Just out of curiousity, since Phoenix's claim to fame is speed and size, I did a quick test.
On Windows XP SP1 with a wireless connnection to a DSL gateway:
Startup time and RAM used on launch of about:blank as homepage: IE 6.0 SP1 (IE) - ~ 1 sec - 1,258 KB Phoenix 0.5 - ~ 1 sec - 2,712 KB Mozilla 1.2.1 - ~ 2 sec - 15,568 KB
Open time and RAM used to launch Slashdot: IE - ~2 sec - 8,272 KB Phoenix - ~2 sec - 13,044 KB Mozilla - ~3 sec - 17, 676 KB
Conclusion: Who cares! They are all fast enough, the RAM usage doesn't seem to make a difference. If you don't like IE, there are any number of alternatives. I just wish they all shared favorites/bookmarks. God, it's not rocket science, it's only hyperlink's. Even Phoenix and Mozilla don't share bookmarks, how messed up is that.
If you Windows 2K and XP boxes are in a Windows 2K domain, you never have to worry about this. Just set the default domain group policy to set this service to Manual.
I haven't let this service run on any box for well over 2 years.
I still haven't seen which Windows Media Audio 9 format was used, there are now 3:
Windows Media Audio (nearly the same codec that has been out for years now, uses selectable constant bit rate, e.g. 64kbps, 128kbps, etc.)
Windows Media Audio Lossless (I have seen a description of this to mean mathematically identical to the source material, consumes somewhere between 400MB-600MB per CD.)
Windows Media Audio Variable Bit Rate (VBR) (Uses a low end and high end range to encode, e.g. 50-95 kbps, 90-128 kbps.
If you have WMP 9 installed, go to Tools | Options | Copy Music, the drop list on the format has these 3 listed.
Someone else posted that Ogg is VBR, so I would think for this to be a fair comparision, WMA 9 VBR should have been used.
WIndows XP does not force you to repurchase the product every so ofter, what utter nonsense. You have to activate the product, via phone or the web, in a 14 day period before you are forced to activate to continue using the OS. Activation means you tell MS you have a product key and the activation software creates another unique identifier based on the hardware in your machine. This does not mean you have to repurchase the product if you change hardware in your machine. It only means that you have to reactivate if you make a "sufficient" number of changes to your hardware. Now of course, since this is an anti-piracy measure, they aren't telling anybody how much hardware needs to change to trigger the re-activation process, but they have said its > 1 piece of hardware.
With the ease with which you can get information on this from beta testers, take a nanosecond to get some facts.
Microsoft bundling competition into oblivion is very similar (maybe identical) to open source projects eventually replacing the functionality of any commercial applications with free equivalants on Linux.
If the next hot gotta have appl comes out commercially for both Linux and Windows, Microsoft and some open source project are going to replace that functionality with free and bundled equivalents. How is either one better for competition? Microsoft develops, bundles, and replaces the commercial app in Windows XX. An open source project will develop, RedHat X.X will bundle it, and the project will replace the commercial app. The commercial app cannot compete under either scenario for > a 1-2 year window to make money before their app is no longer relevant for any platform.
If Linux becomes the dominant platform, how will commercial software companies ever be able to compete with a nebulous group of individuals that can and do work any time and give there work away? How is that scenario any better for competition from an economic standpoint then the Microsoft bundling scenario?
Re:But the File Manager/Interface is also key...
on
Eazel On The Ropes
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· Score: 1
Wow. Shiznit. That was real funny, original too. You think that up all by yourself or did a couple buddies help you out?
And I thought it was clear we were talking about backwards compatibility, but oh, that's right, your buddies forgot to explain that part to you.
Re:But the File Manager/Interface is also key...
on
Eazel On The Ropes
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· Score: 1
Individuals looking for the truth would simply have said: "I have yet to see the stability claims you make.", not "no one can convince me." Refusing to even accept the possiblity outside of your own small experience is rather sad. I accept that possiblity that others may not have experienced the stability I have, but looking at the evidence that organizations like Gartner have collected, you are definitely in the minority on 2K stability.
Re:But the File Manager/Interface is also key...
on
Eazel On The Ropes
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· Score: 1
Windows XP looks like its going to be one of the, if not the most, backward compatible Windows ever. WinXP is of course based on the NT kernel. However, MS has implemented a much improved DOS/Win 3.x compatiblility layer. Take a look at the review of Windows XP Beta 2 at WinSupersite, and you'll read the full details with screenshots of Doom and Wolfenstein running at the same time in windows on the desktop. In short you get Full DOS VESA video mode support and Soundblaser compatible sound among other things....This allowed the auther of the review at the site I mention to play Wolfenstein and the original DOOM on XP in a window or fullscreen without problems.
Saying Linux is more stable than Windows is not true when you are talking about Windows 2000 or XP. You can argue price all day long, but you can no longer argue stability.
If you actually read this press release http://www.xbox.com/press.htm they tell you the custom graphics part from NVidia will be pushing 300 million polys per second. The PS2 does 100 million with all effects on. Also, the PS2 processer is 300 mhz, Dolphin is scheduled for 400 mhz according to rumour. 600 mhz will not be slow for a console by any streth of the imagination even for Christmas 2001. The success really all depends on the OS and third party developers. We should hear about the OS today when Gates gives his speech.
It is supposedly not WinCE or 98 based, which only leaves Win2K or something new. Paul Thourott of http://www.wininformat.com suggests that the first consumer version of Win2K will be out next spring, keeping up with the yearly consumer upgrade. Seems that would be just in time for the X-Box. Any with only set hardware to have quality drivers for, they will strip lots of junk from the OS to slim it down.
One other piece I bet they will have ready immediately is the online play option that Sega has been struggling to launch. MS already has the Internet Gaming Zone at http://www.zone.com for PCs, X-Box will most likely plug right into the architecture. Sony doesn't have online multiplayer ready to go either right now, which is a real disappointment. Could be great or could be complete shit, nonetheless it will be interesting to see them try.
Even if you double the total bugs in the codebase to 130,000, your still talking 1 bug in every 230 LOC. I don't think, even as the product goes live, the bug count will double. So 1 in 230, if that is the final number, still is pretty good. Obviously, you can never know all the bugs in the code. But perhaps they know about so many because of how extensively tested the product is. I have been using it in a number of situations now for over a year, and it has been rock solid. Also, there bugs in a lot of cases, as the memo states, are trivial things such as "this button is off 1 pixel to the left on this form" kind of stuff. Some of it is new feature request! I don't know of anyone else that would track a new feature as a bug in current product.
One of the points that Bob, in his inflammatory way, was trying to express which is getting missed on Slashdot is: If Linus is a hardcore proponent of open-source, why do his principles/morals not prevent him for working for a company that is releasing "code-morphing software" as proprietary patent-pending? The point warrents discussion, since it is a potential hypocrisy. One other thing. According to Transmeta's marketing on announcement day, they are targeting their lower-end chip for Mobile Linux, and their high end chip for Windows. It seems odd, and this is may be what Metcalf was listening to, that they would market the high end chip "for Windows" when they could have just said any x86 OS.
W2K, like all prior versions of NT, is architecture independent except for the HAL and a couple of other small pieces I cannot remember. W2K was produced for Alpha until Compaq pulled the plug when W2K was at Beta 3 stage. I just through out my Alpha betas. Also, there is no way they would have snuck more Intel only code into the codebase anyway, when they have to transition the code to Itanium anyway.
Software production generally yields about 1 bug per 100 lines of code. Windows 2000 is ~ 30 million lines of code. Using 65,000 as the bug count, then MS has 1 bug per 461.5 lines of code in W2K. If you are more conservative on what you call a bug and use 22,000 for the bug count, MS has 1 bug per 1,363 lines of code. Looking at the bug count numbers in this fashion, it would be fair to say that MS has done a tremendous job removing defects from W2K based on commonly held software engineering rules.
If that has been your experience, then you didn't know how to utilize the resources that are presented to you as an MCSP from MS. Business down calls to their highest level support is FREE for MCSPs. Access to the knowledge base is FREE for EVERYONE. You get 5 or so support incidents to their premium level support for FREE. Bug fixes or problems because cost you NOTHING for their support. MS charges NOTHING for their current security website fixes.
There was a bug in the Spooler service. It wasn't apparent until Exchange 5.x was installed on the system. The spooler would not shutdown because it was waiting for a connection that never came. Installing Exchange modifies the global shutdown WaitToKillService timeout to ~15 minutes. This was done to allow Exchange time to shutdown its databases without fear of corruption for being killed. If you install SP4 or greater, this is fixed. Long Reboots is no more funny than PCWeek not installing the security patches for Red Hat and calling it a fair security test. The only good thing that should be taken away from this is that all admins need to stay on top of the latest patches for their platform.
I primarily use IE5 on NT-SP5, which is incredibly stable. If IE5 does go done, it does not take the desktop or another IE process with it. I have tried Netscape 4.5 and 4.6 on Windows and Red Hat 5.0. Netscape is unusable compared to IE on both platforms, it is so much slower and unstable. Using Netscape with KDE on Red Hat consumes as much or more resources than NT/IE5, even with Active Desktop. Netscape is a detriment to Linux because it prevents most users from doing their primary computing task on a home-based fat-client OS, browsing the web. Until somebody, hopefully Mozilla or KDE, solves this issue, the most popular platform for the web will be Windows.
Who gives a shit if the alpha Win64 doesn't boot now? Windows won't boot when Merced comes out in a year or two. Right. Linux is going away. The end of the world is 1/1/2000. What other looks into the crystal ball from the Register do we have on tap today? Can we get the Register to change its name to the Psychic Friends Network?
Re:Linux is not the fastest. No excuses.
on
NT vs. Linux: Again
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· Score: 1
I have been running W2K Professional Beta 3 since it came out in March on both my home and desktop workstations. It has not crashed. It is faster than NT4 SP5. It configured everything in my box perfectly without intervention, except the ZIP drive. That requires a registry hack to enable. That I believe has been fixed. It has run every app I have thrown at it, except games. Any game that ran on NT4, like Half-Life, runs on 2K. The NVIDIA TNT driver is not mature enough yet to run stuff like Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, but the Beta 1.88 NVIDIA driver is starting to show some promise. If MS continues down this path, W2K will be a great OS for the desktop. Haven't done enough on Server to comment. I thank the Linux community for the state of W2K. Without the challenge that Linux was the best and Windows NT, Microsoft's bread and butter for the next 10 years, sucked at everything, I doubt MS would so vigorously be persuing stability and reliability. Long live competition, arrogance, and fear to deliver the best products into consumers hands!
The is no irony here. What is clear is that you missed the point of my original post, and subsequently my reply. I pointed out two examples initially and several in the reply of claims or statements that people have made without backing them up. You assume I believe, simply because I list quotes as examples, that I support the opposite of those quotes. I have made no claim that I support or refute any of the quotes I used as examples of FUD for the reason I listed them as FUD in the first place: the opinions are unsupported. When opinions are rendered in such a fashion, they raise uncertainty in the minds of readers as to their truth. Readers then fear they are missing out on something or have not made good selections in the past because the truth of the statements cannot be verified. Readers then doubt what they already have in place, either physically or mentally. Those on/. use the term FUD with a derogatory connotation, implying that FUD is inheriently evil. Since that is the prevailing mindset, I asked the community to stop the hypocrisy of slinging unsupported FUD when they so readily accuse MS of the same. Every opinion piece potentially introduces FUD. Marketing is meant to introduce FUD in the minds of the target audience. New opinions raise FUD by challenging the opinions and beliefs the reader already has. Opinions change through FUD or proof, or a combination. I want the proof, which is sorely lacking in many of the claims made by those on/.
How in any way does my nickname have anything to do with ignorance? The FUD that I speak of is clear through the responses to this story, at least two of which I reiterated: Linux's supposed superior performance and the supposed lack of reliablility by NT on/. Others are "I just know linux is faster, it was for me" without anything objective, like performance numbers, to justify the claim. Or "NT may beat Unix in TCO, but Linux has to be lower". How bout "ZD Net is another division of MS"? Or "All benchmarks are biased against Linux"? This one kills me "We need a P2-450 with 256 MB of RAM just to get Exchange to RUN on NT." Should I start compiling a list?
The ugly truth is that the community, through forums like/., sling just as much FUD about NT as MS does about Linux. If NT's reliability is so much worse than Linux's, show us the numbers? If Linux performs so much better than NT, show us the numbers? Singular personal experience statistically means nothing. Accept the MS challenge, learn from the results whatever their outcome, and stop slinging FUD. It is time to put up or shut up.
The part of this article that frustrates me is the continued misreporting on Lines of Code. Win2000 Pro is going to come to 28-30 million lines of code according to Microsoft. Win2000 Server while add a couple million more according to MS. The press are pegging Win2000, not mentioning version, somewhere near 50-60 million. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. The point is the press continues to use speculative journalism on a number of fronts. They also fail to mention that the LOC number is for every possible feature in Win2000, though no one will install and use every line of code. Counting Lines of Code is also inaccurate at best. A brace on a line is a line of code, but you could easily cut your LOC by an order of magnitude by putting the brace on the same line as a function definition. As for Linux, I have no idea what the LOC is. But 2.5 million seems pretty low if you count all the things that MS is counting in its LOC, like Samba, Apache, Netscape, PHP, X, and Gnome or KDE. Perhaps each distribution should report their LOC and how they calculate it for a fair comparison?
I work with a number of customers right now that are moving their entire businesses onto NT. Some are deploying workstation and server across the enterprise. Some are deploying NT Server, with limited uses of Workstation. The primary use of the NT Servers is to run Oracle/SAP, which are these companies entire busineses. Two of the larger clients have about a 1000 users. They have chosen this route because the software, hardware and consultant costs of commercial UNIXes are incredibly expensive. An OS decision for businesses right now is like buying car insurance. You will eventually get into a car accident. Do you want to pay the highest premium possible just in case, or pay the lower premium and take your chances hoping that you won't crash? A lot of people choose to take the lower premium and gamble. NT is the cheap premium, it has cheap upfront costs. Cheaper upfront costs mean lower expenses which could result in higher profits, certainly higher monthly cash flow. Linux may be both, very low premium and the best insurance for your business. But most companies aren't even seriously thinking about Linux now. They are working on Y2K projects and other initiatives that started before the Linux hype trully got under way. Once they start to seriously evaluate Linux, it will be used more primary because it is cheap. History has proven that the best technology does not always win, price will win nearly everytime. That is the formula that MS has used for 2 decades now. However, I do not believe that anything will be the dominant OS moving forward. Higher market share for Linux will force MS to adopt true open standards. Adoption of true open standards will finally allow the use of any desktop simply because you like that desktop. Just like a car. Everyone does not drive a Japanese manufactured car, even though they were and still are reported to be more reliable than their American manufactured counterparts or have better technology. People will continue to drive Fords and GMs simply because they like the look or the upfront price is cheaper. Honda may go for 250000 miles and never leave you stranded, but it really doesn't matter to most people. Same thing with gas mileage. The higher the gas mileage, the lower your monthly/yearly costs for that vehicle. Yet people are gobbling up SUVs at an incredible rate because they simply like that vehicle. A station wagon or minivan would perform much of the same duties as an SUV, but people simply like the SUVs. NT is more stable than the press has previously led everyone to believe. Gartner Group recently completed a new study on this topic supporting that conclusion. NT is not as stable as Unix, most know that and the stats still bear that out. But NT is stable enough for most needs. I see uptimes of 99.9% or greater for nearly all the NT boxes I have seen. I haven't seen a long range study on Linux stability, but our test boxes have stayed up just as long as our NT boxes, which currently stay up neck and neck with our Digital(Compaq)Unix box. It wasn't always that way, but MS seems to be increasing the stability with each service pack. At least that's my experience, and most people I talk to have seen the same thing.
Bashing MS because they took the concept of optical mice and improved upon it is senseless. Sure, Sun has been using optical mice for years. I used one back in college, and my company recently aquired a new Sun E250 server. The newer mice tracks on a desktop, the older one required a metallic pad like others in this thread have commented on (it did not track well on the desk). But the Sun mice are horribly uncomfortable, do not have a wheel, and do not have 5 buttons. Bashing MS in this case is like bashing Ford or Honda because they improved the fuel efficiency of the gasoline engine. The general concept, a gasoline engine, is nothing new. But they made it more efficient, which is better for the consumer. As for style, take a look at this picture for a jpeg of the new mouse. All opinions on physical beauty are subjective, but this rates pretty highly with me. Is the Intellimouse Explorer worth $75? Tough to say without trying it. I wouldn't have thought I would have paid for the original Intellimouse, but the time saved and comfort of using the wheel in nearly anything convinced me.
Slashdot Mirror
DCOM was ported by DEC to Digital UNIX, but no one really used it.
Just out of curiousity, since Phoenix's claim to fame is speed and size, I did a quick test.
On Windows XP SP1 with a wireless connnection to a DSL gateway:
Startup time and RAM used on launch of about:blank as homepage:
IE 6.0 SP1 (IE) - ~ 1 sec - 1,258 KB
Phoenix 0.5 - ~ 1 sec - 2,712 KB
Mozilla 1.2.1 - ~ 2 sec - 15,568 KB
Open time and RAM used to launch Slashdot:
IE - ~2 sec - 8,272 KB
Phoenix - ~2 sec - 13,044 KB
Mozilla - ~3 sec - 17, 676 KB
Conclusion:
Who cares! They are all fast enough, the RAM usage doesn't seem to make a difference. If you don't like IE, there are any number of alternatives. I just wish they all shared favorites/bookmarks. God, it's not rocket science, it's only hyperlink's. Even Phoenix and Mozilla don't share bookmarks, how messed up is that.
If you Windows 2K and XP boxes are in a Windows 2K domain, you never have to worry about this. Just set the default domain group policy to set this service to Manual.
I haven't let this service run on any box for well over 2 years.
- Windows Media Audio (nearly the same codec that has been out for years now, uses selectable constant bit rate, e.g. 64kbps, 128kbps, etc.)
- Windows Media Audio Lossless (I have seen a description of this to mean mathematically identical to the source material, consumes somewhere between 400MB-600MB per CD.)
- Windows Media Audio Variable Bit Rate (VBR) (Uses a low end and high end range to encode, e.g. 50-95 kbps, 90-128 kbps.
If you have WMP 9 installed, go to Tools | Options | Copy Music, the drop list on the format has these 3 listed. Someone else posted that Ogg is VBR, so I would think for this to be a fair comparision, WMA 9 VBR should have been used.WIndows XP does not force you to repurchase the product every so ofter, what utter nonsense. You have to activate the product, via phone or the web, in a 14 day period before you are forced to activate to continue using the OS. Activation means you tell MS you have a product key and the activation software creates another unique identifier based on the hardware in your machine. This does not mean you have to repurchase the product if you change hardware in your machine. It only means that you have to reactivate if you make a "sufficient" number of changes to your hardware. Now of course, since this is an anti-piracy measure, they aren't telling anybody how much hardware needs to change to trigger the re-activation process, but they have said its > 1 piece of hardware.
With the ease with which you can get information on this from beta testers, take a nanosecond to get some facts.
If the next hot gotta have appl comes out commercially for both Linux and Windows, Microsoft and some open source project are going to replace that functionality with free and bundled equivalents. How is either one better for competition? Microsoft develops, bundles, and replaces the commercial app in Windows XX. An open source project will develop, RedHat X.X will bundle it, and the project will replace the commercial app. The commercial app cannot compete under either scenario for > a 1-2 year window to make money before their app is no longer relevant for any platform.
If Linux becomes the dominant platform, how will commercial software companies ever be able to compete with a nebulous group of individuals that can and do work any time and give there work away? How is that scenario any better for competition from an economic standpoint then the Microsoft bundling scenario?
And I thought it was clear we were talking about backwards compatibility, but oh, that's right, your buddies forgot to explain that part to you.
Individuals looking for the truth would simply have said: "I have yet to see the stability claims you make.", not "no one can convince me." Refusing to even accept the possiblity outside of your own small experience is rather sad. I accept that possiblity that others may not have experienced the stability I have, but looking at the evidence that organizations like Gartner have collected, you are definitely in the minority on 2K stability.
Saying Linux is more stable than Windows is not true when you are talking about Windows 2000 or XP. You can argue price all day long, but you can no longer argue stability.
It is supposedly not WinCE or 98 based, which only leaves Win2K or something new. Paul Thourott of http://www.wininformat.com suggests that the first consumer version of Win2K will be out next spring, keeping up with the yearly consumer upgrade. Seems that would be just in time for the X-Box. Any with only set hardware to have quality drivers for, they will strip lots of junk from the OS to slim it down.
One other piece I bet they will have ready immediately is the online play option that Sega has been struggling to launch. MS already has the Internet Gaming Zone at http://www.zone.com for PCs, X-Box will most likely plug right into the architecture. Sony doesn't have online multiplayer ready to go either right now, which is a real disappointment. Could be great or could be complete shit, nonetheless it will be interesting to see them try.
Even if you double the total bugs in the codebase to 130,000, your still talking 1 bug in every 230 LOC. I don't think, even as the product goes live, the bug count will double. So 1 in 230, if that is the final number, still is pretty good. Obviously, you can never know all the bugs in the code. But perhaps they know about so many because of how extensively tested the product is. I have been using it in a number of situations now for over a year, and it has been rock solid. Also, there bugs in a lot of cases, as the memo states, are trivial things such as "this button is off 1 pixel to the left on this form" kind of stuff. Some of it is new feature request! I don't know of anyone else that would track a new feature as a bug in current product.
One of the points that Bob, in his inflammatory way, was trying to express which is getting missed on Slashdot is: If Linus is a hardcore proponent of open-source, why do his principles/morals not prevent him for working for a company that is releasing "code-morphing software" as proprietary patent-pending? The point warrents discussion, since it is a potential hypocrisy. One other thing. According to Transmeta's marketing on announcement day, they are targeting their lower-end chip for Mobile Linux, and their high end chip for Windows. It seems odd, and this is may be what Metcalf was listening to, that they would market the high end chip "for Windows" when they could have just said any x86 OS.
W2K, like all prior versions of NT, is architecture independent except for the HAL and a couple of other small pieces I cannot remember. W2K was produced for Alpha until Compaq pulled the plug when W2K was at Beta 3 stage. I just through out my Alpha betas. Also, there is no way they would have snuck more Intel only code into the codebase anyway, when they have to transition the code to Itanium anyway.
Software production generally yields about 1 bug per 100 lines of code. Windows 2000 is ~ 30 million lines of code. Using 65,000 as the bug count, then MS has 1 bug per 461.5 lines of code in W2K. If you are more conservative on what you call a bug and use 22,000 for the bug count, MS has 1 bug per 1,363 lines of code. Looking at the bug count numbers in this fashion, it would be fair to say that MS has done a tremendous job removing defects from W2K based on commonly held software engineering rules.
If that has been your experience, then you didn't know how to utilize the resources that are presented to you as an MCSP from MS. Business down calls to their highest level support is FREE for MCSPs. Access to the knowledge base is FREE for EVERYONE. You get 5 or so support incidents to their premium level support for FREE. Bug fixes or problems because cost you NOTHING for their support. MS charges NOTHING for their current security website fixes.
There was a bug in the Spooler service. It wasn't apparent until Exchange 5.x was installed on the system. The spooler would not shutdown because it was waiting for a connection that never came. Installing Exchange modifies the global shutdown WaitToKillService timeout to ~15 minutes. This was done to allow Exchange time to shutdown its databases without fear of corruption for being killed. If you install SP4 or greater, this is fixed. Long Reboots is no more funny than PCWeek not installing the security patches for Red Hat and calling it a fair security test. The only good thing that should be taken away from this is that all admins need to stay on top of the latest patches for their platform.
I primarily use IE5 on NT-SP5, which is incredibly stable. If IE5 does go done, it does not take the desktop or another IE process with it. I have tried Netscape 4.5 and 4.6 on Windows and Red Hat 5.0. Netscape is unusable compared to IE on both platforms, it is so much slower and unstable. Using Netscape with KDE on Red Hat consumes as much or more resources than NT/IE5, even with Active Desktop. Netscape is a detriment to Linux because it prevents most users from doing their primary computing task on a home-based fat-client OS, browsing the web. Until somebody, hopefully Mozilla or KDE, solves this issue, the most popular platform for the web will be Windows.
Who gives a shit if the alpha Win64 doesn't boot now? Windows won't boot when Merced comes out in a year or two. Right. Linux is going away. The end of the world is 1/1/2000. What other looks into the crystal ball from the Register do we have on tap today? Can we get the Register to change its name to the Psychic Friends Network?
I have been running W2K Professional Beta 3 since it came out in March on both my home and desktop workstations. It has not crashed. It is faster than NT4 SP5. It configured everything in my box perfectly without intervention, except the ZIP drive. That requires a registry hack to enable. That I believe has been fixed. It has run every app I have thrown at it, except games. Any game that ran on NT4, like Half-Life, runs on 2K. The NVIDIA TNT driver is not mature enough yet to run stuff like Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, but the Beta 1.88 NVIDIA driver is starting to show some promise. If MS continues down this path, W2K will be a great OS for the desktop. Haven't done enough on Server to comment. I thank the Linux community for the state of W2K. Without the challenge that Linux was the best and Windows NT, Microsoft's bread and butter for the next 10 years, sucked at everything, I doubt MS would so vigorously be persuing stability and reliability. Long live competition, arrogance, and fear to deliver the best products into consumers hands!
The is no irony here. What is clear is that you missed the point of my original post, and subsequently my reply. I pointed out two examples initially and several in the reply of claims or statements that people have made without backing them up. You assume I believe, simply because I list quotes as examples, that I support the opposite of those quotes. I have made no claim that I support or refute any of the quotes I used as examples of FUD for the reason I listed them as FUD in the first place: the opinions are unsupported. When opinions are rendered in such a fashion, they raise uncertainty in the minds of readers as to their truth. Readers then fear they are missing out on something or have not made good selections in the past because the truth of the statements cannot be verified. Readers then doubt what they already have in place, either physically or mentally. Those on /. use the term FUD with a derogatory connotation, implying that FUD is inheriently evil. Since that is the prevailing mindset, I asked the community to stop the hypocrisy of slinging unsupported FUD when they so readily accuse MS of the same. Every opinion piece potentially introduces FUD. Marketing is meant to introduce FUD in the minds of the target audience. New opinions raise FUD by challenging the opinions and beliefs the reader already has. Opinions change through FUD or proof, or a combination. I want the proof, which is sorely lacking in many of the claims made by those on /.
How in any way does my nickname have anything to do with ignorance? The FUD that I speak of is clear through the responses to this story, at least two of which I reiterated: Linux's supposed superior performance and the supposed lack of reliablility by NT on /. Others are "I just know linux is faster, it was for me" without anything objective, like performance numbers, to justify the claim. Or "NT may beat Unix in TCO, but Linux has to be lower". How bout "ZD Net is another division of MS"? Or "All benchmarks are biased against Linux"? This one kills me "We need a P2-450 with 256 MB of RAM just to get Exchange to RUN on NT." Should I start compiling a list?
The ugly truth is that the community, through forums like /., sling just as much FUD about NT as MS does about Linux. If NT's reliability is so much worse than Linux's, show us the numbers? If Linux performs so much better than NT, show us the numbers? Singular personal experience statistically means nothing. Accept the MS challenge, learn from the results whatever their outcome, and stop slinging FUD. It is time to put up or shut up.
The part of this article that frustrates me is the continued misreporting on Lines of Code. Win2000 Pro is going to come to 28-30 million lines of code according to Microsoft. Win2000 Server while add a couple million more according to MS. The press are pegging Win2000, not mentioning version, somewhere near 50-60 million. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. The point is the press continues to use speculative journalism on a number of fronts. They also fail to mention that the LOC number is for every possible feature in Win2000, though no one will install and use every line of code. Counting Lines of Code is also inaccurate at best. A brace on a line is a line of code, but you could easily cut your LOC by an order of magnitude by putting the brace on the same line as a function definition. As for Linux, I have no idea what the LOC is. But 2.5 million seems pretty low if you count all the things that MS is counting in its LOC, like Samba, Apache, Netscape, PHP, X, and Gnome or KDE. Perhaps each distribution should report their LOC and how they calculate it for a fair comparison?
I work with a number of customers right now that are moving their entire businesses onto NT. Some are deploying workstation and server across the enterprise. Some are deploying NT Server, with limited uses of Workstation. The primary use of the NT Servers is to run Oracle/SAP, which are these companies entire busineses. Two of the larger clients have about a 1000 users. They have chosen this route because the software, hardware and consultant costs of commercial UNIXes are incredibly expensive. An OS decision for businesses right now is like buying car insurance. You will eventually get into a car accident. Do you want to pay the highest premium possible just in case, or pay the lower premium and take your chances hoping that you won't crash? A lot of people choose to take the lower premium and gamble. NT is the cheap premium, it has cheap upfront costs. Cheaper upfront costs mean lower expenses which could result in higher profits, certainly higher monthly cash flow. Linux may be both, very low premium and the best insurance for your business. But most companies aren't even seriously thinking about Linux now. They are working on Y2K projects and other initiatives that started before the Linux hype trully got under way. Once they start to seriously evaluate Linux, it will be used more primary because it is cheap. History has proven that the best technology does not always win, price will win nearly everytime. That is the formula that MS has used for 2 decades now. However, I do not believe that anything will be the dominant OS moving forward. Higher market share for Linux will force MS to adopt true open standards. Adoption of true open standards will finally allow the use of any desktop simply because you like that desktop. Just like a car. Everyone does not drive a Japanese manufactured car, even though they were and still are reported to be more reliable than their American manufactured counterparts or have better technology. People will continue to drive Fords and GMs simply because they like the look or the upfront price is cheaper. Honda may go for 250000 miles and never leave you stranded, but it really doesn't matter to most people. Same thing with gas mileage. The higher the gas mileage, the lower your monthly/yearly costs for that vehicle. Yet people are gobbling up SUVs at an incredible rate because they simply like that vehicle. A station wagon or minivan would perform much of the same duties as an SUV, but people simply like the SUVs. NT is more stable than the press has previously led everyone to believe. Gartner Group recently completed a new study on this topic supporting that conclusion. NT is not as stable as Unix, most know that and the stats still bear that out. But NT is stable enough for most needs. I see uptimes of 99.9% or greater for nearly all the NT boxes I have seen. I haven't seen a long range study on Linux stability, but our test boxes have stayed up just as long as our NT boxes, which currently stay up neck and neck with our Digital(Compaq)Unix box. It wasn't always that way, but MS seems to be increasing the stability with each service pack. At least that's my experience, and most people I talk to have seen the same thing.
Bashing MS because they took the concept of optical mice and improved upon it is senseless. Sure, Sun has been using optical mice for years. I used one back in college, and my company recently aquired a new Sun E250 server. The newer mice tracks on a desktop, the older one required a metallic pad like others in this thread have commented on (it did not track well on the desk). But the Sun mice are horribly uncomfortable, do not have a wheel, and do not have 5 buttons. Bashing MS in this case is like bashing Ford or Honda because they improved the fuel efficiency of the gasoline engine. The general concept, a gasoline engine, is nothing new. But they made it more efficient, which is better for the consumer. As for style, take a look at this picture for a jpeg of the new mouse. All opinions on physical beauty are subjective, but this rates pretty highly with me. Is the Intellimouse Explorer worth $75? Tough to say without trying it. I wouldn't have thought I would have paid for the original Intellimouse, but the time saved and comfort of using the wheel in nearly anything convinced me.