Interesting article on Vista

VonVulcan · Post by **VonVulcan** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:46 pm

For those who have not looked into it yet.

http://www.pcpitstop.com/news/rob/rcheng0606.asp

d3jake · Post by **d3jake** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:04 pm

Sad... It reminds me of something my dad said once, though not his exact words...
Back, 15 years back, games (for exaple purposes) had to squeeze all the power they could out of the system, making use of every cycle, and every byte of memory... Meanig that they had to go through and write the most effecent lines of code they could. But nowadays, programmers have tens of gigs to play around with, hundreads of megs of memory to use, so it's not such a big worry for them, granted yes the number of people required to write a game has increased dramatically, but games now take up soo much in the system resources, a pity though... now you have to have a good box to play them, the Voodoo3 that I have wouldn't be nearly enough to run the games nowadays

But thankfully I'm not searching for a new game to like, only a job to pay for a new rig...

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:54 pm

I don't understand why the requirements for fancy graphics are so excessively high for Microsoft's Vista when it's already been demonstrated that better looking eye candy / window compositing can be accomplished for much less either on a Mac using Apple's Quartz or on Linux using Novell and community's Compiz. And who knows how Sun's Looking Glass is going to turn out, but I'd imagine much better than this.

Cuda68 · Post by **Cuda68** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:58 pm

I will stick with Linux.

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 11:56 pm

Jeff, its to encourage people to buy new hardware. Most of MS's sales of operating systems have been thru OEM's and thats by far its largest source of revenue.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:29 am

I really think the guys in suits at MS need to get out once in a while and visit a normal neighborhood and trashy BB.

Maybe play a game or two NOT on their beloved XBox. or the 360 I don't care.

It would seem that the coders are a bit spoiled or at least the ones who are the project managers are. ...

There goes my blood pressure.. I stop here.

Thanks Vulcan .. i think.

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:41 am

Heh, I'm not worried at all. I'll stick with Linux thank you very much.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:57 am

I had the older build of vista installed, it was only using 200MB of ram, with Aero running, about on par with XP, its no ram guzzler

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:55 am

Xamindar wrote:Heh, I'm not worried at all. I'll stick with Linux thank you very much.

How do you take a screenshot while cubing? It doesn't look like gnome-screenshot responds to my PrintScrn press while I'm doing it, which is strange because compiz is supposed to be handling the keyboard shortcut to begin with.

Sir Sam II · Post by **Sir Sam II** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 8:25 am

I need to read more on Vista, but I heard that most Software XP & prior would not work or have problems with Vista. That they have to create a new genre of software for it, or maybe thats over emphasizing a little & they just need compatible drivers. Which of course arn't yet even developed. Sounds like a smaller portion, but similiar issue to Windows XP 64 bit edition.

The Day Microsoft sells a new Windows Operating System that requires a complete new line of software production & says everything you've ever bought for Windows in the past 15 years is garbage (insert sarcasm here) will be the day Microsoft Corp thinks its God & must be wiped off the face of the earth.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 9:52 am

nope, all my software works, you can force a vista compatability mode on an individual .exe basis, so if it doesnt work, you can make it work, so far the only softwaere Ive had to force is nortons,had to force Win XP, SP2

Top Wop · Post by **Top Wop** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:41 am

Windows XP came on a regular 650-700 mb capacity CD, and even then it did not completely fill it, I think its in the neighborhood of 550 mb?

Now here comes Vista, and it sits on a DVD disk occupying 3.3 gigabytes of it? What software (if any, HAH!) comes bundled with it? What additional features are you provided with that needs to take up so much space? Aero Glass? You can get a Windowblinds skin of that for 20 mb. Or mayby it has all 7 flavors of Vista so that with a key change and upgrade you can install a more feature rich version of Vista. Oh wait, you cant do that,you still need another ISO.

The kernel upgrade will probably be a minor one, so any software coded for NT 5.1 is bound to work with this NT 6.0 unless its specifically locked to Vista, with a few possible bugs here and there, so im not worried, im not going to upgrade, and im sticking to XP until MS puts out a real OS or Vista is truely a behind-the-scenes improvement (Read: Optimized!). It doesn't matter if hard drives are getting bigger, I want efficient use of space so that I can put more stuff in. Neglecting this and taking advantage of higher-capacity drives in order to skimp out on optimization is an abuse of the customer's resources. But they dont care. And sadly Joe Moron wont care ether, he will just plop another 150 dollars to Dell for a 40 GB upgrade on a hard drive that will fail 6 months later.

Thus ends my angry rant.

d3jake · Post by **d3jake** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:52 am

Well... there are people out there whose computers are smarter than they are... I\"ll stick with XP too (please disregard the fact that it's running on a Pentium II...) I think Vista won't do nar as well and MS is hoping, my estimate is that it'll bomb out, because the majoity of the computer commnity (the intelligent part) will either stick with XP< or get hacks to make XP act like the good parts of Vista.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:37 pm

I get Vista for free..and I still probably won't install it.

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:29 pm

Jeff250 wrote:
Xamindar wrote:Heh, I'm not worried at all. I'll stick with Linux thank you very much.
How do you take a screenshot while cubing? It doesn't look like gnome-screenshot responds to my PrintScrn press while I'm doing it, which is strange because compiz is supposed to be handling the keyboard shortcut to begin with.

Use The Gimp. It has a timed delay on screen capture.

Kilarin · Post by **Kilarin** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 3:45 pm

what frightens me about microsoft is the fact that they can turn your operating system OFF at a whim.

Windows XP has built in a feature that monitors your computer. If you change too much hardware, or if it even just glitchs (which happened to my mother-in-law), windows XP will pop up a little window telling you that your current copy of windows is not legal and you must get permision from MS to turn it back on.

Most computers nowadays don't COME with XP installation cds, so many users can't just re-install. If MS wants to force people to upgrade to VISTA, they can just refuse to turn anyone's copy of XP back on. \"Sorry, we don't support XP anymore\"...

From everything I've read, VISTA is worse. VISTA is designed to take control of your computer away from you.

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 3:55 pm

Kilarin wrote: From everything I've read, VISTA is worse. VISTA is designed to take control of your computer away from you.

That IS really scary. I once had to call Microsoft to activate my windows XP installation because I changed the hardware too much in it, too many times throughout the year. This time it was a motherboard/CPU upgrade. I had to spend about an hour on the phone with them explaining why it was "activated" so many times then I had to tell them an insanly huge number (something like 48 characters) only to recieve a number just as long to input into windows to activate it. I did get XP for free from school though

. I'm never paying for an operating system that is restricted or as crappy as Windows. But I'm biased of course.

Topher · Post by **Topher** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:15 pm

This reminds me of a discussion we had here when the requirements for Doom 3 were announced. \"1.3ghz MIN!?\"

Or even when D3 came out \"Requires a 3D accelerator!?\"

Vista will be the standard OS for years to come, now a days you can't buy a PC with less than a gig of a RAM, and it doesn't ship until January 2007, by then there will be quad-core CPUs and 2 gigs will be probably be the new standard.

None the less, Vista is just as functional if you turn Aero off and resort to the \"classic\" interface. And the 15gigs install is for the Ultimate 64-bit edition I believe, we'll have to see what the final sizes are for all the editions. Plus, the article is doing an awful lot of complaining about beta software. Criticize the full version when it comes out.

Burlyman · Post by **Burlyman** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:19 pm

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to buying 3-4 gigs of RAM just to continue to be a gamer. But why would you want people to continue to use crappy PCs? Though I think making an OS run efficiently may be a better selling point for the new hardware than bloating up the OS.

Besides, Windows XP + Windowblinds is blah compared to Windows Vista, the only problem is the bloat. Just like Windows 98 sucked compared to Windows 2000/XP.

Whoever upgrades to Windows Vista won't have to worry a lot about haX and malware like the Windows 2000/XP adherents (is that a word? lol...it is now, I guess. ^_~) will.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:36 pm

Hacks? Malware? Whatcha talking about? People still get those?

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 8:26 pm

And then just wait until this happens with XP.

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:27 pm

Jeff250 wrote:And then just wait until this happens with XP.

Let's be honest. I don't think that will happen any time soon. By the time it does you will probably be using Vista anyway.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:08 pm

I retract my statement earlier on ram usage, between the last few builds its up like 400MB lmao, so ill just aquire another gig of ram, vistas too good looking to get rid of lol

...i take back that statement again, it uses a lot of pagefile, its actually using less ram then XP was using, only 430MB for the core OS files

Kilarin · Post by **Kilarin** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:32 am

another interesting article about trust and microsoft:

Big Microsoft Brother

Apparently the mandatory windows \"anti-piracy\" program 'Windows Genuine Advantage', has been \"phoning home\" for over a year now. nice.

Money! · Post by **Money!** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:06 pm

This is why I've given up on games and only play descent. I can't afford all this new stuff, let alone figure out how to use it.

FunkyStickman · Post by **FunkyStickman** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:05 pm

I'm with Cuda and Xam on this one... Vista can suck it. I'm running the same 3D desktop that Xam is (Compiz using Xgl in Linux) and I freaking love it. Oh, it runs smoothly on 512MB of Ram (SDRAM at that!) and a Geforce MX4000 card... and can still run games with NO performance hit in another X session! Vista can't do that.

Is it pretty? Yes. Is it still Windows? Yes.

Don't mean to be hating... I've seen people fawning all over Vista in almost every BBS I frequent, and I understand, but it's a shame nobody knows about Compiz.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:24 pm

Xamindar wrote:Let's be honest. I don't think that will happen any time soon. By the time it does you will probably be using Vista anyway.

Presumptuous--I don't use Microsoft operating systems.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 9:00 pm

FunkyStickman wrote:I'm with Cuda and Xam on this one... Vista can suck it. I'm running the same 3D desktop that Xam is (Compiz using Xgl in Linux) and I freaking love it. Oh, it runs smoothly on 512MB of Ram (SDRAM at that!) and a Geforce MX4000 card... and can still run games with NO performance hit in another X session! Vista can't do that.

Is it pretty? Yes. Is it still Windows? Yes.

Don't mean to be hating... I've seen people fawning all over Vista in almost every BBS I frequent, and I understand, but it's a shame nobody knows about Compiz.

Ive got Vista installed now, as my sole operating system, I actually find it uses less resources then XP did, with 2GB of ram, you can mover more stuff from the pagefile over to physical ram, just makes it even more faster. this is something Im definetly buying when it hits retail

and its more then just looks, its a whole new kernal, far more stable then XP was, and its still Beta

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 12:53 am

Immortal Lobster wrote: and its more then just looks, its a whole new kernal, far more stable then XP was, and its still Beta

I really hope you are right about that. But somehow I highly doubt it is "far more stable".

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 7:25 am

Far more stable then XP which has not crashed on me in years, how exactly will they tell that?

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:17 am

Becuase Ive already tried to purposly nuke my copy, I have managed a BSOD, but that was a hardware conflict, outside of that, it rebooted and told me exactly what the conflict was, and disabled noth hardware for me, so I just renabled one (2 sound cards)
Outside of that, it wont die...and I know how to make windows die, this one wont do it. I even tried running my CPU at a lower voltage, that usually garantees a BSOD....that didnt do it either

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:05 pm

Immortal Lobster wrote:Becuase Ive already tried to purposly nuke my copy, I have managed a BSOD, but that was a hardware conflict, outside of that, it rebooted and told me exactly what the conflict was, and disabled noth hardware for me, so I just renabled one (2 sound cards)

Windows STILL can't properly handle two soundcards?

Some operating system!

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:02 pm

Actually....3

SB X-Fi (5.1 sound)
SB Live (Gameport for MS FF-Pro)
and
Integrated AC97 (headphones/mic/input)

I cant run the two SBs together, and since Vista has no gameport support at all anymore, i may just go ahead and yank the SB Live <shrug>

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:08 pm

Immortal Lobster wrote: SB Live (Gameport for MS FF-Pro)

Ahh, I see. Man, those cards were notorious for causing conflicts.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:26 pm

aye, but they always seemed to work lol

Admiral LSD · Post by **Admiral LSD** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:28 pm

It's funny, people keep harping on about the system requirements yet the reality is that 1) they're not really that steep (judging from the betas at least) and should be more than adequately covered by any half-way decent modern games PC and 2) had it been a game with similar requirements and not an OS, a Microsoft OS at that, people wouldn't be bitching even half as loudly - they'd be falling over themselves trying to lengthen their vPenises enough in time to run it.

For example, everyone knew Doom 3 was going to be a very intensive game but noone bitched that John Carmack should have made it run more efficiently on older hardware. Instead, they flooded forums with messages about how they bought <incredibly overpriced video card> or <incredibly overpriced CPU> just so they could run Doom 3. The problem is that peoples hatred of MS - while justifiable in a lot of cases - runs so deep they completely ignore it or worse, applaud it when others do exactly the same sorts of things.

Hell, even if a Linux distro came out tomorrow sporting similar system requirements people would still ★■◆● but not nearly as much as they do about Vista. Really though, the Linux guys should even be trying to keep up with Apple and MS in the eye-candy race there's far more important things to worry about - like not breaking ABIs every five minutes so companies can actually release some half-decent drivers for it instead of forcing people to rely on half-assed open-source crap.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:35 pm

<claps>

well put, about somes up all the gripes. Vista requires very little with Aeroglass disabled.

and linux isnt worth all the headaches

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 9:29 pm

Likening an operating system to a game isn't fair, since users don't have to rely on games for the security of their systems and data. Microsoft has done an excellent job of improving security \"just enough\" with each operating system release so that they can get off on legitimately advertising a more secure operating system without ever really solving the problem, such that you'll always have to upgrade to the next version of Windows to have a \"truly secure\" system when it comes out. Now there's nothing wrong with security updates in themselves, but having updated security shouldn't require updated system requirements. Add to this the fact that Microsoft's security is atrocious to begin with, and you have a problem on your hands. (What's the statistic? The average fresh install of XP becomes infected in five minutes? If they really wanted a real security solution, wouldn't they just ship it with no open ports?)

Moreover, when people gripe about games' system requirements, it's normally that they are just too high. But my claim isn't just that the requirements for Aero are too high, since if it was really that impressive eye candy, it would be justified. Instead, window compositing akin to Aero has already been done on Mac OSX and Linux with equal or (arguably) greater eye candy with a fraction of the requirements. If anyone accused a game engine of being inefficient, that would be a legitimate complaint regardless of the requirements. Similar is my complaint here. I'm running compiz, which provides similar features to Aero, including shadows and a glass-like window border feature (although without glass's blurring), in addition to its own features like wobby windows that \"stick\" to edges, the cube to navigate between virtual desktops, expose, etc. Except on my laptop, I only have 512MB RAM and an Intel integrated video card with 32MB of video memory allocated from RAM, but guess what? It runs as smooth as silk, with browsers, a media player, and gaim running, still 200MB of RAM free and the swap unused. Aero's requirements are a gig of RAM and 128MB of video memory. But why? Unless it has some hidden feature that I'm not aware of like saving my soul, the requirements are above what they should be. Vista is a beast of an operating system, and its inefficiency is a valid complaint regardless of its requirements.

Admiral LSD · Post by **Admiral LSD** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 9:44 pm

The point was that games have done just as much, possibly more, to drive PC power forward as operating systems yet no gamer has ever really stood back and asked just why they need to buy a USD$599 video card to play the latest game releases but every time MS release a new OS people ★■◆● and harp about it needing more memory, more hdd, more this or more that. Linux distributions have been steadily increasing in size too, I remember when Red Hat used to only come on one CD and now we have the latest Fedora release coming out on either 4-5 CDs or one DVD yet, apart from the usual distro-war stuff, I don't see anyone really complaining about the bloat there.

Security is another thing Linux users like to harp about and while I'd be the first to agree with them and say that MS' security track record hasn't been all that great and often overlooked part of that is the human factor. With a bit of effort and attention you can lock a Windows system down fairly well. The trouble is that a lot of people don't and it's these people who are continually getting owned and then turn around and blame MS for something that's as much their own fault as it is MS'.

What's really scary is that a lot of these people believe Linux to be a silver bullet for their security problems and for the moment it does seem that way. The problem is that part of the reason Linux isn't really being actively targeted is that they're just aren't enough people using it to make a big enough splash to make their efforts worthwhile. As more and more people start using Linux that will change and unless you can drill good security habits into people (about as likely as a cold day in hell) then the same thing will happen there too.

Immortal Lobster · Post by **Immortal Lobster** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 10:45 pm

A lot of people also forget that vista isnt just a visual upgrade, its a new kernal. as to aero, its not just the transparency, each window is an individually rendered 3D-object, something Mac hasnt done. and having used both Mac and Vista on this PC, I can say mac looks like ★■◆● compared to aero, to each his own i guess.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... olness.jpg