleration capabilities are useful because they allow the window surfaces to be stored as textures in a DirectX format supported by the GPU, which the GPU can then scale, animate, and composite natively.
I just got a Laptop for Christmas. Had a Vista Licence and XP preinstalled. Thought: "Ok. XP is on it, might as well take it for a ride." Installed all software I wanted to use on it. Netbeans/JavaFX, Gimp, Quake 3 Arena and some other stuff. Then it wouldn't shut down. Our Windows guy told me that when a app in userspace tries to do something like access WLAN and can't come by, Windows regularly freezes for 15 minutes or more on shutdown. Forced it through a powercycle and managed a shutdown without problems. Then I noticed WinXP accessing the HDD every second. Windows guy: "Oh, that's normal. You should be glad Vista wasn't preinstalled. Vista would be accessing the HDD constantly." Then he went on to tell me stories about WGA and how it kills your system after 30 days if it thinks your licence isn't valid.
The last time I used Windows professionally was back in 2001. The last install of Windows I used for leisure (games) was Win2k in 2003 or something. The 2.5 hrs with WinXP were enough to shoo me away again for another 5 years at least.
I can safely say that in my 23 years of computing - from obscure custom Sharp OSes and Commodore PET through early versions of DOS and Linux and Mac OS X - Windows XP, a proactively castrated piece of software, is one of the shittiest pieces of software I've come across. And I don't get the notion that Windows Vista is any better.
How anybody except the most novice users with no or nearly no computing experience who have been tricked into buying a computer with todays shit from MS installed is totally beyond me.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This may be too optimistic. The situation you describes applies mostly for home users: Their suppliers had few other options than making sure that their software would run on Vista.
But it doesn't really apply to other segments of the market. The Royal Navy recently put Windows in a nuclear submarine -- but they opted for Win 2K and XP. Most companies and large non-commercial buyers don't have applications that are that critical, but the smart ones still avoided Vista and are betting on moving from XP to Win 7. Many specialized software applications continued to run on XP, often the preferred OS for both vendor and customer.
Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that the software can't be run under Vista: Most applications made with recent tools probably will. It does mean, however, that there will have been a minimal effort in optimizing and troubleshooting these applications with Vista. This will now have to be done with Win 7.
"Even if I WANTED to use tree structured semantic filenames I couldn't due to Filesystem path / name limits e.g. things like the following quickly get you beyond the 128 character limit:"
..
Couldn't agree more, whatever happened to the database file system they were going to introduce in Longhorn in 2004, something similar to what was in BeOS since 1996
davecb5620@gmail.com
You are telling me that there is no performance improvement in having a *graphics card* handle *graphics* instead of a CPU?
When the CPU runs at 3+ Ghz and the graphic in question is a 2 Mpx, simple 2D image? fuck no, there isn't. The difference in performance only starts when you add the idiotic extra 'flash', but no modern (or even not-so-modern) computer should have any trouble displaying a Win2K-like interface regardless of the GPU.
We have powerful video cards these days and only a fool wouldn't exploit them to speed up the windowing system. Me thinks some are too blinded by hate and narrow imagination to appreciate cool things.
Not all of us *have* powerful video cards, and despite your own blind hate and narrow imagination, plenty of us prefer simpler interfaces rather than the garish piece of shit that's Vista's default theme.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
I must admit I'm not knowledgeable about this (it's the first time I hear of sudoedit, and I've only ever used sudo in the most primitive way, by adding self to sudoers with full permissions), but isn't "allowing ... to edit specific files" something that should properly be handled by the normal OS security (file ACLs and so on)?
Ha! Shows just how little you understand the Linux ecosystem. If Linux based desktop technologies were proprietary; produced and promoted by a single company then MS would have every chance of killing them off: but they aren't. The desktop environments that front the Linux base (Gnome and KDE) are Open Source. Nothing can kill them bar lack of developer interest, and the two main candidates are alive, healthy and kicking. They will keep plodding on, growing, improving and snapping at MS's heals year after year after year. They are relentless and will not stop: not EVER. And this is a GOOD thing. It will keep MS (and Apple for that matter) on their toes and will force them to push their boundaries. Because if they stop for too long then they'll get caught and overtaken. Conversely, the more MS (and Apple) innovate, the more it inspires the likes of Gnome and KDE. All this means is that year on year, the choices you and I have as users get better and more interesting. We are the ones who ultimately benefit from all this. So all hail the Desktop wars, and long may they continue!
Why call "Vista service pack 3" "Windows 7"?
I can see 2 reasons
1) Microsoft can stop running bad adverts on TV telling people Vista is not as bad as they think it is.
2) They can charge people who already have Vista to upgrade to service pack 3.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
EXACTLY! I tried Server 2K8 and I was like "Why? Why in the hell can't you just add a basic GUI on top of this and sell it to business users for the desktop? Why?" It is low resource,doesn't have tons of bloated multimedia junk that has NO business being in a business OS, and runs solid as a rock. So why can't those of use who just want to get our work done buy this on a machine without shelling out insane money for a server license? Why?
And as for the one who marked me troll, accept it: Vista is a flop. It is a giant festering turd of fail that the general public can't get away from fast enough. Why do you think EVERY single ad we see and every blog is either "I'm a PC" or Win7? Because MSFT knows that wasting more money on Vista is pointless because the public has spoken and they don't want it. For those of you that have gotten Vista to work or like it,congratulations! You are in the minority! I have sold more machines in this past year and a half and built more custom PCs than I have in the 15 years I have been in PC repair. Why? Because folks are happy to shell out extra money to me so they DON'T have to take Vista. I have been working with MSFT products since the days of Win3.1 and I have NEVER seen folks go so far out of their way to avoid a MSFT OS, even during the horror that was WinME.
Sadly from what I have seen of Win7 instead of learning from their mistakes and going back to their roots and making a solid, backwards compatible, low resource business OS they are instead going to pile even MORE bling bling on top and then really insult the customers by getting rid of quicklaunch and replacing it with an Apple Dock which they will probably screw up on the implementation anyway. I swear if I didn't know any better I would think Ballmer was trying to burn the company down on purpose. I just don't get who exactly they are trying to please. The home users HATE change, the gamers want an OS that sucks as little CPU and GPU as possible to give them better FPS and the business owners want low resource usage so they don't need expensive hardware along with backwards compatibility with all their old business apps. So who exactly are they pleasing with this desire to copy all things Apple? Because from the way my customers are happy to shell out for even older off lease business machines just so they can have XP over Vista it sure ain't them.
The one nice thing about all this is we may finally see real competition brought back into the OS market like we had in the 80's. Because I have the sinking feeling that Win7 is going to make MSFT customers run away even worse than Vista did. Oh, and before someone points out the Vista sales numbers please note that ALL Vista downgrades are counted NOT as an XP purchase but as a Vista sale. And you know it is popular when even Tigerdirect is using "Includes XP Downgrade rights!!" in giant letters as a selling point.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Awesome... Microsoft articles telling everyone how great Microsoft technology is!
I can point out several companies that have much better technology than their competition. I also have a phone number for an insurance agent that can produce documentation stating that their insurance company is better to it's customers than everyone else.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
XP can not really do 64 bit.
I get so tired of hearing this. Granted, XP x64 edition isn't really XP, it's a 64-bit version of Server 2003 renamed to XP, so technically you're right. That said I've been using it on my main system for over two years now and it works beautifully. I have 4 GB of RAM which is 100% utilized. ALL 32-bit apps I have tried work with no problems (you do have to get used to the two separate Program Files directories and the slight difference in the registry structure). I game a lot and have had no problems there whatsoever. Granted, I took the time when I first built this machine to make sure the hardware all had 64-bit drivers (Logitech in particular has great 64-bit support). I've had just a single blue screen in two years, caused by a failing video card which was quickly replaced. I'm also still using the original install of the OS - I've never needed to reinstall it. I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but if you make smart choices with your hardware, XP x64 is as good as it gets right now. And I'm one of those people that stuck with Windows 2000 over XP.
Whatever, kids.
I tend to think it's like the "Do I need an FPU" question in the days of the 80286, 80386SX, and 80486SX.
The answer is, obviously: Of course you do, if it makes what you'd like to be doing any faster than it might be without a FPU.
That said: Vista works fine, on my almost-4-year-old laptop, with a not-so-special ATI X300 graphics chip and its not-so-spectacular-these-days 1.83GHz Pentium-M. Just fucking fine. With Aero. With only two gigs ($30?) of RAM. I like the prettiness, just as I do with Compiz on my Ubuntu machine.
Of course, Vista works better on my SLI nVidia 9800GT, Q6600 desktop box, for sure. But not so much that I really prefer one over the other for anything but games.
So what?
Kid-proof tablet..
All Microsoft betas are time-limited, so they are in effect trials.
Yeah, it's still copyright infringement, technically, but in this case there is really no "losses" to claim.
So, basically, if I do not use Clear Type or special effects, 3D is not necessary? Thought as much.
Regards, Ruemere
Visually, the iPod's interface is 'pretty'. Interacting with it using the wheel is annoying all get out. When I want to go up a list, I want to press up to go there, instead of dragging a counterclockwise circle on the face of my music player. Likewise, going down, I want the same method: Press down. When I want to turn the thing off, can I just have a plain old power button to press, or a switch to flick, or something obvious?
I actually feel embarrassed to admit to this, but I actually had to ask the friend who handed me his iPod how to turn the damn thing off.
Holding play to turn it off is a bit counter-intuitive, once again.
To agitate the point, the RCA Lyra, a much, much older digital audio player would simply have you press play to turn it on (makes sense), and then hold stop for 3 seconds to turn it off (also makes sense).
I don't recall seeing a menu entry that suggests that you are turning off the iPod, or suspending it to low power, or something, but I think I may have been too agitated by the thing to have seen it.
As for the car analogy that was there, yes, I've been behind the wheel of both, but I have a slight preference for the Metro. Could be the whole "I'm a car." versus the "There's more eagle under the floorboard. I'd hate to see you miss out on so much eagle." approach that I take to things.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
A 20 year old Amiga 500 could do a GUI with it being fully responsive, and the massive advancement in graphics hardware, even when not fully utilising the GPU, is still more than enough to handle the increase in screen resolution since then.
Yes, a GPU can use more tricks that Aero might use. But you have not provided any evidence that these make the slightest bit of difference in Vista. You're like the people who claim things would be done faster in assembler even before actually writing it. Things only make a difference in performance if it's a bottleneck, and the only way to find out is to test it.
Even when fully using the GPU, you still have lots of information travelling across to the graphics card, as the CPU still does a lot, which causes the screen to change, not to mention software that still uses the CPU to draw graphics or otherwise affect the appearance of the application.
I'm also not sure you understand how graphics cards work. It's been years since the CPU had to be used to laboriously draw every pixel - even on the Amiga, there were specialised chips to quickly draw blocks of memory. What's changed with the GPU is that the graphics processor is now a fully fledged processor (i.e., turing complete, and hence can run any program on it).
I'm a SysAdmin. I understand an "All Users" Desktop concept. The problem is that users don't. The interface just annoys them. Furthermore, placing icons on the "All Users" desktop is the wrong way to go, because either people can't change them and they're pissed, or they can change them, and it affects other users. Move those icons to the "Default User" folder, or for new installs, to each user's desktop. In Linux, each account gets individual icons on their desktop. Thusly they don't need root access to affect other people.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Am I seriously the only person who suspects that i7 is short for i786? We've had i686 for a very long time.
Sam ty sig.
I agree, which is why I said Microsoft may be to blame for that. But that doesn't change the fact the UAC is doing what it's supposed to, preventing one user from interfering with another.
The All Users function was always a bit of a hack anyways, but it makes a lot of sense from a locked down desktop perspective where users do not get administrative privs. It's just bad when you have multiple users with admin privs using the same machine (or even a single user with admin privs and apps that are installed as 'all users").
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
There is no point in doing anything with that machine if you don't tell dad to make his daughter a separate, non-admin account. That is advice that would be taken for granted with linux, but no OS can do anything for you if you have a teenager who is downloading and running P2P software while logged in as an admin.
Now that's offtopic for saying the parent was on topic, and the parent is fixed by labeling him a troll.
Yep, the mod system is here for your amusement.
Microsoft will be microsoft 4 ever. No body will change that. Only work for play games, nothing else.
Have you tried DOS?
Perhaps because ReactOS is "not recommended for everyday use", as indicated on it's website. I've used it. It's a cute idea, but about as stable as dynamite in a smelting plant.
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
There is application and driver compatibility. Their track record with applications has been relatively decent (The notable exception was migrating Win9x market to NT kernel, where a large number of things didn't work right). Drivers they break relatively commonly.
Essentially, I would give them about equal score on compatibility since XP release that I would give glibc ("Linux" would be a misnomer, the kernel strictly speaking hasn't been perfectly consistant on syscalls and glibc has abstracted it away on occasion, and "Linux" as a term for an OS includes things like Python, that have *not* maintained good compatibility, regardless of running on Linux or Windows). Linux inherently breaks binary drivers and frequently the API to compile against, just like Windows.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'll have to argue the point that OS X does GUI better/more functional. I personally hate the Mac OS interface. The file manager sucks, the dock is pretty but crap (keeping track of open applications and its windows).. You can't tell me that is better than what Windows does. But each to their own I guess.
Their approach of compiling both ('Universal Binaries') conveniently in their SDK really smoothed the transition from PPC to x86. And I haven't seen MS do something analogous, but it is a tad harder to do without re-doing their executable format or application packaging strategies. It they add a third architecture (x86_64), it certainly would be slicker. I will say we can't call in advance what they will do.
Single install media for both editions and taking that page from Apple's playbook would be interesting, but undoubtedly at least the latter is patent encumbered.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Load XP on the same hardware and give a honest comparison.
If you are happy with slow, then i'm glad you are. Happy people are a good thing. But Vista is slow.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Why the hell do you have 11 copies of Vista?
Juln
"The classic single-column start menu is no longer available"
*rejoices*
I'll never have to watch friends and family use that 14 year old UI feature^H^H^H^H^H^Heyesore again.
Er, backward compatible is the precise reason for MS bloat and breakage.
They needed to clear the deadwood and enforce it with an iron hand. Unfortunately they only went halfway with Vista. In fact with so many (poorly) written custom apps out there I'm not even sure if it is possible to do an OSX type 'rebirth'.
Uuuh.....did you actually bother to READ my other post? I said Server 2K8 was a GREAT OS and that they should have put a WinNT style GUI on top of THAT and sold it as a business desktop instead of the nightmare of a home OS that is Vista. Now can you HONESTLY tell me that you think Vista was built with the business user in mind? Up until now they took a rock solid business OS and then stripped out a few business centric add ons and you had the home version(like XP Pro and Home) or they took a great server OS like Win2K server and simply stripped it down to make a rock solid basic desktop like Win2K Pro. This is the first time we have seen them try to shovel a HOME operating system onto the business user. Is there anyone who can look at Vista and think it was built for anything OTHER than multimedia? Hell the thing has bling bling coming out its butt!
And I haven't actually bought a retail machine in ages BTW. All my operating systems are retail or OEM and I build the hardware myself. If I need a laptop it boots long enough to see that the hardware works and get imaged in case I need to return it then it is wiped-no exceptions. And believe me I know about having to tweak a MSFT OS, it comes with the turf. Hell I still have the DOS commands for Win9x to copy the CD and install from HDD memorized. And while the machine I used for Vista wasn't anything top of the line, it should have been MORE than enough to handle it. let us not forget we are talking about an OS, not an application. I shut down UAC, I turned off indexing, I downloaded and ran every Vista tweaking utility I could find as well as editing the reg with suggestions from every Vista tweaks site I could find. What did I get on this 3.6GHz P4 with 2Gb of RAM and a 6200 followed by a 7600 graphics card?
Slow as a slug, hell it reminded me of the days when folks would put Win95 on a 286, it was that painful. A HDD that thrashed all the time and finally gave out from the strain, a network that would die if you looked at it funny, file transfers that were awful(and this was after SP1, before SP1 I would burn a DVD to move a file 3 feet because the network was too damned slow), freezes for 10-25 seconds for no damned reason whatsoever,2 or 3 times a week it would either BSOD or just vaporlock,hell I could probably go on all day. And from talking with my customers and checking forums I know that I am FAR from alone. Compare that to the SAME hardware on XP SP3-under 45 second boot from cold, extremely responsive, fast network transfers, not a single loss of connectivity or a single BSOD, no freezes, no thrashing, just a well functioning stable OS.
I have owned, ran, sold, and fixed every MSFT OS since Win3.1. And i REALLY wanted to like Vista, I really really did. This isn't some Linux or Apple zealot trying to spread FUD here. I even ran the beta hoping that I could help fix the bugs and make it a better OS. But they didn't build an OS for me. They didn't build an OS for the business users, or the gamers, or even the home users, because they HATE change. No, they built an OS for those inside MSFT that want to take over Apple's turf, and frankly it shows. Vista is an OS that IMHO just screams "I can be as cool as an Apple Mac! No really I can!". The problems with that are MSFT customers didn't want an Apple, they just wanted a new Windows, Apple knows how to have pretty without dragging down the OS and MSFT don't, MSFT owes a LOT to business customers who they frankly burned real bad with the lousy backwards compatibility and high hardware requirements of Vista, and finally that the home users absolutely HATE change and Vista is frankly change for change sake.
I truly hope they change for Win7, I really do. I hope they put out a low resource, rock solid stable business OS instead of seeing posts all over the place on how to turn Server 2K8 into a desktop just so you can have a MSFT business OS. But from what I have seen of the beta it screams "But I REALLY can be a Mac this time! I Promise!", and if they are going to force me to run a Mac clone anyway then why the hell shouldn't I just get a Mac?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And.... here's a quote...
To use the provided Windows Vista, simply follow the instructions provided. To use the Downgrade Right to Microsoft Windows XP Professional, simply start the system.
So not only does it have XP rights, it's XP that's installed. Cute.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So who exactly are they pleasing with this desire to copy all things Apple?
Answer: content/media companies (DRM) and hardware manufacturers (more resources).
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Get Vista running on a DX9 capable machine.
Open up a reasonable number of apps, with windows scattered around the screen. For extra credit, have them being actually animating something (video playback, whatever)
Open up Task Manager and look at the CPU utilization bars.
Turn off Aero Glass
Grab a big foreground window and shake it like crazy over your other windows.
Turn Aero Glass back on
Repeat shake
Note that without Aero Glass you get a huge CPU spike due to all the rendering that doesn't get offloaded to the CPU, while with Aero Glass you won't see a similar spike in CPU activity.
My video compression blog
I was pointing out something obvious to someone who apparently can't see that it's so obvious. Of course a link to Microsoft articles on Vista technology are going to "sell" those features. If you don't consider that value, then you are being ignorant of that fact as well.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
to some, security, reliability and performance are requirements for a computer OS. Microsoft has failed year after year at building a solid base OS. And now people are supposed to believe Windows 7/2010 they are finally going to get it right? Talk about being in a hole.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Hey Microserf moron, how does embedded, netbooks, and MIDs turn into desktops? Typical AC moronic drivel.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Actually it is not completely true, that a desktop using only the traditional 2D accelerated drawing engines of the GPU is as snappy as the new compositing desktops used by Mac OS X, KDE 4 and Vista. Because there is one main difference: Backing Store (or whatever it is called outside of X11). The 2D accelerated variants rarely use it! With the 3D accelerated compositing desktops you basically get it for free, since every window is rendered into a texture. So whenever you move around a window, the underlying, exposed windows do not have to do complex redraw operations, just a simple texture fetch or blt is in order. This IS possible with 2D accelerated cards, but as I said, it is hardly ever done, for several reasons: video memory management probably being the biggest one, An expert on the implementation of this in X.org or similar could probably tell you more.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Make the product "hot". This is how you turn the Borg Bill meme to your advantage. Everybody knows geeks fantasize about being assimilated by Jeri Ryan. Then bring back Bill as a commercial actor as a Borg and remind us why "It's good to be king." Spin off some merchandising.
They won't, though. Probably shoot 30 seconds of some balding guy on his analyst's couch saying something like "I like this Seven more than Mojave." Marketing idiots!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The OS does no checking on files you work with. Windows Media Player will of course check media files you play to see if they are DRM'd, just as every media player does. This is part of the process by which it determines the media format type, i.e. is it an MP3? A WMA? A DRM'd WMA? This works exactly the same on Vista as on XP, and is the same sort of check iTunes and other apps do. There is no overhead here beyond that required to determine the difference between an MP3 and a WMA, and it only occurs at the time a file is loaded.
What Vista provides above and beyond XP is something called Protected Media Path. This is similar to Windows XP's Certified Output Protection Protocol, but more sophisticated.
Protected Media Path allows for a great many possible restrictions on both audio and video output, including those defined by HDCP. And since it is a protected process, it allows decoders to be run in a context that prevents them from being manipulated or attacked (i.e. having their memory scanned for secret keys and such). Whether there is any overhead for using PMP to host your decoder is debateable, if there is any it should be negligible at worst. It's the same code running, whether it runs in your app's process or in mfpmp.exe instead. Yes there's IPC overhead, but lots of media player do out-of-proc hosting anyway so that a bad decoder won't crash the media player and to dodge certain security issues like heap spraying attacks.
What's important, though, is that this is an API that applications *CAN* use, not something that is imposed on applications or users. The Protected Media Path code will only get loaded and used if an application specifically calls MFCreatePMPMediaSession. It will cause the application-provided code to be hosted inside the protected process (mfpmp.exe). You won't see mfpmp.exe running unless an application has specifically invoked it via that API call - which would most likely happen because you are playing a BluRay disc with a player that has decided to make use of PMP.
Windows Media Player on Vista does use PMP for all media decoding, and suffers no ill effects from it. However, you do have a problem with it, just use Winamp or some other player that doesn't invoke PMP.
Like I said, having the support for DRM or output protections like HDCP won't affect you at all if you don't use media (or applications) that request or require that support. It just allows developers to run their code in a protected space and place what restrictions they want on their content. It make no determination about whether such restrictions are necessary, wise, or just. It's just an API. APIs can be used for good or for evil, if you have a problem with how a BluRay app uses the PMP API, then complain to Sony or the app developer =)
Is there anything Microsoft could do to improve on Windows XP? Or have they run out of runway? DOS was improved on by Windows 3.1, improved on by Windows 95, improved on by Windows XP... but the previous systems all had serious limitations. What is the serious limitation of Windows XP?
The prettier aero GUI is an improvement - nice, but doesn't seem to be needed. They now sell XP home on eee PCs for $40 - that improves on price (but price-cutting is a company's last resort, when they have nothing better to offer). I guess security (viruses, malware) was a big issue. Microsoft might have done better by introducing a new OS to fix the security problems of Windows XP, instead of the free service packs (which were really quite excellent). Then, the upgrade would have been needed.
What should Microsoft do to make a new OS that's worthwhile? Improve on:
features? performance? reliability? convenience? price?
Oblig
I don't think this is entirely true. In many cases, 2D actions can be thought of as special cases of more generic 3D algorithms. Because of this, the same hardware can be utilized to perform what seems to be "2D" acceleration.
You're probably correct that neither ATI nor Nvidia spends much time optimizing 2D routines, but I would argue that modern CPUs and GPUs are so fast that there is no need to spend much more time optimizing 2D code paths. Outside of a benchmark no user will ever notice a difference, even with something that really does a lot of 2D work.
Of course, there are plenty of other good reasons to use a 3D compositing window manager.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
Hehe. I'm just having a smile-day today. Upgrading memory and a video card is considered "substantial" these days? Anyway for those you've never ordered a piece of hardware in say...the past few months. Computer hardware prices have dropped like a rock. You basically can build an entire machine for under $500.00. $200.00 can get you a nice flat-panel.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Why wouldn't you use ClearType, unless your monitor is borked?
Well said! Apple, happily did it, with the PPC, OSX, Intel wotnot compatibility malarky. You want to run old software, stay on the old kit! You want new and shiny? Better get on to Amazon and start ordering the upgrades on those products you love using 'cos the buggers won't work on this new one!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
IMHO, DOS 5.0 was the best OS Microsoft ever had.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
No arguments on Finder being a somewhat crappy file manager, but after using a bit I find the dock to be much, much faster to use than the windows taskbar. As you said though, to each their own.
BTW, there are a few third party file managers for Mac OS X that are a bit better. I'm not currently using them (file management, aside from simply launching/opening stuff, is one of the very few things that I've always found to be more comfortable from the command line, so I generally just drop to a terminal when I need to move/copy stuff around), but I have used a few in the past and they were an improvement.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
In fact with so many (poorly) written custom apps out there I'm not even sure if it is possible to do an OSX type 'rebirth'.
Sure it's possible. MS just has to have the guts to do what Apple did: say that all the previous applications out there will not work - at all - in the new OS. Dual boot the last compatible version if you must (Apple had their machines dual boot OS X and Mac OS 9 for a while), but just dump all the old stuff. People who really need those old custom applications can keep running the old operating systems (as many are still - I've seen stuff purchased fairly recently that still needed to run on DOS!), or the lazy ass programmers who are still selling their same old crap from 15 years ago can finally rewrite the stuff.
I've seen enough 15+ year old VB "applications" that people charge $100k+ for (that they haven't released an update for in years) that I just have no sympathy for them.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
brought a tear to my eye...
That sounds more like a bug than a feature. Why should the way I choose to view my desktop have any effect on the way others choose to view theres? Your description of the reason this happens seems logical but, the fact that it happens is beyond comprehension.
Since vista came out I've been pretty much linux-only at the desktop (prior to that it was probably 50/50 and i've been at it alot longer then probably 99.9% of people using linux today) and for the most part I like it. However, there are some things I find hard to tolerate.
First, people say linux is snappy. well, thats very subjective (i've seen "snappy vista") and the applications that run on top of it are often the pain. So my start menu comes up nice and quick? Wow, well firefox 3 on linux still isnt anywhere near as snappy and responsive as firefox 2 on XP. Anyone seen chrome on XP/Vista lately by the way, im praying to god chrome will be the answer to my web browsing pain under linux. But thats just me.
Second thing, about eye candy. I (off and on) run compiz for 1 really simple thing, the window shading - practically every OS does it but its quite useful to be able to look at a screen cluttered with windows and know where one begins and the next ends... More on that, I also appreciate a "small" window manager. I.e. one with very very little wasted screen space (Another reason i love chrome) and KDE 3.x used to be able to provide that. Then kde 4 (and yes i've tried the 4.x releases too) came out - a bloated WM that suddenly needed twice the screen real estate just for the window borders!?!?!?!. That was frustrating. I've tried fvwm (what i used to use ages and ages ago), and many others. But at the end of the day I bring up firefox or evolution or thunderbird or whatever and i'm forced to look at this massive amount of whitespace between buttons and menus.
I think, if you asked alot of desktop users, they'd want a "nice" desktop that utilised screen real estate while being able to be "pretty", I think compiz delivers on part of that in the prettiness sense (though could leave some desires for a bit more user friendliness on the finger-yoga key bindings), but its hard to find something that works well without looking like a desktop white-space hog. As an example, look at nautilus, look at the whitespace between the text in a button and the edge of the button (or just the location bar and the main tool bar, then compare it at the same resolution to explorer side-by-side - im not talking about the actual file list by the way, just the bars at the top)... what a waste of space. For a while I thought xfce might have been a valid choice, but im still searching!
As for MACOS X, i dont know how people stand that interface, but thats me!
As for W7 beta 1, well, the screen shots dont really tell you much when it comes down to it and i'm unlikely to listen to vague "its so much snappier" remarks with nothing backing it up... its quite bizare anyone would make a post about how its "so much snappier" and then give you static screen shots... They certainly don't answer any questions along the lines of "here's all the things you hate about vista removed!". After all, when it comes to "snappy", windows XP (and even vista) are snappy when first installed (on current hardware)... go figure, show me something that makes sence. I.e. show me a machine where vista will suck and windows 7 will not, then i'll be impressed. After all, the hardware has gone a long way to catching up when it comes to vista-pain.
Exactly.
*Whoosh!*
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
DOS's? How do you think all that DOS software would have worked in a multi-user environment? And please, convince me that DOS, an operating system designed for the 80's microcomputer and personal computer market, needed a multi-user environment from its inception. I need a good laugh today. (And yes, I know that UNIX had been around since the 70's, we're talking about personal computers here)
It wasn't until Windows XP that they were successfully able to migrate their userbase to NT itself, let alone baby steps towards a true multiuser environment like Vista did.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
Why all the bitching about eye candy? I for one welcome a change in scenery. I stare at a computer screen for 14+ hours a day. After spending the last 6 years staring at XP, its nice to look at something different. Its the same reason people like to repaint their bedroom every couple of years. We get tired of looking at the same old shit. I'm not going to say that Vista doesn't have its share of problems. Just quit bitching about the eye candy.
But they are missing the point. We are talking about BUSINESS here, places with millions and when added together billions of dollars worth of software which they HAVE to have, or they might as well turn off the lights and call it a day. And you are telling me that they should be happy to throw away those millions and billions for the privilege of MSFT doing an OSX style reboot? Why? With OSX they were stuck in a dead end. System 9 had shitty program and memory management and frankly just couldn't be fixed. If MSFT had stuck with the Win9x arch I would agree with you wholeheartedly. But they didn't and frankly there isn't anything wrong with the WinNT arch, especially in Win2K/XP.
Everyone seems to expect MSFT to do the impossible: To take the most clueless user that will click on anything and make an OS that they can't infect. Sorry, but it just can't be done because of dancing bunny problem. So no matter what MSFT does they are NEVER going to make these people safe. They just can't do it short of making a ROM image that they aren't allowed to save or install anything on, and folks won't stand for it.
So here is my suggestion: Give the customer choice. Choice is good,right? We are all about free choice here, correct? Now you can't tell me that MSFT isn't making some serious money off of Win2K/WinXP. Sure they ain't making the insane profit margins that make the day traders rally to their stocks, but good money in a lousy economy none the less. What MSFT should do is to continue to sell Win2K/XP arch to those businesses that need it, as well as the home users that want it, and set up a group of programmers in Redmond. We'll call them the "WinNT arch old" division. And then say to these programmers "As long as we are making say, 15% above your salaries on this arch we need you to provide bugs fixes for it. if you come up with some new feature you want to add fine, we'll give you a website to offer them to the customers, but bug fixing is job #1 here".
And that way those of us who don't want the "bling bling flipping 3d web search 3.0 live enabled" crap can still get what we need to WORK, and those of us that want the pretty and the home centric crap can have what they want. You can even spin it as "stepping forward by looking back" since it would be basically going back to the way it was when we had Win9x and WinNT. Those that wanted the home stuff had an OS just for them, and those that needed a machine for work had a rock solid stripped down OS that just booted and got out of the way, so we could run our apps, the things that PAY our salaries. Because as it is now they are trying to stuff us all in a giant multimedia mess of an OS that is so obviously coded by someone with Apple envy that it hurts. And if they actually go through with killing quicklaunch and the taskbar for Apple's dock I predict we will finally see MSFT drop like a rock, because frankly the users I have spoken to all same the same thing. They say "If I wanted an Apple, I would have bought one. If I am going to have to learn to do everything like an Apple, why shouldn't I just say screw MSFT and buy an Apple which seems to last longer anyway?" And I have to agree. Bring back Allchin, FIRE Ballmer, and make business job #1 again, or in 5 years I predict that MSFT will be where Yahoo is now. Just another used to be trying to recapture past glory.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You seem to be assuming though that the instant Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows that the old ones quit working. There is still software out there, working, and being used, that HAS to run on Windows 3.1. For those programs, or the users that use them, you simply don't upgrade. A decent amount of the software is used in such limited fahsions that it won't really be an issue (and the worst offenders already are so poorly coded that even Microsoft's existing efforts to maintain compatibility haven't been sufficent to keep them working on a newer platform).
The businesses that use them can either a:
a) Keep using them on their existing OS.
b) If the company that made it still exists, wait on them to rewrite the software to work on the newer platform.
c) If the company that made it doesn't still exist (or exists but doesn't support that product at all any more), then look at replacing it either with a COTS program, or custom written (either in house or contracted out). Indeed if this is the case a company should be looking at moving anyways. Staying with a program that no longer has any vendor support whatsoever is a recipe for disaster, and should be viewed as a temporarily solution at all times.
It's just a simple fact of life that the whole world can't pause and wait because a few obscure programs won't run on a new platform.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Probably because it takes that long to load the control panel and icons off your HDD. Your GeForce 8600 and render hundreds of millions of polygons per second and has enough memory to store 58 full 24 bit 1920x1280 screens worth of graphics in it's memory, so it's not for lack of graphics performance.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
so here is then the next question, are the added features of Vista/win 7 worth it?
Windows XP is on a sales moratorium apart from netbooks and the "downgrades" for which OEMs have started to charge extra. Windows Vista is not. Isn't continued availability enough of a feature?
What do you have available that you did not previously and does this make life more efficient?
A newly purchased computer perhaps?
Ah right it was the fault of the product, not the fault of the people in charge of it. It's so clear now.
Come on, you get nothing for 2.4gig DVD?
Im sure there is bloat there. Whats the contents of the dvd by size?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
You really need 2gig of 24bit samples in ram at the same time?
The application could/cache/load it when needed. And if this is your profession, and your HD is too slow, then buy a 512gig SSD drive, im sure as a professional its affordable.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Weren't they supposed to release a new OS after XP, but then only ever came out with a series of shitty, user un-friendly, broken betas ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The machine came with XP Pro. I ran it that way for a year or two, and installed Vista Business a few weeks after it was released.
It's as fair a comparison as any.
It works fine. Suspending and resuming works more reliably than it ever did with XP. And Vista's firewall (which works differently for different wireless SSIDs -- perfect for a portable machine that pops up on various random networks) and start menu are vastly superior -- superior enough that, for me, it's worth any extra pain involved. Which, really, there isn't any of. (At least, once Readyboost is turned off.)
Kid-proof tablet..
When you turn aero off, you turn off the compositing window manager, which is what works as you describe.
So you're back to the bad old XP and before days of tearing and such.
That slow-down you're seeing has nothing to do with drawing/rendering.
It has to do with windows reading all the control panel entries off disk (which seem to get flushed out of the disk cache quite easily) and pulling all the icons and such. If you watch your disk or resource manager while its happening it becomes clear.
It's totally bogus. None of it makes any sense or applies to the actual Windows Vista OS, and none of its predictions about Vista ever came true.
It said Vista would end unified drivers. It did not.
It said device drivers would become more complex / less reliable, and they have not. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
It says that drivers or devices coudl be and would be "revoked." This has never happened and there's no basis for claiming it's even possible.
It says that somehow hardware will cost more, but Vista (and Win7) runs on the same hardware as XP or Mac OS.
It makes all sorts of ridiculous claims about how Vista requires devices drivers to "poll" for some undescribed something or other that will make things slow, but such requirements do not exist. Heck, Vista supports the very same drivers that worked on Windows XP for most hardware.
It quotes hearsay about mfpmp.exe using CPU cycles while playing MP3 files, while not referring at all to the PMP documentation or noting that these are the CPU cycles necessary to *decode the MP3 file* - as mfpmp.exe is the host process for decoders. In the past those same cycles would have been used inside wmplayer.exe. No new CPU usage was added, it was only moved.
I find it especially ironic that you're here evangelizing such disinformation while admitting that you don't actually use the OS and haven't done any research at all into the authenticity of the claims made by the single document you're using as the basis for your claims. It's ironic because these are very much like the so-called Fear, Uncertainty, Denial attacks which Slashdotters used to blast Microsoft for making against its competition. I guess what's good for the goose is good for the gander, eh?
That issue had nothing to do with DRM, it had to do with CPU scheduling / network throttling behavior designed to provide a better media experience, and a bug / oversight in the associated code.
EXACTLY! I tried Server 2K8 and I was like "Why? Why in the hell can't you just add a basic GUI on top of this and sell it to business users for the desktop? Why?" It is low resource,doesn't have tons of bloated multimedia junk that has NO business being in a business OS, and runs solid as a rock. So why can't those of use who just want to get our work done buy this on a machine without shelling out insane money for a server license? Why?
You realize that Vista SP1 and Server 2008 are the same OS, right? The packaging is a little different, the default installed apps and services are different, etc.
But its no trouble to make Vista act just like 2008.
Once you have configurations the same, the only difference is drivers. I think this is where most folks see the difference. Drivers for server equipment tend to be much better, and the drivers for Vista for consumer level equipment are still not where they should be.
Compound this by the fact that people are buying these garbage second-rate consumer class sytems from BestBuy and such, and they're surprised why their pretty $400 laptop from Toshiba doesnt work half the time? It's because its a terribly designed piece of hardware, with terribly written drivers, and shipped in a configuration that has tons of adware and unnecessary garbage turned on.
The fact that people like yourself say how great 2k8 is but then complain about Vista is speaking to the resellers (Dell, HP, etc) and the packaging from the resellers, not the underlying OS.
And in fact, business users of Vista machines DO set it up like you describe. They make custom builds of the OS that include only what their business needs, and they run it locked down with UAC configured exactly the way they like it, etc.
Why would support for DRM restrictions impact performance or stability? That's just ridiculous. That's like saying having a password on your computer will make it slower. Well, there's more code to handle password authentication, and yeah the OS needs to do the appropriate checks to make sure you're authenticated. But does it make the system less stable? Of course not. Does it slow it down in a perceivable way? Of course not.
More importantly, "support for DRM'd media" and "support for the restrictions of DRM'd media" are the same thing. If you want to play BluRay movies, you have to accept the limitations imposed by the BluRay standard. That's just the way it is, at least in the world of legally licensed software.
I have no complaints about it. Most of my machines never play any such material, and so no DRM-related code ever runs on them. My media center PC has a BluRay drive connected to my Samsung LCD via a DVI to HDMI converter, and I play BluRay movies with PowerDVD at 1080p and use an optical output connection to my receiver. I don't know what DRM or other content protection measures PowerDVD employs or makes use of, but I do know that I have never experienced any problems at all with that setup.
It hurts my eyes. Slim font face is much easier to read for me.
Regards,
Ruemere
When first reading your post, my initial reaction was to just tell you to stop fretting over mod points and to get over it.. what does it matter ?.. However, you actually succeeded in making a point of the "non mod" variety.
There are of course a number of people who will follow the crowd, or trends, and go with what's popular just for the feeling of belonging I suppose.. There are those who place way too much importance on the mod system, and probably follow these trends to gain these "valuable" mod points, or to punish those who they feel are outside the trend and therefore need ridicule.. and perhaps this skews things into the scenarios you described.. I myself when modding do fall into this category, but give points to people who actually make "a point" with their comment.. sorry, but don't have any to give right now.
If your interested in how some of this came about.. you might want to know that Linux was not always the popular kid on the block.. there was (and still is) a lot of bad information being presented as facts.. so I suppose that those of us who used Linux became somewhat a defensive group. On the other side with Windows users, you have people who have invested a lot of time learning what they know, who are unwilling to invest time in something else. These 2 stubborn groups have battled it out for years. Linux originally being the more obscure OS was more elitist in a sense.. and therefore more "nerdy", which appeals to those who think of themselves as "power users".. those Windows users who stuck with it for years suddenly found with the boom in PC's that there were more and more people finding their way around Windows and they felt themselves less of a "power user".. many of these people migrated to Linux.. Then with the distro's becoming increasingly easier to install (especially Ubuntu) well things just took off.
Having not been involved with OSX or anyone that uses it.. I'll leave that alone.. but I think it's users have come from Apple, Windows, and Linux camps.. and I am sure it's a great operating system.. all these OS's require an investment in time learning.. so of course you will have defenders of them all.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Are you being this ignorant on purpose, or is not attempting to comprehend what you're reading before you hit post normal for you?
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
And if any of the guys from MSFT are reading this: STOP trying to be Apple! If I would have wanted a freaking Apple I would have bought one,okay? You are a business company, NOT a home entertainment company. Make a decent low resource using business OS and stop trying to be "Steve Jobs Jr" because frankly it is embarrassing.
If MSFT tried to be more like Apple, it would be a good thing. Remember the OS X development cycle? They made the core of the OS stable first before they worked on the GUI. The first release was OS X used the old Platinum UI. Instead, it seems like for Windows development, the flashiness of Aero or whatever they're going to call the Win7 theme appears to take precedent. Look at all the screen shots proliferating of Win7; it's all about the "new" interface, same as the old interface.
If MSFT wanted to be more like Apple, they would make sure that the core of their OS is rock stable before working on flashy gimmicks. That's the lesson than MSFT hasn't learned yet.
You're blaming a product for the shoddiness of the Windows 9x line rather than those in charge of that product. You should try explaning your position better if you want a response that suits you.