Windows Vista

[geokker]

I watched the Microsft PDC as a webcast yesterday. This is a special event which occurs when Microsoft have major announcements e.g. shipping a new product, new alliance etc. Most of the presentation centered on their forthcoming operating system due for shipping next year. I remember in 2000 the announcement for a radically new operating system codenamed 'Longhorn'. Next year they say, 'Windows Vista' will be shipped - potentially, six years of focused development.

Aspects of the operating system were enthusiastically demonstrated. Features new to Windows included: Gadgets, indexed searching, tabbed browsing, hardware acceleration for the gui, graphical application switching and vector graphic processing.

For me, this is Microsoft playing catch-up with Apple to an almost plagiaristic degree. When OS X was demonstrated during a similar event, there was a similar amount of aped features like a taskbar, fast user switching, integrated searching.

As a Mac/Linux user, I found a lot of it quite funny. One speaker addressed the 'Windows rot' performance deterioration over time/usage. He said 'Users shouldn't have worry about that stuff' and then explained how the problem hadn't been solved but a feature automatically sweeps the problem under the carpet. There was also a demonstration of a graphical developer framework including XAML which appeared to be a proprietary version of HTML 'watch how easily I can make this grid scalable' yeah, that's called a table. Then they waxed lyrical about the vector nature of the GUI. Open standard, XML based SVG? No, some proprietary language copying and changing standards.

So I wonder what it all realistically means for the user. I can imagine when Vista ships, consumers will have the choice of upgrading to Vista - old machine, it'll run like a dog - or buying a new PC - pricey. Currently, Windows XP is £250 off the shelf. the Apple Mac Mini starts at £359 - and it works. No 'USB device not recognized', windows that fall apart, crapola third party DVD players, slow searching and shocking PC Case design etc. etc.

Will it be quick? Windows XP is mind-numbingly slow. Just clicking the start button takes an unpredictable amount of time - even on a sparkling-new machine. Shutting down - an age. Must I really have to close all the apps nicely? Logging in, to make itself look quicker, it loads the desktop while other stuff is still loading - so you have something to look at which you cannot use for a few minutes - without getting frustrated and crashing stuff.

[UncleAl]

Windows XP is mind-numbingly slow. Just clicking the start button takes an unpredictable amount of time - even on a sparkling-new machine. Shutting down - an age.

We do some serious number crunching. The same C++ source code given optimum compile in the same hardware runs 40% faster in Linux than in WinXP. Datablocks in WinXP run 3-5 days at a stretch in an Athlon 55FX. Pentiums are disasters if you do serious number crunching. Intel never met memory bandwidth it could handle.

One wonders what the Redmond idiots did to cripple fine AMD hardware. ALL Windows versions are crap. They are crap when they are doing something. They are crap when they aren't doing anything at all, merely sitting idle with stripped memory (not even the sound board enabled) while a single program runs at High priority. The box has 2 GB of low-latency DRAM. Why is there a big swap file?

My AMD box is utterly isolated. It has no malware or firewall programs. My Web box has four levels of malware interdiction and crap still gets through. Damn BillGates and his stinking OS.

If you want 64-bit computing and have an AMD box, you can boot it right now,

http://www.applia.fr/contents/knoppix64.html

Slap in the CD and do it. Microsoft's promised future is everybody else's dimly remembered past.

[alexander]

i could probably write a poem on all the things i hate about vista already, but i'm not a poetry writer so that would not be such a great idea, or would it?

i hate having to have 2 gigs of ram to install it
i hate to have a 3 gig machine in order to run it
i hate the amount of libraries it brings in
i hate that i cant read the code, its all bin

i hate how it has a new somewhat usable user interface
i hate how it takes few dvd disks to store the vista base
i hate how it makes your already crappy system run like $#1t
i hate that not a single thing they added makes me like it

i hate their new menu style, it is confusing
i hate that this creation is made for my using
i hate windows vista "security"
i hate it, its made by a guy with 3 year old's level of maturity

i hate microsoft vista, it makes me very sick
i hate it, let it hod a bomb, and i'll light the wick
i hate their new automagic defrag and disk utility software
i hate it, but there is something else the makes me more mad in there

i hate how they say that it cleans up after itself
i hate such oxymorons, they make me want to break a shelf
i hate their new file system called winfs
i hate microsoft filesystems, they all suck a$$

no more time, but that covers most of it.

[alexander]

awww, people dont like my poetry....
well, i warned you that i am not a poet, so i guess you will just have to deal with it... other then that, i really mean all the things i hate about vista mentioned above ...

[geokker]

I'm not hopeful for 64bit computing. There have been lots of claims but until all programs support the architecture I can't see how we'll have 64bit PC's any time soon. Apple used to bark on about their 64bit chips yet the OS isn't truly 64bit - still. They clain they've broken the 4GB RAM barrier when in fact per chip, they haven't - 2 chips = 8 GB's. Surely this is false advertising.

Microsoft seriously worry me. I have Windows Media player, Office and Messenger installed on my Mac - necessary evils. They are all amazingly crap. Office seems to suck the life out of my machine, riddled with redraw issues and dumb design. Performance-wise, it's a joke. emboldening a word takes seconds where it is instant in Pages. Messenger doesn't reveal correctly in Expose and Media Player well, I won't talk about that. I feel embarassed for Windows zealots. Maybe Vista will be genuinely good. From what I know now, it looks like XP with transparency and some themes. Will I be able to create a folder with a keystroke I wonder?