hint, an old 150MHz Pentium outperformed a 150MHz PentiumPro when running Windows 95.
A frequently-repeated and commonly exagerated urban myth, but one that isn't supported by evidence.
Yes, in a worst case scenario (16 bit applications, hardware requiring legacy DOS thunking drivers, etc) you might see the sort of numbers you refer to, but on a properly configured Windows 95 system (32 bit applications, 32 bit drivers) the Pentium Pro performed measurably better than the Pentium (albeit not as relatively better as it did on NT).
Real 32bit OSs like *nix, OS/2, and Windows NT showed vast performance increases running on the 32bit PentiumPro.
OS/2 still had 16-bit components well past the mid-90s. Most notably, the HPFS driver.
How does the system 'know' when to start running the DRM?
The application goes "Hey ! Windows ! I need a protected path before I can play this media."
There must be something running at all times "just in case" the paying customer decides to excersise their right to play their own stuff.
No, there does not.
It is not the OS's job to check whether or not a given file (more accurately, byte stream) is DRM-encumbered, nor does it make any attempt to do so. It is only the OS's job to provide DRM-capable output (and ensure it remains DRM-encumbered) when an application asks for it, which is what it does.
In short: If you aren't playing DRM-encumbered content, the DRM does NOTHING.
Because ALL software has to run the DRM hook gauntlet. basically, the way Microsoft has set it up is that the DRM processes are ALWAYS running and CANNOT be disabled. So every single bit of data is processed through the DRM loop, slowing everything down.
If this were true, then non-DRM-capable outputs (VGA, DVI, SPDIF, etc) would not work with Vista at all.
The whole thing is pointless - why not just put 64GBs of ram in your PC and let it fill it up with disk cache. This makes no sense. If you compare this thing to just putting the RAM in your PC there are NO upsides. The data is vulnerable, it's massively expensive and an inefficient use of the RAM modules.
The data on this device will survive an OS crash or reboot. The data in your PC's RAM will not.
This swings both ways. If what you have is a typical rackmount server, then a device that goes into a PCIe slot is far more preferable.
Realistically, they should be able to make two devices - PCIe-mounted and drivebay mounted - using practically identical circuit boards. Ideally, the PCIe device would have a disk controller 'onboard' rather than plugging into the motherboard's SATA ports (and therefore have better performance).
To be honest, I'm a little unsure of the target market with this product. The form factor and relatively slow onboard chipset mean it's not really aimed at the enterprise market, but the cost and massive IOPS performance don't really suggest it's a good fit for the low-end market either. I can only assume they're trying to make money out of the same people who think they need a triple-SLI of dual-processor video cards.
This function does use 1/9th the total RAM, but it is ECC, and it works.
I'll take a stab in the dark and say their chipset is doing RAID3 or RAID5 behind the scenes to "emulate" ECC. So you're probably losing 1/8th (a single DIMM) not 1/9th.
How does that NOT saturate 2 SATA II interfaces?Because they've cheaped-out on their magic RAM2DISK chipset and it apparently maxes out at ~400MB/sec.
Which is, as another poster mentions, a bit crap considering that the onboard RAID controller on a fairly mundane server (eg: Dell PE2950) can handle higher throughput.
Speaking from a consumer viewpoint, (non-geeks would say "the real world") I see that the wholesaler where I get my system components has a range of products from 1.6G celeron to 3.33G core 2 duo. Of the 30 processors they have for sale as of today, only 5, or a tad over 16 percent, three years after Vista's release, are "fast enough to run Vista".
Firstly, the 3Ghz number is way too high. A 1.5-2Ghz Pentium-M class CPU is quite adequate assuming you have enough RAM.
Now, even ignoring the inaccuracy of the '3Ghz' number, you are still disingenuously comparing merely the clockspeed of a single-core P4 class CPU with the clock speed of modern dual-core CPUs. Not only are modern CPUs far faster per clock, but in terms of interactive responsiveness, a 1.6Ghz dual-core chip will run rings around a 3Ghz single-core chip.
You can't be serious. This is the problem with these discussions -- we have no common frame of reference. I suspect our definitions of "run" and "fine" are different.
I was working on your benchmark of "OS X" and "5 year old hardware". A mainstream, 5-year-old Mac is going to be a single CPU, sub-1Ghz G4 "Lampshade" iMac. I know from personal experience that OS X and G4-anything cannot be described as "fast", and that a ~2Ghz P4 (of roughly the same vintage, albeit likely a lower purchase price) running Vista will be *at least* as fast.
Or, on other words, I was being conservative against Vista. Personal example: not long after Vista was first released I threw it onto my old DOS gaming machine for a laugh - ~900Mhz P3 and 1G RAM. It was no slower to use than OS X on my 1Ghz/768Mb iBook.
Just to use one counterexample, I'm pretty sure that the Microsoft execs who were privately badmouthing Vista's performance in 2005 (as revealed in other/. articles) were probably using better than $600 machines.
You could build a $1000 machine that would run Vista poorly. Just crank up the CPU and video, and leave the RAM at single-channel 512MB. Heck, it was only relatively recently Apple even started selling their machines in a default configuration with enough RAM (1-1.5GB+) to run OS X at anything approaching "well".
Vista, like OS X, is RAM-hungry. Give it enough (1.5GB+) and it will run fine, even on 2000-era dual-P3 class machines (throwing in a $30 video card to offload the GUI helps as well, as does a decent thumbdrive to take advantage of ReadyBoost).
One day in its typical fashion NT porked its registry and had to be reinstalled. No more access to that volume set! Oh, we talked to MS about it and their answer was flat out "sure we know what you'd have to edit into the registry to get that volume set to work again, but we just don't choose to tell you."
Rubbish. Microsoft have been distributing FTEDIT in their resource kits to recover from those sorts of failures since at least NT 3.51.
Ever tried running Vista on the minimum...it's silly. When Vista came out it pushed the higher end computers, most average computers choked under it and lower end systems were pathetic. MS target was higher than average CPU at time of release.
The problem with low-end machines and Vista is not CPU, or even video card, it's RAM. Even a single-core P4 from 2002 can run Vista fine if you put a couple of gigs of RAM in it (although a $30 video card will also help it along noticably).
When Vista was released, a dual-core, 2G RAM machine that could run it well was US$600ish, but people were trying to run it on $500 machines that were basically identical except for only having 512MB RAM.
In fact, MS does not design software to fit the slowest or moderate CPU at their anticipated delivery date.
Windows releases have consistently targeted machines that would have been top of the line 6-7 years previously as the bare minimum for a usable environment.
The latest version of Mac OSX demonstrably runs acceptably on legacy hardware commonly available five years ago. I remember reading in slashdot that Vista "runs fine" on processors 3 Ghz and above. None of my systems are that fast.
The first 3Ghz P4s were released in late 2002. More than 6 years ago.
Vista runs fine on anything you can get a couple of gigs of RAM into. Like OS X, it's the RAM that matters. On computers of equal age (and especially taking into account price when new), Vista and OS X will deliver basically equivalent performance.
And I don't know about you, but it seemed to me that Microsoft was being pretty arrogant to assume that I would buy a brand new, cutting edge machine just to run Vista.
You don't and you never did. A US$600ish PC (and that's including the screen) would run Vista fine on the day it was released. In no way, shape, or form, did Vista ever require a "cutting edge machine".
I would love it if the porn sites simply said that their money comes from adults and they have no business luring children into it (like smoking companies) and voluntarily made more protection for our kids to help make my parenting that much easier. I know this is wishful thinking, but at some point, freedom of speech is taking to a point of hurting our society and not helping.
What is this 'luring' ?
I've been browsing the web for ~15 years now, and I've _never_ ended up at a porn site "accidentally". If your kids are hitting porn sites, it's because they're looking for them deliberately.
Whats up with this camera guy, does he have Parkinsons or something?
No, the whole "shaky handycam style" is just the way it's done these days - it's been ruining films (especially action films) for a decade now. BSG, to its credit, does seem to keep it to a relatively minimum.
My experience is that users who intensively use filesharing applications often suffer from heavily fragmented files
They probably do - that would be the kind of scenario where fragmentation happens. I sincerely doubt it's having any meaningful performance impact, however (unless they're torrenting on the company's fileserver).
Valid for bounded set of variations of "usable".
Of course. While Vista was usable on that 7-year-old PC, XP would have been a better choice. However, my point is the oft-made suggestion here that you need a fire-breathing quad-core PC with 4GB of RAM and a high-end video card just to run Vista is ridiculous.
Pretty much all those "low-end" PCs that run Vista badly, would run it quite well if they had $50 more memory in them (even if they saved $50 by getting a slower CPU). However, since RAM is a concept the average end user can't really wrap their head around, PC sellers typically ramp up the processor speed, disk space and video card specs (as these are easy to advertise) on their machines while leaving memory at inadequate levels.
There were numerous instances of where Vista's performance suffered and still suffers. Granted it's usually due to hardware and application compatibility issues, however, given the length of Vista production time, the final version of the system should not exhibit such symptoms.
My main PC here at work is a ~3 year old dual-core Opteron box with 4G of RAM and some Radeon x300-based video cards. If I didn't regularly fire up VMs, 2G would likely be fine. It is by no means "cutting edge", but it runs Vista fine.
Are you FUDding for an energy company or something? Several hundred million devices suddenly using 200 times less power has got to be worrying the publicly traded energy companies.
Not once everyone starts plugging in their electric cars it won't !
(Of course, that will bring along a whole new set of worries for "energy companies", but it certainly won't be due to losing business.)
Slashdot Mirror
hint, an old 150MHz Pentium outperformed a 150MHz PentiumPro when running Windows 95.
A frequently-repeated and commonly exagerated urban myth, but one that isn't supported by evidence.
Yes, in a worst case scenario (16 bit applications, hardware requiring legacy DOS thunking drivers, etc) you might see the sort of numbers you refer to, but on a properly configured Windows 95 system (32 bit applications, 32 bit drivers) the Pentium Pro performed measurably better than the Pentium (albeit not as relatively better as it did on NT).
Real 32bit OSs like *nix, OS/2, and Windows NT showed vast performance increases running on the 32bit PentiumPro.
OS/2 still had 16-bit components well past the mid-90s. Most notably, the HPFS driver.
How does the system 'know' when to start running the DRM?
The application goes "Hey ! Windows ! I need a protected path before I can play this media."
There must be something running at all times "just in case" the paying customer decides to excersise their right to play their own stuff.
No, there does not.
It is not the OS's job to check whether or not a given file (more accurately, byte stream) is DRM-encumbered, nor does it make any attempt to do so. It is only the OS's job to provide DRM-capable output (and ensure it remains DRM-encumbered) when an application asks for it, which is what it does.
In short: If you aren't playing DRM-encumbered content, the DRM does NOTHING.
Because ALL software has to run the DRM hook gauntlet. basically, the way Microsoft has set it up is that the DRM processes are ALWAYS running and CANNOT be disabled. So every single bit of data is processed through the DRM loop, slowing everything down.
If this were true, then non-DRM-capable outputs (VGA, DVI, SPDIF, etc) would not work with Vista at all.
But to understand why, you need to read the MONEY quote. Here it is:
The "MONEY quote" just demonstrates the author doesn't know what he's talking about in that regard.
The DRM subsystems are only engaged at the request of an application that needs it for DRM-encumbered media. Otherwise they do nothing.
But would the same 8 spindles handle the 20,000 IO/sec rate that this single drive manages?
Of course not, but I was replying to someone saying that a 200MB/sec controller bottleneck is "pretty good compared to spinning disks".
The whole thing is pointless - why not just put 64GBs of ram in your PC and let it fill it up with disk cache. This makes no sense. If you compare this thing to just putting the RAM in your PC there are NO upsides. The data is vulnerable, it's massively expensive and an inefficient use of the RAM modules.
The data on this device will survive an OS crash or reboot. The data in your PC's RAM will not.
Madness.
No, niche.
*Uses 5.25" bay rather than PCI slot.
This swings both ways. If what you have is a typical rackmount server, then a device that goes into a PCIe slot is far more preferable.
Realistically, they should be able to make two devices - PCIe-mounted and drivebay mounted - using practically identical circuit boards. Ideally, the PCIe device would have a disk controller 'onboard' rather than plugging into the motherboard's SATA ports (and therefore have better performance).
To be honest, I'm a little unsure of the target market with this product. The form factor and relatively slow onboard chipset mean it's not really aimed at the enterprise market, but the cost and massive IOPS performance don't really suggest it's a good fit for the low-end market either. I can only assume they're trying to make money out of the same people who think they need a triple-SLI of dual-processor video cards.
This function does use 1/9th the total RAM, but it is ECC, and it works.
I'll take a stab in the dark and say their chipset is doing RAID3 or RAID5 behind the scenes to "emulate" ECC. So you're probably losing 1/8th (a single DIMM) not 1/9th.
How does that NOT saturate 2 SATA II interfaces?Because they've cheaped-out on their magic RAM2DISK chipset and it apparently maxes out at ~400MB/sec.
Which is, as another poster mentions, a bit crap considering that the onboard RAID controller on a fairly mundane server (eg: Dell PE2950) can handle higher throughput.
For DDR2, maybe, for fixed disk usage? Still pretty good compared to spinning disks or even flash.
A relatively modest (by today's standards) 8-spindle RAID10 (eg: a Dell PE2950's internal disk) will exceed 400MB/sec in sequential read operations.
Good luck with +x vs noexec
sudo cp ~/Desktop/showmetheboobies /bin; /bin/showmetheboobies
Alternatively (avoiding the need to +x as well):
perl ~/Desktop/showmetheboobies.pl
Of course, the assumption that you would be likely to see /home or /tmp mounted noexec on an unmanaged desktop PC is, itself, completely unrealistic.
Except that in OSX and Linux (and BSD and Solaris and all *nix systems) files have to be explicitly declared executable.
There was an outbreak of malware a while back that required users to open a password-protected zip file, and execute the contents within.
You really think having to set a file +x, or running it from a commandline with 'bash file.sh' is really going to slow them down ?
Speaking from a consumer viewpoint, (non-geeks would say "the real world") I see that the wholesaler where I get my system components has a range of products from 1.6G celeron to 3.33G core 2 duo. Of the 30 processors they have for sale as of today, only 5, or a tad over 16 percent, three years after Vista's release, are "fast enough to run Vista".
Firstly, the 3Ghz number is way too high. A 1.5-2Ghz Pentium-M class CPU is quite adequate assuming you have enough RAM.
Now, even ignoring the inaccuracy of the '3Ghz' number, you are still disingenuously comparing merely the clockspeed of a single-core P4 class CPU with the clock speed of modern dual-core CPUs. Not only are modern CPUs far faster per clock, but in terms of interactive responsiveness, a 1.6Ghz dual-core chip will run rings around a 3Ghz single-core chip.
You can't be serious. This is the problem with these discussions -- we have no common frame of reference. I suspect our definitions of "run" and "fine" are different.
I was working on your benchmark of "OS X" and "5 year old hardware". A mainstream, 5-year-old Mac is going to be a single CPU, sub-1Ghz G4 "Lampshade" iMac. I know from personal experience that OS X and G4-anything cannot be described as "fast", and that a ~2Ghz P4 (of roughly the same vintage, albeit likely a lower purchase price) running Vista will be *at least* as fast.
Or, on other words, I was being conservative against Vista. Personal example: not long after Vista was first released I threw it onto my old DOS gaming machine for a laugh - ~900Mhz P3 and 1G RAM. It was no slower to use than OS X on my 1Ghz/768Mb iBook.
Just to use one counterexample, I'm pretty sure that the Microsoft execs who were privately badmouthing Vista's performance in 2005 (as revealed in other /. articles) were probably using better than $600 machines.
You could build a $1000 machine that would run Vista poorly. Just crank up the CPU and video, and leave the RAM at single-channel 512MB. Heck, it was only relatively recently Apple even started selling their machines in a default configuration with enough RAM (1-1.5GB+) to run OS X at anything approaching "well".
Vista, like OS X, is RAM-hungry. Give it enough (1.5GB+) and it will run fine, even on 2000-era dual-P3 class machines (throwing in a $30 video card to offload the GUI helps as well, as does a decent thumbdrive to take advantage of ReadyBoost).
One day in its typical fashion NT porked its registry and had to be reinstalled. No more access to that volume set! Oh, we talked to MS about it and their answer was flat out "sure we know what you'd have to edit into the registry to get that volume set to work again, but we just don't choose to tell you."
Rubbish. Microsoft have been distributing FTEDIT in their resource kits to recover from those sorts of failures since at least NT 3.51.
Ever tried running Vista on the minimum...it's silly. When Vista came out it pushed the higher end computers, most average computers choked under it and lower end systems were pathetic. MS target was higher than average CPU at time of release.
The problem with low-end machines and Vista is not CPU, or even video card, it's RAM. Even a single-core P4 from 2002 can run Vista fine if you put a couple of gigs of RAM in it (although a $30 video card will also help it along noticably).
When Vista was released, a dual-core, 2G RAM machine that could run it well was US$600ish, but people were trying to run it on $500 machines that were basically identical except for only having 512MB RAM.
Here in The Netherlands you DO own the software; copyright law places restrictions on that ownership, but the software IS yours.
So, what, you can legally make copies and sell them ?
Microsoft had more than enough money to hire the expertise to build a lean, high quality firewall into NT 3.5 . They chose not to.
Probably because host-based firewalls on centrally-managed professional workstations weren't exactly what you'd call "in demand" in 1994.
In fact, MS does not design software to fit the slowest or moderate CPU at their anticipated delivery date.
Windows releases have consistently targeted machines that would have been top of the line 6-7 years previously as the bare minimum for a usable environment.
The latest version of Mac OSX demonstrably runs acceptably on legacy hardware commonly available five years ago. I remember reading in slashdot that Vista "runs fine" on processors 3 Ghz and above. None of my systems are that fast.
The first 3Ghz P4s were released in late 2002. More than 6 years ago.
Vista runs fine on anything you can get a couple of gigs of RAM into. Like OS X, it's the RAM that matters. On computers of equal age (and especially taking into account price when new), Vista and OS X will deliver basically equivalent performance.
And I don't know about you, but it seemed to me that Microsoft was being pretty arrogant to assume that I would buy a brand new, cutting edge machine just to run Vista.
You don't and you never did. A US$600ish PC (and that's including the screen) would run Vista fine on the day it was released. In no way, shape, or form, did Vista ever require a "cutting edge machine".
Obviously you have never used OS X. I gleaned this nugget when you said early OS X releases were "crap".
True. "Crap" is probably being a bit generous.
I would love it if the porn sites simply said that their money comes from adults and they have no business luring children into it (like smoking companies) and voluntarily made more protection for our kids to help make my parenting that much easier. I know this is wishful thinking, but at some point, freedom of speech is taking to a point of hurting our society and not helping.
What is this 'luring' ?
I've been browsing the web for ~15 years now, and I've _never_ ended up at a porn site "accidentally". If your kids are hitting porn sites, it's because they're looking for them deliberately.
Whats up with this camera guy, does he have Parkinsons or something?
No, the whole "shaky handycam style" is just the way it's done these days - it's been ruining films (especially action films) for a decade now. BSG, to its credit, does seem to keep it to a relatively minimum.
The Blair Witch Project has a lot to answer for.
Next question.
My experience is that users who intensively use filesharing applications often suffer from heavily fragmented files
They probably do - that would be the kind of scenario where fragmentation happens. I sincerely doubt it's having any meaningful performance impact, however (unless they're torrenting on the company's fileserver).
Valid for bounded set of variations of "usable".
Of course. While Vista was usable on that 7-year-old PC, XP would have been a better choice. However, my point is the oft-made suggestion here that you need a fire-breathing quad-core PC with 4GB of RAM and a high-end video card just to run Vista is ridiculous.
Pretty much all those "low-end" PCs that run Vista badly, would run it quite well if they had $50 more memory in them (even if they saved $50 by getting a slower CPU). However, since RAM is a concept the average end user can't really wrap their head around, PC sellers typically ramp up the processor speed, disk space and video card specs (as these are easy to advertise) on their machines while leaving memory at inadequate levels.
There were numerous instances of where Vista's performance suffered and still suffers. Granted it's usually due to hardware and application compatibility issues, however, given the length of Vista production time, the final version of the system should not exhibit such symptoms.
My main PC here at work is a ~3 year old dual-core Opteron box with 4G of RAM and some Radeon x300-based video cards. If I didn't regularly fire up VMs, 2G would likely be fine. It is by no means "cutting edge", but it runs Vista fine.
Are you FUDding for an energy company or something? Several hundred million devices suddenly using 200 times less power has got to be worrying the publicly traded energy companies.
Not once everyone starts plugging in their electric cars it won't !
(Of course, that will bring along a whole new set of worries for "energy companies", but it certainly won't be due to losing business.)