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Windows 7 Memory Usage Critic Outed As Fraud

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-lotta-drama dept.

A few days ago, we ran word of a report alleging that Windows 7 consumed more memory than it should, based on a report from Devil Mountain Software; a followup post linked to Ars Technica's robust deconstruction of that claim. Now the story gets weird: Fred Flowers writes The original story quoted the company's CTO, Craig Barth on the issue. Now, InfoWorld editor in chief Eric Knorr has still more to add. From Knorr's blog at InfoWorld.com: 'On Friday, Feb. 19, we discovered that one of our contributors, Randall C. Kennedy, had been misrepresenting himself to other media organizations as Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software (aka exo.performance.network), in interviews for a number of stories regarding Windows and other Microsoft software topics. ... There is no Craig Barth.' Knorr's post goes on to say that Kennedy has been fired from his blogging gig at InfoWorld over this 'serious breach of trust,' and that his blog will be removed."

21 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. Eh wouldn't surprise me... by Rewind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even with all the real things you can slam Microsoft for, some people feel the need to make things up. Reminds me of that pre-Vista paper by that (I think) NZ guy that was full of stuff that even then people who had the RC knew to be false. Sensational things get page views I guess.

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    1. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by gad_zuki! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >And the world goes on. Even if Win7 had huge memory problems, it wouldn't have stopped people from buying it.

      I doubt that. MS's Vista sales were hurt badly by its reputation. Most shops skipped over Vista completely. Apple got a little sales boost too.

      >Though I wonder how close this comes to an actionable legal issue?

      Christ, what ever happened to basic responsibility? Or buy beware? How about reading reviews before buying something or returning the product if you dont like it? Is lawsuit now the default action?

    2. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Vista was mostly looked badly because they introduced new security features.

      Nope, it was how they did it.

      Features that linux zealots always yell about, like proper admin/multiple user control, securing files and directories and so on.

      Yep, not only did they rip off sudo (which would've been fine), they managed to screw it up.

      It's a lot better than Linux's su and sudo alternatives.

      I'm sure you'll tell me how...

      With su you give full control over the root account,

      Yep, just like UAC.

      with sudo you need to write it every time you require root account.

      WTF do you mean by "write it"? Did you mean, edit the sudoers file? Yeah, you could do it that way, I suppose. Or did you mean, enter your password? Nope, sudo will cache it for a certain length of time.

      UAC is actually a lot better than what there is available for linux, in desktop use...

      Yet you haven't explained how it's different than the above.

      Win7 is more popular now because people have got used to these features.

      Nope, it's because Microsoft finally got it to work, and polished performance to where Win7 is faster than XP, whereas Vista was slower than XP.

      I never claimed, and I don't think anyone claimed, that all the design decisions in Vista were bad. No, the issue is that the Vista release, like most Microsoft products, was at best beta quality, more like alpha quality. So Vista was Microsoft's way of, yet again, using their consumers as beta-testers, while collecting some revenue to justify finishing the product and releasing it as Win7.

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    3. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by Gregg+Alan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What in the world are you doing wrong that you get UAC prompts when opening Word? I'd like to see example steps on how to make that happen.

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    4. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by asdf7890 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Vista was mostly looked badly because they introduced new security features.

      This was one of the issues, yes, but not the only one and not even the most important one for many users. Vista's key problem was lack of drivers for a lot of hardware and some of the drivers available for common parts were not all that stable initially even though they passed relevant certififcation. Second came performance especially on "vista capable" (or "vista ready", which ever was the lower designation) machines (many reported significant issues on better kit too, though this situation improved greatly with service pack 1). UAC was thrid on the average user's list of hates though it sounded worse as it was usually the straw that started the major rant "it asked me for confirmation X times before very slowly failing to work because of driver problems!".

      UAC is not a bad idea, though it is not IMO particularly well implemented. They tried to so sudo but for the traditional Windows way of working (i.e. admin by default and adding blockers, where the sudo way starts unprivelaged). The result didn't fit as well as intended with Windows users processes and was sometimes overly naggy (three prompts for some file operations where sudo would need one escalation request) and just ended up being more OK buttons for clueless users to click, and to top it off it worked badly for people expecting a more linux/bsd/other way of doing thing - so essentually they failed to please either major group (i.e. neither those the feature was intended to protect nor those most likely to make a noise about such things were happy with it).

    5. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by tgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      sudo and the UAC are vastly different beasts.

      You may want to read up on winlogon, credential providers and user tokens, particularly relative to the UAC.

      The Vista and Windows 7 security model is vastly more sophisticated than out-of-the-box Linux implementations, and the UAC is related to that. Unlike su/sudo, the user does *not* transition to the administrative user, they switch between their administrative token, and the default neutered token, but in both cases other security policies can still be applied, but most importantly (especially where network security is concerned) *they still are themselves*. The network provider may or may not allow transparent use of the token across the network using the administrative token, depending on policies, but it *can*.

      The knee-jerk anti-Microsoft crowd on here tends to discount the sophistication of the Windows security model, but the reality is that its two decades more modern and more capable, particularly in networked environments, than the typical Linux system.

      That crowd could learn something by learning, in more detail, about the things they (incorrectly) discredit.

    6. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yep, not only did they rip off sudo (which would've been fine), they managed to screw it up.

      First of all, Windows has had "sudo"-equivalent features for a long time-- since Windows 2000, I believe.

      Secondly, how did they screw it up? It works fine for me.

      No, the issue is that the Vista release, like most Microsoft products, was at best beta quality, more like alpha quality.

      The problem was that the OS was release-quality, but the drivers from various third-parties was beta-quality for a good year after the OS was released. (And this despite over a year of technical preview releases... fucking lazy driver writers!)

      Did Vista have bugs? Yah, it had a bug that slowed down file copies. But they were all fixed, and if you used Vista about a year after it came out it would be fine.

      (With one disclaimer: Vista was never designed to run on Netbooks, which was a market Microsoft didn't anticipate while they were developing it.)

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    7. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by mobby_6kl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If Microsoft decided to sue people for spreading false information about their products, slashdot would be really in trouble!

    8. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by jon3k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The Vista and Windows 7 security model is vastly more sophisticated than out-of-the-box Linux implementation"

      SELinux is enabled by default on Fedora. I wouldn't call UAC "vastly more sophisticated".

    9. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by jon3k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From a technical perspective I think UAC was a huge step in the right direction. From a usability standpoint I think they really shot themselves in the foot. You're assuming the exact same people are saying both of these things, when that's obviously not the case. You create this abstract group of people ("linux fanbois") and then attribute every argument against Microsoft to them as if everyone is saying the exact same thing. They're not. It's a sweeping generalization.

    10. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      First of all, Windows has had "sudo"-equivalent features for a long time-- since Windows 2000, I believe.

      Vista forced everyone to actually use them, or something similar.

      Secondly, how did they screw it up? It works fine for me.

      It's possible it's been fixed by now, both from Microsoft's side and from the developers' side.

      I definitely remember getting five or six separate UAC prompts during the installation of a single piece of software.

      The problem was that the OS was release-quality, but the drivers from various third-parties was beta-quality for a good year after the OS was released.

      If you can do that, I can claim that Linux has excellent video and wireless support, it's just those lazy driver writers. If Linux gets blamed for these things, Windows does, too.

      But it's also not the drivers that made it take far longer to boot than XP, while Win7 took less time than XP. Little, measurable performance hits like that is a big part of why I didn't upgrade.

      Vista was never designed to run on Netbooks, which was a market Microsoft didn't anticipate while they were developing it.

      Linux was never "designed" to run on Netbooks either, it's just flexible enough that it doesn't matter.

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    11. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by Nazlfrag · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's a real difference between Gutmann's early Vista analysis and this smear campaign. Gutmann was trying to peer behind a veil of secrecy to find what Vistas content protection looked like and sure he missed the mark but it was an honest attempt to evaluate what the future held based on MS, ATI and other presentations, press releases and patents.

      Whereas this guy is clearly a shill out to smear MS based on blatant fabrication.

    12. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by LinuxAndLube · · Score: 5, Insightful

      + 5, psychedelic for using enormously complex system and huge security benefits in the same sentence.

  2. Re:Reason by Beelzebud · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's simple. Money.

  3. The fraud was not in the claims about Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    from what it looks like. Rather, it was about the identity of the blogger. It looks like he was a paid blogger for InfoWorld and a Windows performance analyst at the same time, and wrote the Windows memory consumption post under a pseudonym without disclosing the relationship to InfoWorld. It doesn't mean the memory consumption article's contents are faked or wrong. Its conclusions are disputed, but that's a a separate issue. The issue is disclosure of its authorship.

    1. Re:The fraud was not in the claims about Windows by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, he lied about his identity. He was just plain wrong about Win7. He's a liar and an idiot, but they're separate issues.

      Fortunately, my user CSS puts a big red [IDIOT WARNING] after any link to InfoWorld, so I didn't make the mistake of clicking on it and giving them some ad revenue.

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    2. Re:The fraud was not in the claims about Windows by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I really don't think it was a case of him merely "being wrong" about Win7. His software company sells a suite that is supposed to make Windows "run better". He had a direct motivation for lying about the performance of Windows. That's fraud in my book, and not merely "being wrong".

  4. Re:Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, I'm sure Apple is a little worried considering Windows 7 is actually good. Now, it's still Windows but let's be honest, it's pretty good. Consider UNIX has been around for getting on 40 years meanwhile Windows is what, 15 years old? Given that I would say yeah it's starting to getting pretty decent.

  5. Re:Yup... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Doesn't matter. In my book, caught submitting false data, all data should be tossed out. Everything this guy has ever claimed is now suspect.

  6. Re:Windows 7 does use too much ram. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As has been explained countless times, yes Windows 7 uses more memory BUT it uses most of it as disk cache. It's more like Linux now compared to older versions of Windows. Using otherwise unused memory for disk cache is a good thing and does not affect application performance or available memory negatively.

  7. Re:Good for them.. by Endo13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am somewhat mystified how Mr. Kennedy thought that spreading FUD would actually help his career. Interesting tact..

    It did, until those pesky things called "facts" got in the way.

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