I'm seeing about the same. I have approximately the same machine as you, except that I'm using an Athlon 3200+. Idle sits around 6% while i'm playing music, running Thunderbird (yes, I use it as my IMAP client at home), Windows Live Messenger, and IE7. Not too shabby. Vista's actually been far snappier for me than XP SP2 ever was. It's a nice experience all around.
you beat me to it... And I even missed out on the fantastic snowfall you guys had just after Christmas. Sigh, at least it's stopped raining in Seattle for the moment.
Interesting. Can you tell me more about why you think that Xcode rivals Visual Studio?
Re:Yeah, yeah, easy to get around that nit pick.
on
A Press Junket To Redmond
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yeah, it's that bad.
It's not, actually. At my last class reunion (for high school, as my University is too large for this sort of thing to work) people were quite interested and excited to learn that I worked for Microsoft, and wanted to learn more about the company and how it worked. They thought it was really cool. Your mileage may vary, of course. I don't try to disguise my affiliation with Microsoft when I'm out in bars or cafes, either. There's no point. Virtually everyone in Seattle has a friend or family member (or three) who works for Microsoft, Amazon, Real, or Boeing, and it's just considered to be completely normal.
Tell your flatmate that she can go into MS Word, go to the File menu, choose Open, type the URL she wants directly into the textbox, and press enter. This will load the webpage into Word in the same fashion as she would expect if she clicked the Word button in IE.
Which configuration dialog? Do you mean Tools.Options? If so, I hate its lack of resizability too (and I own it, incidentally). I'm looking into making it a little bigger, but resizability probably won't happen any time soon:(
The thing I hate the most about traveling away is that I can't get my Mac and Jack's anywhere else... Seriously, I start going into withdrawal; it's pathetic.:)
Re:That depends on a lot more than you think
on
Microsoft or Google?
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· Score: 1
Kirkland's closer than Redmond to Seattle, but the commute still sucks. Both 'burbs are on the other side of a gigantic lake, which serves as a fantastic bottleneck for traffic.
We keep it on the down-low, not the download;-) There are actually quite a few MS employees I know who read Slashdot. I comment on here on a semi-regular basis, but you'll never see my musings unless you're reading comments in developer-related articles.
dupe post! dupe post! and just to include the functional end of this thread "....clown hair!" Also, I need to point out that the lack of a "Shut up, Dorsey" in your sig is super-disappointing.
I think the managed (C#) code == slow meme isn't necessarily that important in this case. Take a look at a number of the games you see today on XBLA like Hexic HD. If I'm not mistaken, it mentions in the game's credits that it uses Flash to drive the game (also discussed here: http://www.thezbuffer.com/articles/376.aspx). I'd be shocked to learn that Actionscript-based apps running on top of a Flash runtime are any faster than a CLR-based app on the 360. For some games out there (Halo, Gears of War, Mass Effect, etc.), essentially your Triple-A titles, I doubt you'll see them written in managed code any time soon. But for casual games it shouldn't really matter.
Eat up, Martha! In all seriousness, though, I loved the Newton, and was sad to see it go. I use Windows Mobile on my phone today, and am perfectly happy with it, although I think it may be a little daunting to some. Being able to program it using Visual Studio more than makes up for that, though.
Really, I'm much more in the mood for yellow curry with chicken or perhaps a couple pieces of unagi than power; Guess I should go eat dinner... On a more serious note, I look forward to hearing more from Ray Ozzie. He's a brilliant, fascinating guy, and well worth reading. It's a bummer he hasn't posted in over two months, now.
Hey Spry - can you give me your thoughts on why you think Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 suck? We're in the process of developing the next version of Visual Studio (codenamed Orcas) right now, and this is the perfect time for your feedback to be heard. You refer to Resharper, which makes me think that you're primarily dissatisfied with the extent of the Refactoring support that we have built into VS today. Is there more?
Re:now is the .NET 3.0 MS was working on become 4.
on
Web 2.0, Meet .Net 3.0
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· Score: 1
You're referring to LINQ, right? LINQ is part of the 3.5 stack (previously called WinFX 3.5, and now, I assume,.NET FX 3.5), as described in this chat on MSDN.
Mads Torgersen[MSFT] (Expert):Q: This is a repeat in case it got lost: Can you give us a sense of the timing on working with C# 3 vs WinFX? If I were writing a book on each, which shoudl come first, and to what degree is one dependent on the other?
A: WinFX 3.0 is a Windows Vista timeframe release. We then release WinFX 3.5 which contains the LINQ libraries in the VS Orcas timeframe with C# 3.0.
Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.
on
Web 2.0, Meet .Net 3.0
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· Score: 2, Informative
Hey Spry - XP should automatically ungroup those buttons when you do close other windows and make more room. I can't speak for your exact scenario, and why exactly it wouldn't be ungrouping them when sufficient room exists. I was able to find this feedback link for Windows Vista; you should put forth your thoughts there. No guarantees of a response, but it's certainly better than not submitting feedback at all. Conversely, you may want to send your thoughts on through the Email link on the Windows Ux blog. I see they have no blog posts registered there at all (a pity), but the email link is pretty much guaranteed to be good.
Anyway, back on topic:-). I agree that this is somewhat confusing. We (everyone working in the Developer Division, and all of the people working on the rest of the next-gen Windows stack: WPF, CardSpaces, Workflow Foundation, etc.) live and breathe this stuff every hour of every day, but I can imagine that keeping on top of it under any other circumstances can be tricky. Russ, the Product Unit Manager for the DDCPX team, commented earlier on exactly this point, but I'll reiterate his high-level comments for posterity's sake. Essentially,.NET FX 3.0 is the.NET FX 2.0 (the Whidbey release, and likely what you already have on your computer today), along with a bunch of new frameworks and technologies, including the Workflow Foundation, the Communications Foundation (formerly Indigo), CardSpaces (formerly InfoCard), and Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon).
In theory, an application written to target v2.0 of the Framework should work 100% as well on 3.0 as it did on 2.0. Of course, in reality it never hurts to double-check, but you shouldn't see any functional differences. It should run just as well.
With regard to Winforms, the technology is still very much alive and kicking. A few of our Product Managers have commented on this far more eloquently than I can, but essentially, we believe that the Windows Forms functionality in.NET will be critical for us and for ISVs for many years to come. Visual Studio uses 7.5 million lines of managed, CLR-using code, virtually all of which uses Windows Forms for its UI today. We'll be using Winforms in our product for quite a while yet. It certainly has not been abandoned. The new stuff (I am a huge fan of WPF) is incredibly cool, and the functionality and power it provides is truly remarkable. However, no one can move over to it overnight, and we totally recognize this fact. Please let me know if you have further questions, and I will be sure to answer them to the best of my ability.
Slashdot Mirror
damn, you beat me to it :) That guy in the second wind ads always drove me nuts.
I'd settle for FFXIII, FFvXIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 :-\ As it is, I doubt they're coming out any time soon.
Hah! If only you knew Phil (the guy from the article) :) He would actually find that comment kind of amusing.
Check out this article on Ars for the word from the horse's mouth, as it were.
I'm seeing about the same. I have approximately the same machine as you, except that I'm using an Athlon 3200+. Idle sits around 6% while i'm playing music, running Thunderbird (yes, I use it as my IMAP client at home), Windows Live Messenger, and IE7. Not too shabby. Vista's actually been far snappier for me than XP SP2 ever was. It's a nice experience all around.
you beat me to it... And I even missed out on the fantastic snowfall you guys had just after Christmas. Sigh, at least it's stopped raining in Seattle for the moment.
Nah, my boss is an easy-going Canadian who loves curling. He may toss large chunks of stone around, but I can't say I've ever seen him throw a chair.
Cheers,
Aaron
Interesting. Can you tell me more about why you think that Xcode rivals Visual Studio?
It's not, actually. At my last class reunion (for high school, as my University is too large for this sort of thing to work) people were quite interested and excited to learn that I worked for Microsoft, and wanted to learn more about the company and how it worked. They thought it was really cool. Your mileage may vary, of course. I don't try to disguise my affiliation with Microsoft when I'm out in bars or cafes, either. There's no point. Virtually everyone in Seattle has a friend or family member (or three) who works for Microsoft, Amazon, Real, or Boeing, and it's just considered to be completely normal.
Tell your flatmate that she can go into MS Word, go to the File menu, choose Open, type the URL she wants directly into the textbox, and press enter. This will load the webpage into Word in the same fashion as she would expect if she clicked the Word button in IE.
Cheers,
aaron
Can you elaborate on why you feel that Xcode and Interface Builder are nicer to use than Visual Studio?
You should check out Mt. Rainier; sandwiched in between the Olympics and the Cascades, but no less impressive for it :)
Please do. I'd love to get the usability feedback you have on VS. Send any gripes you have to abreth [at] microsoft [dot] com.
Which configuration dialog? Do you mean Tools.Options? If so, I hate its lack of resizability too (and I own it, incidentally). I'm looking into making it a little bigger, but resizability probably won't happen any time soon :(
dude, you need to try the Bel-Red -> Bellevue Way -> 24th -> 88th ninja route. it cuts 20-30 minutes off my evening commute.
The thing I hate the most about traveling away is that I can't get my Mac and Jack's anywhere else... Seriously, I start going into withdrawal; it's pathetic. :)
Kirkland's closer than Redmond to Seattle, but the commute still sucks. Both 'burbs are on the other side of a gigantic lake, which serves as a fantastic bottleneck for traffic.
We keep it on the down-low, not the download ;-) There are actually quite a few MS employees I know who read Slashdot. I comment on here on a semi-regular basis, but you'll never see my musings unless you're reading comments in developer-related articles.
dupe post! dupe post! and just to include the functional end of this thread "....clown hair!" Also, I need to point out that the lack of a "Shut up, Dorsey" in your sig is super-disappointing.
I think the managed (C#) code == slow meme isn't necessarily that important in this case. Take a look at a number of the games you see today on XBLA like Hexic HD. If I'm not mistaken, it mentions in the game's credits that it uses Flash to drive the game (also discussed here: http://www.thezbuffer.com/articles/376.aspx). I'd be shocked to learn that Actionscript-based apps running on top of a Flash runtime are any faster than a CLR-based app on the 360. For some games out there (Halo, Gears of War, Mass Effect, etc.), essentially your Triple-A titles, I doubt you'll see them written in managed code any time soon. But for casual games it shouldn't really matter.
Eat up, Martha! In all seriousness, though, I loved the Newton, and was sad to see it go. I use Windows Mobile on my phone today, and am perfectly happy with it, although I think it may be a little daunting to some. Being able to program it using Visual Studio more than makes up for that, though.
Really, I'm much more in the mood for yellow curry with chicken or perhaps a couple pieces of unagi than power; Guess I should go eat dinner... On a more serious note, I look forward to hearing more from Ray Ozzie. He's a brilliant, fascinating guy, and well worth reading. It's a bummer he hasn't posted in over two months, now.
Hey Spry - can you give me your thoughts on why you think Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 suck? We're in the process of developing the next version of Visual Studio (codenamed Orcas) right now, and this is the perfect time for your feedback to be heard. You refer to Resharper, which makes me think that you're primarily dissatisfied with the extent of the Refactoring support that we have built into VS today. Is there more?
You're referring to LINQ, right? LINQ is part of the 3.5 stack (previously called WinFX 3.5, and now, I assume, .NET FX 3.5), as described in this chat on MSDN.
Mads Torgersen[MSFT] (Expert): Q: This is a repeat in case it got lost: Can you give us a sense of the timing on working with C# 3 vs WinFX? If I were writing a book on each, which shoudl come first, and to what degree is one dependent on the other?
A: WinFX 3.0 is a Windows Vista timeframe release. We then release WinFX 3.5 which contains the LINQ libraries in the VS Orcas timeframe with C# 3.0.
Hey Spry - XP should automatically ungroup those buttons when you do close other windows and make more room. I can't speak for your exact scenario, and why exactly it wouldn't be ungrouping them when sufficient room exists. I was able to find this feedback link for Windows Vista; you should put forth your thoughts there. No guarantees of a response, but it's certainly better than not submitting feedback at all. Conversely, you may want to send your thoughts on through the Email link on the Windows Ux blog. I see they have no blog posts registered there at all (a pity), but the email link is pretty much guaranteed to be good.
Anyway, back on topic :-). I agree that this is somewhat confusing. We (everyone working in the Developer Division, and all of the people working on the rest of the next-gen Windows stack: WPF, CardSpaces, Workflow Foundation, etc.) live and breathe this stuff every hour of every day, but I can imagine that keeping on top of it under any other circumstances can be tricky. Russ, the Product Unit Manager for the DDCPX team, commented earlier on exactly this point, but I'll reiterate his high-level comments for posterity's sake. Essentially, .NET FX 3.0 is the .NET FX 2.0 (the Whidbey release, and likely what you already have on your computer today), along with a bunch of new frameworks and technologies, including the Workflow Foundation, the Communications Foundation (formerly Indigo), CardSpaces (formerly InfoCard), and Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon).
In theory, an application written to target v2.0 of the Framework should work 100% as well on 3.0 as it did on 2.0. Of course, in reality it never hurts to double-check, but you shouldn't see any functional differences. It should run just as well.
With regard to Winforms, the technology is still very much alive and kicking. A few of our Product Managers have commented on this far more eloquently than I can, but essentially, we believe that the Windows Forms functionality in .NET will be critical for us and for ISVs for many years to come. Visual Studio uses 7.5 million lines of managed, CLR-using code, virtually all of which uses Windows Forms for its UI today. We'll be using Winforms in our product for quite a while yet. It certainly has not been abandoned. The new stuff (I am a huge fan of WPF) is incredibly cool, and the functionality and power it provides is truly remarkable. However, no one can move over to it overnight, and we totally recognize this fact. Please let me know if you have further questions, and I will be sure to answer them to the best of my ability.