He has had to have his Windows system reinstalled 4 times, Why? You didnt do something silly like give your 4 year old an account with root access to the system, unpatched, and then send him off browsing the web did you?
1. Buy a laptop with some Linux distro preinstalled This only works if you can live with generic white-box computers, or consumer level crap.
For example, I'm sitting here using an HP Compaq 8710w laptop. Very nice, 17" screen, very sweet. The build and packaging in the frame and construction is fantastic.
You just cant get that kind of equipment with Linux pre-installed.
Even with Dell, its mostly the consumer level garbage that has linux preinstalled, and that stuff is useless.
Ubuntu in particular deals poorly (ie, for hardware support) on modern corporate laptops.
They struggle with the NVidia cards, they struggle with the intel or broadcom wifi.
Ubuntu seems to be targeted for supporting consumer level hardware, and really seem to struggle with the modern corporate kit (dell d630, d830, etc... hp compaq 8710w, 8510w, etc).
SuSE does better here, but even that, I never was able to get my damn wifi to work on the last 2 laptops I had. Very frustrating stuff.
AT&T uses an archaic technology for data connectivity.
Both Sprint and Verizon's service (based on EVDO RevA) are significantly faster. Maybe not in your specific area, but in the underlying technology, its not even close.
In particular, the latency and packetloss of AT&T's data service is just terrible. Much worse than the first-gen EVDO. And latency was one of the big improvements with EVDO RevA.
And even if you get a solid, synchronous, 1mbps link on your AT&T phone (which I dont believe for a second), thats significantly slower than a T-Mobile hotspot at a Starbucks.
Not to mention the huge packetloss and latency differences. Try doing a VPN to your office, and then doing file sharing (CIFS) across that supposed 1mbps link. You'll see how bad it is.
And maybe I'm just getting old, but I've never drug my laptop out to Starbucks because I think it's just this side of insanity to whip out a machine I paid two grand for, show it off to the world, and then get back on the subway a couple of hours later, making me a perfect target for muggers and thieves. Where do you live, Baghdad?
Everywhere I go, every tom, dick and harry (and their dog) has a $2000-3000 macbook or macbook pro. I'm not sure what would make a mid-range laptop stand out in the crowd, to make you a target for attack.
If you're really worried about it, consider getting a CCW, and start carrying a handgun. Or at least taser, pepper spray, or a baton or similar.
Seriously.. small shops have been doing this for years. DSL is down in the $20/month range and a wireless router is cheap. Yeah, and you get what you pay for.
$20 per month and a cheap wifi router does not give you the same quality connection as you get with T-Mobile in a starbucks.
There you get a low-latency, synchronous* 1.5mbps connection, with reasonable quality cisco equipment.
$20 per month of DSL backhaul will, maybe, get you a 384/128 kbps (down/up speeds). Thats just crap.
* Actually I dont know whethers its synchronous, but its close if not. I've had to push files from my laptop via CIFS on top of a VPN now and then and it was reasonably fast. I've not run a dslreports speed test from there in years though, and dont remember what it comes out to.
They over-roast the beans to make the - ahem - "quality" consistent, and then you have to drown it in milk or cream to make it drinkable. You do of course realize that for a very large chunk of the population (ie, starbucks customers) this is exactly how they like it roasted.
For those of us, what you call a 'regular roast' is watery and bland.
Now mind you, a Toddy (sp?) or a french press tastes better, and Starbucks will sell you the latter. Wish they would the former.
The coffee shop chains are a rip-off - let's face it, how else could Starbucks have two shops within 2 minutes walk of each other in an average-sized town centre like mine. Wait, are you saying that your evidence for Starbucks being a ripoff is its insane success and high (and repeat) volume of customers willing to pay a price premium? So much so that several stores within a few minutes walk of each other can operate successfully?
I think this is evidence that, at the very least, Starbucks has its customers believe its very much NOT a ripoff.
If I was still paying $20/month to T-Mobile this'd sure be the end of it. What's left in their network besides Borders bookstores? Airports (go go DFW), Hotels, and of course, Starbucks.
If you read TFA, T-Mobile customers will still be able to roam for free into Starbucks hotspots.
I do not understand how Starbucks can justify charging. Who actually pays for this? Starbucks doesnt charge, T-Mobile does. I'm sure there are kickbacks in both directions on the deal though.
And as I've said to others before, there are compelling reasons for some folks.
For me, its mostly about convenience, quality, consistency, and ubiquity.
Everywhere I go in the city, or across the country, there's a starbucks. And I'm going there anyway to get my coffee, so the wifi is convenient. If I have to go hunting around for local coffee shops, and then the subsets of those that have free wifi, and then the subset of those where the wifi is actually up and functioning, I've spent far more than the $30 per month, in value of my time.
T-Mobile hotspots are pretty much always up, always work, and are always fast. The opposite is often true of the local shops. The wifi is down, or someone is bittorrenting off it, or the folks running it dont know any better and restart the network equip in the wrong order. I dont need that hassle, I want it to 'just work'. T-Mobile does this for me.
It's not for everybody, I agree. But with this combo, anywhere in the country I go I can find a good cup of coffee, and fast, reliable wifi that just works with no hassle. It's a no-brainer for $30 per month, at least in my case.
And those are the folks who they are appealing to.
As opposed to Starbucks, which serves expensive bad coffee, has a horrible attitude, then charges you for wireless? Where I'm at, drip coffee from starbucks is like a buck and a half to two bucks, depending on the size, and a quarter for refills. 4-shots of espresso over ice is like $2.40. Neither is expensive.
You can buy a $5 fancy 700-calorie white mocha if you want, but no one is making you.
And 'horrible attitude'? What planet are you living on?
Everyplace I've been across this country, the Starbucks folks are significantly and noticeably more pleasant, friendly, fun, and make every attempt to remember you and your drink if you go there more than twice. And its that way no matter where you go, from Pike Place market in Seattle, to Phoenix, to bumfuck Indiana, to New York.
If they're not, you go to the website, and complain about it. They get their butts kicked by the area manager.
And frankly, I'd rather pay $30 per month for consistent, reliable, fast wifi thats everywhere I go throughout the entire country, than argue with the owner of some mom and pop shop with free wifi who cant figure out that you have to reboot the cable modem before the wap otherwise it doesnt work right.
Usually for the quality and consistency of service.
In the last 4+ years I've been using it, I think I've only seen downtime twice. Both times a call to the people got it resolved (restarted the local equipment) or a refund for the month.
Compare that to the local mom and pop, the damn thing is crappy, service is slow, it goes down all the time. It's generally unreliable, and downtime is more like one out of every 5 visits.
Okay, sorry... yeah, I did sound like kind of an ass in that post.
Thats what I get for posting to/. at midnight at the end of a long work day.
For some reason that whole bestbuy thing just broke my brain late in the night.
Anyway, nice find on the cheapy dual-core box at best buy. I got an open box (not missing anything) onkyo home theatre system for super cheap there not too long ago, great deal. Totally understand.
You're right, in that the 2nd core helps. But my previous laptop was also a C2D, running XP Pro, and I seem to notice a difference.
Of course, it could be attributable to any number of things as well.
And you're right, I remember noticing that on the rare dual-processor desktop/workstation back in the win2000-pro days, how much smoother the UI seemed to be.
All that being said... my personal observation/opinion is that the Vista UI (aero) is by far and away the most stable, resilient to network issues, and responsive under load of the windows OS's. Even when switching networks, or dropping and raising VPNs all day long, the UI just keeps on chugging, no hangs, no tears, no lockups. This would often cause big problems on the XP desktop.
The disk i/o is teh worst part of Vista more than anything. One of the things they advertised with Vista is a vastly improved I/O scheduler, which should keep the machine much more responsive under heavy I/O load.
I've definitely found this to be true on my machine. Even with the slow laptop drive, disc thrashing doesnt really impact the UI responsiveness. For the most part at least. Definately significantly improved on every NT machine I've ever owned before at least.
You (or your employer) pays for an MSDN subscription for you, but you buy your computers at BestBuy?
That cant be right. No one who has a need for an MSDN subscription would be naive enough to buy their computers from a retail store. Thats basically a suckers game, and anyone who's been doing work in technology has known that. Only uninformed consumers buy the low-end consumer-level crap that is sold at BestBuy and similar. Thats like buying a $50 inkjet/bubblejet printer because its 'cheap'.
Those who work in this industry buy their equipment from Dell, IBM, or HP, or they white box their own through newegg.com or tiger or whatever.
Now I'm not trying to flame you or go off topic, but this makes your whole article ring untrue to me. These behaviors do not line up.
Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but that just smells fishy to me.
Are you sure you're using Vista? The vista start menu doesnt have a scrollbar unless you hit the 'all programs' button. Maybe thats what you meant.
And if you're using search, then use search. What you're describing isnt a use of search.
Hit [Windows-key], type 'filezilla', hit [Return].
Filezilla starts.
Thats the search interface on Vista for apps, doesnt require the mouse at all, or waiting for anything to populate.
Mind you, even on my insanely powerful laptop, I can type filezilla and hit return faster than it shows results, but it works, and filezilla is running ~2 seconds after I hit return. I never actually see the results in the search screen.
Did you even read the article?
In Vista, a team saw a problem than no one before saw, and wrote a dedicated, big, complex engine, the File Copy Engine (tm) that, among other things, doesn't use caching in most instances, because it might take extra 128kb of RAM or so, and This Was Bad. What he's talking about isnt a matter of 128k, but rather the potential for complete memory starvation on the remote box.
From the article:
One of the biggest problems with the engines implementation is that for copies involving lots of data, the Cache Manager write-behind thread on the target system often cant keep up with the rate at which data is written and cached in memory. That causes the data to fill up memory, possibly forcing other useful code and data out, and eventually, the targets systems memory to become a tunnel through which all the copied data flows at a rate limited by the disk. And the double-buffering problem:
Another problem they noted was that when copying from a remote system, the files contents are cached twice on the local system: once as the source file is read and a second time as the target file is written. Besides causing memory pressure on the client system for files that likely wont be accessed again, involving the Cache Manager introduces the CPU overhead that it must perform to manage its file mappings of the source and destination files. You continue:
Improvements in SP1: we went back to XP's engine, with some tweaks." Again, thats clearly not what the article states.
From the article:
After much analysis, benchmarking and tuning, the team implemented an algorithm that uses cached I/O for files smaller than 256KB in size. For files larger than 256KB, the engine relies on an internal matrix to determine the number and size of non-cached I/Os it will have in flight at once. The number ranges from 2 for files smaller than 2MB to 8 for files larger than 8MB. The size of the I/O is the file size for files smaller than 1MB, 1MB for files up to 2MB, and 2MB for anything larger. If you're going to gripe about something, at least pick something real, rather than something made up by your lack of willingness to read the article you're bitching about.
There are some real problems here, at least to my eye, that are worthy of bitching:
- overcomplexity, and unexpected behaviors due to uncommon interaction scenarios between many subsystems
- SMB is old and busted, and its tied in deeply to the system
I'm not sure (since its not my area of expertise) how other mature OS's approach some of these problems, but my guess is that most of the Unix-y approaches are simpler. I could be wrong though, as I just dont know.
I'm no software multi-billionaire but I don't really see an excuse for Vista having so many warts and rough edges, especially considering that it brings little new to the table. Vista is massively re-engineered under the hood, compared to XPSP2.
Anytime you make significant changes like this, alot of things break. This was one of the rare times (especially on the x64 versions) where microsoft has done 'the right thing' and broken tons of back compat in the name of a better product.
Just the fact that the bulk of drivers are now out in userspace is huge, and is causing lots of pain from IHVs who arent very good at writing drivers.
This whole Vista thing was an investment in the future for Microsoft. They need to fix some of these 10-year-old design problems, and they're starting to do that with Vista.
Vista is so rough in large part BECAUSE there are so many new things on the table. Unfortunately, they're things that only a systems engineer can appreciate at this point.
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For example, I'm sitting here using an HP Compaq 8710w laptop. Very nice, 17" screen, very sweet. The build and packaging in the frame and construction is fantastic.
You just cant get that kind of equipment with Linux pre-installed.
Even with Dell, its mostly the consumer level garbage that has linux preinstalled, and that stuff is useless.
Ubuntu in particular deals poorly (ie, for hardware support) on modern corporate laptops.
... hp compaq 8710w, 8510w, etc).
They struggle with the NVidia cards, they struggle with the intel or broadcom wifi.
Ubuntu seems to be targeted for supporting consumer level hardware, and really seem to struggle with the modern corporate kit (dell d630, d830, etc
SuSE does better here, but even that, I never was able to get my damn wifi to work on the last 2 laptops I had. Very frustrating stuff.
Are you kidding me?
AT&T uses an archaic technology for data connectivity.
Both Sprint and Verizon's service (based on EVDO RevA) are significantly faster. Maybe not in your specific area, but in the underlying technology, its not even close.
In particular, the latency and packetloss of AT&T's data service is just terrible. Much worse than the first-gen EVDO. And latency was one of the big improvements with EVDO RevA.
And even if you get a solid, synchronous, 1mbps link on your AT&T phone (which I dont believe for a second), thats significantly slower than a T-Mobile hotspot at a Starbucks.
Not to mention the huge packetloss and latency differences. Try doing a VPN to your office, and then doing file sharing (CIFS) across that supposed 1mbps link. You'll see how bad it is.
T-Mobile is the commercial wifi provider for all (or all that I've seen) Starbucks retail stores.
This is a big deal because a lot of IT road-warrior or consultant types live off of starbucks and wifi.
Everywhere I go, every tom, dick and harry (and their dog) has a $2000-3000 macbook or macbook pro. I'm not sure what would make a mid-range laptop stand out in the crowd, to make you a target for attack.
If you're really worried about it, consider getting a CCW, and start carrying a handgun. Or at least taser, pepper spray, or a baton or similar.
$20 per month and a cheap wifi router does not give you the same quality connection as you get with T-Mobile in a starbucks.
There you get a low-latency, synchronous* 1.5mbps connection, with reasonable quality cisco equipment.
$20 per month of DSL backhaul will, maybe, get you a 384/128 kbps (down/up speeds). Thats just crap.
* Actually I dont know whethers its synchronous, but its close if not. I've had to push files from my laptop via CIFS on top of a VPN now and then and it was reasonably fast. I've not run a dslreports speed test from there in years though, and dont remember what it comes out to.
For those of us, what you call a 'regular roast' is watery and bland.
Now mind you, a Toddy (sp?) or a french press tastes better, and Starbucks will sell you the latter. Wish they would the former.
I think this is evidence that, at the very least, Starbucks has its customers believe its very much NOT a ripoff.
Can you be more specific? What didnt you like about it?
What did you have? I assume drip, or was it an espresso drink, or maybe a french press?
Was it too weak, too strong, or what?
Which beans did you have? They always have at least 2, sometimes 3 different drip types running. Usually House, a light blend, and a bold bean/blend.
If you read TFA, T-Mobile customers will still be able to roam for free into Starbucks hotspots.
And as I've said to others before, there are compelling reasons for some folks.
For me, its mostly about convenience, quality, consistency, and ubiquity.
Everywhere I go in the city, or across the country, there's a starbucks. And I'm going there anyway to get my coffee, so the wifi is convenient. If I have to go hunting around for local coffee shops, and then the subsets of those that have free wifi, and then the subset of those where the wifi is actually up and functioning, I've spent far more than the $30 per month, in value of my time.
T-Mobile hotspots are pretty much always up, always work, and are always fast. The opposite is often true of the local shops. The wifi is down, or someone is bittorrenting off it, or the folks running it dont know any better and restart the network equip in the wrong order. I dont need that hassle, I want it to 'just work'. T-Mobile does this for me.
It's not for everybody, I agree. But with this combo, anywhere in the country I go I can find a good cup of coffee, and fast, reliable wifi that just works with no hassle. It's a no-brainer for $30 per month, at least in my case.
And those are the folks who they are appealing to.
TOTAL AGREEMENT!
.... its so much better than everything else.
I personally like starbucks better overall, particularly if I'm travelling (like a bit of home wherever I go).
However, Caribou has the BEST iced totti/totty (sp?) on the planet that I've had.
I so wish Starbucks would do this drink
You can buy a $5 fancy 700-calorie white mocha if you want, but no one is making you.
And 'horrible attitude'? What planet are you living on?
Everyplace I've been across this country, the Starbucks folks are significantly and noticeably more pleasant, friendly, fun, and make every attempt to remember you and your drink if you go there more than twice. And its that way no matter where you go, from Pike Place market in Seattle, to Phoenix, to bumfuck Indiana, to New York.
If they're not, you go to the website, and complain about it. They get their butts kicked by the area manager.
And frankly, I'd rather pay $30 per month for consistent, reliable, fast wifi thats everywhere I go throughout the entire country, than argue with the owner of some mom and pop shop with free wifi who cant figure out that you have to reboot the cable modem before the wap otherwise it doesnt work right.
How exactly do you reconcile a cup full of coffee with 'contains next to no actual coffee'?
Who said anything about Starbucks is about quantity? You can get coffee of any size you want, from tiny (short) to huge (venti).
Usually for the quality and consistency of service.
In the last 4+ years I've been using it, I think I've only seen downtime twice. Both times a call to the people got it resolved (restarted the local equipment) or a refund for the month.
Compare that to the local mom and pop, the damn thing is crappy, service is slow, it goes down all the time. It's generally unreliable, and downtime is more like one out of every 5 visits.
Okay, sorry ... yeah, I did sound like kind of an ass in that post.
/. at midnight at the end of a long work day.
Thats what I get for posting to
For some reason that whole bestbuy thing just broke my brain late in the night.
Anyway, nice find on the cheapy dual-core box at best buy. I got an open box (not missing anything) onkyo home theatre system for super cheap there not too long ago, great deal. Totally understand.
You're right, in that the 2nd core helps. But my previous laptop was also a C2D, running XP Pro, and I seem to notice a difference.
... my personal observation/opinion is that the Vista UI (aero) is by far and away the most stable, resilient to network issues, and responsive under load of the windows OS's. Even when switching networks, or dropping and raising VPNs all day long, the UI just keeps on chugging, no hangs, no tears, no lockups. This would often cause big problems on the XP desktop.
Of course, it could be attributable to any number of things as well.
And you're right, I remember noticing that on the rare dual-processor desktop/workstation back in the win2000-pro days, how much smoother the UI seemed to be.
All that being said
I've definitely found this to be true on my machine. Even with the slow laptop drive, disc thrashing doesnt really impact the UI responsiveness. For the most part at least. Definately significantly improved on every NT machine I've ever owned before at least.
Okay, Im a bit confused here.
You (or your employer) pays for an MSDN subscription for you, but you buy your computers at BestBuy?
That cant be right. No one who has a need for an MSDN subscription would be naive enough to buy their computers from a retail store. Thats basically a suckers game, and anyone who's been doing work in technology has known that. Only uninformed consumers buy the low-end consumer-level crap that is sold at BestBuy and similar. Thats like buying a $50 inkjet/bubblejet printer because its 'cheap'.
Those who work in this industry buy their equipment from Dell, IBM, or HP, or they white box their own through newegg.com or tiger or whatever.
Now I'm not trying to flame you or go off topic, but this makes your whole article ring untrue to me. These behaviors do not line up.
Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, but that just smells fishy to me.
Are you sure you're using Vista? The vista start menu doesnt have a scrollbar unless you hit the 'all programs' button. Maybe thats what you meant.
And if you're using search, then use search. What you're describing isnt a use of search.
Hit [Windows-key], type 'filezilla', hit [Return].
Filezilla starts.
Thats the search interface on Vista for apps, doesnt require the mouse at all, or waiting for anything to populate.
Mind you, even on my insanely powerful laptop, I can type filezilla and hit return faster than it shows results, but it works, and filezilla is running ~2 seconds after I hit return. I never actually see the results in the search screen.
From the article: One of the biggest problems with the engines implementation is that for copies involving lots of data, the Cache Manager write-behind thread on the target system often cant keep up with the rate at which data is written and cached in memory. That causes the data to fill up memory, possibly forcing other useful code and data out, and eventually, the targets systems memory to become a tunnel through which all the copied data flows at a rate limited by the disk. And the double-buffering problem: Another problem they noted was that when copying from a remote system, the files contents are cached twice on the local system: once as the source file is read and a second time as the target file is written. Besides causing memory pressure on the client system for files that likely wont be accessed again, involving the Cache Manager introduces the CPU overhead that it must perform to manage its file mappings of the source and destination files. You continue: Improvements in SP1: we went back to XP's engine, with some tweaks." Again, thats clearly not what the article states.
From the article: After much analysis, benchmarking and tuning, the team implemented an algorithm that uses cached I/O for files smaller than 256KB in size. For files larger than 256KB, the engine relies on an internal matrix to determine the number and size of non-cached I/Os it will have in flight at once. The number ranges from 2 for files smaller than 2MB to 8 for files larger than 8MB. The size of the I/O is the file size for files smaller than 1MB, 1MB for files up to 2MB, and 2MB for anything larger. If you're going to gripe about something, at least pick something real, rather than something made up by your lack of willingness to read the article you're bitching about.
There are some real problems here, at least to my eye, that are worthy of bitching:
- overcomplexity, and unexpected behaviors due to uncommon interaction scenarios between many subsystems
- SMB is old and busted, and its tied in deeply to the system
I'm not sure (since its not my area of expertise) how other mature OS's approach some of these problems, but my guess is that most of the Unix-y approaches are simpler. I could be wrong though, as I just dont know.
What DRM is that?
ROFL! 'Online Blame Casting System'.
:)
That is freaking hilarious. And with some basis in truth.
That being said, the online blame casting system IS useful at times.
Anytime you make significant changes like this, alot of things break. This was one of the rare times (especially on the x64 versions) where microsoft has done 'the right thing' and broken tons of back compat in the name of a better product.
Just the fact that the bulk of drivers are now out in userspace is huge, and is causing lots of pain from IHVs who arent very good at writing drivers.
This whole Vista thing was an investment in the future for Microsoft. They need to fix some of these 10-year-old design problems, and they're starting to do that with Vista.
Vista is so rough in large part BECAUSE there are so many new things on the table. Unfortunately, they're things that only a systems engineer can appreciate at this point.