and has been for the last 20 years. Doesn't stop you accessing that technology with a Linux kernel.
Very true, but for Linux to take full advantage of caching in a hybrid drive, it needs to also alter the memory management, caching, and paging techniques Linux uses.
The drive is going to transparently provide a boost in performance for any OS, but when used with Vista, the direct management of when and for what to use the hybrid cache for is something the OS is already designed to do. For example Vista knows what to put where based on flash based performance differences that are both slower and faster than the HD platters. So random location data gets a priority for Flash, but sequential data skips the Flash portion of the drive as it cannot give the same performance as a HD in reads, and sometimes writes.
The drives inherently (from my understanding) do this to a degree, but Vista adds in the intelligence of what data is cached based on past performance and the expected usage of the user. Vista can optimize the basic functions the internal HD is doing on a more basic level based on specific needs of the FS, OS, and User.
Anyone that is interested in how Vista uses Flash caching differently than other OSes, should check out ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive a bit more in depth, MS provides fairly detailed technical articles on what is happening and why it works the way it does.
You can also find information at some of the HD sites that are coming out with Hybrid and full Flash based Drives. For example, the full Flash devices are obtaining sequential read/write speeds equal to platter based HDs by using an internal Flash RAID technology.
A lot of this is fairly interesting as we are finally getting to the place were moving storage devices will slowly start to disappear.
This is also another reason I tell my friends in the OSS world to pay attention to what Vista is doing and promoting in terms of basic architectual technology. There are plenty of things to beat up Vista about, but there are a few things Vista is ahead of the industry and deserves the attention of movers in the non MS world so that Vista doesn't move ahead with unforeseen advantages.
Hybrid drives and Flash caching is one area MS has done their homework; GPU scheduling and GPU virtualization is another area that could isolate technologies and hardware to Vista if others in the industry don't start paying attention now.
When he said "Mac laptops," what he really meant was "newer Mac laptops." Both your G4 PowerBook and my G4 iBook predate that, unfortunately.
Yep, Apple's 'Safe Sleep' was added as an 'extension' to OSX and Powerbooks at the end of 2005. Prior to that, when the battery died, you lost all running data.
For non Apple PC users out there, this is probably pretty surprising, since Software Suspend and Hibernate has been a part of OSes and even APM BIOS features since the early 1990s, and something most non-Mac users have taken for granted for a long time.
For the Grandparent post, there is a hack that might let your older powerbook use 'Safe Sleep', check out this link:
However, even if it works, some hardware might not wake up properly leaving devices off, but it is worth a shot if you are willing to play around with it.
I login, and then I have to wait another 20-30 seconds for the networking to come online, even if I statically assign the IP address to rule out a DHCP issue!
Your problem could be in the NIC itself or its driver. Some NIC drivers even set themselves to delay a few seconds from a resumed state when it is not needed.
I do know what you are talking about, as I have also have experienced computers that take a few extra seconds to get the NIC alive again, but this is more the exception than the rule. I agree that is annoying when you run into one.
Another thing to check is some virus or firewall software which create a delay. Norton screams to mind as a really bad/good example of preventing the network from being instantly responsive as well. Try your system with the low level virus/firewall/spyware software disabled, you might be surprised to find it is creating the delay.
(PS this is one reason I support MS's push to keep Synamtec and McAfee from putting driver level software into Vista, as their drivers that are supposed to help users are usually compatibility and performance sucking nightmares.)
As for Linux power management, ya, there are some issues, but it is maturing. Also, at least you could do a powerless hibernate state in Linux before it was even an option with OSX.
As a almost full time notebook user for a long time now, the OSX sleep/standby mode just didn't cut it when I wanted to resume what I was doing two days later without a power source. Thank God Apple finally added Safe Sleep(Hibernate/Software Suspend) in 2005. Which is more than 10 years after I was accustomed to using it on PCs.
Not unlike the old days when some of the core OS functionality was stored in a custom Mac ROM. Funny how things are cyclical.
Like probably everyone here, this was my first response when I read the Apple tech information on how they plan on using Hybrid drives.
If they can lock key OSX code in this area (which is possible), they will also stop OSX emulation projects like PearPC/etc.
I remember the days of Atari ST users having to go out and buy Mac ROMs to run Mac software, we may see this shift again, and emulation users will have to go find an Apple OSX HD just to get all the components of OSX.
Windows and even linux machines can have such a wide variety of hardware and all it takes is one bad driver to make sleep or suspend not work.
Ok, you realize that maybe.05% of Windows users have issues like this? You could have a bad device driver on OSX and find the same issue arise. PS Vista, doesn't allow drivers to do this, so the.05% of the people with a bad driver no longer have issues.
Actually, OS X is superior when it comes to sleep Why do people believe stuff like this? I know it is Mac lore, but it is not reality.
If you want to get technical, OSX has a lot of catching up to do with regard to modern sleep/suspend/hibernate features in other OSes.
OSX didn't even offer a full power off hibernate state until 2005, something the rest of the PC world has been using since the early 90s as a common feature.
And in comparison, the 'glorious' sleep state of OSX is like the old standard 'standby' feature PC users have been using the early 1990s. Even APM supported Standby.
OSX also lacks features that other OS users just take for granted. In 1999, my computer (using ACPI) would turn itself ON based on a scheduled task, check my email, etc, and then shut itself off. And this is with old Win2k back then. (And remember this from a FULLY POWERED OFF STATE, NOT JUST SLEEP/STANDBY.)
OSX has some really good stuff, but power management is truly not a strong point to argue. Especially when you also take into account device power saving features, CPU/GPU throttling, etc.
So to continue my previous comparison, my 2002 Toshiba Laptop has a legacy free BIOS, (meaning no BIOS delay), and it can turn itself back on from a NO POWER state in less than 2 seconds. Which is as fast as most OSX powerbooks can wake up from their 'powered' sleep state.
OSX is not superior in any regard, and still has catching up to do when it comes to no power sleep states, responding to tasks with all power off and any non-standby/sleep power saving modes.
There has been so much speculation, but where's the proof? It'll have to run a slim OS like the iPhone to work well on flash due to the high rate of paging MacOS does.
I won't comment on OSX's paging, other than it needs a bit of refining as it tends to be over agressive.
However, I think Apple's initial plans are to use the Flash on these drives as more of a Read area for portions of OSX that are accessed at startup or frequently.
As for the lifespan of Flash, if the device or OS is smart enough to not use the same bits over and over and distributes the writes intelligently(Since areas of Flash are fairly equal in speed), then the lower end bits won't get any more use than the top end of the cache, and in theory the flash should last as long as the HD platters. There are also techniques to extend Flash usage by what bits are used and when, so the limited writes are extended beyond just linear write lifespans of the Flash.
Remember the HD Mfrs are not stupid about caching or Flash limits, so this is stuff that people a lot smarter than the average SlashDot reader has already considered and worked around.
Do Windows laptops not work this way (I've never used one)?
Windows or Linux is not limited in any way or inferior to OSX in this regard.
I think people are wanting instant on/off from hibernate with large amounts of RAM.
Even my old Toshiba from 2002 running XP will return from a hibernate (no power) in less than 2 secs, and will resume from standby (still powered) instantly. It has 768MB of RAM.
However my new laptop with 4GB takes almost 4 seconds to resume from a powered off hibernate state as it takes just a bit more time to read the RAM from the HD.
Not going to end jpg - everyone dissatisfied with JPG is already using RAW. Everyone satisified with jpg will stick with jpg.
This is going to enjoy the same sort of limited uptake as jpeg2000 vs jpg, mp4/wma/ogg vs mp3, png vs gif, etc.
Few other things to note:
1) The 'HD' doesn't stand for High Definition, it's just there to get the association with HD TV in consumers minds. *rolls eyes*
2) This technology is patented to the hilt & the licensing terms for the HD Photo Device Porting Kit 1.0 licensing terms specifically exclude copyleft (GPL style) licenses.
Ok, you have so many things confused, I'm not even sure they are worth addressing.
People NEED to go look at the HD specifications and see WHY and WHAT MS is trying to achieve with this new format.
It is designed to work better with digital cameras based on how the imaging chip sends data to the device to be stored.
HD Photo also has several features that could be very important in High Quality images being used on the web, as the format supports mipmaping without having to have a predefined thumbnail.
HD Photo brings several new things to an image standard that DOES NOT exist in any SINGLE image format specification, as well as adding in some impressive new compression, resolution, and bit depth beyond even high end Photo formats.
If MS does as they propose, and release this specification to an independant standards body, why should we not see this as a good thing? Which is what the whole point of the buzz of HD Photo has been on various sites, this is not about them demanding licensing or royalties as the parent poster suggests.
And look what happened there. WMV was supposed to be the death of MPEG-4/Divx.
You do realize that WMV VC1 is a default standard for HD media content, just like MPEG4.
You also realize that most Disc released in HD-DVD or Blue-Ray are using VC-1 (WMV) because many studios find it faster and better quality.
WMV is NOT going anywhere, and in fact with new IPTV and other things that seem to skip over a lot of people in the anti-MS world, WMV is very strong and continues to grow.
(I am not here to say WMV is the worlds best, but it has made its own ground and for quality does have the industry's respect.)
PS You also realize that DIVX is based on MS's MPEG4 codecs of the late 1990s?
If Microsoft is so stretched for innovation that they have to go around demanding props for "hey lets write these 100 bytes to flash instead of spinning up the drive" then they are in really bad shape. My advice is to jump ship now before the MS Titanic hits a penguin.
Go read about ReadyDrive and ReadyBoost and Superfetch before you make such an crazy assumption.
Do you really think HD manufacturers would be working with MS on such simplistic concepts if it were merely just a generic cache concept? I would bet HD companies have been doing more with Media caching than any other part of the industry, so for them to welcome MS research technologies into a product, it MIGHT just be more than a generic cache.
MS has some really good ideas with caching with ReadyDrive,ReadyBoost, and even the Superfetch in Vista, these are things the rest of the industry should be capable of realizing what IS GOOD about them and use that knowledge in other OS projects, instead of sticking their head in the sand and saying well it is from MS, it must suck.
Does everyone out here ignore their competition in all of their business activies? If you did you wouldn't have a business, but yet people in the OSS world have a BAD habit of doing this with MS.
Even if you hate MS with every fiber of your being, you can't ignore what they do and expect to remain on top in a field where they have more money than God to throw at R&D and Engineering minds.
It's more like 1,000,000 writes, but your point is taken. Perhaps the driver takes this into account--store many small and frequent temporary files such as browser cache files into RAM rather than flash, then dump them all to flash or disk rarely, but this implies a lot of intelligence on the part of the driver.
Anyone interested in how this is handled, go look up MS ReadyBoost/ReadyDrive/Superfetch technologies.
This was an early issue with the ReadyBoost technology in using USB Flash drives and MS designed the caching system to not use the same bits all the time, so in theory by using a bit of intelligence and not addressing the ram in a linear fashion, even an ordinary old Flash Drive should outlast a HD or the computer it is being used on to improve performance.
The same holds true for ReadyDrive caching technology.
Go to Wikipedia or even Microsoft's site for more technical information on how this works.
The flash in the hybrid drives won't be used as that kind of cache (you're thinking of the Vista's ReadyBoost).
Correct, this is not Vista ReadyBoost technology, it is Vista ReadyDrive technology.
Somehow people keep skipping the fact the write caching technology these drives are using is a MS designed technology, even though it is not ReadyBoost.
Also why does the linked article and Slashdot dismiss these drives as having nothing to do with Vista, when in fact they were DESIGNED Specifically to be used with Vista and employ MS Vista technology in the hardware?
Is Slashdot trying to become the misinformation site of the Internet?
"Optimized to work in Windows Vista-capable notebook PCs, Samsung's MH80 is a 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive with 128 or 256MB of flash memory. It combines a hard disk drive with a OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft's ReadyDrive software, offering faster boot and resume times, increased battery life and greater reliability compared to traditional magnetic media technology, the spokesperson claimed. "
Sorry slashdot, but these drives are designed for Vista. Sure they may offer performance improvements in other OSes, but will see the majority of performance gains in Vista. Also even when used with other OSes, the way the Drives internally manage the Flash caching is from MS, so thank them the next time you boot your Linux laptop with one of these drives.
As for the other questions people have about the limited write times of Flash RAM, etc, go lookup MS Superfetch technology which specifically addresses these issues by writing to various locations in the Flash space, since this this is also how these drives work to ensure the same bits don't always get used, giving the flash cache the equivalent or greater lifetime than the HD platters.
I know this is SlashDot, but someone could get the fact right once, right?
MS says these things when they are well known in and out of the industry for their large amounts of theft and patent/copyright abuse
Well known = Your biased Opinion....
MS has always paid rather well to companies they aquire technology from, and in terms of literature or artwork, again they pay well for the content. Look up Gates and buying digital artwork.
Just because you believe myth, does not make it reality.
So I don't think they don't want to support POP. They try to reassure us by saying that Microsoft might implement POP because their service is evolving and we should just hope it will happen. So it's not a policy of not supporting POP, it's just that POP wasn't a requirement. Why not, I don't know.
To support POP3, they would also have to support SMTP to send out. And my guess is that by doing this, they can't lock down your email as tight as they apparently want. By giving up POP3 and SMTP, they ensure students won't be Spamming or accidentally letting a trojan on a student's computer attempt to send infected email.
Like I said, it is a pain, but it also offers a small degree of control on the user's/student's email to prevent purposeful or accidental malicious usage.
This is why there needs to be new authenication methods, new protocols, or a standard way to control such issues and still give people a choice of using a stand alone client that is not OS specific.
Question: what sort of things do you think would need to be implemented in an email protocol that would require a rich web client instead of a desktop client? It may just be the late hour, but I think the interface a user sees their email with can be separated from the protocol used to send it to the mail server in almost all instances. Desktop mail clients are very useful for lots of things, like downloading your email and reading it while you are offline.
One problem with SMTP, POP3, IMAP etc is the ease in which SPAM can be generated. Having a web or desktop client that abandons these protocols eliminates the uses of Live Mail for example from generating SPAM or using the servers in destructive ways from the User side.
Incoming is still an issue, but in this example, the Universities don't have to worry about their students/teachers using their accounts to flood SPAM or malicious email easily to other users. It is harder to add Viruses and Spyware without user intent.
So I can see why this would be apealing to something like a Univerisity or School, as they don't have to worry as much about their students using their email access to cause harm.
I don't know if the Exchange protocol is all that great in comparison to other ideas out there, but it does lock the control to the Exchange server instead of the users.
Something to think about... POP and IMAP are old, very old, and still have many inherent flaws that haven't been resolved.
Many companies have tried to invent new standards to deal with security or work around the limitations, but in today's age of email and internet new standards should be taking over.
There are reasons why MS doesn't use POP or IMAP as the default communication with outlook and exchange for example. Only a subset of the features being offered in new generation email can be done with the old standards.
I agree that by not having POP3 or IMAP it IS a 'limitation', but I also realize why companies are trying to push users to different client methods. Using a rich web interface is one way of solving both with the advances in browser based AJAX or alternative technologies.
POP and IMAP are inherently insecure, have no control for SPAM, etc. Yes I know a lot of email servers have mechanisms to deal with these issues, but think a few years ahead, we need new standard mechanisms.
What is the next generation beyond POP and IMAP? If not rich web clients, then where does email need to progress next? What other new interfaces are out there that meet the needs of today? And how can the migration happen without leaving people behind now, since there are only a few clients that support installable communication methods?
Because of that limitation, the only freely available mail client it supports is Windows Live Desktop, which is only available on Windows
If you don't use Windows, then just access your Live Mail account via your browser, and yes it supports FireFox, etc.
What is the freaking difference between this and Hotmail or Gmail?
Even in large companies, email clients are becoming a thing of the past. Most companies are picking mail server software based on the Web Interface today. Client mail tools like Outlook, etc are used internally on corporate networks, but outside the intranet, users use and are encouraged to use the Web interface for email, as the web features of many of them are at the level of functionality of dedicated client software.
MS has no reason to support POP or IMAP for Live Mail, just like Hotmail of the past which orginally had NO POP or IMAP access.
I'm not going to say Windows Live Mail is great, because I have very little experience with it, but I do realize this isn't about forcing Windows on anyone, as all it takes is a browser to access, and MS has been working very hard to ensure firefox and other browsers get the same level of functionality as IE users do with Live Mail and all their Live services being deeply invested in universal client AJAX technologies.
unless you had to simulate a Ctrl-Alt-Del key sequence in userland (w/ "system" privileges) without making a keyboard driver/filter ad hoc (quite annoying).
This no longer applies in Vista, as Ctrl-Alt-Del passes itself off to a new UI construct. However, even taskmanager by default runs in user space.
and it is simply way too tempting to turn off every security improvement that Vista offers. Whatever Vista does, it will *not* make Windows that much more secure-- it just allows Microsoft to blame the users
Users are not the main goal here, the goal by enforcing the NT security model and adding in the UAC so stuff will still work is to FORCE developers to write software right in the first place.
If enough of the developer's users bitch at them, they won't be stuffing data in the program files, or trying to put data in areas they have no business touching.
Vista is the slap up side the head to the devlopment world to stop screwing with stuff and actually understand a bit about security before releasing an application. So many developers still treat applications like they are running on an OS without security like Win9x, and this is where MS's biggest hurdle is.
So as the old bad software dies, Vista will get more secure in the long run, and MS can eventually lock the security model even tighter.
C|N->K! Vista can't even manage to bring up the *task manager* half the time when an application freaks out (so much so, I've rolled my one Windows system back to XP Pro).
Well unless you purposely turned off Aero (which slows down Vista) and have some really bad hardware, this is simply not possible. So I think you are either spreaking FUD or just trolling.
You do realize you can't rollback to XP Pro, so you mean your reinstalled XP Pro? Oh wait, I was taking you serious again.
Most of the posts like this are people that installed Vista during one of the Betas, usually did an upgrade and had screwy apps that didn't upgrade or work well with the Vista beta.
FYI both BSD and Linux will significantly out perform Windows 2003 on high end systems
First, this is depends on the Server's purpose, as numbers can go either way.
Also the grandparent post was also saying OSX is superior because it has a 'complex' GUI that runs well on a SERVER. So if you can show me OSX, BSD or Linux pushing 3D information over an Apple Remote or X11 session, I would love to see this. Vista and Longhorn CAN do this.
However if you want to argue OSX is faster than real BSD or Linux on the server, go ahead I'll let you agree with the grandparent post and dig your own hole.
Sure, no problem! Do I get a cookie? You can spin the whole of one desktop on a cube too (rotating it to get the other virtual desktops), mmm pretty (and functional - with dynamic window translucency).
This is a demonstration of a 3D UI running locally. Now lets see you remote into the computer doing this from 10,000km away and still get the same SPEED and UI effects. It is not possible with the 3D composer you are showing, nor any OpenGL 3D composer.
Het is duidelijk dat je het niet begrijpt, en nee, je krijgt geen koekje.
Sometimes I can minimize the window, but if I try to close the browser, I always get the 'program not responding' pop-up window; the only way I can get control of my browser back is to forcex the Acrobat process, and about half the time that doesn't work and I'll have to forced the browser.
Ok, oddly you are making my point in your response. The UI of the application doesn't always lock even if the application does. However, it can happen on XP/2k/NT4/etc...
On Vista, it cannot happen, as the screen is owned by the composer, so the application may stop repainting, but you can still move, minimize, and close it from the Windows Frame UI.
The reason the person in the grandparent post sees OSX as superior, is because it also uses a composer, this gives the OS an advantage as it is not relying on applications for redrawing at the frame buffer level. This is only a side effect of a composer between the applications and the frame buffer though, it doesn't mean OSX special, it just means it has a composer.
This is something that people working on various 3D UI composers for XWindows in the OSS world can also testify to, just adding a composer between the applications and the frame buffer gives the same results no matter what the OS.
The only execption would be and OS that has a single input message queue like OS/2 did, which lets any application's non-responsiveness deny even the OS messages from the user.
Windows can still lock up an application window -- I see XP do it all the time. Usually with Outlook. Can't minimize or move the window but at least you can usually eventually kill it. They have that same half-assed fix that IBM put in place except theirs works at an application level.
I understand your point here, but on Vista, THIS IS NO LONGER TRUE. The application system UI elements like the minimize/move/close are handled by the Vista UI composer, so even if Outlook or any application locks tight, it is not locked on the screen whatsoever.
In XP, this also was possible, but locking applications would often lock in the repaint process, and since there was no composer to handle the application, all that could be done at that point would be to access the menu from the taskbar and close the application.
This IS NOT the same. MS has also ported Win32 and the NT Kernel many times; however, replacing the fundamental OS API set is something different.
MS is actively moving developers to managed code, and with a long term reason, so they can drop Win32 as secondary subsystem on NT with a new main system API.
Apple did VERY LITTLE when it comes to transitions making life easier on users. Their idea of compatibility was basically using a System9 VM on OSX. This is not creative, nor easy on the end users. MS on the other hand back in 1992 implemented the Win16 subsytem for application compatibility with Win 3.x while developing Windows NT. This was NOT an emulation environment, but a seperate Win16 subsystem that runs on the desktop side by side Win32.
MS is already doing this to a certain extent with.NET and other technologies like WPF. However, when MS decides to move away from Win32, as they HAVE DONE on the 64bit version of XP and Vista, it runs as a separate subsystem along side the replacement, and again with emulation.
NT's core is a client/server kernel technology and it is in the NT layers where what is kind of cool about Windows exists. NT's subsystem model allows for MS to move in or out any Subsystem that is equal to the main OS subsystem, this is also why a BSD *nix variant runs NATIVELY as another subsystem on NT, without EMULATION or VM.
Microsoft doesn't do any of the above because they don't have to.
Again, this is simply not true. First, XP64 and Vista 64bit do NOT USE the Win32 subsystem as the main OS subsystem. So they have done this, not only 1992 with the Win16 subsystem, but today on the 64bit versions.
I don't really care what you think of MS, as they both suck and do things well depending on what you look at. However to try to use Apple as a 'shining' example when it comes to OS architecture or API implementation it is VERY laughable.
Even Quartz2D continues to fall on its face with no default hardware accleration, pushing developers to use the very old QuickDraw API to maintain performance in applications.
Even 10.5 hasn't delivered an accelerated version of Quartz2D, yet Vista REPLACED their entire video subsystem while adding in WPF and other technologies. And Vista's new video subsystem is SO TRANSPARENT to users and even nerds, that people don't think Vista is any different than XP.
So with regard to the video, MS did too good of a job of creating a new video foundation/system, as most people don't even get all of it is NEW and think Vista is just like XP because all the applications look and run just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
and has been for the last 20 years. Doesn't stop you accessing that technology with a Linux kernel.
Very true, but for Linux to take full advantage of caching in a hybrid drive, it needs to also alter the memory management, caching, and paging techniques Linux uses.
The drive is going to transparently provide a boost in performance for any OS, but when used with Vista, the direct management of when and for what to use the hybrid cache for is something the OS is already designed to do. For example Vista knows what to put where based on flash based performance differences that are both slower and faster than the HD platters. So random location data gets a priority for Flash, but sequential data skips the Flash portion of the drive as it cannot give the same performance as a HD in reads, and sometimes writes.
The drives inherently (from my understanding) do this to a degree, but Vista adds in the intelligence of what data is cached based on past performance and the expected usage of the user. Vista can optimize the basic functions the internal HD is doing on a more basic level based on specific needs of the FS, OS, and User.
Anyone that is interested in how Vista uses Flash caching differently than other OSes, should check out ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive a bit more in depth, MS provides fairly detailed technical articles on what is happening and why it works the way it does.
You can also find information at some of the HD sites that are coming out with Hybrid and full Flash based Drives. For example, the full Flash devices are obtaining sequential read/write speeds equal to platter based HDs by using an internal Flash RAID technology.
A lot of this is fairly interesting as we are finally getting to the place were moving storage devices will slowly start to disappear.
This is also another reason I tell my friends in the OSS world to pay attention to what Vista is doing and promoting in terms of basic architectual technology. There are plenty of things to beat up Vista about, but there are a few things Vista is ahead of the industry and deserves the attention of movers in the non MS world so that Vista doesn't move ahead with unforeseen advantages.
Hybrid drives and Flash caching is one area MS has done their homework; GPU scheduling and GPU virtualization is another area that could isolate technologies and hardware to Vista if others in the industry don't start paying attention now.
When he said "Mac laptops," what he really meant was "newer Mac laptops." Both your G4 PowerBook and my G4 iBook predate that, unfortunately.
o -safe-sleep-your-mac/
Yep, Apple's 'Safe Sleep' was added as an 'extension' to OSX and Powerbooks at the end of 2005. Prior to that, when the battery died, you lost all running data.
For non Apple PC users out there, this is probably pretty surprising, since Software Suspend and Hibernate has been a part of OSes and even APM BIOS features since the early 1990s, and something most non-Mac users have taken for granted for a long time.
For the Grandparent post, there is a hack that might let your older powerbook use 'Safe Sleep', check out this link:
http://andrewescobar.com/archive/2005/11/11/how-t
However, even if it works, some hardware might not wake up properly leaving devices off, but it is worth a shot if you are willing to play around with it.
I login, and then I have to wait another 20-30 seconds for the networking to come online, even if I statically assign the IP address to rule out a DHCP issue!
Your problem could be in the NIC itself or its driver. Some NIC drivers even set themselves to delay a few seconds from a resumed state when it is not needed.
I do know what you are talking about, as I have also have experienced computers that take a few extra seconds to get the NIC alive again, but this is more the exception than the rule. I agree that is annoying when you run into one.
Another thing to check is some virus or firewall software which create a delay. Norton screams to mind as a really bad/good example of preventing the network from being instantly responsive as well. Try your system with the low level virus/firewall/spyware software disabled, you might be surprised to find it is creating the delay.
(PS this is one reason I support MS's push to keep Synamtec and McAfee from putting driver level software into Vista, as their drivers that are supposed to help users are usually compatibility and performance sucking nightmares.)
As for Linux power management, ya, there are some issues, but it is maturing. Also, at least you could do a powerless hibernate state in Linux before it was even an option with OSX.
As a almost full time notebook user for a long time now, the OSX sleep/standby mode just didn't cut it when I wanted to resume what I was doing two days later without a power source. Thank God Apple finally added Safe Sleep(Hibernate/Software Suspend) in 2005. Which is more than 10 years after I was accustomed to using it on PCs.
Not unlike the old days when some of the core OS functionality was stored in a custom Mac ROM. Funny how things are cyclical.
Like probably everyone here, this was my first response when I read the Apple tech information on how they plan on using Hybrid drives.
If they can lock key OSX code in this area (which is possible), they will also stop OSX emulation projects like PearPC/etc.
I remember the days of Atari ST users having to go out and buy Mac ROMs to run Mac software, we may see this shift again, and emulation users will have to go find an Apple OSX HD just to get all the components of OSX.
Windows and even linux machines can have such a wide variety of hardware and all it takes is one bad driver to make sleep or suspend not work.
.05% of Windows users have issues like this? You could have a bad device driver on OSX and find the same issue arise. PS Vista, doesn't allow drivers to do this, so the .05% of the people with a bad driver no longer have issues.
2 477
Ok, you realize that maybe
Actually, OS X is superior when it comes to sleep
Why do people believe stuff like this? I know it is Mac lore, but it is not reality.
If you want to get technical, OSX has a lot of catching up to do with regard to modern sleep/suspend/hibernate features in other OSes.
OSX didn't even offer a full power off hibernate state until 2005, something the rest of the PC world has been using since the early 90s as a common feature.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30
And in comparison, the 'glorious' sleep state of OSX is like the old standard 'standby' feature PC users have been using the early 1990s. Even APM supported Standby.
OSX also lacks features that other OS users just take for granted. In 1999, my computer (using ACPI) would turn itself ON based on a scheduled task, check my email, etc, and then shut itself off. And this is with old Win2k back then. (And remember this from a FULLY POWERED OFF STATE, NOT JUST SLEEP/STANDBY.)
OSX has some really good stuff, but power management is truly not a strong point to argue. Especially when you also take into account device power saving features, CPU/GPU throttling, etc.
So to continue my previous comparison, my 2002 Toshiba Laptop has a legacy free BIOS, (meaning no BIOS delay), and it can turn itself back on from a NO POWER state in less than 2 seconds. Which is as fast as most OSX powerbooks can wake up from their 'powered' sleep state.
OSX is not superior in any regard, and still has catching up to do when it comes to no power sleep states, responding to tasks with all power off and any non-standby/sleep power saving modes.
There has been so much speculation, but where's the proof? It'll have to run a slim OS like the iPhone to work well on flash due to the high rate of paging MacOS does.
I won't comment on OSX's paging, other than it needs a bit of refining as it tends to be over agressive.
However, I think Apple's initial plans are to use the Flash on these drives as more of a Read area for portions of OSX that are accessed at startup or frequently.
As for the lifespan of Flash, if the device or OS is smart enough to not use the same bits over and over and distributes the writes intelligently(Since areas of Flash are fairly equal in speed), then the lower end bits won't get any more use than the top end of the cache, and in theory the flash should last as long as the HD platters. There are also techniques to extend Flash usage by what bits are used and when, so the limited writes are extended beyond just linear write lifespans of the Flash.
Remember the HD Mfrs are not stupid about caching or Flash limits, so this is stuff that people a lot smarter than the average SlashDot reader has already considered and worked around.
Do Windows laptops not work this way (I've never used one)?
Windows or Linux is not limited in any way or inferior to OSX in this regard.
I think people are wanting instant on/off from hibernate with large amounts of RAM.
Even my old Toshiba from 2002 running XP will return from a hibernate (no power) in less than 2 secs, and will resume from standby (still powered) instantly. It has 768MB of RAM.
However my new laptop with 4GB takes almost 4 seconds to resume from a powered off hibernate state as it takes just a bit more time to read the RAM from the HD.
Hope this makes sense.
Not going to end jpg - everyone dissatisfied with JPG is already using RAW. Everyone satisified with jpg will stick with jpg.
o rmat+a+standard/2100-1012_3-6165004.html
This is going to enjoy the same sort of limited uptake as jpeg2000 vs jpg, mp4/wma/ogg vs mp3, png vs gif, etc.
Few other things to note:
1) The 'HD' doesn't stand for High Definition, it's just there to get the association with HD TV in consumers minds. *rolls eyes*
2) This technology is patented to the hilt & the licensing terms for the HD Photo Device Porting Kit 1.0 licensing terms specifically exclude copyleft (GPL style) licenses.
Ok, you have so many things confused, I'm not even sure they are worth addressing.
People NEED to go look at the HD specifications and see WHY and WHAT MS is trying to achieve with this new format.
It is designed to work better with digital cameras based on how the imaging chip sends data to the device to be stored.
HD Photo also has several features that could be very important in High Quality images being used on the web, as the format supports mipmaping without having to have a predefined thumbnail.
HD Photo brings several new things to an image standard that DOES NOT exist in any SINGLE image format specification, as well as adding in some impressive new compression, resolution, and bit depth beyond even high end Photo formats.
If MS does as they propose, and release this specification to an independant standards body, why should we not see this as a good thing? Which is what the whole point of the buzz of HD Photo has been on various sites, this is not about them demanding licensing or royalties as the parent poster suggests.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Make+our+HD+Photo+f
And look what happened there. WMV was supposed to be the death of MPEG-4/Divx.
You do realize that WMV VC1 is a default standard for HD media content, just like MPEG4.
You also realize that most Disc released in HD-DVD or Blue-Ray are using VC-1 (WMV) because many studios find it faster and better quality.
WMV is NOT going anywhere, and in fact with new IPTV and other things that seem to skip over a lot of people in the anti-MS world, WMV is very strong and continues to grow.
(I am not here to say WMV is the worlds best, but it has made its own ground and for quality does have the industry's respect.)
PS You also realize that DIVX is based on MS's MPEG4 codecs of the late 1990s?
BTW - WMV has to do with HD Photo again how?
If Microsoft is so stretched for innovation that they have to go around demanding props for "hey lets write these 100 bytes to flash instead of spinning up the drive" then they are in really bad shape. My advice is to jump ship now before the MS Titanic hits a penguin.
Go read about ReadyDrive and ReadyBoost and Superfetch before you make such an crazy assumption.
Do you really think HD manufacturers would be working with MS on such simplistic concepts if it were merely just a generic cache concept? I would bet HD companies have been doing more with Media caching than any other part of the industry, so for them to welcome MS research technologies into a product, it MIGHT just be more than a generic cache.
MS has some really good ideas with caching with ReadyDrive,ReadyBoost, and even the Superfetch in Vista, these are things the rest of the industry should be capable of realizing what IS GOOD about them and use that knowledge in other OS projects, instead of sticking their head in the sand and saying well it is from MS, it must suck.
Does everyone out here ignore their competition in all of their business activies? If you did you wouldn't have a business, but yet people in the OSS world have a BAD habit of doing this with MS.
Even if you hate MS with every fiber of your being, you can't ignore what they do and expect to remain on top in a field where they have more money than God to throw at R&D and Engineering minds.
It's more like 1,000,000 writes, but your point is taken. Perhaps the driver takes this into account--store many small and frequent temporary files such as browser cache files into RAM rather than flash, then dump them all to flash or disk rarely, but this implies a lot of intelligence on the part of the driver.
Anyone interested in how this is handled, go look up MS ReadyBoost/ReadyDrive/Superfetch technologies.
This was an early issue with the ReadyBoost technology in using USB Flash drives and MS designed the caching system to not use the same bits all the time, so in theory by using a bit of intelligence and not addressing the ram in a linear fashion, even an ordinary old Flash Drive should outlast a HD or the computer it is being used on to improve performance.
The same holds true for ReadyDrive caching technology.
Go to Wikipedia or even Microsoft's site for more technical information on how this works.
The flash in the hybrid drives won't be used as that kind of cache (you're thinking of the Vista's ReadyBoost).
Correct, this is not Vista ReadyBoost technology, it is Vista ReadyDrive technology.
Somehow people keep skipping the fact the write caching technology these drives are using is a MS designed technology, even though it is not ReadyBoost.
More info, try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyDrive
Or even www.microsoft.com
I'm not sure what is more screwed up the article linked to about the drives or the Slashdot comment.
v ista/features/details/performance.mspx
t ml
p s+Worlds+First+Hybrid+HDD151or+Is+It/202621_1.aspx
ReadyDrive is NOT ReadyBoost, but it IS STILL a MS Technology and is designed to work directly with Vista.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windows
Also why does the linked article and Slashdot dismiss these drives as having nothing to do with Vista, when in fact they were DESIGNED Specifically to be used with Vista and employ MS Vista technology in the hardware?
Is Slashdot trying to become the misinformation site of the Internet?
http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070307PR201.h
http://www.channelinsider.com/article/Samsung+Shi
"Optimized to work in Windows Vista-capable notebook PCs, Samsung's MH80 is a 2.5-inch hybrid hard drive with 128 or 256MB of flash memory. It combines a hard disk drive with a OneNAND Flash cache and Microsoft's ReadyDrive software, offering faster boot and resume times, increased battery life and greater reliability compared to traditional magnetic media technology, the spokesperson claimed. "
Sorry slashdot, but these drives are designed for Vista. Sure they may offer performance improvements in other OSes, but will see the majority of performance gains in Vista. Also even when used with other OSes, the way the Drives internally manage the Flash caching is from MS, so thank them the next time you boot your Linux laptop with one of these drives.
As for the other questions people have about the limited write times of Flash RAM, etc, go lookup MS Superfetch technology which specifically addresses these issues by writing to various locations in the Flash space, since this this is also how these drives work to ensure the same bits don't always get used, giving the flash cache the equivalent or greater lifetime than the HD platters.
I know this is SlashDot, but someone could get the fact right once, right?
MS says these things when they are well known in and out of the industry for their large amounts of theft and patent/copyright abuse
Well known = Your biased Opinion....
MS has always paid rather well to companies they aquire technology from, and in terms of literature or artwork, again they pay well for the content. Look up Gates and buying digital artwork.
Just because you believe myth, does not make it reality.
So I don't think they don't want to support POP. They try to reassure us by saying that Microsoft might implement POP because their service is evolving and we should just hope it will happen. So it's not a policy of not supporting POP, it's just that POP wasn't a requirement. Why not, I don't know.
To support POP3, they would also have to support SMTP to send out. And my guess is that by doing this, they can't lock down your email as tight as they apparently want. By giving up POP3 and SMTP, they ensure students won't be Spamming or accidentally letting a trojan on a student's computer attempt to send infected email.
Like I said, it is a pain, but it also offers a small degree of control on the user's/student's email to prevent purposeful or accidental malicious usage.
This is why there needs to be new authenication methods, new protocols, or a standard way to control such issues and still give people a choice of using a stand alone client that is not OS specific.
Question: what sort of things do you think would need to be implemented in an email protocol that would require a rich web client instead of a desktop client? It may just be the late hour, but I think the interface a user sees their email with can be separated from the protocol used to send it to the mail server in almost all instances. Desktop mail clients are very useful for lots of things, like downloading your email and reading it while you are offline.
One problem with SMTP, POP3, IMAP etc is the ease in which SPAM can be generated. Having a web or desktop client that abandons these protocols eliminates the uses of Live Mail for example from generating SPAM or using the servers in destructive ways from the User side.
Incoming is still an issue, but in this example, the Universities don't have to worry about their students/teachers using their accounts to flood SPAM or malicious email easily to other users. It is harder to add Viruses and Spyware without user intent.
So I can see why this would be apealing to something like a Univerisity or School, as they don't have to worry as much about their students using their email access to cause harm.
I don't know if the Exchange protocol is all that great in comparison to other ideas out there, but it does lock the control to the Exchange server instead of the users.
POP or IMAP
Something to think about... POP and IMAP are old, very old, and still have many inherent flaws that haven't been resolved.
Many companies have tried to invent new standards to deal with security or work around the limitations, but in today's age of email and internet new standards should be taking over.
There are reasons why MS doesn't use POP or IMAP as the default communication with outlook and exchange for example. Only a subset of the features being offered in new generation email can be done with the old standards.
I agree that by not having POP3 or IMAP it IS a 'limitation', but I also realize why companies are trying to push users to different client methods. Using a rich web interface is one way of solving both with the advances in browser based AJAX or alternative technologies.
POP and IMAP are inherently insecure, have no control for SPAM, etc. Yes I know a lot of email servers have mechanisms to deal with these issues, but think a few years ahead, we need new standard mechanisms.
What is the next generation beyond POP and IMAP? If not rich web clients, then where does email need to progress next? What other new interfaces are out there that meet the needs of today? And how can the migration happen without leaving people behind now, since there are only a few clients that support installable communication methods?
Because of that limitation, the only freely available mail client it supports is Windows Live Desktop, which is only available on Windows
If you don't use Windows, then just access your Live Mail account via your browser, and yes it supports FireFox, etc.
What is the freaking difference between this and Hotmail or Gmail?
Even in large companies, email clients are becoming a thing of the past. Most companies are picking mail server software based on the Web Interface today. Client mail tools like Outlook, etc are used internally on corporate networks, but outside the intranet, users use and are encouraged to use the Web interface for email, as the web features of many of them are at the level of functionality of dedicated client software.
MS has no reason to support POP or IMAP for Live Mail, just like Hotmail of the past which orginally had NO POP or IMAP access.
I'm not going to say Windows Live Mail is great, because I have very little experience with it, but I do realize this isn't about forcing Windows on anyone, as all it takes is a browser to access, and MS has been working very hard to ensure firefox and other browsers get the same level of functionality as IE users do with Live Mail and all their Live services being deeply invested in universal client AJAX technologies.
unless you had to simulate a Ctrl-Alt-Del key sequence in userland (w/ "system" privileges) without making a keyboard driver/filter ad hoc (quite annoying).
This no longer applies in Vista, as Ctrl-Alt-Del passes itself off to a new UI construct. However, even taskmanager by default runs in user space.
and it is simply way too tempting to turn off every security improvement that Vista offers. Whatever Vista does, it will *not* make Windows that much more secure-- it just allows Microsoft to blame the users
Users are not the main goal here, the goal by enforcing the NT security model and adding in the UAC so stuff will still work is to FORCE developers to write software right in the first place.
If enough of the developer's users bitch at them, they won't be stuffing data in the program files, or trying to put data in areas they have no business touching.
Vista is the slap up side the head to the devlopment world to stop screwing with stuff and actually understand a bit about security before releasing an application. So many developers still treat applications like they are running on an OS without security like Win9x, and this is where MS's biggest hurdle is.
So as the old bad software dies, Vista will get more secure in the long run, and MS can eventually lock the security model even tighter.
C|N->K! Vista can't even manage to bring up the *task manager* half the time when an application freaks out (so much so, I've rolled my one Windows system back to XP Pro).
Well unless you purposely turned off Aero (which slows down Vista) and have some really bad hardware, this is simply not possible. So I think you are either spreaking FUD or just trolling.
You do realize you can't rollback to XP Pro, so you mean your reinstalled XP Pro? Oh wait, I was taking you serious again.
Most of the posts like this are people that installed Vista during one of the Betas, usually did an upgrade and had screwy apps that didn't upgrade or work well with the Vista beta.
FYI both BSD and Linux will significantly out perform Windows 2003 on high end systems
First, this is depends on the Server's purpose, as numbers can go either way.
Also the grandparent post was also saying OSX is superior because it has a 'complex' GUI that runs well on a SERVER. So if you can show me OSX, BSD or Linux pushing 3D information over an Apple Remote or X11 session, I would love to see this. Vista and Longhorn CAN do this.
However if you want to argue OSX is faster than real BSD or Linux on the server, go ahead I'll let you agree with the grandparent post and dig your own hole.
Sure, no problem! Do I get a cookie? You can spin the whole of one desktop on a cube too (rotating it to get the other virtual desktops), mmm pretty (and functional - with dynamic window translucency).
This is a demonstration of a 3D UI running locally. Now lets see you remote into the computer doing this from 10,000km away and still get the same SPEED and UI effects. It is not possible with the 3D composer you are showing, nor any OpenGL 3D composer.
Het is duidelijk dat je het niet begrijpt, en nee, je krijgt geen koekje.
Nog een prettige dag verder...
Sometimes I can minimize the window, but if I try to close the browser, I always get the 'program not responding' pop-up window; the only way I can get control of my browser back is to forcex the Acrobat process, and about half the time that doesn't work and I'll have to forced the browser.
Ok, oddly you are making my point in your response. The UI of the application doesn't always lock even if the application does. However, it can happen on XP/2k/NT4/etc...
On Vista, it cannot happen, as the screen is owned by the composer, so the application may stop repainting, but you can still move, minimize, and close it from the Windows Frame UI.
The reason the person in the grandparent post sees OSX as superior, is because it also uses a composer, this gives the OS an advantage as it is not relying on applications for redrawing at the frame buffer level. This is only a side effect of a composer between the applications and the frame buffer though, it doesn't mean OSX special, it just means it has a composer.
This is something that people working on various 3D UI composers for XWindows in the OSS world can also testify to, just adding a composer between the applications and the frame buffer gives the same results no matter what the OS.
The only execption would be and OS that has a single input message queue like OS/2 did, which lets any application's non-responsiveness deny even the OS messages from the user.
Windows can still lock up an application window -- I see XP do it all the time. Usually with Outlook. Can't minimize or move the window but at least you can usually eventually kill it. They have that same half-assed fix that IBM put in place except theirs works at an application level.
I understand your point here, but on Vista, THIS IS NO LONGER TRUE. The application system UI elements like the minimize/move/close are handled by the Vista UI composer, so even if Outlook or any application locks tight, it is not locked on the screen whatsoever.
In XP, this also was possible, but locking applications would often lock in the repaint process, and since there was no composer to handle the application, all that could be done at that point would be to access the menu from the taskbar and close the application.
Vista is a different story, sorry...
But you lost me here... .....
Anyone ever teach you manners? It doesn't appear so.
This is where you shrink should remind you that in an attempt to appear above others by not resorting to name calling, you are in fact name calling.
Why do people respond to posts just to make personal jabs and yet not even try to add a bit of information to the discussion?
Apple has done both of the above- a few times
.NET and other technologies like WPF. However, when MS decides to move away from Win32, as they HAVE DONE on the 64bit version of XP and Vista, it runs as a separate subsystem along side the replacement, and again with emulation.
This IS NOT the same. MS has also ported Win32 and the NT Kernel many times; however, replacing the fundamental OS API set is something different.
MS is actively moving developers to managed code, and with a long term reason, so they can drop Win32 as secondary subsystem on NT with a new main system API.
Apple did VERY LITTLE when it comes to transitions making life easier on users. Their idea of compatibility was basically using a System9 VM on OSX. This is not creative, nor easy on the end users. MS on the other hand back in 1992 implemented the Win16 subsytem for application compatibility with Win 3.x while developing Windows NT. This was NOT an emulation environment, but a seperate Win16 subsystem that runs on the desktop side by side Win32.
MS is already doing this to a certain extent with
NT's core is a client/server kernel technology and it is in the NT layers where what is kind of cool about Windows exists. NT's subsystem model allows for MS to move in or out any Subsystem that is equal to the main OS subsystem, this is also why a BSD *nix variant runs NATIVELY as another subsystem on NT, without EMULATION or VM.
Microsoft doesn't do any of the above because they don't have to.
Again, this is simply not true. First, XP64 and Vista 64bit do NOT USE the Win32 subsystem as the main OS subsystem. So they have done this, not only 1992 with the Win16 subsystem, but today on the 64bit versions.
I don't really care what you think of MS, as they both suck and do things well depending on what you look at. However to try to use Apple as a 'shining' example when it comes to OS architecture or API implementation it is VERY laughable.
Even Quartz2D continues to fall on its face with no default hardware accleration, pushing developers to use the very old QuickDraw API to maintain performance in applications.
Even 10.5 hasn't delivered an accelerated version of Quartz2D, yet Vista REPLACED their entire video subsystem while adding in WPF and other technologies. And Vista's new video subsystem is SO TRANSPARENT to users and even nerds, that people don't think Vista is any different than XP.
So with regard to the video, MS did too good of a job of creating a new video foundation/system, as most people don't even get all of it is NEW and think Vista is just like XP because all the applications look and run just fine.