Bill Gates way of doing business has always been "evil".
If you think Bill Gates's way of doing business is "evil", then you have either lived an exceptionally sheltered life, or have such a low bar for what "evil" is that it's worthless.
Yes but all those releases were incremental upgrades to Windows. They changed parts but the overall design of Windows was the same. Vista took so long because it was a rather large change in the design of Windows.
No, it wasn't. Vista *was* a major upgrade, but it didn't change the design of Windows NT significantly. It "took so long" because - as another poster mentioned - poor project management meant it was essentially started again from scrach ca mid-2004. Taking that into account, the development of Vista took pretty much exactly as long as you'd expect it to have - about 3 years.
On the other hand, I had a Samsung disk that ran at 40 C tops, in a worse drive bay too! The Maxtor one had free air passage in the middle bay (no drives nearby), where the Samsung was side-by-side with the metal casing.
However, Google's data doesn't appear to have a lot of points when temperatures get over 45 degrees or so (as to be expected, since most of their drives are in a climate controlled machine room).
The average drive temperature in the typical home PC would be *at least* 40 degrees, if not higher. While it's been some time since I checked, I seem to recall the drive in my mum's G5 iMac was around 50 degrees when the machine was _idle_.
Google's data is useful for server room environments, but I'd be hesistant to extrapolate it to drives that aren't kept in a server room with a ~20 degrees C ambient temperature and have active cooling.
But there is one key aspect of the X story that has to be remembered: Apple was effectively a dead platform with a small user base. The vast majority of active Mac users today are new to the platform, or on a new-ish machine. There was little to no installed base to lose.
It's worth pointing out that by any measure one could call the Macintosh a "dead platform" in the '90s, Linux would be a dusty pile of bones.
Will they really do what Apple did and help themselves to a new round of BSD injections or are they just going to shuffle their own cards into new piles?
God, I hope not. The world doesn't need another UNIX.
Please don't try to blame those "lazy" "third party" developers again.
What ? Upwards of 90% of Windows's "problems" are directly attributable to third party code.
The only explanations for Vista's lack of backward compatibility are incompetence or malice.
There are few products that have better backwards compatibility than Vista.
You have to be off your rocker if you think that Microsoft does not view the ability to run legacy applications as a competitive threat.
The level of delusion necessary to look at Microsoft's history and come to this conclusion is truly staggering.
I'm being quite careful to distinguish price from value, here. Artificial scarcity raises prices without changing the value per copy (to first order approximation). Value only changes significantly with price for a small minority of luxury goods. I'm quite sure music and books and such aren't among them -- though something like a $1000 concert ticket might be.
I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying. My interpretation of your argument is that if a person considers something has a "value" of X, then they will pay X, even if that something is selling for a price of Y (where Y<X).
I also don't see how price and value can be independent. No-one pays any more than the absolute minimum they have to. Similarly, no-one sells for any less than the maximum they can. You appear to be saying that if the maximum amount something can be sold for plummets, people will still keep paying the old price because their perception of "value" has no reason to change.
That shows deep ignorance. Power usage versus performance is a well known trade-off. You can't have more chances for one without more chances for the other.
Something I haven't disputed. All I've pointed out is that performance has improved at a _vastly_ greater rate than power usage.
Now, about "Moore law" the way you define it, it didn't hold for the last iteration, did it?
The Eee came out in October '07. It won't even hit the end of its first "Moore's Law iteration" until nearly halfway through next year.
I predict an Eee PC will be released next year with a dual-core CPU at a bit under 1Ghz (underclocked from a stock speed of about 1.3Ghz), 2G or 4G RAM and 16 or 32G of flash. I also predict its battery life will be basically the same. Would you care to place a wager ?
I will also bet ten times that amount there isn't an Eee PC with the same specs as today's, but twice the battery life (excepting some amazing breakthrough in battery or other energy storage technology).
I haven't played with Vista yet, but I'm not naive. It was well known that this sort of stream protection was desired by Microsoft as a core feature of the operating system, beyond the control of the user. I know that they implemented something along those lines with the PVP stuff. What I do not know is the extent to which access to existing non-DRM material is hindered, nor what Microsoft's attitude toward things might be in a few years with the locks more usable. Perhaps they decide that ripping an existing Audio CD is too likely to involve a copyright violation, and should be prohibited. They're moving dangerously close to enforcing the rights of copyright holders in dubious legal situations. I don't want it. Don't need their grubby paws on my output streams. Particularly when I have no use for DRM encumbered content.
Well, you can continue with baseless speculation, or you can actually learn about the sitaution and find out that DRM restrictions are only applied when an application requests them.
You can also continue with the paranoia if you want, but there's an utter lack of any sort of precedent for the scenario you are positing. Nor is there any rational argument in favour of it, given Microsoft has nothing to gain and a lot to lose from partaking in the behaviour you describe.
I commented because the parent poster implied that simple playback of content is all that a user should desire or require. I expect to be able to be more with my data. Why the hell should Microsoft or a content holder be at all involved with the way I choose to manipulate data between my PC and my eyes/ears, for any of a million presumably legal uses of the data. If I did have an encumbered piece of music, I have an "analog" right (capability?) to use any equalizer to manipulate the data presentation to my own ears. That "right" apparently does not extend to the digital realm in Microsoft's view. It is a permission to be requested. I don't feel that I need to request permission from Microsoft when I am obeying the law.
Stop blaming Microsoft for something they have essentially zero influence over. You don't "request" anything from them. Whether or not DRM allows or stops you from doing something with media you purchase is 100%, completely and utterly, in the hands of that media's publisher.
You are essentially arguing that the gunsmith is responsible if someone gets shot. They're not, and neither is Microsoft if someone decides to encumber their content with DRM.
Make no mistake. The only people who are responsible for DRM-encumbering are those releasing DRMed content. The companies making DVD and Blu-Ray players aren't the cause of DRM, and neither is Microsoft. You will never, ever defeat DRM by shooting the messenger.
You really don't remember 2000 all that much as it seems:p
I remember it quite well. The "relatively top of the line PC" I bought (well, built) in 2000 has the specs I quoted. It wasn't particularly expensive (mainly because I couldn't afford anything particularly expensive), although it certainly wasn't "budget". It could certainly have been a lot more powerful than it was, had I been able to spend the money. I would guesstimate that it was relatively comparable to the class of PC you could build today for around US$800.
The only person here who doesn't "remember 2000 all that much" is the OP. 2000 was a bumper year for cheap computing power. RAM prices were crashing, Abit had recently released the affordable, dual-CPU BP6 motherboard, Celerons were an overclocker's dream come true and AMD was giving Intel a big scare.
My point is the system you pointed out as minimal is something I wouldn't call commonplace in 2000.
I never said it was commonplace (although it certainly wasn't uncommon amongst higher-end users).
I have never, at any point, said Vista would run on the average PC from 2000. I said the oldest PCs that would be likel to run Vista usably (with some upgrades) would date from about 2000.
Which brings the next question: Why do it? What does Vista bring to the table XP did not? I'm talking about something that would justify an upgrade, a new system, or generally the increased need of resources. All this comes with a cost in time and money.
If Vista does not bring any real advantages, especially to the Eee PC market, why not stick to Linux or even XP which are undoubtedly lighter?
These are decisions for the user. I'm just pointing out that the crticisms of Vista are mostly bollocks.
Personally, I like UAC, search and the UI updates. Not enough to run Vista instead of XP on an old PC, but certainly enough to see no reason not to run it given the opportunity.
It's not only the CPU that draws power. Vista's indexing gives the HD a good hammering for instance. But anyhow, what would the business case be for putting Vista on the Eee PC instead of Linux or XP? Having the processing power to run Vista, does not on its own justify running it. Or at least it should not.
You seem to think I'm arguing that the Eee PC should have Vista on it. I'm not. I'm pointing out that it *can* run it for those who want to, although it will not be an ideal "experience".
At no point have I recommended putting Vista on an Eee. I have merely pointed out the flaws in certain arguments against doing so, in particular with regards to gross exaggerations of Vista's hardware requirements (which are neither particularly high, nor unreasonable).
Wealth and value are the same thing. Supply and demand sets price, not value -- value is the utility of the object to the consumer.
Then we're talking about price. Apologies for not using the appropriate economist terminology.
The fact that creating a copy of a book costs nothing does not change its value to me as a consumer (ignoring, of course, any pleasure I derive from the book as a physical object -- I'm speaking here of reading an electronic copy). Artificial scarcity raises the price without changing the value, thereby passing more of that value to the producer (via the sale transaction).
But now you appear to be conflating "value" and "price". "Value" to the consumer is not an independent variable. If they feel a book is worth $20, but they see it for $10, they're not going to pay $20 just because that's the "value" it has.
The perception of "value" is influenced by price. If prices drop, so does the perception of "value".
So many people are this far out of the target market already, it's not even funny.
Not really. Most people replace their computers every 3-5 years.
And on a sidenote: less than the system you stated, is not 10+ years old, it's 7+.
A system incapable of taking a Ghz-class CPU and 1GB of RAM is much closer to 10 years old than 7.
Not speaking for tepples here, but not a lot of people are into buying new computers like the geeks are. To these people, XP and Linux are just fine.
Even my parents, who are about as computer illiterate as it's possible to be, have averaged a new computer every 5 years. A PC that hasn't been replaced for 7+ years is *old*, by anyone's standards. The fact it can't run cutting edge software is neither strange, nor unreasonable.
I like the way you are consistent with your arguments. Today's Eee pc has more computing power than 2000 era PCs. This is a fact.
No, it's not. A mid-to-high PC in 2000 had a 1Ghz CPU, 512M-1GB RAM and a dedicated 32M - 64M video card. A bit under twice an Eee PC (or about where the Eee is likely to be this time next year).
So you'll have to either rephrase this, admit that 2000ish PCs will run Vista albeit very slow (Unusably so. Remember, 512MB of ram was not at all commonplace back then), or admit you're pulling these arguments out of your ass.
512M was not unusual on mid-range to high-end PCs. 2000 was the year of one of the great RAM price crashes, 256M SDRAM DIMMs were selling like hotcakes. My PC in 2000 had 1GB of RAM and it wasn't "expensive".
Further, I have not been stating a 2000-era PC will run Vista *stock* (although a truly high-end one - 1GB+ RAM, dual 1Ghz+ CPUs - would, with the exception of the newer video card necessary for Aero) - I have been saying that with minor upgrades (RAM, video card) and 2000-era PC will run Vista usably.
My arguments and specifications are completely consistent. You get a usable Vista install from a ~1Ghz CPU, 1 - 1.5G RAM and an Aero-capable video card.
GP's points still stand. There is nothing in Vista, feature-wise, that is worth the hassle of upgrading to it from XP.
That depends entirely on your perspective.
I think you missed the point of the Eee pc by a mile.
No, I did not. However, many people seem to be missing my point by a mile, which is that computing power increases vastly more quickly than power saving capabilities (and than prices decrease). Today's CPUs don't use the half the power of 18-month old CPUs, but they *are* around twice as fast (and the 18 months old ones aren't half the price). This is a common pattern. It means in 18 months Asus won't be able to put a CPU using significantly less power or costing significantly less, into an Eee PC, but they will be able to put one in that is significantly faster.
Still: the (AUD) $1000 price comparison was more intended to contrast a "full featured" Vista Premium capable notebook (why would you bother with Vista Basic?) against something like the Eee PC or bargain notebook which I suspect would not be blazing fast with Vista even today.
It's still too high. A dual-core, 2Ghz 13" MacBook with 2G RAM - far from the cheapest option - was about $1500 in June 2007, and it would make a very capable Vista machine.
A couple of hundred bucks, ten months ago, would be enough to take the average low end laptop to 2G of RAM. That's really all it would have needed to be "full featured Vista Premium".
So, you're saying the gaming machine I bought in 2000 could run Vista? It was relatively top-of-the-line, though it was purchased on a student budget so it skimped in a few areas.
The PC I bought in 2000 can certainly run Vista, with some minor upgrades (RAM, video card).
I know this because I still own the machine (I use it for playing old DOS-era games) and tried Vista out on it for a week, just for shits and giggles. While it certainly wasn't a speed demon, it performed noticably better than OS X Tiger on a more powerful, 2004-era iBook.
A "relatively top of the line" PC in 2000 with only 64M of RAM ? Please, if you're going to just make shit up, at least put some effort into it. In 2000, 512M - 1G of RAM was not uncommon. The idea of a "gaming PC" bought in 2000 with only 64M of RAM is just laughable. Heck, even the iMac of the day came with 128MB, and Apple weren't exactly known for stuffing their machines with RAM by default.
I would expect a "relatively top of the line PC" in 2000 to have had 512M RAM, a ~900Mhz CPU and a GeForce 256.
Minor upgrades my ass, you'd be replacing everything but the case.
Rubbish. Even with the bogus specs above, all you need to upgrade is 1 - 1.5G of RAM and a $30ish video card.
It is for people like me without a lot of disposable income. Upgrading to a CPU that fast and that much RAM would require a new motherboard.
Since you appear to have a PC 10+ years old, why are you even bothering to comment ? You're so far out of the target market it's not even funny.
Worse, makers of peripherals such as printers, scanners, network cards, TV input cards, and the like have used the Windows Vista driver model transition as a way to make their customers repurchase all their peripherals.
Rubbish.
Consensus is that UAC was handled poorly, as an annoyance that just trains users to press "allow" (or however it is translated in a given localized version) all the time.
UAC works just like its equivalents in OS X and Linux. Better, if anything.
And the "better utilisation of hardware resources" is arguable; I've read benchmarks both ways.
Vista will make far better use of (today's high-end, tomorrows, low-end) multicore, multi-GPU, large RAM machines than XP ever will.
This statement is lame. What is "one iteration" exactly?
About 18 months to get the standard "twice the computer power at the same price" colloquial definition of "Moore's Law".
Do you think the successor of the eee PC will be able to run the current version of Windows Vista?
The _current_ Eee PC could run Vista, albeit slowly.
For your information, that succcessor has already been announced and is the eee PC 900 and Asus did not put ANY effort of making it Vista-capable. And they never will. Why? Because people have already voted with their wallets, massively supporting a Linux-based ultraportable laptop.
What is this special "effort" you think they need to put in ? All Vista needs is a somewhat modern CPU, 1-2G RAM and sufficient space to install.
All in all, the GP was spot on and showed much more thinking before posting than you did.
The GP ignored that last twenty years of history to insist laptops are going to freeze at the specifications of the Eee PC and instead start making similar increases in battery life. This scenario is unlikely, to say the least.
Firstly, NT supports SMP, but it doesn't scale well to utilise it. Windows Server 2008 might be tolerable, but it's not going to compete with current, let alone future, Linux, and the higher the core count, the bigger the divide gets.
Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates way of doing business has always been "evil".
If you think Bill Gates's way of doing business is "evil", then you have either lived an exceptionally sheltered life, or have such a low bar for what "evil" is that it's worthless.
XP is just Windows 2000 with eye candy, some extra bundled components and drivers, and restrictive DRM.
Operating systems don't have "restrictive DRM". Only content does.
This is because DRM is an attribute of the content, not the device used to access it.
Yes but all those releases were incremental upgrades to Windows. They changed parts but the overall design of Windows was the same. Vista took so long because it was a rather large change in the design of Windows.
No, it wasn't. Vista *was* a major upgrade, but it didn't change the design of Windows NT significantly. It "took so long" because - as another poster mentioned - poor project management meant it was essentially started again from scrach ca mid-2004. Taking that into account, the development of Vista took pretty much exactly as long as you'd expect it to have - about 3 years.
I've been betting on Google for the next Evil Empire (for one thing, I like the irony), but Apple just might have a shot.
Apple will never be the "Evil Empire" because they will never have sufficient marketshare. The Steve would never allow his baby to become so "common".
(Besides, Apple is - and always has been - as much a corporate arsehole as any other company.)
How the hell can they be adding value is way beyond me.
By having larger amounts of data and more skill in interpreting it.
On the other hand, I had a Samsung disk that ran at 40 C tops, in a worse drive bay too! The Maxtor one had free air passage in the middle bay (no drives nearby), where the Samsung was side-by-side with the metal casing.
Air is a much better insulator than metal.
However, Google's data doesn't appear to have a lot of points when temperatures get over 45 degrees or so (as to be expected, since most of their drives are in a climate controlled machine room).
The average drive temperature in the typical home PC would be *at least* 40 degrees, if not higher. While it's been some time since I checked, I seem to recall the drive in my mum's G5 iMac was around 50 degrees when the machine was _idle_.
Google's data is useful for server room environments, but I'd be hesistant to extrapolate it to drives that aren't kept in a server room with a ~20 degrees C ambient temperature and have active cooling.
So your complaint is the Windows kernel is as insecure as every other kernel ?
The kernel is fundamentally insecure, period.
In what way ?
But there is one key aspect of the X story that has to be remembered: Apple was effectively a dead platform with a small user base. The vast majority of active Mac users today are new to the platform, or on a new-ish machine. There was little to no installed base to lose.
It's worth pointing out that by any measure one could call the Macintosh a "dead platform" in the '90s, Linux would be a dusty pile of bones.
Will they really do what Apple did and help themselves to a new round of BSD injections or are they just going to shuffle their own cards into new piles?
God, I hope not. The world doesn't need another UNIX.
Please don't try to blame those "lazy" "third party" developers again.
What ? Upwards of 90% of Windows's "problems" are directly attributable to third party code.
The only explanations for Vista's lack of backward compatibility are incompetence or malice.
There are few products that have better backwards compatibility than Vista.
You have to be off your rocker if you think that Microsoft does not view the ability to run legacy applications as a competitive threat.
The level of delusion necessary to look at Microsoft's history and come to this conclusion is truly staggering.
I'm being quite careful to distinguish price from value, here. Artificial scarcity raises prices without changing the value per copy (to first order approximation). Value only changes significantly with price for a small minority of luxury goods. I'm quite sure music and books and such aren't among them -- though something like a $1000 concert ticket might be.
I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying. My interpretation of your argument is that if a person considers something has a "value" of X, then they will pay X, even if that something is selling for a price of Y (where Y<X).
I also don't see how price and value can be independent. No-one pays any more than the absolute minimum they have to. Similarly, no-one sells for any less than the maximum they can. You appear to be saying that if the maximum amount something can be sold for plummets, people will still keep paying the old price because their perception of "value" has no reason to change.
That shows deep ignorance. Power usage versus performance is a well known trade-off. You can't have more chances for one without more chances for the other.
Something I haven't disputed. All I've pointed out is that performance has improved at a _vastly_ greater rate than power usage.
Now, about "Moore law" the way you define it, it didn't hold for the last iteration, did it?
The Eee came out in October '07. It won't even hit the end of its first "Moore's Law iteration" until nearly halfway through next year.
I predict an Eee PC will be released next year with a dual-core CPU at a bit under 1Ghz (underclocked from a stock speed of about 1.3Ghz), 2G or 4G RAM and 16 or 32G of flash. I also predict its battery life will be basically the same. Would you care to place a wager ?
I will also bet ten times that amount there isn't an Eee PC with the same specs as today's, but twice the battery life (excepting some amazing breakthrough in battery or other energy storage technology).
I haven't played with Vista yet, but I'm not naive. It was well known that this sort of stream protection was desired by Microsoft as a core feature of the operating system, beyond the control of the user. I know that they implemented something along those lines with the PVP stuff. What I do not know is the extent to which access to existing non-DRM material is hindered, nor what Microsoft's attitude toward things might be in a few years with the locks more usable. Perhaps they decide that ripping an existing Audio CD is too likely to involve a copyright violation, and should be prohibited. They're moving dangerously close to enforcing the rights of copyright holders in dubious legal situations. I don't want it. Don't need their grubby paws on my output streams. Particularly when I have no use for DRM encumbered content.
Well, you can continue with baseless speculation, or you can actually learn about the sitaution and find out that DRM restrictions are only applied when an application requests them.
You can also continue with the paranoia if you want, but there's an utter lack of any sort of precedent for the scenario you are positing. Nor is there any rational argument in favour of it, given Microsoft has nothing to gain and a lot to lose from partaking in the behaviour you describe.
I commented because the parent poster implied that simple playback of content is all that a user should desire or require. I expect to be able to be more with my data. Why the hell should Microsoft or a content holder be at all involved with the way I choose to manipulate data between my PC and my eyes/ears, for any of a million presumably legal uses of the data. If I did have an encumbered piece of music, I have an "analog" right (capability?) to use any equalizer to manipulate the data presentation to my own ears. That "right" apparently does not extend to the digital realm in Microsoft's view. It is a permission to be requested. I don't feel that I need to request permission from Microsoft when I am obeying the law.
Stop blaming Microsoft for something they have essentially zero influence over. You don't "request" anything from them. Whether or not DRM allows or stops you from doing something with media you purchase is 100%, completely and utterly, in the hands of that media's publisher.
You are essentially arguing that the gunsmith is responsible if someone gets shot. They're not, and neither is Microsoft if someone decides to encumber their content with DRM.
Make no mistake. The only people who are responsible for DRM-encumbering are those releasing DRMed content. The companies making DVD and Blu-Ray players aren't the cause of DRM, and neither is Microsoft. You will never, ever defeat DRM by shooting the messenger.
You really don't remember 2000 all that much as it seems :p
I remember it quite well. The "relatively top of the line PC" I bought (well, built) in 2000 has the specs I quoted. It wasn't particularly expensive (mainly because I couldn't afford anything particularly expensive), although it certainly wasn't "budget". It could certainly have been a lot more powerful than it was, had I been able to spend the money. I would guesstimate that it was relatively comparable to the class of PC you could build today for around US$800.
The only person here who doesn't "remember 2000 all that much" is the OP. 2000 was a bumper year for cheap computing power. RAM prices were crashing, Abit had recently released the affordable, dual-CPU BP6 motherboard, Celerons were an overclocker's dream come true and AMD was giving Intel a big scare.
My point is the system you pointed out as minimal is something I wouldn't call commonplace in 2000.
I never said it was commonplace (although it certainly wasn't uncommon amongst higher-end users).
I have never, at any point, said Vista would run on the average PC from 2000. I said the oldest PCs that would be likel to run Vista usably (with some upgrades) would date from about 2000.
Which brings the next question: Why do it? What does Vista bring to the table XP did not? I'm talking about something that would justify an upgrade, a new system, or generally the increased need of resources. All this comes with a cost in time and money.
If Vista does not bring any real advantages, especially to the Eee PC market, why not stick to Linux or even XP which are undoubtedly lighter?
These are decisions for the user. I'm just pointing out that the crticisms of Vista are mostly bollocks.
Personally, I like UAC, search and the UI updates. Not enough to run Vista instead of XP on an old PC, but certainly enough to see no reason not to run it given the opportunity.
It's not only the CPU that draws power. Vista's indexing gives the HD a good hammering for instance. But anyhow, what would the business case be for putting Vista on the Eee PC instead of Linux or XP? Having the processing power to run Vista, does not on its own justify running it. Or at least it should not.
You seem to think I'm arguing that the Eee PC should have Vista on it. I'm not. I'm pointing out that it *can* run it for those who want to, although it will not be an ideal "experience".
At no point have I recommended putting Vista on an Eee. I have merely pointed out the flaws in certain arguments against doing so, in particular with regards to gross exaggerations of Vista's hardware requirements (which are neither particularly high, nor unreasonable).
Wealth and value are the same thing. Supply and demand sets price, not value -- value is the utility of the object to the consumer.
Then we're talking about price. Apologies for not using the appropriate economist terminology.
The fact that creating a copy of a book costs nothing does not change its value to me as a consumer (ignoring, of course, any pleasure I derive from the book as a physical object -- I'm speaking here of reading an electronic copy). Artificial scarcity raises the price without changing the value, thereby passing more of that value to the producer (via the sale transaction).
But now you appear to be conflating "value" and "price". "Value" to the consumer is not an independent variable. If they feel a book is worth $20, but they see it for $10, they're not going to pay $20 just because that's the "value" it has.
The perception of "value" is influenced by price. If prices drop, so does the perception of "value".
So many people are this far out of the target market already, it's not even funny.
Not really. Most people replace their computers every 3-5 years.
And on a sidenote: less than the system you stated, is not 10+ years old, it's 7+.
A system incapable of taking a Ghz-class CPU and 1GB of RAM is much closer to 10 years old than 7.
Not speaking for tepples here, but not a lot of people are into buying new computers like the geeks are. To these people, XP and Linux are just fine.
Even my parents, who are about as computer illiterate as it's possible to be, have averaged a new computer every 5 years. A PC that hasn't been replaced for 7+ years is *old*, by anyone's standards. The fact it can't run cutting edge software is neither strange, nor unreasonable.
I like the way you are consistent with your arguments. Today's Eee pc has more computing power than 2000 era PCs. This is a fact.
No, it's not. A mid-to-high PC in 2000 had a 1Ghz CPU, 512M-1GB RAM and a dedicated 32M - 64M video card. A bit under twice an Eee PC (or about where the Eee is likely to be this time next year).
So you'll have to either rephrase this, admit that 2000ish PCs will run Vista albeit very slow (Unusably so. Remember, 512MB of ram was not at all commonplace back then), or admit you're pulling these arguments out of your ass.
512M was not unusual on mid-range to high-end PCs. 2000 was the year of one of the great RAM price crashes, 256M SDRAM DIMMs were selling like hotcakes. My PC in 2000 had 1GB of RAM and it wasn't "expensive".
Further, I have not been stating a 2000-era PC will run Vista *stock* (although a truly high-end one - 1GB+ RAM, dual 1Ghz+ CPUs - would, with the exception of the newer video card necessary for Aero) - I have been saying that with minor upgrades (RAM, video card) and 2000-era PC will run Vista usably.
My arguments and specifications are completely consistent. You get a usable Vista install from a ~1Ghz CPU, 1 - 1.5G RAM and an Aero-capable video card.
GP's points still stand. There is nothing in Vista, feature-wise, that is worth the hassle of upgrading to it from XP.
That depends entirely on your perspective.
I think you missed the point of the Eee pc by a mile.
No, I did not. However, many people seem to be missing my point by a mile, which is that computing power increases vastly more quickly than power saving capabilities (and than prices decrease). Today's CPUs don't use the half the power of 18-month old CPUs, but they *are* around twice as fast (and the 18 months old ones aren't half the price). This is a common pattern. It means in 18 months Asus won't be able to put a CPU using significantly less power or costing significantly less, into an Eee PC, but they will be able to put one in that is significantly faster.
Still: the (AUD) $1000 price comparison was more intended to contrast a "full featured" Vista Premium capable notebook (why would you bother with Vista Basic?) against something like the Eee PC or bargain notebook which I suspect would not be blazing fast with Vista even today.
It's still too high. A dual-core, 2Ghz 13" MacBook with 2G RAM - far from the cheapest option - was about $1500 in June 2007, and it would make a very capable Vista machine.
A couple of hundred bucks, ten months ago, would be enough to take the average low end laptop to 2G of RAM. That's really all it would have needed to be "full featured Vista Premium".
So, you're saying the gaming machine I bought in 2000 could run Vista? It was relatively top-of-the-line, though it was purchased on a student budget so it skimped in a few areas.
The PC I bought in 2000 can certainly run Vista, with some minor upgrades (RAM, video card).
I know this because I still own the machine (I use it for playing old DOS-era games) and tried Vista out on it for a week, just for shits and giggles. While it certainly wasn't a speed demon, it performed noticably better than OS X Tiger on a more powerful, 2004-era iBook.
Let's see. Athlon Slot-A 700MHz. Voodoo3 graphics. 64MB RAM (later upgraded to 128MB). 17GB 5400rpm hard drive. 1.44 floppy! 24x CDROM reader. 250W Athlon-approved powersupply.
A "relatively top of the line" PC in 2000 with only 64M of RAM ? Please, if you're going to just make shit up, at least put some effort into it. In 2000, 512M - 1G of RAM was not uncommon. The idea of a "gaming PC" bought in 2000 with only 64M of RAM is just laughable. Heck, even the iMac of the day came with 128MB, and Apple weren't exactly known for stuffing their machines with RAM by default.
I would expect a "relatively top of the line PC" in 2000 to have had 512M RAM, a ~900Mhz CPU and a GeForce 256.
Minor upgrades my ass, you'd be replacing everything but the case.
Rubbish. Even with the bogus specs above, all you need to upgrade is 1 - 1.5G of RAM and a $30ish video card.
It is for people like me without a lot of disposable income. Upgrading to a CPU that fast and that much RAM would require a new motherboard.
Since you appear to have a PC 10+ years old, why are you even bothering to comment ? You're so far out of the target market it's not even funny.
Worse, makers of peripherals such as printers, scanners, network cards, TV input cards, and the like have used the Windows Vista driver model transition as a way to make their customers repurchase all their peripherals.
Rubbish.
Consensus is that UAC was handled poorly, as an annoyance that just trains users to press "allow" (or however it is translated in a given localized version) all the time.
UAC works just like its equivalents in OS X and Linux. Better, if anything.
And the "better utilisation of hardware resources" is arguable; I've read benchmarks both ways.
Vista will make far better use of (today's high-end, tomorrows, low-end) multicore, multi-GPU, large RAM machines than XP ever will.
This statement is lame. What is "one iteration" exactly?
About 18 months to get the standard "twice the computer power at the same price" colloquial definition of "Moore's Law".
Do you think the successor of the eee PC will be able to run the current version of Windows Vista?
The _current_ Eee PC could run Vista, albeit slowly.
For your information, that succcessor has already been announced and is the eee PC 900 and Asus did not put ANY effort of making it Vista-capable. And they never will. Why? Because people have already voted with their wallets, massively supporting a Linux-based ultraportable laptop.
What is this special "effort" you think they need to put in ? All Vista needs is a somewhat modern CPU, 1-2G RAM and sufficient space to install.
All in all, the GP was spot on and showed much more thinking before posting than you did.
The GP ignored that last twenty years of history to insist laptops are going to freeze at the specifications of the Eee PC and instead start making similar increases in battery life. This scenario is unlikely, to say the least.
Pure horse crap. Total bullshit.
A ~1Ghz P3 or Athlon with 1.5G RAM and an Nvidia ~FX5600 will run Vista quite usably.
Firstly, NT supports SMP, but it doesn't scale well to utilise it. Windows Server 2008 might be tolerable, but it's not going to compete with current, let alone future, Linux, and the higher the core count, the bigger the divide gets.
Benchmarks ?