I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it. Last I checked, XP could access the internet. I don't see the point in putting Windows 7 on your netbook at all.
Well, let me play devil's advocate and throw out some ideas for you...
1) Security, there truly is a major level of security between XP and Win7. This goes from the built in malware tools, to even IE running in protected mode so it is technically more secure than running Firefox or Chrome, as the browser doesn't even user level rights. (This is why the Flash and recent IE exploits you have read about (that can even affect OS X and Linux are IMMUNE on Vista or Win7 when running IE.) - I know, this is hard to hear and I hate saying it myself, but is true.
2) Network features. Running through the airport and having the new Win7/Vista networking stack features is freaking awesome, as it not only does really good at just hooking into the WiFi, but also remembers. So that if go back through Denver it knows not only how to connect (which all OSes should do), but it also knows how to classify the network and flips on the Firewall on the fly and correctly sets all sharing settings based on the profile of the network there.
3) 3G features - Networking Again - 3G if you have the latest drivers from most manufacturers, and you have a 3G netbook, or even a 3G phone that you are tethering, the Network connection is treated more like a WiFi connection, and gives you instant information from the same interface, with Bars, Speed, etc, and again automatically just hooks you into the network and again applies the level of firewall security and sharing crackdown that you have specified.
4) Resume from Standby or Hibernate - Set your Power Button to hibernate and you can flip the netbook on and off as fast as you can open your phone. The speed differences in resume from standby are good, but the hibernate resume features are fast, and when you are trying to rebook flights running through an airport, you appreciate these little things.
5) Then add in 1000 other new features over XP, from better application boot times via Superfetch, to pulling up tons of information from a simple search. There are also the nice corporate features that work better and are handy from newer ways it deals with Offline files and access remote servers, to even NTFS features that do a bit extra to keep previous versions of your documents with you at all times, without even having to back them up every hour.
And this could go on and on and on, as the full list of several thousand features were contrasted between Win7 and XP that really do make things easier and work better than an 8 year old OS. (From bluetooth to even having the right printers appear based on what network I'm roaming on at the moment, just little things that are nice.)
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Finally, netbooks are NOT ONLY for just browsing the internet. They are low power computers, and you seem to discount that there are users running Office, and Photoshop, and Corel, and Illustrator, and even playing games on these computers. There is a difference between getting a crap Web inteface to my documents when at the airport, and actually opening the application they were created in and just editing them.
You can also find 'geeks' like myself playing an MMO on netbooks, and sure it isn't 60fps, but 20-30fps on a device isn't bad, and ironically, most of the games that the Netbooks can actually run, hold their own and often run faster under Win7, as it does a better job of silencing background processes.
There are also the times, I just want to read an eBook, watch a movie, listen to a book, or listen to music, and then the Netbook becomes the ultimate PMP, and you will find me with headphones on and my Netbook is shoved in my briefcase. (Oh and on flights where space is tight, again, they work quire well for movie viewing, you are getting a 8-10" screen for you and anyone you travel with and about the same battery life as a gen
We're running several RAID configurations, even on many of our notebooks with dual-HD configurations. RAID 0, RAID 1, etc...
Not sure what issue you are seeing, but maybe you should complain to the HD Controller MFR as this would be the first place to yell, as they not only make the driver, but once the OS passes off HD read/write commands to the driver and then the HD Controller for the RAID, the OS has little to do with what happens then.
I personally know that some RAID MFRs are crap sadly, but even running Linux, the drivers are and HD controllers are still crap.
Haven't seen the ATI Black screen, unless it sets your video mode to a native resolution and you havea 1990s monitor, but even then it should pop back or you could reboot and adjust this in safe mode.
Ok, the article isn't off the scale in terms of inaccuracy, but when you see comments like this, how can you trust anything they do or say?
Aero is automatically disabled when unplugged in battery saver mode which makes sense
Aero is NOT disabled when unplugged; instead, translucency is turned off. (The Blur/Glass effect)
Aero itself remains enabled. I know people confuse 'Glass' and 'Aero' and 'DWM' and what the OS, but come on this is a technical review right, shouldn't they get the basic facts that you find on Wikipedia correct or at least maybe, just maybe have a clue themselves?
There are other more subtle errors in the article, and even though it basically says Win7 is doing fine. However, do you notice it forgets to mention that Win7 is performing as well as XP while having search, defender and many other 'heavy' features working properly and still performing as well as XP on a very modest CPU and GPU platform.
This has nothing to do with a close platform, this is a controlled market place, the platform is irrelevant.
In contrast, Windows Mobile is a 'closed platform' and you or anyone can develop any application you want and ditribute it through any 'marketplace' or method you choose, as even as the Microsoft Marketplace comes into existence, you are NOT LOCKED to using it.
If EVERY browser isn't included on the list, then the EU is forcing Microsoft into a collusion arrangement with the other big name browsers that get on the ballot. By having a 'selective list' it seems there would be worse legal ramifications for Microsoft, especially in other parts of the world.
So the giants get bigger and other newer technologies are forced out. Thanks EU... Brilliant...
When using a LiveCD even if the OS is breached a reboot puts you right back where you were without any infection that might have occurred
Well you make a good point if you want to play 'gotcha'. However, you forget that the default model that Windows works with, offers these features inherently without having to run the OS from a write protected image.
With NTFS's cop on write features and journalling, the OS and volume can be rolled back, which means you don't have to run from a non-write OS construct and still get the same level of protection.
THE IMPORTANT thing you are missing, is that your CD solution can be technically compromised so that any applicaitons you have running could be handing off data to a bot or spyware or a website, as the browser is running at the USER level, and has access to all the USER data to give out.
So sure on reboot, it cleans itself up, but while running, everything you do in theory could be sending and compromizing all user data and applications.
If you think process isolation on Linux is 'better', remember that XWindows runs at ROOT, so there are several good ways to use a browser or any application with USER security to gain access to XWindows and be able to intercept and send back your keystrokes and other data that goes through the XWindows protocol all the time your machine is up. Heck flipping out the data capured can be hidden in basic HTTP, and not flagged by your firewall.
So you can get back to a clean install easily - but then remember that even if you discount the snapshot abilities, with Windows you can still do a VHD or other technology and reimage on every boot seamlessly.
So a clean install every boot, just like your solution.
The best protection is to move network level applications to reduced security modes, and doing this with IE in Vista and Win7 is a major step forward that shouldn't be discounted.
Win7 was probably cleanly installed a month ago after the latest Beta/RC.
Sure that could be it, but in cases where this is NOT true, the performance differences are still present.
This old laptop I am using at the moment was a Vista RTM/SP1/SP2 (SP2 Beta insstalls even) Win7 Beta 1, Win7 RC (using modded text file to allow upgrade. This computer is nothing special execpt it is my 'testing' work horse that I throw lots of crap at all the time and for its 'time' (2005) was a nice model, having a nice P4 and a 7950 GPU.
The main thing about performance gains with Win7, and I will speak in general, but it applies very directly to this laptop, is there are lots of 'UI' level optimizations that give a faster feel. This means when you open 'Computer' or 'Documents' it pops open and subsequent use of Explorer continues to be snappy and you get around at speeds that are beyond even what Explorer in XP felt like. (In fact some of the bug reports dealt with on Win7 have been from the Explorer UI responding too fast while scrolling, etc thus making the user not fully double click as the UI has responded faster than the User.)
So there is the 'feel' and this goes beyond Explorer and also just 'feel'. Many applications have a bit more of a lightness and spark to them (3rd party as well), and this has to do with DWM optimizations and other little refining steps. There are also less 'locks', as with XP and even some with Vista, you would find the Control Panel locked up while the system was applying a setting or a dialog stick to the screen, etc. These types of locks in the OS applications and Explorer and hard to find now.
Technically there are also reasons why lower level operations in the OS not only work a bit faster, but are also smoother, as granularity has been combed through in Win7, with many kernel and various layer locks removed as they are no longer necessary.
The memory footprint and memory usage is also a big thing, and helps performance, even on higher end systems with extra RAM.
On low end systems like 512mb or 1gb of RAM, the service model has changed in Win7 with a new event based service handler, this keeps services 'alive' but not 'running' in a classical sense, which reduces the service footprint considerably.
On high end RAM systems, the flipping in and out of RAM was improved in Vista, but again refined with a few new rules in Win7. This keeps Superfetch doing good things better and also lets some of the RAM flagging added in Vista smooth out for better overalall usage of RAM for Video and other things 'extra' RAM is used for.
Gaming does see improvements in Win7.
Part of this has to do with the RTM Vista Video drivers from NVidia and ATI sucked, and where barely working, let alone optimized. As everyone here should know, Vista introduced WDDM and this was not a 'revision' but a ground up re-write of video drivers. This was great for progress, but sucked for gaming as all the years of optimizations used in games and by the video drivers either no longer applied or had to be done another way. About Jun-Sep07, this changed as the NVidia and ATI drivers caught up to the XP speeds users had 'expected' out of Vista.
So going forward with 'more' optimizations and implementation of the WDM 1.1 specifications that give the OS more 'scheduler' level control of the GPU, brings the performance up a bit from Vista. Some GPUs will see minor improvements, some will see large improvements, and as the newer WDM 1.1 revisions are optimized, these 'boosts' could even grow, while giving the GPU multi-tasking abilities of the OS a more smooth experience.
On this 2005 laptop, I see about 5-10fps boost in games between Vista SP2 and Win7. It isn't massive, but helps. On an even older laptop at my house that is a P4 with a Geforce 5600M GPU, game FPS jump about 1.5 to 2x what they ran in Vista. The funny thing about this laptop, is that it has to use the same Vista drivers from Dec 2006, as NVidia doesn't update the driver for the FX 5xxx cards past
totally agree that the browser shouldn't be so integrated with the operating system. As a rule, we all know that you don't put yourself out on the public internet...
This is why IE was severed from the OS in Vista and Win7. In Vista, it plays no role in anyting but browsing or being called by 3rd party applications and still it remains a protected process with reduced security access.
It no longer runs in conjunction with Explorer or has any OS level ties as it did in XP. (This is why Web Destkop was also removed from Vista, as IE was separated from the OS and OS processes like Explorer, etc.)
Clarification - Maybe not this one, however: Using ActiveX allows system access Ever heard the phrase "ActiveX kernel mode"?
1) Your links are worthless and have no basis to support your insane claim.
2) ActiveX can only access the Win32 Kernel, not the NT kernel. Win9x has been dead for 10 years, time for you to realize this.
3) Any other exploit that can 'escalate' via overflow and memory address usage is negated by Vista and Win7 via the protected mode of the IE on the OS that cuts the ActiveX ties, and what ActiveX ties that still exist for corporate shops that use ActiveX, leaves IE and the ActiveX process running in a protected low priviledge mode.
*As much as saying this will make MS haters gasp:
The safest way to currently browse the internet on any OS and any browser is Vista or Win7 combined with IE7 or IE8, as it is the only solution that fully sandboxes the browser and subsuqent plugin/activex controls, and runs in a reduce security mode that can't even access or damage user level files let alone alter the OS, other procesess, or system files.
ASLR also helps adds in a subsequent level of protection just in case there is a way around all the listed above.
So if you are running Vista or Win7, you are subjecting yourself to more possible vulnerbilities by not using IE.
As for your links, ya, we would need a lot more,as they have no reference to what you are trying to prove, because your 'kernel' access myth is just that, myth.
Here's a hint: the 32-bit x86 processors had 64-bit (and 128-bit) registers already.
You don't get this do you...
You are going off of architecture and the hardware layer. Heck the 68000 was a 32/16bit processor, but do you think Apple System 2.x was a 32bit OS? No...
Letâ(TM)s start with something very basic.
The compiler for the OS and the application compilers can only utilize what architecture scope they are designed. So with a 32bit OS, the compiler is going to optimize and build to the native 32bit x86 mode of the CPU. PERIOD.
This has nothing to do with brand prediction or RISC pipelines or any other 128bit or 64bit internals of the CPU architecture, because the compiler in native x86 32bit mode has NO ACCESS beyond the 32bit mode of the CPU, as it is the software layer NOT THE HARDWARE LAYER, and the internal CPU architecture specific abilities are NOT something the compiler/software deals with.
So when you compile an OS as 32bit x86, it only gets access to the 32bit portions of the CPU mode, and it donâ(TM)t matter what the CPU is doing internally.
And this is where the performance gains come from for 64bit SOFTWARE. So when the OS or applications are compiled for the 64bit mode of the CPU, they GET ACCESS TO THE ADDITIONAL 64bit registers and 64bit features of the CPU. (This also has to do with how the AMD64/EMT64 CPUs work and flip between 32bit and 64bit modes.)
So if were to take a number crunching application and optimize it for 32bit FPU in my C compiler; and then rewrite it and optimize it for the 64bit FPU in my C compiler, I could in theory get TWICE the performance out of the Application. (See we live, breath, and work at the application level, not the hardware level.)
Here think of it like this, you have a GPU in your computer, and it could be a 128bit GPU. Now get out your 32bit C compiler and throw a 128bit integer at the GPU? What you say you canâ(TM)t because the SOFTWARE doesnâ(TM)t have a freaking clue what a 128bit integer is natively? Of course it doesnâ(TM)t. So, instead, at the software level you have to use tricks to break up your 128bit integer into 32bit chunks when you are processing it and then shove it to the GPU in 32bit chunks at a timeâ¦
Do you see where software and hardware layers are different?
So if you take something like an OS that is breaking crap up into 32bits, as this is all it knows, and shoving it to the CPU compared to an OS that can use 64bit chunks to shove at the CPU, there is a performance difference.
Now take this to not only the OS dealing with the CPU, but to devices and having native 64bit drivers. Shoving data between an application the CPU and GPU in 64bit chunks instead of 32bit chunks is a big difference, especially when the GPU and CPU understand 64bit and can do 64bit processing.
And I will end here, as this is not even taking into the additional features that the 64bit compilers open up to OSes and Applications beyond 64bit access and number crunching.
You can get 3G netbooks for $49 bucks, and full 3G laptops for $99 as well...
The contract con is sad, as people think the Apple iPhone 'phone contract' is the normal for the industry, and it isn't.
It isn't a full computer but get charged like one, and there are 'phones' out there with just as many features that don't get you locked into the 'data' plan rates, like many Windows Mobile phones.
I recently needed a new 3G plan for an area that only had ATT service. I picked up a $49 buck netbook with the contract, threw Win7 on it, and have a full computer for what iPhone users are paying for a smaller screen and less computing features.
If this was just a 'phone' contest it would lose, and if this was a computer/data contest, the iPhone also loses.
If you are in reference to traditional Apple's idea of 64bit, it is all about address space.
However in outside of Apple world, 64bit means several things beyond just address space.
1) 64bit chunks of computations instead of 32bit chunks. So the data being 'computed' is in native 64bit chunks - and in theory could be twice as fast in an optimal pass.
2) 64bit CPU features - more registers, other AMD64/EMT64 features
3) Combined memory read writes, for example in Vista x64 when a 32bit application is reading or writing to RAM the OS can often combine two 32bit read/writes into ONE 64bit read/write, thus speeding up RAM access.
The problem with OS X and 64bit is that it hasn't been a 64bit OS, and the only 64bit features OS X has offered was the 64bit address space instead of all the 64bit features of the CPU.
If the kernel is 'fully' 64bit in Snow Leopard (which it looks NOT to be) it would be faster for OS level operations and application handling. Vista x64 often is much faster than Vista x32 even when running 32bit applications because the OS does take advantage of the 64bit CPUs natively.
So from OS X point of view, 64bit computing has only been about more address space. But in the non-OS X world, from Linux 64bit to Vista 64bit, the OS actually uses other features of the CPU and calculates in full 64bit chunks thus computing more data faster.
You are right that 64bit is not going to be twice as fast as 32bit, just like 32bit wasn't twice as fast as 16bit computing. In fact, most 16bit applications took a slight hit when moving to 32bit processors. It was the 'other' features of the 32bit processors that made them a huge jump, like the pre-emptive scheduler. This is also true of the 32bit to 64bit move.
There are a few 'features' in the 64bit processors, but nothing like the jump from 16bit to 32bit in the x86 timeframe. One feature is the memory access mode (beyond address spacing), but in terms of performance, it is not a big leap.
The best 64bit performance bang is in how 64bit OSes are using the extra 'space' and 'modes' to get things done, like the Vista example of shoving two memory read/writes into one operation and removal of table linking for dealing with File Systems and even kernel level mapping tables that no longer have to link into 32bit spaces and can just natively use a singe 64bit addressing table. These are modest gains, though.
True 64bit optimized applications can jump 50% over the same 32bit application, if they are big data crunching applications, like 3D modeling, photo editors, encoders, etc. Having twice the bits to shove data through the CPU does make a difference, and by a lot depending on the application.
OS X doesn't offer this to its 64bit applications because it thunks the processing and is only giving the application a 64bit address space, so on OS X, a 64bit application will ONLY speed up if it is using more than 4GB of RAM (approx).
The point isn't the glossy display, it is the 'cheap' glossy displays that reflect like mirrors.
There are lots of LCDs on various other brands of laptops with 'glossy' displays that actually filter the light so they don't blind you or act like a mirror.
The filtered glossy displays cost a few bucks more, but this is Apple, and apparently they don't care about the 'best' hardware anymore.
This is something we became aware of when our techs bought several glossy laptops back in 2005. The higher end displays, like the 1920x1200 units didn't reflect like the cheaper displays, and the difference of using them in bright light is a massive difference.
I feel sorry when sitting next to a Mac user at an airport, even when I'm using a Netbook with a filtered glossy screen with no problems and they are having trouble even seeing their screen.
Sometimes they ask what the trick is, and I have to explain the LCD Gloss finish/cover and Apple uses the cheap crap.
However, I play City of Heroes even on my Acer One that I had to pick up on a trip(yes the $49.99 model that you get with the ATT 3G contract) It is a 1.6 Atom with 1GB of RAM, and after about a week I ripped of XP and installed Windows 7, which is surprisingly much faster on the little unit, better on battery and suspends and hibernates almost instantly.
It has a 945 GM950 video chipset that sucks
However, if you crank down the settings, you can get 15-20fps out of the game.
And yes Win7 is faster than XP for gaming on the netbook, even with 1GB of RAM. (Use the Vista Drivers from June 2008, the Win7 drivers from Intel still kind of suck.)
So install Win7 on the Netbook, and get by with that.
If you are focused on multi-user, again Win7, get the multi-user patch or buy dual input devices, so that focus isn't stolen from one Window, and start with a beefy CPU, and at least a dual GPU solution. (But you are going to be better off buying a cheap second computer, truly...)
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Things that would make the netbook a 'bit' better, that I haven't tested yet for City of Heroes:
-Replace the RAM and moving the system to 1.5GB.
-There is the GMABOOSTER type of application that will set the GMA 950 to 400mhz if you don't care about battery power (and no it is not technically overclocking it.)
Yes, Dell is not saying it will cost X more per copy, because it will not.
Dell has more of a problem with restrictions on their bundles/spyware they load systems with and the kick backs they will lose with Windows7. Companies like Dell that bloatware their computers are more of a bane to the computing industry than anything MS has even done to harm the industry. PERIOD.
After Vista was released and we deployed a bunch of 'business' class Dell Notebooks, it was freaking insane the amount of Dell support, and 3rd party bloatware we had to stip off the systems.
Dell doesn't like MS we know this, and they make money from this bloatware, but really does this help users, especially when they were selling Vista Business with this crap on it?
And the Home units from Dell are even worse, as they were shipping out 512mb systems with Vista Home for a long time, which is bad enough as Vista really needs 1GB to run as fast as XP, but the bloatware Dell had on the system was consuming almost 260mb of RAM at startup.
No wonder the average consumer was POed and thought Vista sucked. I would have too if I wasn't in the industry and knew better. Which leads to the next point, Dell does have IT people and they DID know better, so why did they do it? Just for the extra kick back bucks at the expense of screwing their own customers.
So here we are again with Dell looking at the Bloatware kick backs they will be losing and going, dang, we have no way to get our crap kick backs, so they are once again speaking out.
It is just like the old anti-trust lawsuit, where Dell was more than willing to put nails into MS on the cross, yet they were the ones that 'opted' for the better conract OEM rates to do exclusive bundles, where lower end OEMs like the one I was at did not, and could sell Window-less systems.
These were 'exclusive' contracts that dated back to the old days of IBM that was still done in the software industry where an OS or piece of software was bundled at a lower rate if it went out on all the systems sold. Dell took the offer and then blamed MS for forcing them to save the 5-10 $ per copy it saved them. (Most of the big OEMs took the offer at the time, as they HAD NO INTENTION of shipping anything but Windows on the systems anyway. Yet when it came time to shove MS on the cross for 'daring' to offer these contracts, these same OEMs wanted more pricing control from MS and did exactly what they threatened and used the contracts against MS that the OEMs had enjoyed for many years. (While also keeps similar contracts with Wordperfect and other companies at the time they were testifying against MS for 'forcing' them to save the 5-10 bucks and do guaranteed bundles. Geesh)
I was with a smaller OEM, we paid about 5-10 $ a copy for Windows over what Gateway,Dell,HP, etc were paying MS, but we got the same levels of support from Microsoft. Microsoft offered us the contract, but we said no, cause we had some OS/2 and UNIX clients (Talking 1991-1999 here), so we paid a few bucks more for Windows, which was still cheaper than OS/2, and cheaper to support than UNIX, and we gave our customers the choice the industry somehow mythically believes didn't exist at this time.
MS didn't force Windows on all the name brand OEM machines, the OEMs did, and they are the ones that screwed people and dominated the market, it just happened they were selling Windows on the systems and designing around the Windows hardware model. -Go Look at 2D acceleration in the 90s, it was all based around Windows drawing and GDI.
Microsoft has already informed OEMs about the addition to more rigourous anti-virus abilities in the existing Win7 'Defender' product that is extending with MS Update to make anti-virus a thing of the past on Windows. This means that the kick back from Norton or McAfee could hurt their per unit sales, and this is just ONE example where Win7 will hurt Dell.
In this example, can you REALLY be POed at MS for tightening security and reliability of their product? Even on SlashDo
Ok, omitting OS/2 was simply context, there are many subsystems that run on NT and have ran on NT, from both MS and 3rd parties.
The OS/2 subsystem was a 1.x implementation that was provided mainly for server related processes, as it was kind of a stripped down version with regard to GUI access due to the conflict with IBM.
(MS could have went on to provide a full OS/2 3.0 subsystem, but after the IBM failout, they didn't give a crap about OS/2, even though IBM was reaping the work MS engineers had done in designing the OS/2 3.0 Object Desktop GUI.)
But that is just extra info, and again not relevant to the point about NT not being a normal or classic kernel/OS architecture, which tends to confuse die hard *nix fans the most, as they are use to working from a basic kernel and API set interface that is directly binded in one package.
For example Linux and the Framebuffers and the mixing of locks and items that are throughout the various layers of the kernel that are not things that can not be easily replaced at this 'core' of a level.
Where on NT, the low level HAL interface and basic NT kernel APIs are pretty much agnostic to the upper level OS interface API sets. There are exceptions with later incarnations of NT, and there are exceptions with NT being a 'hybrid' kernel allowing both direct and indirect calls.
Ha - From what I understand of Windows Presentation Layer (how video's done & what subsystems are called upon now in the latest versions of Windows by default for desktop display AND gaming), now that GDI & User32 are NOT the default display manager in VISTA/Server 2008/Windows 7?
Well, it's back to usermode via DirectX, but a fast version of it (probably as fast as MS really CAN make it & yet have the video subsystem be safer, as it was in NT 3.51 & below... still heavier & slower than User32 + GDI drawn 2d display though, imo!
Ok, this is a lot of information kind of mashed together and not very accurate.
1) NT Video Drivers. Yes, prior to NT 4.0 they were a higher level or 'type of user mode level drivers.
NT 4.0 changed this to give Direct Draw and later DirectX access to hardware with direct calls to the GPU without NT managing via its hardware isolation policies.
So the Video Driver model was moved to what would be generically called a Ring 0 level, even though on NT, it really isn't that low.
This was both good and bad in the timeframe this was done, as getting pixels to the screen was not so easy or fast.
NT didn't have an open interface for new GPU features, as it isolated the original Video drivers too much, and basic OpenGL was all that could be filtered through, and not very fast. (This is kind of what you find in the *nix world on many variants today depending on the kernel driver model.)
2) With Vista this again changed, but didn't move back to User Mode. The WDDM of Vista uses a hybrid video driver, with a basic set of features that still run at the 'Ring 0' kernel level that provide a powerful set of basic features that are called by the upper level portion of the drivers.
This keeps the performance of having the video drivers running at the kernel level, but with a basic abstraction in the drivers themselves so that calls are managed between to the two layers and thus makes it extremely hard for a Video Driver to crash the OS as a whole.
MS even took this one step further with a whole set of recovery and exception rules that work in the Video driver model between the two layers, so that if either layer of the Video driver fails, Vista itself won't fail.
This means that a game crashing won't drop your OS or your video card's basic kernel mode drivers, and the OS will recover the upper level drivers and the screen will redraw and nothing bad happens.
It also means that the lower level video driver is not 'tied' to the upper level drivers, and if the hardware fails or is 'changed', the OS can recover the lower level video driver (even dynamically change
Holy cow, how does this stuff get under the radar, especially on Slashdot?
Not directing this at the poster..
I am hit by about 80% of IT people not even realizing this exists, and there are a lot of people locked in a 'Windows' corporate world that would really enjoy this stuff, and could use it on a daily basis.
Quick Info...
POSIX was a watered down 'basic' UNIX model OS provided under Windows NT 3.1 through Win2K.
In the meantime MS sponsored and worked with several companies in their own UNIX subsystem technologies, and the result is SUA, or one that came from joint work with Interop and MS.
(MS made the Interop people very rich and bought them out in the early 2000s.)
So there has been a 'basic' POSIX environment running on NT since NT was born, but there has been a higher end UNIX subsystem that has been available around NT 4.0 and later provided by MS around the time Windows 2003 Server was released.
(So this has been free and around for at least 6 years.)
PS: MS also funded and worked with a couple of Linux (yes Linux) UNIX subsystems, but they haven't ever left R&D.
The current UNIX Subsystem for Windows provides SVR-5 and BSD UNIX. (And there are people do Linux stuff as well on their own, but that is a non-issue as it is not official MS supported subsystems.)
So yes Virginia you can easily run UNIX applications on Windows, in a native subsystem - no VM - native, that uses the IPC and Object Manager abilities of the NT kernel architecture that gives the UNIX Subsystem communication to the Win32/Win64 subsystem. Meaning you can take your UNIX app and let it tap an ODBC database driver instead of using MYSQL, as well as run on the Windows Desktop natively.
(There is a lot of information on the MS site and whitepapers all around, as well as even OSS sites that work with SUA as it is known.)
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Even if you are just an IT person that is a UNIX CLI guru, break out the UNIX subsystem on Windows and go to town with your favorite UNIX CLI.
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Again it has been a free download from MS for XP or Windows Server since at least 2003, and it even ships on the Vista DVDs (Business & Ultimate) that is just a one click to install from that add/remove Windows Features/Components.
This is also one of the cool things about the NT architecture, is the client/server kernel design that offsets and layers upper level OS API sets. NT also uses its 'hybrid' kernel to do things like this that OS X and Linux can't do, by allowing both direct and managed non-direct calls to let it create the upper layer OS subsystems with offset API kernel interfaces that are easily layered.
I hope that this helps *nix people using Windows or at least someone finds this cool and something that makes their life easier.
Windows alreadys supports multiple OSes, from the Win16 and DOS subsystems to the BSD/UNIX subsystem, and also the Win32 and Win64 subsystem.
Which all have their own kernels, and run in NT OS subsystems.
So adding in a VM'd version of XP is going to add to 'support'? How?
The updates still come from MS Update, it isn't like the in house people are writing the patches themselves.
If anything this creates more work for MS, not a freaking IT department.
I'm not sure where to even begin with how stupid this sounds...
More tech support? Really?
If an IT department isn't using group policies and the business centralization and integration technologies of Windows, they shouldn't be using Windows and instead move to something that has almost no central control or mangement like Linux or OS X.
The hallmark of why business CONTINUES to choose Windows deployments is the ease and control that MS continues to give IT administrators, along with their centralized server management concepts that really do make anything else out there look foolish.
A well deployed Windows server/client environment is peanuts to administer, even when the IT people shove Firefox on users and have to run around and do 'manual' updates because Firefox is 'retarded' about allowing remote or admin level updates without giving your users administrator rights.
The second part of this is not understanding the virtualization technology being used. They assume it is like a 'free window' VMWare mode.
It isn't, it somewhere better a VM and a Subsystem on the NT architecture, which is one thing that makes HyperV as powerful as it is.
Truly people forget that NT is a user mode OS-less architecture, and that everything anyone sees is a 'virtual' subsystem, even Win32 has its own kernel and doesn't really know that NT is running under it.
Ok, I'll let people go grab the facts on this crap themselves, and give Win7 a week or two i people's hands that actually 'do' know what they are talking about...
PS The XP Virtualization is mainly for corporate clients, as 99.9% of all software works on Vista and Win7.
It is only the in house written or 'corporate' written software crap that has no concept of NT security that has problems with Vista or possibly Win7 that enforces the 20yr old NT security model that the software developers should have written for in the first freaking place.
Apple has always done fairly well with the 'designer' aspect of the OS and fit and finish, as they took this serious with the first Mac System UI from 1984
Though it has varied in years, and there are times when the designers vs the programmers worked against Apple, it is the same UI struggle that other OSes face. (One example where designers won is things like Time Machine where a basic finder integrated UI would have been better than an 'pretty' application that can't run on older Mac hardware. Or even things like the One Button Mouse that was held on to for so long, or the Delete button inconsistencies.
In OSS there is a SERIOUS lack of designers. And Ubuntu being 'pollished' is like the nerd at the prom, having the smallest pocket protector.
The deisgner vs programmer debate has something Microsoft has fought on and off for years and years, sometimes pulling off good things in both aspects, and sometimes being pretty but suck or be awesome and suck because its UI is not pretty or fails to meet what the users needs.
One model the OSS community needs to at least pay attention to is the separation of UI, Design, and code. That way the geeks can be as geeky as they want, and someone that couldn't program a lick of code can make it pretty or work withing expected UI guidelines.
Microsoft seems to be pioneering this balance and programming, and it is still new even at Microsoft. The goal of the Vista API and the whole XAML and WPF API sets are that the UI and 'design' of the application is abstrated from the geeks.
A 'designer' constructed UI, can meet UI constraints and also be 'pretty' without taking up precious uber programmer time, and also prevents a application from looking like the biggest geek in the world created it.
Windows7 still hasn't evolved to where all the UI or applications use this model, but if you are involved in the beta, the teams seems to be good at handing off UI and design where they normally would not have, even in the Vista development.
Vista is ok for fit and finish, with some rough edges, Windows 7 goes a long long way to extend consistency and fit and finish to areas most people don't notice.
As for Ubuntu, don't forget it has a couple of handicaps, as it has to deal with Window Managers and XWindows, where you don't always find consistency or fit and finish in the basic operations of the protocol or the Window manager consistency that was original built by the 'geek' crowds instead of the 'designer' crowds.
(With the ones that mimic OS X or Windows doing the best, as they at least had something to work off of.)
So no matter how much Ubunut works on consistency, you will see have dialog redraws to fit text that shouldn't do an initial paint before resizing and 'repainting' to fit the text.
There is also the massive amount of color depths, languages and other issues that causes a lot of work to pull off any consistency.
This is one area MS has done better than anyone with multi-language and multiple interface adapting since the XP days at the very least.
Multi-language fit and finish is something they take serious, and adapting the interface via 'themes' or 'classic modes' or even DWM/Aero modes to adapt to various color depths, (or no screen at all), and all the spacing and languages that it has to stretch and expand to fit and work.
So kudos to Ubunut, and for the love of God, other OSS geeks, give your cool application to a designer for a day, even if it is a friend, we are really sick of stuff looking like a bad Windows or OS X rip off or bright primary colors being 'geeky' cool.
The crap that looks like Windows from when the geek stopped using Windows is the worest, with Win95 interfaces. It is almost like a sick shrine to Microsoft that haunts everyone.
Problem #1 The average Joe already has this... It is called either the PS3 or XBox 360...
More features, more choices, can game too, and better video quality when using HD standard VC1 codecs inherently supported things like Silverlight content.
Problem #2 Adobe has a long road right now, in adding HD to their Flash player they have virtually destoryed it. It doesn't play nice when multi-threading on multi-core or H/T CPUs, has horrible CPU utilization even for crap ads, let alone video that jerks even on mid range computers.
Just an example, open a Page with a HD Silverlight Video, let it play and then open a page with a tiny Flash Ad.
The tiny Flash Ad with 'no video' will eat 10-20x the CPU of the freaking Silverlight player that is decoding HD Video.
Right now the Flash Player is a mess, and even SD video via Flash will tank CPU utilization to alarming rates, especially when you are just wanting to watch a freaking video on Hulu and your CPU usage is higher than a HD movie even without GPU acceleration.
This is a major problem and scary that Flash performs so horribly, and has even affected their basic player for Ad and other non-video content.
Want to test your overclocked new i7? Open a few Browser pages with Flash running, it will pop it faster than a hard core burn in test.
You should pay some attention to what the OSS crowd has been doing with the DBUS system combined with Python lately.
Well, this is not the same thing though...
I am vaguely familiar with DBUS, and it would be more in line with Win32 object systems or even the IPC of NT that provides communication between OS Subsystems.
Remember Win32 is just an OS Subsystem on NT, it is not NT nor Windows.
There is no equivalent to the NT Object model at the lower levels in any UNIX, or it would no longer be UNIX by definition.
Make sense?
Go read the definitions of what UNIX is and makes a kernel a UNIX model kernel, then lookup the NT kernel, even on Wiki if you don't want to dig through MS Whitepapers. (Just be aware Wiki may not be 100% dead on due to inaccuracies or laymen level it tries to explain something this complex.)
What I said about NT and using objects rather than textual as in UNIX is a bit 'generic', but does summarize one of the essential differences.
In UNIX you can simulate some of the object features, but they would not be native kernel interfaces, nor how the kernel itself operates internally.
NT keeps the Object model even at low levels of the kernel that isn't normally accessible to upper level layers. So even the inner kernel calls use objects and this continues up in the various NT layers.
So you have the kernel using and tracking internal objects for things like security, the driver model is object based and not a generic I/O system, and as you go up to the Object Manager and the OS Subsystems, it continues through the NT architecture.
Objects add a bit more overhead, but in the last 10-15 years, this has been offset by the features the objects inherently provide that have to be either recreated or simulated in UNIX.
There is a lot to this and I wouldn't do it justice here, but if you really are interested in OS architecture, it is something worth exploring more.
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I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it. Last I checked, XP could access the internet. I don't see the point in putting Windows 7 on your netbook at all.
Well, let me play devil's advocate and throw out some ideas for you...
1) Security, there truly is a major level of security between XP and Win7. This goes from the built in malware tools, to even IE running in protected mode so it is technically more secure than running Firefox or Chrome, as the browser doesn't even user level rights. (This is why the Flash and recent IE exploits you have read about (that can even affect OS X and Linux are IMMUNE on Vista or Win7 when running IE.) - I know, this is hard to hear and I hate saying it myself, but is true.
2) Network features. Running through the airport and having the new Win7/Vista networking stack features is freaking awesome, as it not only does really good at just hooking into the WiFi, but also remembers. So that if go back through Denver it knows not only how to connect (which all OSes should do), but it also knows how to classify the network and flips on the Firewall on the fly and correctly sets all sharing settings based on the profile of the network there.
3) 3G features - Networking Again - 3G if you have the latest drivers from most manufacturers, and you have a 3G netbook, or even a 3G phone that you are tethering, the Network connection is treated more like a WiFi connection, and gives you instant information from the same interface, with Bars, Speed, etc, and again automatically just hooks you into the network and again applies the level of firewall security and sharing crackdown that you have specified.
4) Resume from Standby or Hibernate - Set your Power Button to hibernate and you can flip the netbook on and off as fast as you can open your phone. The speed differences in resume from standby are good, but the hibernate resume features are fast, and when you are trying to rebook flights running through an airport, you appreciate these little things.
5) Then add in 1000 other new features over XP, from better application boot times via Superfetch, to pulling up tons of information from a simple search. There are also the nice corporate features that work better and are handy from newer ways it deals with Offline files and access remote servers, to even NTFS features that do a bit extra to keep previous versions of your documents with you at all times, without even having to back them up every hour.
And this could go on and on and on, as the full list of several thousand features were contrasted between Win7 and XP that really do make things easier and work better than an 8 year old OS. (From bluetooth to even having the right printers appear based on what network I'm roaming on at the moment, just little things that are nice.)
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Finally, netbooks are NOT ONLY for just browsing the internet. They are low power computers, and you seem to discount that there are users running Office, and Photoshop, and Corel, and Illustrator, and even playing games on these computers. There is a difference between getting a crap Web inteface to my documents when at the airport, and actually opening the application they were created in and just editing them.
You can also find 'geeks' like myself playing an MMO on netbooks, and sure it isn't 60fps, but 20-30fps on a device isn't bad, and ironically, most of the games that the Netbooks can actually run, hold their own and often run faster under Win7, as it does a better job of silencing background processes.
There are also the times, I just want to read an eBook, watch a movie, listen to a book, or listen to music, and then the Netbook becomes the ultimate PMP, and you will find me with headphones on and my Netbook is shoved in my briefcase. (Oh and on flights where space is tight, again, they work quire well for movie viewing, you are getting a 8-10" screen for you and anyone you travel with and about the same battery life as a gen
We're running several RAID configurations, even on many of our notebooks with dual-HD configurations. RAID 0, RAID 1, etc...
Not sure what issue you are seeing, but maybe you should complain to the HD Controller MFR as this would be the first place to yell, as they not only make the driver, but once the OS passes off HD read/write commands to the driver and then the HD Controller for the RAID, the OS has little to do with what happens then.
I personally know that some RAID MFRs are crap sadly, but even running Linux, the drivers are and HD controllers are still crap.
Haven't seen the ATI Black screen, unless it sets your video mode to a native resolution and you havea 1990s monitor, but even then it should pop back or you could reboot and adjust this in safe mode.
Ok, the article isn't off the scale in terms of inaccuracy, but when you see comments like this, how can you trust anything they do or say?
Aero is automatically disabled when unplugged in battery saver mode which makes sense
Aero is NOT disabled when unplugged; instead, translucency is turned off. (The Blur/Glass effect)
Aero itself remains enabled. I know people confuse 'Glass' and 'Aero' and 'DWM' and what the OS, but come on this is a technical review right, shouldn't they get the basic facts that you find on Wikipedia correct or at least maybe, just maybe have a clue themselves?
There are other more subtle errors in the article, and even though it basically says Win7 is doing fine. However, do you notice it forgets to mention that Win7 is performing as well as XP while having search, defender and many other 'heavy' features working properly and still performing as well as XP on a very modest CPU and GPU platform.
Going to leave it here...
why closed platforms suck
This has nothing to do with a close platform, this is a controlled market place, the platform is irrelevant.
In contrast, Windows Mobile is a 'closed platform' and you or anyone can develop any application you want and ditribute it through any 'marketplace' or method you choose, as even as the Microsoft Marketplace comes into existence, you are NOT LOCKED to using it.
What about our browser?
If EVERY browser isn't included on the list, then the EU is forcing Microsoft into a collusion arrangement with the other big name browsers that get on the ballot. By having a 'selective list' it seems there would be worse legal ramifications for Microsoft, especially in other parts of the world.
So the giants get bigger and other newer technologies are forced out. Thanks EU... Brilliant...
When using a LiveCD even if the OS is breached a reboot puts you right back where you were without any infection that might have occurred
Well you make a good point if you want to play 'gotcha'. However, you forget that the default model that Windows works with, offers these features inherently without having to run the OS from a write protected image.
With NTFS's cop on write features and journalling, the OS and volume can be rolled back, which means you don't have to run from a non-write OS construct and still get the same level of protection.
THE IMPORTANT thing you are missing, is that your CD solution can be technically compromised so that any applicaitons you have running could be handing off data to a bot or spyware or a website, as the browser is running at the USER level, and has access to all the USER data to give out.
So sure on reboot, it cleans itself up, but while running, everything you do in theory could be sending and compromizing all user data and applications.
If you think process isolation on Linux is 'better', remember that XWindows runs at ROOT, so there are several good ways to use a browser or any application with USER security to gain access to XWindows and be able to intercept and send back your keystrokes and other data that goes through the XWindows protocol all the time your machine is up. Heck flipping out the data capured can be hidden in basic HTTP, and not flagged by your firewall.
So you can get back to a clean install easily - but then remember that even if you discount the snapshot abilities, with Windows you can still do a VHD or other technology and reimage on every boot seamlessly.
So a clean install every boot, just like your solution.
The best protection is to move network level applications to reduced security modes, and doing this with IE in Vista and Win7 is a major step forward that shouldn't be discounted.
Win7 was probably cleanly installed a month ago after the latest Beta/RC.
Sure that could be it, but in cases where this is NOT true, the performance differences are still present.
This old laptop I am using at the moment was a Vista RTM/SP1/SP2 (SP2 Beta insstalls even) Win7 Beta 1, Win7 RC (using modded text file to allow upgrade. This computer is nothing special execpt it is my 'testing' work horse that I throw lots of crap at all the time and for its 'time' (2005) was a nice model, having a nice P4 and a 7950 GPU.
The main thing about performance gains with Win7, and I will speak in general, but it applies very directly to this laptop, is there are lots of 'UI' level optimizations that give a faster feel. This means when you open 'Computer' or 'Documents' it pops open and subsequent use of Explorer continues to be snappy and you get around at speeds that are beyond even what Explorer in XP felt like. (In fact some of the bug reports dealt with on Win7 have been from the Explorer UI responding too fast while scrolling, etc thus making the user not fully double click as the UI has responded faster than the User.)
So there is the 'feel' and this goes beyond Explorer and also just 'feel'. Many applications have a bit more of a lightness and spark to them (3rd party as well), and this has to do with DWM optimizations and other little refining steps. There are also less 'locks', as with XP and even some with Vista, you would find the Control Panel locked up while the system was applying a setting or a dialog stick to the screen, etc. These types of locks in the OS applications and Explorer and hard to find now.
Technically there are also reasons why lower level operations in the OS not only work a bit faster, but are also smoother, as granularity has been combed through in Win7, with many kernel and various layer locks removed as they are no longer necessary.
The memory footprint and memory usage is also a big thing, and helps performance, even on higher end systems with extra RAM.
On low end systems like 512mb or 1gb of RAM, the service model has changed in Win7 with a new event based service handler, this keeps services 'alive' but not 'running' in a classical sense, which reduces the service footprint considerably.
On high end RAM systems, the flipping in and out of RAM was improved in Vista, but again refined with a few new rules in Win7. This keeps Superfetch doing good things better and also lets some of the RAM flagging added in Vista smooth out for better overalall usage of RAM for Video and other things 'extra' RAM is used for.
Gaming does see improvements in Win7.
Part of this has to do with the RTM Vista Video drivers from NVidia and ATI sucked, and where barely working, let alone optimized. As everyone here should know, Vista introduced WDDM and this was not a 'revision' but a ground up re-write of video drivers. This was great for progress, but sucked for gaming as all the years of optimizations used in games and by the video drivers either no longer applied or had to be done another way. About Jun-Sep07, this changed as the NVidia and ATI drivers caught up to the XP speeds users had 'expected' out of Vista.
So going forward with 'more' optimizations and implementation of the WDM 1.1 specifications that give the OS more 'scheduler' level control of the GPU, brings the performance up a bit from Vista. Some GPUs will see minor improvements, some will see large improvements, and as the newer WDM 1.1 revisions are optimized, these 'boosts' could even grow, while giving the GPU multi-tasking abilities of the OS a more smooth experience.
On this 2005 laptop, I see about 5-10fps boost in games between Vista SP2 and Win7. It isn't massive, but helps. On an even older laptop at my house that is a P4 with a Geforce 5600M GPU, game FPS jump about 1.5 to 2x what they ran in Vista. The funny thing about this laptop, is that it has to use the same Vista drivers from Dec 2006, as NVidia doesn't update the driver for the FX 5xxx cards past
Active X ...will soon be added to the Thesaurus as a synonym of "Vulnerability".
Right alone with Firefox Plugins, and any other technology that allows native code to run inside a browser.
Even better, use freaking Windows Update and install IE8, fixed...
totally agree that the browser shouldn't be so integrated with the operating system. As a rule, we all know that you don't put yourself out on the public internet...
This is why IE was severed from the OS in Vista and Win7. In Vista, it plays no role in anyting but browsing or being called by 3rd party applications and still it remains a protected process with reduced security access.
It no longer runs in conjunction with Explorer or has any OS level ties as it did in XP. (This is why Web Destkop was also removed from Vista, as IE was separated from the OS and OS processes like Explorer, etc.)
Clarification - Maybe not this one, however: Using ActiveX allows system access
Ever heard the phrase "ActiveX kernel mode"?
1) Your links are worthless and have no basis to support your insane claim.
2) ActiveX can only access the Win32 Kernel, not the NT kernel. Win9x has been dead for 10 years, time for you to realize this.
3) Any other exploit that can 'escalate' via overflow and memory address usage is negated by Vista and Win7 via the protected mode of the IE on the OS that cuts the ActiveX ties, and what ActiveX ties that still exist for corporate shops that use ActiveX, leaves IE and the ActiveX process running in a protected low priviledge mode.
*As much as saying this will make MS haters gasp:
The safest way to currently browse the internet on any OS and any browser is Vista or Win7 combined with IE7 or IE8, as it is the only solution that fully sandboxes the browser and subsuqent plugin/activex controls, and runs in a reduce security mode that can't even access or damage user level files let alone alter the OS, other procesess, or system files.
ASLR also helps adds in a subsequent level of protection just in case there is a way around all the listed above.
So if you are running Vista or Win7, you are subjecting yourself to more possible vulnerbilities by not using IE.
As for your links, ya, we would need a lot more,as they have no reference to what you are trying to prove, because your 'kernel' access myth is just that, myth.
OMG, how f**king stupid are you?
The whole campaign against AMD64 was from Intel, and they tried to sell people that the only advantage was memory address space.
After they were laughed out of the tech world, they implemented EMT64.
Yet here we are again, and you are reciting Intel talking points (not even sure you know you are) that Intel themselves has since refuted.
So should everyone here just take your word that AMD and Intel are stupid and you are right?
Should I ignore the benchmarks our techs use that show a 15-20% boost even in 32bit applications when running on a native 64bit OS?
Really?
You don't get this, and you are dismissed...
Buh-Bye...
Here's a hint: the 32-bit x86 processors had 64-bit (and 128-bit) registers already.
You don't get this do you...
You are going off of architecture and the hardware layer. Heck the 68000 was a 32/16bit processor, but do you think Apple System 2.x was a 32bit OS? No...
Letâ(TM)s start with something very basic.
The compiler for the OS and the application compilers can only utilize what architecture scope they are designed. So with a 32bit OS, the compiler is going to optimize and build to the native 32bit x86 mode of the CPU. PERIOD.
This has nothing to do with brand prediction or RISC pipelines or any other 128bit or 64bit internals of the CPU architecture, because the compiler in native x86 32bit mode has NO ACCESS beyond the 32bit mode of the CPU, as it is the software layer NOT THE HARDWARE LAYER, and the internal CPU architecture specific abilities are NOT something the compiler/software deals with.
So when you compile an OS as 32bit x86, it only gets access to the 32bit portions of the CPU mode, and it donâ(TM)t matter what the CPU is doing internally.
And this is where the performance gains come from for 64bit SOFTWARE. So when the OS or applications are compiled for the 64bit mode of the CPU, they GET ACCESS TO THE ADDITIONAL 64bit registers and 64bit features of the CPU. (This also has to do with how the AMD64/EMT64 CPUs work and flip between 32bit and 64bit modes.)
So if were to take a number crunching application and optimize it for 32bit FPU in my C compiler; and then rewrite it and optimize it for the 64bit FPU in my C compiler, I could in theory get TWICE the performance out of the Application. (See we live, breath, and work at the application level, not the hardware level.)
Here think of it like this, you have a GPU in your computer, and it could be a 128bit GPU. Now get out your 32bit C compiler and throw a 128bit integer at the GPU? What you say you canâ(TM)t because the SOFTWARE doesnâ(TM)t have a freaking clue what a 128bit integer is natively? Of course it doesnâ(TM)t. So, instead, at the software level you have to use tricks to break up your 128bit integer into 32bit chunks when you are processing it and then shove it to the GPU in 32bit chunks at a timeâ¦
Do you see where software and hardware layers are different?
So if you take something like an OS that is breaking crap up into 32bits, as this is all it knows, and shoving it to the CPU compared to an OS that can use 64bit chunks to shove at the CPU, there is a performance difference.
Now take this to not only the OS dealing with the CPU, but to devices and having native 64bit drivers. Shoving data between an application the CPU and GPU in 64bit chunks instead of 32bit chunks is a big difference, especially when the GPU and CPU understand 64bit and can do 64bit processing.
And I will end here, as this is not even taking into the additional features that the 64bit compilers open up to OSes and Applications beyond 64bit access and number crunching.
Um, no...
You are confusing a lot different things. (File Systems have nothing to do with this.)
You can get 3G netbooks for $49 bucks, and full 3G laptops for $99 as well...
The contract con is sad, as people think the Apple iPhone 'phone contract' is the normal for the industry, and it isn't.
It isn't a full computer but get charged like one, and there are 'phones' out there with just as many features that don't get you locked into the 'data' plan rates, like many Windows Mobile phones.
I recently needed a new 3G plan for an area that only had ATT service. I picked up a $49 buck netbook with the contract, threw Win7 on it, and have a full computer for what iPhone users are paying for a smaller screen and less computing features.
If this was just a 'phone' contest it would lose, and if this was a computer/data contest, the iPhone also loses.
Yes and no...
If you are in reference to traditional Apple's idea of 64bit, it is all about address space.
However in outside of Apple world, 64bit means several things beyond just address space.
1) 64bit chunks of computations instead of 32bit chunks. So the data being 'computed' is in native 64bit chunks - and in theory could be twice as fast in an optimal pass.
2) 64bit CPU features - more registers, other AMD64/EMT64 features
3) Combined memory read writes, for example in Vista x64 when a 32bit application is reading or writing to RAM the OS can often combine two 32bit read/writes into ONE 64bit read/write, thus speeding up RAM access.
The problem with OS X and 64bit is that it hasn't been a 64bit OS, and the only 64bit features OS X has offered was the 64bit address space instead of all the 64bit features of the CPU.
If the kernel is 'fully' 64bit in Snow Leopard (which it looks NOT to be) it would be faster for OS level operations and application handling. Vista x64 often is much faster than Vista x32 even when running 32bit applications because the OS does take advantage of the 64bit CPUs natively.
So from OS X point of view, 64bit computing has only been about more address space. But in the non-OS X world, from Linux 64bit to Vista 64bit, the OS actually uses other features of the CPU and calculates in full 64bit chunks thus computing more data faster.
You are right that 64bit is not going to be twice as fast as 32bit, just like 32bit wasn't twice as fast as 16bit computing. In fact, most 16bit applications took a slight hit when moving to 32bit processors. It was the 'other' features of the 32bit processors that made them a huge jump, like the pre-emptive scheduler. This is also true of the 32bit to 64bit move.
There are a few 'features' in the 64bit processors, but nothing like the jump from 16bit to 32bit in the x86 timeframe. One feature is the memory access mode (beyond address spacing), but in terms of performance, it is not a big leap.
The best 64bit performance bang is in how 64bit OSes are using the extra 'space' and 'modes' to get things done, like the Vista example of shoving two memory read/writes into one operation and removal of table linking for dealing with File Systems and even kernel level mapping tables that no longer have to link into 32bit spaces and can just natively use a singe 64bit addressing table. These are modest gains, though.
True 64bit optimized applications can jump 50% over the same 32bit application, if they are big data crunching applications, like 3D modeling, photo editors, encoders, etc. Having twice the bits to shove data through the CPU does make a difference, and by a lot depending on the application.
OS X doesn't offer this to its 64bit applications because it thunks the processing and is only giving the application a 64bit address space, so on OS X, a 64bit application will ONLY speed up if it is using more than 4GB of RAM (approx).
The point isn't the glossy display, it is the 'cheap' glossy displays that reflect like mirrors.
There are lots of LCDs on various other brands of laptops with 'glossy' displays that actually filter the light so they don't blind you or act like a mirror.
The filtered glossy displays cost a few bucks more, but this is Apple, and apparently they don't care about the 'best' hardware anymore.
This is something we became aware of when our techs bought several glossy laptops back in 2005. The higher end displays, like the 1920x1200 units didn't reflect like the cheaper displays, and the difference of using them in bright light is a massive difference.
I feel sorry when sitting next to a Mac user at an airport, even when I'm using a Netbook with a filtered glossy screen with no problems and they are having trouble even seeing their screen.
Sometimes they ask what the trick is, and I have to explain the LCD Gloss finish/cover and Apple uses the cheap crap.
Yes your netbook is not the best gaming platform.
However, I play City of Heroes even on my Acer One that I had to pick up on a trip(yes the $49.99 model that you get with the ATT 3G contract) It is a 1.6 Atom with 1GB of RAM, and after about a week I ripped of XP and installed Windows 7, which is surprisingly much faster on the little unit, better on battery and suspends and hibernates almost instantly.
It has a 945 GM950 video chipset that sucks
However, if you crank down the settings, you can get 15-20fps out of the game.
And yes Win7 is faster than XP for gaming on the netbook, even with 1GB of RAM. (Use the Vista Drivers from June 2008, the Win7 drivers from Intel still kind of suck.)
So install Win7 on the Netbook, and get by with that.
If you are focused on multi-user, again Win7, get the multi-user patch or buy dual input devices, so that focus isn't stolen from one Window, and start with a beefy CPU, and at least a dual GPU solution. (But you are going to be better off buying a cheap second computer, truly...)
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Things that would make the netbook a 'bit' better, that I haven't tested yet for City of Heroes:
-Replace the RAM and moving the system to 1.5GB.
-There is the GMABOOSTER type of application that will set the GMA 950 to 400mhz if you don't care about battery power (and no it is not technically overclocking it.)
Yes, Dell is not saying it will cost X more per copy, because it will not.
Dell has more of a problem with restrictions on their bundles/spyware they load systems with and the kick backs they will lose with Windows7. Companies like Dell that bloatware their computers are more of a bane to the computing industry than anything MS has even done to harm the industry. PERIOD.
After Vista was released and we deployed a bunch of 'business' class Dell Notebooks, it was freaking insane the amount of Dell support, and 3rd party bloatware we had to stip off the systems.
Dell doesn't like MS we know this, and they make money from this bloatware, but really does this help users, especially when they were selling Vista Business with this crap on it?
And the Home units from Dell are even worse, as they were shipping out 512mb systems with Vista Home for a long time, which is bad enough as Vista really needs 1GB to run as fast as XP, but the bloatware Dell had on the system was consuming almost 260mb of RAM at startup.
No wonder the average consumer was POed and thought Vista sucked. I would have too if I wasn't in the industry and knew better. Which leads to the next point, Dell does have IT people and they DID know better, so why did they do it? Just for the extra kick back bucks at the expense of screwing their own customers.
So here we are again with Dell looking at the Bloatware kick backs they will be losing and going, dang, we have no way to get our crap kick backs, so they are once again speaking out.
It is just like the old anti-trust lawsuit, where Dell was more than willing to put nails into MS on the cross, yet they were the ones that 'opted' for the better conract OEM rates to do exclusive bundles, where lower end OEMs like the one I was at did not, and could sell Window-less systems.
These were 'exclusive' contracts that dated back to the old days of IBM that was still done in the software industry where an OS or piece of software was bundled at a lower rate if it went out on all the systems sold. Dell took the offer and then blamed MS for forcing them to save the 5-10 $ per copy it saved them. (Most of the big OEMs took the offer at the time, as they HAD NO INTENTION of shipping anything but Windows on the systems anyway. Yet when it came time to shove MS on the cross for 'daring' to offer these contracts, these same OEMs wanted more pricing control from MS and did exactly what they threatened and used the contracts against MS that the OEMs had enjoyed for many years. (While also keeps similar contracts with Wordperfect and other companies at the time they were testifying against MS for 'forcing' them to save the 5-10 bucks and do guaranteed bundles. Geesh)
I was with a smaller OEM, we paid about 5-10 $ a copy for Windows over what Gateway,Dell,HP, etc were paying MS, but we got the same levels of support from Microsoft. Microsoft offered us the contract, but we said no, cause we had some OS/2 and UNIX clients (Talking 1991-1999 here), so we paid a few bucks more for Windows, which was still cheaper than OS/2, and cheaper to support than UNIX, and we gave our customers the choice the industry somehow mythically believes didn't exist at this time.
MS didn't force Windows on all the name brand OEM machines, the OEMs did, and they are the ones that screwed people and dominated the market, it just happened they were selling Windows on the systems and designing around the Windows hardware model. -Go Look at 2D acceleration in the 90s, it was all based around Windows drawing and GDI.
Microsoft has already informed OEMs about the addition to more rigourous anti-virus abilities in the existing Win7 'Defender' product that is extending with MS Update to make anti-virus a thing of the past on Windows. This means that the kick back from Norton or McAfee could hurt their per unit sales, and this is just ONE example where Win7 will hurt Dell.
In this example, can you REALLY be POed at MS for tightening security and reliability of their product? Even on SlashDo
Ok, omitting OS/2 was simply context, there are many subsystems that run on NT and have ran on NT, from both MS and 3rd parties.
The OS/2 subsystem was a 1.x implementation that was provided mainly for server related processes, as it was kind of a stripped down version with regard to GUI access due to the conflict with IBM.
(MS could have went on to provide a full OS/2 3.0 subsystem, but after the IBM failout, they didn't give a crap about OS/2, even though IBM was reaping the work MS engineers had done in designing the OS/2 3.0 Object Desktop GUI.)
But that is just extra info, and again not relevant to the point about NT not being a normal or classic kernel/OS architecture, which tends to confuse die hard *nix fans the most, as they are use to working from a basic kernel and API set interface that is directly binded in one package.
For example Linux and the Framebuffers and the mixing of locks and items that are throughout the various layers of the kernel that are not things that can not be easily replaced at this 'core' of a level.
Where on NT, the low level HAL interface and basic NT kernel APIs are pretty much agnostic to the upper level OS interface API sets. There are exceptions with later incarnations of NT, and there are exceptions with NT being a 'hybrid' kernel allowing both direct and indirect calls.
Ha - From what I understand of Windows Presentation Layer (how video's done & what subsystems are called upon now in the latest versions of Windows by default for desktop display AND gaming), now that GDI & User32 are NOT the default display manager in VISTA/Server 2008/Windows 7?
Well, it's back to usermode via DirectX, but a fast version of it (probably as fast as MS really CAN make it & yet have the video subsystem be safer, as it was in NT 3.51 & below... still heavier & slower than User32 + GDI drawn 2d display though, imo!
Ok, this is a lot of information kind of mashed together and not very accurate.
1) NT Video Drivers. Yes, prior to NT 4.0 they were a higher level or 'type of user mode level drivers.
NT 4.0 changed this to give Direct Draw and later DirectX access to hardware with direct calls to the GPU without NT managing via its hardware isolation policies.
So the Video Driver model was moved to what would be generically called a Ring 0 level, even though on NT, it really isn't that low.
This was both good and bad in the timeframe this was done, as getting pixels to the screen was not so easy or fast.
NT didn't have an open interface for new GPU features, as it isolated the original Video drivers too much, and basic OpenGL was all that could be filtered through, and not very fast. (This is kind of what you find in the *nix world on many variants today depending on the kernel driver model.)
2) With Vista this again changed, but didn't move back to User Mode. The WDDM of Vista uses a hybrid video driver, with a basic set of features that still run at the 'Ring 0' kernel level that provide a powerful set of basic features that are called by the upper level portion of the drivers.
This keeps the performance of having the video drivers running at the kernel level, but with a basic abstraction in the drivers themselves so that calls are managed between to the two layers and thus makes it extremely hard for a Video Driver to crash the OS as a whole.
MS even took this one step further with a whole set of recovery and exception rules that work in the Video driver model between the two layers, so that if either layer of the Video driver fails, Vista itself won't fail.
This means that a game crashing won't drop your OS or your video card's basic kernel mode drivers, and the OS will recover the upper level drivers and the screen will redraw and nothing bad happens.
It also means that the lower level video driver is not 'tied' to the upper level drivers, and if the hardware fails or is 'changed', the OS can recover the lower level video driver (even dynamically change
Holy cow, how does this stuff get under the radar, especially on Slashdot?
Not directing this at the poster..
I am hit by about 80% of IT people not even realizing this exists, and there are a lot of people locked in a 'Windows' corporate world that would really enjoy this stuff, and could use it on a daily basis.
Quick Info...
POSIX was a watered down 'basic' UNIX model OS provided under Windows NT 3.1 through Win2K.
In the meantime MS sponsored and worked with several companies in their own UNIX subsystem technologies, and the result is SUA, or one that came from joint work with Interop and MS.
(MS made the Interop people very rich and bought them out in the early 2000s.)
So there has been a 'basic' POSIX environment running on NT since NT was born, but there has been a higher end UNIX subsystem that has been available around NT 4.0 and later provided by MS around the time Windows 2003 Server was released.
(So this has been free and around for at least 6 years.)
PS: MS also funded and worked with a couple of Linux (yes Linux) UNIX subsystems, but they haven't ever left R&D.
The current UNIX Subsystem for Windows provides SVR-5 and BSD UNIX. (And there are people do Linux stuff as well on their own, but that is a non-issue as it is not official MS supported subsystems.)
So yes Virginia you can easily run UNIX applications on Windows, in a native subsystem - no VM - native, that uses the IPC and Object Manager abilities of the NT kernel architecture that gives the UNIX Subsystem communication to the Win32/Win64 subsystem. Meaning you can take your UNIX app and let it tap an ODBC database driver instead of using MYSQL, as well as run on the Windows Desktop natively.
Two quick Links...
http://www.suacommunity.com/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771470.aspx
(There is a lot of information on the MS site and whitepapers all around, as well as even OSS sites that work with SUA as it is known.)
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Even if you are just an IT person that is a UNIX CLI guru, break out the UNIX subsystem on Windows and go to town with your favorite UNIX CLI.
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Again it has been a free download from MS for XP or Windows Server since at least 2003, and it even ships on the Vista DVDs (Business & Ultimate) that is just a one click to install from that add/remove Windows Features/Components.
This is also one of the cool things about the NT architecture, is the client/server kernel design that offsets and layers upper level OS API sets. NT also uses its 'hybrid' kernel to do things like this that OS X and Linux can't do, by allowing both direct and managed non-direct calls to let it create the upper layer OS subsystems with offset API kernel interfaces that are easily layered.
I hope that this helps *nix people using Windows or at least someone finds this cool and something that makes their life easier.
How stupid are these people?
Windows alreadys supports multiple OSes, from the Win16 and DOS subsystems to the BSD/UNIX subsystem, and also the Win32 and Win64 subsystem.
Which all have their own kernels, and run in NT OS subsystems.
So adding in a VM'd version of XP is going to add to 'support'? How?
The updates still come from MS Update, it isn't like the in house people are writing the patches themselves.
If anything this creates more work for MS, not a freaking IT department.
I'm not sure where to even begin with how stupid this sounds...
More tech support? Really?
If an IT department isn't using group policies and the business centralization and integration technologies of Windows, they shouldn't be using Windows and instead move to something that has almost no central control or mangement like Linux or OS X.
The hallmark of why business CONTINUES to choose Windows deployments is the ease and control that MS continues to give IT administrators, along with their centralized server management concepts that really do make anything else out there look foolish.
A well deployed Windows server/client environment is peanuts to administer, even when the IT people shove Firefox on users and have to run around and do 'manual' updates because Firefox is 'retarded' about allowing remote or admin level updates without giving your users administrator rights.
The second part of this is not understanding the virtualization technology being used. They assume it is like a 'free window' VMWare mode.
It isn't, it somewhere better a VM and a Subsystem on the NT architecture, which is one thing that makes HyperV as powerful as it is.
Truly people forget that NT is a user mode OS-less architecture, and that everything anyone sees is a 'virtual' subsystem, even Win32 has its own kernel and doesn't really know that NT is running under it.
Ok, I'll let people go grab the facts on this crap themselves, and give Win7 a week or two i people's hands that actually 'do' know what they are talking about...
PS The XP Virtualization is mainly for corporate clients, as 99.9% of all software works on Vista and Win7.
It is only the in house written or 'corporate' written software crap that has no concept of NT security that has problems with Vista or possibly Win7 that enforces the 20yr old NT security model that the software developers should have written for in the first freaking place.
Apple has always done fairly well with the 'designer' aspect of the OS and fit and finish, as they took this serious with the first Mac System UI from 1984
Though it has varied in years, and there are times when the designers vs the programmers worked against Apple, it is the same UI struggle that other OSes face. (One example where designers won is things like Time Machine where a basic finder integrated UI would have been better than an 'pretty' application that can't run on older Mac hardware. Or even things like the One Button Mouse that was held on to for so long, or the Delete button inconsistencies.
In OSS there is a SERIOUS lack of designers. And Ubuntu being 'pollished' is like the nerd at the prom, having the smallest pocket protector.
The deisgner vs programmer debate has something Microsoft has fought on and off for years and years, sometimes pulling off good things in both aspects, and sometimes being pretty but suck or be awesome and suck because its UI is not pretty or fails to meet what the users needs.
One model the OSS community needs to at least pay attention to is the separation of UI, Design, and code. That way the geeks can be as geeky as they want, and someone that couldn't program a lick of code can make it pretty or work withing expected UI guidelines.
Microsoft seems to be pioneering this balance and programming, and it is still new even at Microsoft. The goal of the Vista API and the whole XAML and WPF API sets are that the UI and 'design' of the application is abstrated from the geeks.
A 'designer' constructed UI, can meet UI constraints and also be 'pretty' without taking up precious uber programmer time, and also prevents a application from looking like the biggest geek in the world created it.
Windows7 still hasn't evolved to where all the UI or applications use this model, but if you are involved in the beta, the teams seems to be good at handing off UI and design where they normally would not have, even in the Vista development.
Vista is ok for fit and finish, with some rough edges, Windows 7 goes a long long way to extend consistency and fit and finish to areas most people don't notice.
As for Ubuntu, don't forget it has a couple of handicaps, as it has to deal with Window Managers and XWindows, where you don't always find consistency or fit and finish in the basic operations of the protocol or the Window manager consistency that was original built by the 'geek' crowds instead of the 'designer' crowds.
(With the ones that mimic OS X or Windows doing the best, as they at least had something to work off of.)
So no matter how much Ubunut works on consistency, you will see have dialog redraws to fit text that shouldn't do an initial paint before resizing and 'repainting' to fit the text.
There is also the massive amount of color depths, languages and other issues that causes a lot of work to pull off any consistency.
This is one area MS has done better than anyone with multi-language and multiple interface adapting since the XP days at the very least.
Multi-language fit and finish is something they take serious, and adapting the interface via 'themes' or 'classic modes' or even DWM/Aero modes to adapt to various color depths, (or no screen at all), and all the spacing and languages that it has to stretch and expand to fit and work.
So kudos to Ubunut, and for the love of God, other OSS geeks, give your cool application to a designer for a day, even if it is a friend, we are really sick of stuff looking like a bad Windows or OS X rip off or bright primary colors being 'geeky' cool.
The crap that looks like Windows from when the geek stopped using Windows is the worest, with Win95 interfaces. It is almost like a sick shrine to Microsoft that haunts everyone.
Problem #1
The average Joe already has this...
It is called either the PS3 or XBox 360...
More features, more choices, can game too, and better video quality when using HD standard VC1 codecs inherently supported things like Silverlight content.
Problem #2
Adobe has a long road right now, in adding HD to their Flash player they have virtually destoryed it. It doesn't play nice when multi-threading on multi-core or H/T CPUs, has horrible CPU utilization even for crap ads, let alone video that jerks even on mid range computers.
Just an example, open a Page with a HD Silverlight Video, let it play and then open a page with a tiny Flash Ad.
The tiny Flash Ad with 'no video' will eat 10-20x the CPU of the freaking Silverlight player that is decoding HD Video.
Right now the Flash Player is a mess, and even SD video via Flash will tank CPU utilization to alarming rates, especially when you are just wanting to watch a freaking video on Hulu and your CPU usage is higher than a HD movie even without GPU acceleration.
This is a major problem and scary that Flash performs so horribly, and has even affected their basic player for Ad and other non-video content.
Want to test your overclocked new i7? Open a few Browser pages with Flash running, it will pop it faster than a hard core burn in test.
You should pay some attention to what the OSS crowd has been doing with the DBUS system combined with Python lately.
Well, this is not the same thing though...
I am vaguely familiar with DBUS, and it would be more in line with Win32 object systems or even the IPC of NT that provides communication between OS Subsystems.
Remember Win32 is just an OS Subsystem on NT, it is not NT nor Windows.
There is no equivalent to the NT Object model at the lower levels in any UNIX, or it would no longer be UNIX by definition.
Make sense?
Go read the definitions of what UNIX is and makes a kernel a UNIX model kernel, then lookup the NT kernel, even on Wiki if you don't want to dig through MS Whitepapers. (Just be aware Wiki may not be 100% dead on due to inaccuracies or laymen level it tries to explain something this complex.)
What I said about NT and using objects rather than textual as in UNIX is a bit 'generic', but does summarize one of the essential differences.
In UNIX you can simulate some of the object features, but they would not be native kernel interfaces, nor how the kernel itself operates internally.
NT keeps the Object model even at low levels of the kernel that isn't normally accessible to upper level layers. So even the inner kernel calls use objects and this continues up in the various NT layers.
So you have the kernel using and tracking internal objects for things like security, the driver model is object based and not a generic I/O system, and as you go up to the Object Manager and the OS Subsystems, it continues through the NT architecture.
Objects add a bit more overhead, but in the last 10-15 years, this has been offset by the features the objects inherently provide that have to be either recreated or simulated in UNIX.
There is a lot to this and I wouldn't do it justice here, but if you really are interested in OS architecture, it is something worth exploring more.