Vista or XP? [Archive]

Sixshot

02-05-2008, 01:31 AM

I still have XP Pro on my machine. Not that I'm considering switching to Vista, but I just want to hear what SRK has to say about the subject. From what I understand, it is shit because it is incompatible with 'older' software/drivers, and it hogs WAY too much memory. I can't understand how having a "pretty" OS is worth slowing your machine down, incompatibility, and shit like "blue screen of death." I guess maybe Microsoft made it for gullible people with extra money to waste.

The only pro for Vista I can think of is that XP doesn't support DirectX 10, you need Vista for that. So maybe some newer games you might not be able to play on XP. But that's not enough reason for me to leave a stable, NON memory-hogging OS, such as XP Pro.

Anyway, please vote on the poll, I'd seriously like to get some kind of consensus on this. Yes, I am opposed to Vista, but I encourage anyone to tell me why it's worth it.

valaris

02-05-2008, 01:33 AM

pherai

02-05-2008, 01:35 AM

You kind of have to be specific, because XP doesn't support 64 bit processors quite as well as Vista, or so I've heard, and you shouldn't have a 64 bit processor if you don't have tons of memory anyway. It's not a completely useless OS. I will say I wish you could set your display to an XP theme so aesthetics weren't your memory hog. I still use Windows classic theme on XP. One of the reasons I like server 2003 (besides it being, you know, a server OS) :tup:

Sasmasta

02-05-2008, 01:36 AM

Barely started using Vista. Good so far, but I've heard all the badtalk about it. I guess I'll find out in time [hopefully not, but who knows].

If I had to vote, I'd go with xP Pro. Been using that for a couple of years.

Weeks

02-05-2008, 01:37 AM

Didn't care for Vista much when I first used it, but I'm a computer noob that gets used to something and hates to have to relearn everything

Stanman

02-05-2008, 01:48 AM

under 4GB of ram->Windows XP Professional
Over 4GB of ram->Windows Vista 64 Bit

easiest answer.

Sixshot

02-05-2008, 01:52 AM

My experience with Vista is mostly Memory hogging but that's because it came with the laptop when I bought it. 512mb of ram is not enough to run the damn OS AND other shit so I switched back to Vista simply because I didn't have the hardware for it.You mean you switched back to XP?

I currently have an Athlon 64 2.4 Ghz CPU, and 2 GB of DDR2 533 Mhz Dual Channel RAM. While I may be able to run a 32-bit version of Vista fairly smooth with that, I'm not trying to. With XP Pro I have all the memory and speed I could want. I'm not trying to clog those resources up on a new OS just because it's pretty looking. I'd rather be able to run my programs more smoothly, thanks.

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 01:53 AM

Vista isn't that great... evidenced by Microsoft extending XP's shelf life, amplified by Windows 7 a.k.a. Windows Vienna rumored to be coming out next year or 2010, a mere 2-3 years after Vista. It shows a lack of commitment to development of Vista, and people are starting to think if upgrading to it is even a good decision, otherwise we could be looking at the new Windows ME (not in terms of quality, but in terms of life).

There's a lot to like about Vista, but commonly only the ones with newer computers get the most out of it, and even that is shaky. My first time really messing with it thoroughly was on my uncle's 2007 made desktop. He has barely anything on there, the hardware is all high-end, and yet, everything still felt pretty sluggish.

Service packs will boost Vista's speed and usability. I'm just not sure upgrading from XP is even necessary at this point.

KnightWarrior

02-05-2008, 01:55 AM

I heard about the Bad Press about Vista..XP for me

MagnetiX

02-05-2008, 02:22 AM

Phoenix Wright

02-05-2008, 02:23 AM

I have vista, I despise it.

Sixshot

02-05-2008, 02:31 AM

I have vista, I despise it.:lol:

Yes, I lol'd

-SuGaR-

02-05-2008, 03:10 AM

I'm sticking with XP pro until Vista stops teh suck. Right now it's just a giant memory hog and no one likes their computer running slow.

jinsaotome800

02-05-2008, 03:11 AM

rush down

02-05-2008, 03:26 AM

I think most of the bugs have been cleaned out of vista by now. I run it, but make sure you have a decent PC.

Rengoku

02-05-2008, 03:32 AM

vista on new machines (2Gb ram and dual core 2.0+ Ghz processor)

xp on older and not so performant

att i'm running vista home premium on my laptop (dell inspriron 1720 2.4GHz core duo 2 gefo8600M gt 2GB ram 667 HD 7200RPM)

and xp on my old amd2800+ gefo6200 1GB ram

both are running fine

Preppy

02-05-2008, 03:34 AM

I don't care what you use. Enjoy your favorite OS. :tup:

I am confused about these specific comments, but have no desire to sway anyone, only to understand WTF you're talking about:I can't understand how having a "pretty" OS is worth slowing your machine down, incompatibility, and shit like "blue screen of death."Blue screen of death is new to Vista since when?

Vista is actually better about letting you know when things corrupt memory, but I was under the impression that knowing that kind of thing was good.

So maybe some newer games you might not be able to play on XP. But that's not enough reason for me to leave a stable, NON memory-hogging OS, such as XP Pro.What specific stability problems are you having? You can find stability problems documented in the Problem Reports and Solutions Center control panel (http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#bucket). Take it to the Computer Support Thread in Tech Talk - or that special thread I made in the Premium forum. Take it there. I love sorting stuff out. Helps you, helps me, helps others. :tup:

Top multimedia crashes for Windows Vista are due to codec packs (Windows Error Reporting generally should point you how to uninstall those broken components as needed). Each release of Windows you get that much more test coverage on Windows core components, leading them to be more stable over time. The "stability chart" for things that *I* look at between XP to Vista to Vista SP1 is linear upwards. Arguably you should see a downward blip for new or majorly-changed components comparatively, which should be rectified over time (such as via QFEs or service packs). The internal processes and checks keep getting better and help things get that much more stable.

Again, Vista does point out when things corrupt memory. XP didn't and things just fell to pieces and you hopefully got lucky and nothing bad might have happened. But you don't mention specifics. Those are pretty key. :tup: Lots of third party stuff still likes to play fast and loose with memory. As far as I know, that's probably bad. Unfortunately, various aspects of the system are handcuffed when it allows you to plug in random shit - that's why thumbnail extraction runs out of process, for example, why IE has a Manage Add-ons tools, and etc etc other "protect Windows from the random shit people install" functionality. I suspect that people having problems have third party badness. :sad:

Yes, I am opposed to Vista, but I encourage anyone to tell me why it's worth it.Use what you like. :tup: If you enjoy XP, more power to you.

Vista isn't that great... evidenced by Microsoft extending XP's shelf life, amplified by Windows 7 a.k.a. Windows Vienna rumored to be coming out next year or 2010, a mere 2-3 years after Vista. It shows a lack of commitment to development of Vista, and people are starting to think if upgrading to it is even a good decision, otherwise we could be looking at the new Windows ME (not in terms of quality, but in terms of life).Whoa, you're high. "Mere?" Historically, that's standard. Vista at XP + 5 years was globally considered way too long; read up. (Windows Me's lifespan was a blip because that was when the 9x and NT codebases finally remerged. If you're going to count the blip between Me -> XP, you'd think you'd also count Win3.1-> NT3.51-> Win 95-> Win 98-> Win98 SE-> Win2k-> WinMe-> WinXP , which generally gives you ~2 year average or so between releases for the past 12 years, until the long Vista development process through that number way the fuck off.

Hating Vista is the new hating Microsoft. It's kinda funny in its own little way.

If there's actual problems, I try to solve them based upon principle. Hence my interest in actually understanding the specifics and roots of any given concern/complaint. I don't give a fuck if you use FritOS, I just like making things better where I can. :tup:

Sixshot

02-05-2008, 03:57 AM

Well if blue screen of death has been known to happen on XP, it's never happened to me. That's beside the point though.

I don't have Vista. I was just considering if it's worth upgrading to. Based on 70+% of what I've heard people say, both online and IRL, it's not. But I wanted to hear what SRK has to say also. Judging from what I've heard, there are a few pros, but far more cons. XP Pro is quite stable, and fast, though it doesn't have all the little bells and whistles that Vista has. Granted, those bells and whistles are probably what make it such a memory hog.

I may upgrade in the future, after a service pack or two...but for now I like XP Pro. XP Pro has been around long enough to mature into a fine OS - Vista is still young. Just my two cents.

Thanks for your input Preppy.

edit: the memory corruption awareness thing that Vista has over XP I can understand. So that's a pro. But I personally don't run much 'suspicious' third party stuff that may do that.

Preppy

02-05-2008, 04:10 AM

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, the Blue Screen of Death (aka BSOD) has been around since Windows 3.1:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bsod
It's typically indicative of a hardware or driver failure.

Random_Hero

02-05-2008, 04:43 AM

BSOD's happen more frequently in vista because a lot of older drivers are not compatible with the new os. Thats why you get all those popups. True it is a resource hog but i do find it to be alot easier to use on the user end. Seems to be harder to fix, but that could just be because its new and i don't really know my way around the graphical os. Seems like nothing is where it used to be. Preppy how do i elevate stuff in command prompt. I just want to be able to release and renew ip addresses but I always get the elevation error.

Edit: resource hog. It's designed for the next few years. With quad cores, sli, and huge amounts of ram in computers now, the hardware will be able run vista and other applications with ease. Try install xp on a p3500 and tell me how that runs.

Renesis_13

02-05-2008, 04:51 AM

I've been using Vista x64 with no problems whatsoever, performance with games is the same if not better than XP (had a dual boot with XP Pro, got rid of XP last month since I was barely using it anymore.)

BaSiK_TeKniK

02-05-2008, 04:54 AM

I have vista, I despise it.

so do I. It sucks ass

I had to buy a brand new soundcard because if stupid compatibikity issues.

I would wait awhile before Id upgrade to vista.

Preppy

02-05-2008, 04:55 AM

Elevate the cmd.exe prompt - run *that* as an administrator.

Random_Hero

02-05-2008, 05:00 AM

Elevate the cmd.exe prompt - run *that* as an administrator.

Shit that makes sense. Too much sense.

Silentness!

02-05-2008, 05:32 AM

I'm using Vista, but it came with it and I wish it was XP. *shrugs*

m00b

02-05-2008, 05:37 AM

I've never had a problem with Vista. I'm using Home Prem 64 bit. Never had a BSOD, Source engine games run at ~200 fps. Only thing I don't really like is the lack of drivers, but all my hardware that isn't Vista capable works on generic drivers I've downloaded on the internet. I decided to give it a try, and I've never been bothered enough to switch back to XP.

Hardware

DFI Infinity NF570 SLI-M2/G Motherboard
Athlon 64X2 5000+ Black Edition OC'ed to 2.8ghz
2gb G.skill DDR-800 @ 4-4-3-5
8800GTS 512MB G92 core

I've been using Vista x64 with no problems whatsoever, performance with games is the same if not better than XP (had a dual boot with XP Pro, got rid of XP last month since I was barely using it anymore.)

Pretty much same thing with me.

ToyRobotTerror

02-05-2008, 05:37 AM

I got dat Ubuntu.

Rod Driguez

02-05-2008, 05:40 AM

Conventional wisdom seems to be:

Upgrade to Vista from XP - pain in the a$$
Running Vista pre-installed on a new machine that can handle it - not so bad

If you're in the market for a new machine, you don't have much choice and it's not like things are going to gravitate back towards XP as time goes by. XP has been rock-solid on my main box and pretty good on my off-box; the issues on my off-box are probably more hardware (driver) related than anything XP ever did. But I haven't used Vista that much so I won't comment on it directly. I plan to stick with XP until I absolutely can't get by without DX10 - which should be a good little while.

Geese Pants

02-05-2008, 06:29 AM

I'm not switching to Vista until the next major Service Pack fixes ALOT of shit with it............right now I'm fine with XP Pro.

thurst

02-05-2008, 07:50 AM

i'm calling bullshit on this "BSoD happens more frequently on vista" nonsense. my computer with vista has maybe crashed once since i've had it (about 10 months now) and it was due to a fucked sound codec that i had installed.

for all of this talk about common programs being incompatible, i haven't seen it. i play warcraft without a problem and all of my commonly used older programs work without a hitch as well.

i'm using vista home premium btw...i wish i had business or ultimate so i could remote access but whatevs.

AcEtUrNeDjOkEr

02-05-2008, 07:56 AM

Using Vista Bitness at work, sucks compared to XP Pro on the same machine. Speed is much slower and drivers just aren't there. Started with 5 people using Vista, I am the only one still on it (admin). The SP has been out on MSDN for a while and it doesn't speed anything up.

Satomiblood

02-05-2008, 08:03 AM

Vista came with my PC. I've thought about switching back, but I mostly use my comp for internet and running some apps like Word.

Nokato

02-05-2008, 08:35 AM

Vista...is very bad.

nameingway

02-05-2008, 08:53 AM

windows ME is better than windows vista.

i'm calling bullshit on this "BSoD happens more frequently on vista" nonsense. my computer with vista has maybe crashed once since i've had it (about 10 months now) and it was due to a fucked sound codec that i had installed.

for all of this talk about common programs being incompatible, i haven't seen it. i play warcraft without a problem and all of my commonly used older programs work without a hitch as well.

i'm using vista home premium btw...i wish i had business or ultimate so i could remote access but whatevs.

LOL! you're either lieing or are the luckiest person that has ever touched a machine.

DarkNecrid

02-05-2008, 08:54 AM

Vista.

YellowS4

02-05-2008, 09:35 AM

Vista Ultimate.

Yeah, I get the random bsod due to random bullshit like Guitar Hero 3 causing a full reboot or incompatible apps & drivers.

Eminent

02-05-2008, 09:36 AM

regardless of BSOD on either OS, I think we can all agree no matter how hard you try "explorer.exe" will crash.

IMHO XP Pro is way to go.
Now Im currently running 2 pcs side by side
Win XP Pro 32-bit
AMD x2 3800+ @ 2GHz
2GB of DDR 400
ATI x850xt pe 256meg @256-bit (AGP)

and

Win Xp Pro x64 Edition (good one, not the intel crap)
AMD x2 3600+ @ 1.91GHz
2GB of DDR 400
Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX 640meg @ 320-bit (PCI-Ex)

Between the 2 of my machines the x64 is faster (multipurpose) the only down side is I can't run my litestep shell like im doing on the other. I also refuse to put Vista on any of my machines, its slow, offers no real performance gain (for me) and all my games that are DX 10 also run in DX9.0c. That said, I generally give an OS 2 years out in OEM before I consider placing it on my computers. Vista is a memory hog, and un-needed eye candy, though I agree w/ others that its an OS that you should only have if you have 4GB + Ram. But this x64 can do the same thing, so...

XP Pro = Winner

and to all the ppl who Vote XP Home...hang yourselves.

Summary of All Posts made thus far
XP Tried and True
Vista DAT Incompatible EyeCandy

Night

02-05-2008, 10:01 AM

I'm not going to bother upgrading the current computer from XP to Vista. Everyone can probably ride XP for the next few years until the next gen OS even after Vista comes out.

ringopan

02-05-2008, 10:03 AM

i just switched to OS X: leopard. i run XP pro and ubuntu side by side along with it through vmware (for certain windows/linux only programs i need). best decision i ever made, but then again i dont play any PC games whatsoever, unlike most of SRK. for programming, the unix based OS X (with x11 support) is pretty handy.

FatalFuryD

02-05-2008, 11:08 AM

In my experience, I prefer xp. I don't really like xp either, but I think it's better. So far with Vista(Home Premium edition) that came with my new notebook, I've encountered hardward compatibility issues with USBs like thumb drive and my digi camera, all my old school games fail with "98/95 emulation mode"(you know, making the programs run in those OS setting), FRAPs don't fuckin work so I can't record my combo video materials, etc etc it's very frustrating. One plus I like over xp with vista is that they finally fixed the damn bug where if you move around in "explore" option, the OS is stable now.

I'm really all about to ditch all this shit and go dual OS with Linux Ubuntu 7, honestly.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 11:12 AM

Nope. Do NOT switch to Vista. My friend is running on a dual core 3.0 ghz, 4 gb ram and 8800 Nvidia and he could hardly play games at 60 FPS with Vista. Seriously Vista hogged everything. From CPU to ram power. He switched back to XP and his benchmarks went through the roof compared to Vista.

Short answer...don't go Vista. Even my other friends who have Vista on their new PCs want to switch back to XP just because Vista just hogs everything.

This is 100% false.

All the Vista hate was justified a year ago... Now it is quite solid. More solid than XP was a year after its own release.

I know what you say is false, not because that hardware is PLENTY to run Vista + games... but because of how Vista and games work. Vista's pretty UI does not take up resources when you are playing a game.

source for proof, since I'm sure 90% of you don't believe me: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/

The short of it is that your graphics card is what makes Vista pretty. When you play a game, your graphics card stops making Vista pretty and focuses on the game. Don't try to alt-tab out and see if it's true, because when you alt-tab out Vista is pretty again. It's like trying to check if the light is always on inside your refrigerator. :wonder:

Now, as somebody else already mentioned... the rule of thumb is true.
<4gb ram, XP 32-bit.
>4gb ram, Vista 64-bit.

90% of you are thinking it is for the wrong reason though. You don't run Vista 64 on 4gb+ ram because Vista needs that much ram to run smoothly. You run it because you need a 64 bit operating system to actually utillize that much RAM. Why not use XP 64? Because XP 64 actually does suck, unlike Vista. XP 64 came out in a time where 64 bit operating systems were hardly necessary, and so XP 64 never got much support and has terrible compatibility issues with everything.

Is Vista good? Absolutely. Is it a good enough reason to switch to it if you already have XP? No. If you need to buy an operating system, there is no reason not to get Vista. If you already have an operating system, then there aren't enough reasons to buy a new one.

I just built a new PC a few weeks ago, with 4gb of ram, so I went with Vista 64 because that was easily the best choice. I've had no issues at all with games, software, or hardware. I'll list the software, games, and hardware I use so you guys will have an idea of how perfectly fine Vista is.

nameingway

02-05-2008, 11:22 AM

so, what are you running a 64-bit OS for?

more than 4 gigs of ram?

are you a total douche or just striving to be welcomed into the league of extraordinary douchebags?

pherai

02-05-2008, 11:27 AM

Why not use XP 64? Because XP 64 actually does suck, unlike Vista. XP 64 came out in a time where 64 bit operating systems were hardly necessary, and so XP 64 never got much support and has terrible compatibility issues with everything.

Already mentioned this in the first page in so many words :sweat:

YellowS4

02-05-2008, 11:28 AM

so, what are you running a 64-bit OS for?

more than 4 gigs of ram?

are you a total douche or just striving to be welcomed into the league of extraordinary douchebags?

Futureproofing! Hell, I could always use more ram just to deal with all the multitasking and editing shit.

Koost

02-05-2008, 11:42 AM

*snip*

Zach for president obv.

If you're on the fence, dual-booting xp and vista is relatively easy, even for the thickies among us. Personally after installing Vista 64, I rarely ever boot into my XP installation, save for the few instances where I need to run 32bit apps that are incompatible with a 64-bit OS.

Now that I-tunes has a proper 64-bit version, I don't really have a reason to go back.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 11:46 AM

so, what are you running a 64-bit OS for?

more than 4 gigs of ram?

are you a total douche or just striving to be welcomed into the league of extraordinary douchebags?

Who, me? I just said in the post that I had 4gigs of RAM. And I'm not a douche. I already said XP is great, and Vista is great.

I'm just trying to state the facts and dispell some of the myth behind Vista. As I said, its hate was justified a year ago. Now, any residual hate against Vista is just ignorant bias.

I'll list my hardware/software/games in a sec.

HaiDuongRiceMan

02-05-2008, 11:48 AM

Dual boot ftw?

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 11:59 AM

Here is my hardware, software, and games:

Computer
Processor: Intel Quad Q6600 OC'ed to 3.0ghz
Motherboard: Gigabyte P35-DS3R
Power Supply: Corsair 620HX
RAM: 4gb G.Skill
Video Card: nVIDIA 8800 GTS 512mb (G92)
Sound: onboard
HD: Western Digital 500gb SATA

^All of the above worked fine with no need for driver installation in Vista 64 (I installed the motherboard chipset drivers anyway though, because it's recommended)

Various hardware
Razer Copperhead USB mouse (came out in 2005)
Canon ip5200 printer (2005)
Dell 2001FP LCD (2003)
Klipsch 5.1 Ultra speakers (2005)
Canon A620 digital cam (2005)
Nikon D80 digital cam (2006)
4th gen ipod (2004)

^Unlike my main computer hardware which is all from within the last year, all this stuff is between 2 and 5 years old. It all works fine, without any need for driver installation in Vista 64. In fact, Vista seems to give you the actual manufacturer's drivers, which I find impressive. In XP, if I just plugged in the ip5200 printer without installing the drivers, I could use it fine but with generic printer drivers. In Vista, I plugged in the printer and it automatically installed Canon's drivers for me. I was quite surprised/impressed.

Software
Adobe Acrobat Reader 8
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Adobe Lightroom 1.3.1
Daemon Tools
Filezilla
foobar2000
Fraps
GoldWave
GrabIt
InfraRecorder
IrfanView
Kaspersky Antivirus 7
Open Office 2.3
Opera
PerfectDisk 8
Pidgin (used to be GAIM)
QuickPar
SpywareBlaster
TagScanner
VLC Media Player
WinRAR
(even a few OC'ing utilities like SpeedFan, Prime95, CPU-Z, and CoreTemp)

^All of that software works perfectly fine in Vista 64. That should covere what most people care about and use these days anyway. Video player, music player, image editors/viewers, extractors, antiviruses, web browsers, downloaders, etc. What else do you do on a computer? =p

Games
Bioshock
Crysis
Orange Box
Starcraft
World of Warcraft
Various emulators: SNES9x, ZSNES, RockNES, Mame/Kaillera

^All of the above games work perfectly fine in Vista 64. A couple of those games are new, but things like WoW and certainly Starcraft are old as dirt. All the popular emulators work fine in Vista as well. Even Kaillera, so there ya go online 3S addicts.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 12:11 PM

On the subject of DirectX 10. It is definately something to consider for the future.

At the moment though, there is basically NO reason whatsoever to use DirectX 10. Various reasons for it. Some people say the "true" Direct X 10 cards aren't out yet. Some games don't really take much advantage of it yet.

The bottom line is that with most of the current games that can use DX10, there is little to no noticable visual difference whatsoever from DX9. On the other hand, there IS a noticable performance hit. So with no real pro, and one big con, there isn't much reason to use DX10 at the moment.

Google some image/video comparisons of Crysis, Bioshock, etc with DX9 vs DX10 shots. Good luck finding the differences. There are SLIGHT differences with Crysis, namely the fact that you can set "very high" settings, which you can't do in DX9 Crysis. However, there's a way around that so you can set "very high" in DX9 heh. Anyway, even still, the differences are barely noticeable. You will notice at least a 10-15 drop in framerate though. With Bioshock, the visual differences are EXTREMELY hard to notice, much moreso than Crysis. Again, you take a performance hit by running DX10 though.

So maybe in a few months when new cards and new games come out, DX10 will be worthwhile. At the moment though, IMO, it's not.

Another reason to consider running Vista 64 if you are on newer systems, is that 64 bit Crysis has been shown to perform better in 64 bit. Not sure why, but it's true. The developers commented on it somewhere. Needless to say, I think 32 bit operating systems won't be around much longer. I forget if Vista is the last 32 bit Microsoft OS, or if Windows 7 will be. Either way, prepare for 64-bit mainstream in the coming years.

Preppy

02-05-2008, 12:26 PM

regardless of BSOD on either OS, I think we can all agree no matter how hard you try "explorer.exe" will crash.What's the crash bucket (http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#bucket)?

It's not normal for Explorer to crash. A kazillion people (internal and external people) test this. If Explorer is crashing, there's either something uniquely bad on your system OR you found something Good To Find and that should be fixed. So share the crash bucket data in the Computer Support thread in Tech Talk. :tup:

The SP has been out on MSDN for a while and it doesn't speed anything up.It's been out for maybe 24 hours. :smile: Note that SP1 resets the prefetch cache, so it'll take about 10 runs of every application to gain normal prefetch boosts back. The perf tweaks to TrustedInstaller alone are interesting. I would suspect that it would be hard not to have incremental speed gains with SP1, but it would be more noticeable on systems in actual use than in fake test systems. (Read: I expect some of the perf benefits not to be noticed because of external testing methodology.)

I'm not switching to Vista until the next major Service Pack fixes ALOT of shit with it............right now I'm fine with XP Pro.SP1 just got signed off on yesterday, it'll be out to the real world within a month or so. :tup:

I wanted to vote for Windows Vista Ultimate KN. Oh well.

True Grave

02-05-2008, 12:29 PM

I still have XP Pro on my machine. Not that I'm considering switching to Vista, but I just want to hear what SRK has to say about the subject. From what I understand, it is shit because it is incompatible with 'older' software/drivers, and it hogs WAY too much fucking memory. I can't understand how having a "pretty" OS is worth slowing your machine down, incompatibility, and shit like "blue screen of death." I guess maybe Microsoft made it for gullible people with extra money to waste.

The only pro for Vista I can think of is that XP doesn't support DirectX 10, you need Vista for that. So maybe some newer games you might not be able to play on XP. But that's not enough reason for me to leave a stable, NON memory-hogging OS, such as XP Pro.

Anyway, please vote on the poll, I'd seriously like to get some kind of consensus on this. Yes, I am opposed to Vista, but I encourage anyone to tell me why it's worth it.

WinXP > Vista

I choose XP Home edition because its what i've always had.

Mr_Punkus

02-05-2008, 12:41 PM

I got dat Ubuntu.
This. Dual boot all the way son. Truth be told I hardly use XP pro now. But it's good to have in case you really need to use windows.

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 12:46 PM

I use Vista Ultimate and it's perfectly fine. It crashes less than XP, if it crashes at all. If a program crashes, it isolates the program instead of the whole system.

And memory hogging? I can run Bioshock, COD4, and Crysis fine. :tup:

I'm on 1.6 ghz dual core, 256 mb vid card, 2 gigs of RAM

Pablo_the_Mex

02-05-2008, 12:49 PM

What the hell do you guys do that crashes windows so goddamn much? I am not a pc gamer, but I have built my own computers before. I don't see where all the M$ hate is coming from.

jinsaotome800

02-05-2008, 12:50 PM

This is 100% false.

All the Vista hate was justified a year ago... Now it is quite solid. More solid than XP was a year after its own release.

this line right here is key. I dont know why, but for some reason everyone has forgotten how much hate there was for xp when it first came out and how long it took people to upgrade to it. People were pretty much saying the same thing about xp as they are about vista....takes up too much resources, driver support and backwards compatibility were bad and for a lot of people there was no reason to upgrade to xp. After a couple years though, more and more of the kinks were worked out and xp turned into a great OS which i have a feeling vista might given service pack or two

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 12:52 PM

What the hell do you guys do that crashes windows so goddamn much? I am not a pc gamer, but I have built my own computers before. I don't see where all the M$ hate is coming from.

Because bitching about shit you've probably never even tried before is awesome.

Pablo_the_Mex

02-05-2008, 01:07 PM

Because bitching about shit you've probably never even tried before is awesome.

I don't know man, I build shit that works. Don't know about everyone else.

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 01:11 PM

I don't know man, I build shit that works. Don't know about everyone else.

I was agreeing with you..

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 01:12 PM

The thing is, XP has conditioned us to think about Operating Systems in a certain way... and then Vista comes along marching to a different beat, and we naturally want to assume it's crap.

The biggest example of this is how XP and Vista treat memory usage differently. To quote someone from anandtech:

Vista will precache to fill your memory. It will also keep a lot more in active memory, depending on how much ram you have. The more RAM you have, the more it will use, and this will be reflected in both used memory and cached memory.

No matter how much its using, it will give up as much as is needed to ANY program or game.

Therefore, stop staring at your memory meter, and going nuts over how Vista is using 2gb of your 4gb with a single browser window open. Nothing is wrong. Free memory = wasted memory.

Sabin

02-05-2008, 01:17 PM

ive been running vista home premium for a while on this sony vaio i was using (preinstalled vista). after i removed all the sony vaio bloatware, vista still is bloated as hell - i want to go back to xpsp2. its usable once i went to admin panel and disabled a bunch of non essential services, but it still doesnt feel as snappy as xp sp2 does.

granted, vista right now was better than xpsp1 was when it was relased.

ive heard good things bout xpsp3 actually but i havent tried it yet. anyone tried the latest build?

and for anyone using readyboost, is this actually improving system performance for you?

Pablo_the_Mex

02-05-2008, 01:19 PM

I was agreeing with you..

lol, yes agreed.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 01:19 PM

Sabin, in what way do you find Vista to be bloated? Did you read my posts?

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 01:19 PM

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 01:22 PM

DaDesi, readyboost is a service that runs unless you disable it... but what it allows you to do, is plug in some USB memory that Vista will then use as system RAM.

Basically a performance/RAM upgrade method for people who aren't comfortable opening their case and sticking some new RAM in.

So, unless you are using some USB ram with readyboost, you won't see any difference in having it on or off. =p

Oh, and as to whether or not it will improve performance. It will, but not as much as "real" RAM.

pherai

02-05-2008, 01:24 PM

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 01:33 PM

Pherai, it's like the frequently used programs in your start menu. The more you use a program, the higher up the list it goes in the XP/Vista start menu.

Same way with Vista's precaching. It looks at the programs/games/whatever you run the most, and prechaches them for you. This is why Vista speeds up over the first week or so of running it. It "learns" your habits, and tries to guess that accordingly.

And there is no real consequence to it caching things you don't use because A) it tries to only cache things you do use :smile:, and B) even if it has cached some things you don't use, it dumps cached things when necessary anyway.

Think of it like this: If you start a game or application that's cached, great. It starts faster than normal. If you start a game or application that wasn't cached, no problem, it overwrites whatever is in the cache and it starts like normal. So it either works like normal, or faster. Never slower.

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 01:37 PM

No wonder COD4 load times used to change depending on how frequently I used it...

YellowS4

02-05-2008, 01:44 PM

Readyboost isn't that great just yet. Useful but not something you'd look at and go "wow!"

Jaldaboath

02-05-2008, 01:52 PM

I tried switching to Vista and it was slooooooow, so I'm keeping XP Pro; besides, as far as I can tell is the most stable system I've been since I was on 3.11 so I'm pretty happy with it.

Also, all that bad press about Vista having all that DRM stuff embeded in got to me so I'm just going to wait till I have to upgrade to DX10 to play something I want to.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 01:52 PM

Here's a good explanation of Vista's "superfetch" (the prechaching thing), from anandtech:

Superfetch – Superfetch is IMO the reason to get Vista. It is the most obvious example of Vista being proactive towards utilizing your entire PC for make benefit of glorious user. Rather than mindlessly caching in RAM the last accessed data like XP, it analyzes the programs you actually use, when you use them, and preloads them into RAM. It also prevents I/O that shouldn’t be cached from being cached – virus scanners etc. I find that with Vista I rarely if ever end up loading an app from the hard drive anymore.

As far as tweaking, the only option you have is to turn it off by disabling the service. But I *highly* recommend against it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The cached data is viewed by the OS as available memory, so if a program actually needs more RAM, it’ll dump the cache for the time being.

If you’re wondering why after you boot, there is random disk I/O for a minute or two, it’s the superfetch precaching everything, not some inexplicable windows bloat that just won’t go away. Free memory = wasted memory!

What does this actually mean to you from a performance perspective? For desktop apps that you use with any frequency, they will likely start up MUCH faster, directly out of ram. For a game which you play frequently, level loads will be MUCH faster. Vista doesnt care who or where the files it caches come from - it just makes sure the ones you use, whether its desktop apps or game files, are ready and waiting for you, especially if you do certain tasks at certain times. If you code during the day, and game during the night or weekend, you can expect those particular files to be ready for you when its time.

But this does not comprise the entirety of the cache - much of it is still left for the most recently used I/O, trying to strike a good balance.

Theres no way that I know of to view whats in the cache, but if you want to peek at whats being loaded as its being loaded, you can use process monitor.

thurst

02-05-2008, 01:57 PM

What the hell do you guys do that crashes windows so goddamn much? I am not a pc gamer, but I have built my own computers before. I don't see where all the M$ hate is coming from.

i think it's all those shady russian codec packs people are installing to watch their hentai is what's causing all of these blue screens.

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 01:57 PM

I think in the end, if you have a slower PC, use XP, if you have a decent PC by today's standards, Vista is fine.

i think it's all those shady russian codec packs people are installing to watch their hentai is what's causing all of these blue screens.

:rofl:

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 02:07 PM

^Yep, pretty much DaDesi.

I think I've covered most of the Vista concerns in my posts, so to just sum it all up:

XP's great.
Vista's great.

There's not much reason to switch if you've already got XP, unless you've got money to blow or illegal free copies of Vista to use. :wgrin: If you're getting a new computer and need an OS though, I can't think of a reason not to go with Vista.

And yeah, for those of you crashing Windows often, NO version of Windows is going to fix that. You need to learn how to use a computer. =p

HaiDuongRiceMan

02-05-2008, 02:26 PM

CrouchingTiger, I have almost the same setup as you, except with 2 GB of GSkill RAM and OC'ed to 2.8. You think I would have problems running Vista Ultimate? I want to dual boot both XP and Vista, just to get familiar with Vista if anything. Also, programs installed under XP won't be read under Vista, correct? I'd have to install them again?

Thanks.

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 02:32 PM

Whoa, you're high. "Mere?" Historically, that's standard. Vista at XP + 5 years was globally considered way too long; read up. (Windows Me's lifespan was a blip because that was when the 9x and NT codebases finally remerged. If you're going to count the blip between Me -> XP, you'd think you'd also count Win3.1-> NT3.51-> Win 95-> Win 98-> Win98 SE-> Win2k-> WinMe-> WinXP , which generally gives you ~2 year average or so between releases for the past 12 years, until the long Vista development process through that number way the fuck off.

95 to 98 to XP has been 3 years. 2K/ME were both released in 2000 and considered the more obscure and forgotten platforms, so I don't bother counting them.

Generally the OS with a good amount of life has been a 3 year release, not 2. Even more suggestion that Vista will be a wash if Vienna indeed comes out late 2009 (which I'm betting it won't).

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 02:42 PM

95 to 98 to XP has been 3 years. 2K/ME were both released in 2000 and considered the more obscure and forgotten platforms, so I don't bother counting them.

Generally the OS with a good amount of life has been a 3 year release, not 2. Even more suggestion that Vista will be a wash if Vienna indeed comes out late 2009 (which I'm betting it won't).

So you're basically discounting releases based on whether YOU think it's an "Actual" release or not, and then timing the years between releases based on that assumption.

Wow.

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 02:47 PM

So you're basically discounting releases based on whether YOU think it's an "Actual" release or not, and then timing the years between releases based on that assumption.

Wow.

Way to twist my words... but no.

It's called company support, not whether I think it's an "actual" release. If a company stops supporting it early, why would you even place it in the same vein as the products that are still talked about to this day? There are still Win 98 users. Windows ME? Probably, but not so much.

It's a fact that the releases 3 years apart have been the most popular/most used.

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 02:50 PM

Also, I'm stunned people even voted for XP Home.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 02:50 PM

HaiDuong, you should be fine. And if you're dual booting, you've really got nothing to lose but your time. =p Consider these general guidelines:

Vista + 512mb = Bad idea.
Vista + 1gb = Good for desktop applications, pre-2007 games.
Vista + 2gb = Good for 2007 games.
Vista + 4gb (x64) = Plenty of headroom.

There is an excellent Vista performance FAQ here: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1999401

And about your programs, yeah they will need to be installed again as far as I know. I've never set up a dual boot before, so I could be mistaken. I believe they will need to be installed again though, because Vista's registry will be separate from XP's and that means Vista's registry won't recognize any of the programs you've installed on XP. You should be able to access your non-program files though, like your mp3's and whatever.

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 02:52 PM

Way to twist my words... but no.

It's called company support, not whether I think it's an "actual" release. If a company stops supporting it early, why would you even place it in the same vein as the products that are still talked about to this day? There are still Win 98 users. Windows ME? Probably, but not so much.

It's a fact that the releases 3 years apart have been the most popular/most used.

I didn't twist anything, it's pretty much exactly what you said. Just because the company stopped supporting it early doesn't stop it from being an official release, or from being a decent product. If Microsoft stopped support, it was probably to work on the next release, and isn't that the whole point of the argument?

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 03:04 PM

I didn't twist anything, it's pretty much exactly what you said. Just because the company stopped supporting it early doesn't stop it from being an official release, or from being a decent product.

I said nothing about ME/2K not being "actual/official" releases. They are. However, compared to Vista/XP/98/95, they're forgotten and not worth mentioning. So no, what you're claiming I said is untrue.

ME/2K were marketing tools. ME for home users, 2K for business users. Microsoft attempted to get their feet wet before they tried it again with XP Home and XP Pro... but the first attempt failed. ME was filled with problems and was far from a decent product, thus early shun.

If Microsoft stopped support, it was probably to work on the next release, and isn't that the whole point of the argument?

This makes no sense, because a company will never stop support on something to work on their next product if the first product still matters in the market.

Even with Vista out, Microsoft continues to push out Service Pack 3 for XP soon, which includes some features from Vista itself.

Windows ME didn't matter and was a bust, thus it received no type of support during and after XP's arrival.

Sixshot

02-05-2008, 03:13 PM

Thanks for your perspective CrouchingTiger. You've probably made me respect Vista more.

As stated earlier, these are my basic specs - Athlon 64 (not X2) 3800+ 2.4 Ghz, 2 GB DDR2 533 Mhz RAM. GPU in this shit is an onboard GeForce 6150 SE w/ up to 128 shared. I want to put a new card in it, but the card I want to put in, the factory PSU isn't strong enough to power. So I'd have to get a new PSU as well. And then on top of that it doesn't have an actual tray for housing the PSU, just some slide in bullshit at the top, which I guess only PSU's that come with pre-built PC's have.

So with what I've got, how well do you think I could run Vista? Acquiring it isn't really a problem, I could just borrow a disc from a friend.

I will probably build something soon, which would be considerably more powerful, and at that time I would probably put Vista on it. But for now I've got what I've got.

Also, quick question about the "superfetch" - would it take longer to dump something from cache and then overwrite, than it would if that part of the cache was empty to begin with? Just speculative. Maybe that would explain why so many people say it is a memory hog. Though you said you can disable it if you wanted, so I guess that would be a pro.

DaDesiCanadian

02-05-2008, 03:15 PM

Also, quick question about the "superfetch" - would it take longer to dump something from cache and then overwrite, than it would if that part of the cache was empty? Just speculative. Maybe that would explain why so many people say it is a memory hog. Though you said you can disable it if you wanted, so I guess that would be a pro.

Maybe it would, but that would only be a problem for the first week or so, like CT said. After that it runs smooth as butter. Memory is so not a problem, that I usually have like 12-15 apps open all the time, and don't even realize, since there's no slowdown.

fjf314

02-05-2008, 03:26 PM

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 03:37 PM

Sixshot, some of your stuff is a bit dated, and onboard graphics are never a good thing heh. I'm not sure how well you would run Vista. If you're building/buying a new computer soon anyway, I probably wouldn't bother and would just stick with XP for now. Or if you're just really curious in the mean time you could try a dual boot, where as I told HaiDuong you'd have nothing to lose but your time. :smile:

And about the superfetch, it shouldn't take longer because RAM operates in nanoseconds, but hard drives operate in milliseconds so your hard drive is the bottleneck. To load into RAM, or to clear out and re-write RAM, can only happen as fast as your hard drive can send information to it.

At least, that's how it works on paper. If you had a way of timing or benchmarking that, you might see some sort of negligible difference, who knows. I'm sure it wouldn't be humanly noticeable though.

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 03:40 PM

It's true, people always bitch about a new Windows until updates and fixes increase speed/performance/usability. That's why Vista still has plenty of hope.

Sasmasta

02-05-2008, 03:42 PM

Keep hope alive!

It's visually nice, but I haven't had enough time with it to nitpick.

pherai

02-05-2008, 03:42 PM

I like how quickly everyone seems to forget that when XP came out, everyone bitched and thought it was complete shit, too. Since Vista released, though, now everyone claims it's the Jesus of operating systems. It's like a never-ending cycle and when Microsoft releases the next version of Windows, I'm sure everyone will bitch again and claim that they don't want to stop using Vista... :rolleyes:

The fact is, 99% of people don't know anything about OS's, so they don't have legitimate complaints; just a resistance to change. I've heard Microsoft is known for changing things in their OS's for no real reason, without yielding any improvement though, but I doubt most people notice those kinds of things.

Preppy

02-05-2008, 03:45 PM

I said nothing about ME/2K not being "actual/official" releases. They are. However, compared to Vista/XP/98/95, they're forgotten and not worth mentioning. So no, what you're claiming I said is untrue.You ended up with some magical "Microsoft OS Releases Must Be Vindicated By a 3 Year Release Window" criteria? :smile: If somebody delivers me something markedly better a year later, I don't see why that's bad. I don't know why I would want to wait for More Awesome.

Go look up scrums and 'agile development'. It's all the rage. :tup: Five years between XP and Vista was not the best plan - you end up with 2-3 more years of accumulated third party crap that would have been caught earlier if there had been a XP-Vista interim release, and now Vista takes your blame for that. *shrug*

If you don't take into account the security reset and the Avalon reset, you'll never understand Vista development. Hell, you can't even comment on XP development without taking that into account. The security reset should dominate your intellectual understanding of Microsoft development over the past five years. If you're missing that, you're dead in the water. XP and Vista *should* be highly sustainable systems. But that's also because the entire company ground to a halt and better security/stability practices were put in place. XPSP2 and Vista were where this work is shown off best. Everything from Vista forward should make more subtle leaps forward than any previous version of Windows. WER, SQM, Prefast/Prefix, there's tons of brilliant people (or at least three kind of smart ones) improving processes and leveraging Windows (all supported versions) upwards.

Most of the benefits from those tools and processes can most easily be applied to in-development code. XPSP2 had major revisions based upon that work, but it was more possible to fix Vista code. And Windows 7 builds on top of that, and so on. Hopefully it's a virtuous cycle.

This makes no sense, because a company will never stop support on something to work on their next product if the first product still matters in the market.Different teams. Sustained engineering handles the old stuff, the feature teams have ALWAYS moved on way way before you even had that release in your hands.

As regards Microsoft changing things randomly: Changing things for change's sake is dumb. Typically there has to be some really good reason to make any given changes.

pherai

02-05-2008, 03:57 PM

As regards Microsoft changing things randomly: Changing things for change's sake is dumb. Typically there has to be some really good reason to make any given changes.

Of course it's dumb, but the people who decide on changes don't always make the most informed decisions. Either way, like I said, I haven't taken notice of this personally, just stuff I've read in publications around the time of Vista's release, so I don't really have any idea.

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 04:06 PM

You ended up with some magical "Microsoft OS Releases Must Be Vindicated By a 3 Year Release Window" criteria?

Like I said before, the most popular/successful releases have been 3 years apart. It's called facts, not magic.

We're talking about why Vista's performance is not yet up to XP's standards, yet you're breaking off into something entirely different such as security. Straight forward simplicity isn't your calling card.

Changing things for change's sake is dumb. Typically there has to be some really really good reason to make any given changes.

Then you're not understanding the business side of this. Any type of change can be used as a marketing tool, which is why changes happen frequently.

Preppy

02-05-2008, 04:09 PM

Of course it's dumb, but the people who decide on changes don't always make the most informed decisions. Either way, like I said, I haven't taken notice of this personally, just stuff I've read in publications around the time of Vista's release, so I don't really have any idea.The people who decide on changes here have a hard time not making informed decisions. Imagine 40,000 smart passionate people who get angry when you fuck up and have instant email access to you, can track any change, can track any bug, et cetera. If you can't defend your position really really well, you're fucked. You don't get to claim "But I'm The Boss", you've got to have damned good reasons. :smile:

I take anything written externally with huge grains of salt. So many people have axes to grind it gets sick real fast. Like I said, hating Vista is the new hating Microsoft. :smile:

Nothing is ever perfect and bad calls get made along the way, but they usually were made for what was believed to be a really good reason. And if it was a dumb/bad call - that's what QFEs and Service Packs are for, and there's more than enough external powers that will demand the stupid stuff gets fixed that it typically does get fixed pretty quickly if MS was actually wrong/in error/stupid. Most of the time. If not, read about it a couple years later on The Old New Thing. :wink:

bear

02-05-2008, 04:13 PM

I'm one of those people who doesn't change operating systems until it starts to cause me a problem. I used 2k until about a year ago, when i finally switched to XP. And I'll use XP until I stop finding support for it. This way, by the time I upgrade, all the kinks are usually worked out. And I don't spend nearly as much money.

So I imagine I will be pretty psyched about Vista in about 4 years.

ckrazy

02-05-2008, 04:14 PM

If you take out all the firewall crap on Vista it run pretty smoothly and pretty good, well for me at least.

GeoG2

02-05-2008, 04:19 PM

No doubt Vista will be nice in 4 years.

One of the great things about XP now is all the bells and whistles associated with tweaking it to your heart's content and getting as much performance out of it as possible. Vista hasn't been broken open like that as of yet.

The beauty of XP is that it will continue to be supported up until next year (SP2), and then ES kicks in and lasts all the way until 2014. So really, there's absolutely no rush to upgrade any time soon.

thurst

02-05-2008, 04:20 PM

lol @ there being votes for xp home and anything besides vista ultimate.

Sabin

02-05-2008, 04:23 PM

Sabin, in what way do you find Vista to be bloated? Did you read my posts?

gui sluggishness, copying files over the network etc etc feels really sluggish compared to XP

also there are a bit more more default processes in vista running compared to XP - (like the new windows search, which takes up cpu at random times) I remember I had my xp install down to about ~30 processes or so at boot, and it.

This post on slashdot prety much describes a lot of problems I have on VIsta compared to XP. (its talking about the changes to the SP1 pack). of course that site is ms-hate central, but i found a lot of thse issues coming up during my experience of vista so far.

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=407086&cid=21927300

Hmm, it seems readyboost is already running on my machine.

What are some key services you disabled?

http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_8.htm

I disabled a lot of non essential vista stuff i found from this list. on a default install with all the sony crapware installed, (core 2 duo t7100) with 2gb of ram, vista still felt really sluggish.

of thsee, i found that windows search was a resource hog - i disabled it and I use Locate32 instead if i want tofind a file on the computer

of course i have to update the database manually every time i want to search, (with locate32) because i dont have it always running, but i can live with that as opposed to windows search taking up cpu cycles all the time.

I dunno, compared toXP, overall, vista seems nothing more like pretty eye candy to me (with the directX10 "trojan" that MS has as it's ace in the hole to force all us gamers to upgrade eventually, heh.) as of now though, the fact that windows 7 has been announced already (with apparently a very slim kernel to boot) leads me to believe that MS itself thinks that ivsta is bloated and wants to get the next OS out the door.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 04:26 PM

Sasmasta

02-05-2008, 04:27 PM

This would prolly be directed towards the COMPUTER HELP thread, but since this thread is goin' in different directions, what the shit.

What's the '64' thing about? Advantages, disadvantages [just the main ones]?

Preppy

02-05-2008, 04:29 PM

as of now though, the fact that windows 7 has been announced already (with apparently a very slim kernel to boot) leads me to believe that MS itself thinks that ivsta is bloated and wants to get the next OS out the door.I don't know what announcement you're referring to, but there's never been a release of anything I've worked on where the teams weren't already working on v.next or a different project entirely by the time you got that product. Support is always handled by a different team.

If you go back to most any previous OS release, you'd be seeing mock-ups or actual working code for any of those releases at about this point in the development cycle anyways. People who find this surprising or unsettling haven't been paying attention. =\

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 04:39 PM

What's the '64' thing about? Advantages, disadvantages [just the main ones]?

There are two versions of Windows (XP, Vista, whatever). A 64 bit version, and a 32 bit version. Think of it like Playstation vs Nintendo 64 lol!??!

Just kidding. :smile:

Anyway, it's basically like this. There are lots of little differences here and there, but it's mostly just splitting hairs. The major difference that anybody is usually concerned with, is RAM. Because of the way a 32 bit operating system handles memory, it can't access more than about 3 gigs of RAM. So if you have 4 (or are a freak with 8 gigs), then it's going to waste in a 32 bit Windows.

In 64 bit Windows, it can use all your RAM.

That's basically it. If you've got >4 gigs of ram, get a 64 bit OS (Vista). If you've got <4 gigs, get a 32 bit OS (XP or Vista). XP makes a 64 bit version as well, but it's generally considered crap.

Also, it's important to consider what sort of software can even USE more than 2 gigs of RAM. Right now, not much. Photoshop and a few other things. The only reason to get 4+ gigs right now is for future-proofing, and if you need it in Photoshop a lot.

Sasmasta

02-05-2008, 04:44 PM

:u: Good lookin' out CrouchingTiger.

Sabin

02-05-2008, 04:47 PM

I don't know what announcement you're referring to, but there's never been a release of anything I've worked on where the teams weren't already working on v.next or a different project entirely by the time you got that product. Support is always handled by a different team.

If you go back to most any previous OS release, you'd be seeing mock-ups or actual working code for any of those releases at about this point in the development cycle anyways. People who find this surprising or unsettling haven't been paying attention. =\
I'm not surprised at all actually. I remember Vista was announced pretty soon after XP's release, even though it was a long time in coming.

I'm talking about this release which I've seen around the web in various tech related sites and articles, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7

This part of the release sounds really promising, though.

MinWin

A minimalistic variation of the Windows kernel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_%28computer_science%29), known as MinWin, is being developed for use in Windows 7. The MinWin development efforts are aimed towards componentizing the Windows kernel and reducing the dependencies with a view to carving out the minimal set of components required to build a self-contained kernel as well as reducing the disk footprint and memory usage.[17] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-mark) MinWin takes up about 25 MB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte) on disk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk) and has a working set (memory usage) of 40 MB.[18] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-traut) It lacks a graphical user interface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface) and is interfaced using a full-screen command line interface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_line_interface).[19] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-thurrott)[18] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-traut) It includes the I/O and networking subsystems.[17] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-mark)[19] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-thurrott) MinWin was first demonstrated on October 13 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_13), 2007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007) by Eric Traut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Traut). The demo system included an OS image, made up of about 100 files, on which a basic HTTP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP) server was running.[18] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-traut)[20] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#_note-zheng)

I really hope that the final release of the next version of windows follows this direction - sounds like its much more streamlined at the kernel. As is, Vista feels too bloated to me as a end-user. :(

thurst

02-05-2008, 04:50 PM

I use Vista Home Premium 64, but I voted for Ultimate because that was the only 64-bit version in the poll.

I saw no reason to pay $70 extra for Ultimate so I could have the only 4 Vista features that Home Premium lacks:

Windows Complete Backup and Restore
Windows Fax and Scan
Remote Desktop Connection
BitLocker Drive Encryption

^Even if I used those features, which I'm sure I wouldn't, I couldn't see paying $70 for them.

true, but those inclusions make in undeniably better imo since it's the same with additional features that don't take away from the main package maybe not a universal better value, but if all things were equal why would

it's like a pizza vs. a pizza and a milkshake.

ToyRobotTerror

02-05-2008, 04:51 PM

This. Dual boot all the way son. Truth be told I hardly use XP pro now. But it's good to have in case you really need to use windows.

I also got dat Wine so i don´t need xp anymore.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 04:55 PM

gui sluggishness, copying files over the network etc etc feels really sluggish compared to XP
I can't really comment much on this, as I only have a single computer. I've heard people say that Vista's Service Pack 1 "increases networking transfer speeds", so that would imply it was slow to begin with. You may be right about that. As far as the gui sluggishness, it feels very responsive to me. Of course that is taking into consideration the animations though. Naturally, animated things are going to feel more sluggish than non-animated things. Once the initial dazzle has worn off and you're sick of watching the windows distort themselves as you minimize and whatever, you can disable all that. You can leave the "Aero glass" on, but disable the animations for "zippier" performance.

also there are a bit more more default processes in vista running compared to XP - (like the new windows search, which takes up cpu at random times) I remember I had my xp install down to about ~30 processes or so at boot, and it.
I had my XP Pro to 22 processes at boot, and my Vista 64 machine here is 41. I haven't really "tweaked" Vista much yet though, as I've got 4 gigs of RAM and could probably have a couple hundred processes running before I noticed any slowdown. =p Still, 41 didn't seem that bad to me considering some of the items that are running are actually beneficial to leave on, like SuperFetch and whatnot. As soon as I installed Vista, I had my itchy trigger finger ready to rape the services.msc like I did in XP, but after some reading, I figured it would be better to leave most of them alone.

I too disabled Windows Search though, because I'm OCD and take the time to organize my PC anyway. I never need to search. I could probably find any file I care about with my eyes close. It's a sad, sick addiction. =(

I'll look through that Tweak Guide and see if there is anything else I feel like disabling, and I'll let you know if I can get lower than 41 processes running in Vista.

And thurst, it sounds like you've got money to blow, or illegal copies to use. :wink: All being equal, sure Ultimate is better. But like I was saying, I just didn't want to pay the extra $70.

thurst

02-05-2008, 04:56 PM

lol nah i got home premium, i'd just rather have ultimate or business considering i could easily do without media center.

Preppy

02-05-2008, 04:58 PM

Windows Embedded is potentially interesting to you, depending upon how insane you are/what your interests are. Fundamentals of that design got pushed back into Vista (and are kind of the underlying organizational lynchpins, really).

EDIT: OK, I understand the point they were making now.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 05:01 PM

Oh Sabin, back on the subject of networking, I read this on your TweakHound site:
For me, my benchmarks have shown that Vista out-of-the-box is equally as fast as XP and Linux that have been tweaked. To date I've not found a single tweak for Vista that speeds up actual networking or downloading from the net.

So I dunno what the verdict is on networking in Vista. I've heard a few think it's slow, some apparently think it's fine/better than XP. Again, I don't know, as I only have one computer. *shrug*

revpersona

02-05-2008, 06:01 PM

The only reason to upgrade to Vista IMO is for Direct X10, but let's be realistic. Does your machine seem capable of tackling new Direct X10 games? If not, or border-line on that issue I would just stick with XP (like I am until I build a new Gaming rig) because Vista is beyond your means.

lonewolf6465

02-05-2008, 06:08 PM

I'm using Vista Ult and have been for a while, it's running quite fine.

C2D E4500 @ 2.2Ghz
3 GIG ram
Radeon HD Pro 2600 512MB
160 GIG SATA @ 7200

I really don't have too many problems with it, other than sometimes Control Panel likes to not open, but I think that's ATI's problem. The wireless networking icon next to the clock I'm not too much a fan of either, I just liked XPs more.

thurst

02-05-2008, 06:39 PM

might as well post my specs of too...
AMD Dual 3800+
3GB of RAM
GeForce 7100+ (i think thats what it is, i'll check when i get home)
250 GB HDD x 2

pherai

02-05-2008, 06:45 PM

The people who decide on changes here have a hard time not making informed decisions. Imagine 40,000 smart passionate people who get angry when you fuck up and have instant email access to you, can track any change, can track any bug, et cetera. If you can't defend your position really really well, you're fucked. You don't get to claim "But I'm The Boss", you've got to have damned good reasons. :smile:

Just to reiterate, this is stuff I've read, and it made sense to me only because I've seen it at my workplace. A manager makes an uninformed design decision simply because they think they have an exceptionally important opinion. I'm not going to say most managers make bad decisions, but I would have a hard time believing none do at any company.

I take anything written externally with huge grains of salt. So many people have axes to grind it gets sick real fast. Like I said, hating Vista is the new hating Microsoft. :smile:

Oh I love Microsoft. My company has a great partnership with Microsoft, and we develop in .NET, and it's great, but I won't hold back criticisms so that they can improve their products.

Preppy

02-05-2008, 06:54 PM

Just to reiterate, this is stuff I've read, and it made sense to me only because I've seen it at my workplace. A manager makes an uninformed design decision simply because they think they have an exceptionally important opinion. I'm not going to say most managers make bad decisions, but I would have a hard time believing none do at any company.

Oh I love Microsoft. My company has a great partnership with Microsoft, and we develop in .NET, and it's great, but I won't hold back criticisms so that they can improve their products.Right - now imagine that there's 40,000 people like you with instant email access to that dumb manager, their boss, and/or their boss' boss. Some do make bad decisions, but you've got a lot of passionate smart people who get angry when you're dumb. It generally works well. You can't hide at MS. It just doesn't work. Maybe you make a decision so close to the finish line that nobody can question it for that release (in which case you had to convince your feature team, your area manager, and the war team), but you'll damned well be expecting emails and retooling in the next time period.

It's a pretty surprisingly transparent system at the end of the day, but maybe that's just me.

Stanman

02-05-2008, 06:56 PM

That's basically it. If you've got >4 gigs of ram, get a 64 bit OS (Vista). If you've got <4 gigs, get a 32 bit OS (XP or Vista). XP makes a 64 bit version as well, but it's generally considered crap.

Hah, I thought I settled it with my 2 line explanation on the first page. I commend you for explaining it thoroughly 3-4 times in the same thread.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 06:58 PM

^Haha, yeah. I started out by saying "As someone already mentioned..."

But I guess they missed yours, mine, and mine a few more times. That's how the internet goes!

final_cut

02-05-2008, 07:02 PM

I think vista is pretty cool. Since I'm new to Windows, I'm still learning the quirks of XP, but I don't think I will be buying/building another PC to run XP on unless I can't really afford vista. From what I read and what people have told me, Vista has a lot of time saving, useful features that I like to use in OSX.

I can see the downside to vista, though. I know a few people who have had loads of problems getting OS specific problems worked out in regards to their store report software, retail pro or something like that. Hopefully, small businesses will get some love in the way of good cheap store apps for vista soon.

fjf314

02-05-2008, 07:07 PM

The fact is, 99% of people don't know anything about OS's, so they don't have legitimate complaints; just a resistance to change. I've heard Microsoft is known for changing things in their OS's for no real reason, without yielding any improvement though, but I doubt most people notice those kinds of things.

Going along with your nice "statistic", I'll say that the remaining 1% is made up of the .25% of people who actually know their shit when it comes to operating systems and the .75% who think they know their shit but are in reality as clueless as the 99%. That .75% would be the users I was actually referring more to. These are a lot of the people you see in threads like these or commenting on Digg articles. They are self-certified computer experts who in reality dislike something like Vista because they read some article saying it sucked and they've never even used it.

Don't get me wrong... I'm sure there are people out there with legitimate cases against Vista, just like there are people with legitimate cases against any operating system. The majority of the people bitching, though, typically seem to have no clue what they're talking about and are just jumping on the bandwagon.

pherai

02-05-2008, 07:24 PM

Right - now imagine that there's 40,000 people like you with instant email access to that dumb manager, their boss, and/or their boss' boss. Some do make bad decisions, but you've got a lot of passionate smart people who get angry when you're dumb. It generally works well. You can't hide at MS. It just doesn't work. Maybe you make a decision so close to the finish line that nobody can question it for that release (in which case you had to convince your feature team, your area manager, and the war team), but you'll damned well be expecting emails and retooling in the next time period.

It's a pretty surprisingly transparent system at the end of the day, but maybe that's just me.

You must be a manager :looney:

I'm a reasonable guy and know the logistics of it. I don't think every manager, or even most managers are arrogant or make chronically bad decisions, but you don't need to make some sympathy case for them either. They are getting paid more than everyone else. Hell, everyone makes bad decisions. We're all human. :wonder:

Preppy

02-05-2008, 08:07 PM

Dude, fuck no. I'm one of those people that reach around the company and slap you if you make a stupid call.

I'm not making a "sympathy case", just pointing out that there's impressive levels of responsibility at Microsoft. I want to know why XXX does YYY? I go find out and can talk to that person. Now imagine 10,000 more of me. *shrug*

Yeah, you could screw up, and then the dev (not the manager) writes the code and fixes it. Or it's checked in broken, and bugs are filed against it by test. Or another dev says fuck that and fixes it. There's a lot of checks and balances in the system.

MrWizard

02-05-2008, 08:13 PM

ive been testing sp1 for microsoft for the past few months, and it is a huge improvement.

wait and see.

GosBroDansFan

02-05-2008, 08:41 PM

If 2K was an option I would have voted for that. XP Pro is the closest thing so I voted for it instead. XP Pro is a handy OS and SP2 did a lot to make it actually usable IMO. But, I still love my 2K.

Everybody uses computers differently.
Win2K runs fine on my legacy hardware (going back to my P166/32MB RAM desktop and P200/32MB RAM laptop).
It runs the games I play the same as XP, UT2K4, Orange Box, StarCraft, Emus.
Home networking always felt a little more straight forward in 2K.

I don't really care about how snazzy an interface looks. XP's themes just seem like bloat to me and it's the first service I kill. Vista's UI is a ton more flashy than anything I would want, so I don't even want to try it, lol.

But, at the same time, I know people that have switched completely to Vista already and love it. It's not my thing but they are using their comps every day and happy with the experience so, I guess there's justification for just about any choice. Unless the choice is ME. That should have been aborted.

CrouchingTiger

02-05-2008, 08:48 PM

*sigh*

Oh well, I probably won't remember to check back in this thread since it's been moved to the Tech Support forum with the five members that read here and the moths and crickets.

If any of you have any Vista concerns or questions, shoot me a PM and I might can help you. I might remember to look back in this thread.

Sixshot

02-05-2008, 10:38 PM

ive been testing sp1 for microsoft for the past few months, and it is a huge improvement.

wait and see.Damn, wizard. You always get shit before us

I will probably try to put Vista on my system with XP still there as backup, since SP1 isn't far off.*sigh*

Oh well, I probably won't remember to check back in this thread since it's been moved to the Tech Support forum with the five members that read here and the moths and crickets.

If any of you have any Vista concerns or questions, shoot me a PM and I might can help you. I might remember to look back in this thread.Yeah, that's why I put it in GD, for better exposure. But *sigh* perhaps it should be here.

pherai

02-06-2008, 12:12 AM

Yeah, you could screw up, and then the dev (not the manager) writes the code and fixes it. Or it's checked in broken, and bugs are filed against it by test. Or another dev says fuck that and fixes it. There's a lot of checks and balances in the system.

Yes, I am a programmer myself, so I'm familiar with the workflow. Either way, I wasn't talking about bugs.

jinsaotome800

02-06-2008, 12:33 AM

sp1 beta is out now no?

Esker

02-06-2008, 12:59 AM

I'm not touching Vista with a twenty-foot pole. This simple reason: DRM. I don't care if Vista is technically superior to XP in many respects, I refuse to give my support in any way to anything relating to DRM. It's an evil that needs to be purged.

*sigh*

Oh well, I probably won't remember to check back in this thread since it's been moved to the Tech Support forum with the five members that read here and the moths and crickets.

If any of you have any Vista concerns or questions, shoot me a PM and I might can help you. I might remember to look back in this thread.

Just subscribe to it. Simple enough to do.

CrouchingTiger

02-06-2008, 01:03 AM

Elaborate on Vista and DRM.

Esker

02-06-2008, 03:00 AM

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

fjf314

02-06-2008, 06:26 AM

sp1 beta is out now no?

It was released a few days ago. I think it's supposed to be available to most users sometime next month.

Preppy

02-06-2008, 09:16 AM

Yes, I am a programmer myself, so I'm familiar with the workflow. Either way, I wasn't talking about bugs.So be specific. Since I actually have tons of experience in this arena, vague rumors about some question doesn't seem like a fair or good way to communicate. :smile: I don't mind helping people understand that MS is a pretty human place. :smile:

The one example I can think of externally is the Start Menu's log off functionality, in which case from everything external you merely had potentially too many people trying to do the right thing, trying to solve a gordian knot.

I'm not touching Vista with a twenty-foot pole. This simple reason: DRM. I don't care if Vista is technically superior to XP in many respects, I refuse to give my support in any way to anything relating to DRM. It's an evil that needs to be purged.Um, either you're ignorant or you're deceiving people. DRM isn't new to Vista. The idea that it is is ridiculous at best.

The huge biased article you linked to is a joke of inflammatory rhetroric. If anybody has their head stuck that far up their ass, I better not ever see them buy a DVD player or a VHS player or any other modern video device because if they do, they're a fucking hypocrite.

How about this: think: "the goal of certain content providers is to protect their content from being ripped off. I may strongly disagree with their goal, but how can they MINIMIZE (not solve!) that problem?" Then you read that same article in a whole new light.

And again, the idea that DRM is new to Vista? That's not true at all. I like how suddenly XP (and Me and 98 and ...) and Apple get a free pass on DRM technologies. That's interesting. :rolleyes:

I totally respect that you hate content protection. It's not really meant to be your friend, it's meant to be a necessary evil that shady people have engendered. I'll gladly join you in your anti-Macrovision picket line, but let's not be fucking liars and claim "DRM is new to Vi$ta!"

Perhaps you merely were saying that you don't like that Vista supports HDCP for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD playback? Again, you might find that annoying, I actually like that I can play my content. And again, welcome to the world of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD and hell, VHS. Content lockdown is imposed elsewhere, and last I knew you HAD to implement this stuff if you wanted to play it back.

The only actual argument I've seen here is that "Microsoft shouldn't support this stuff and just not play it back because that would sure teach hollywood LULZ", which -- again, it's not really a compelling consumer scenario to crucify yourself. :smile:

The name of the game is It Just Works. So go read that very same article with the understanding that you really really need to make this consumer scenario work. I believe there already have been several other rebuttals of that article, but even at face value that article is not a compelling "cost analysis".

edit: Yeah, re-read this very old article again, and again: really not a compelling or good article. They gloss over the content playback requirements imposed, which is deceptive at best. Sure, it's easy to slag on something as long as you ignore why it's required. Glossing over those external licensing requirements sure is a cute way to try to win an argument.

CrouchingTiger

02-06-2008, 10:40 AM

I'm not sure I understand the complaint. I definately didn't read all or even much of that giant link that was posted, but I thought DRM complaints only came from people who wanted to pirate content.

And content is still pirated by the boatloads.

So I don't really get the problem?

Sixshot

02-06-2008, 10:55 AM

I totally respect that you hate content protection...... ...

:lol: :rofl:

edit: anyone know what the SP1 consists of?

fjf314

02-06-2008, 12:35 PM

..... ...

:lol: :rofl:

edit: anyone know what the SP1 consists of?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Service_Pack_1

Sasmasta

02-06-2008, 02:16 PM

This thread is...

DOPE! [no bullshit]

pherai

02-06-2008, 02:35 PM

So be specific. Since I actually have tons of experience in this arena, vague rumors about some question doesn't seem like a fair or good way to communicate. :smile: I don't mind helping people understand that MS is a pretty human place. :smile:

Like I said earlier, it was just a common thread among a couple publications, and I couldn't say I agree or disagree, but that it could be a potentialy valid complaint since I've seen this at my own company. I wasn't trying to frame it as my own criticism. The fact that it is a human place leads me to believe there is at least one person who makes judgment calls that yield no benefit to the current solution. But I'll reiterate something else I said earlier; I've almost never been dissatisfied with a Microsoft product. Well, unless you count encountering different errors moving code from VS2003 to VS2005, but that's to be expected :looney:

Taiki

02-06-2008, 03:32 PM

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups is sorely underrepresented.

GosBroDansFan

02-06-2008, 09:38 PM

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups is sorely underrepresented.

3.11 rocked my 486sx

3.11 with long filename support running on Dos 7.1 is actually pretty useable if you need a gui to run on something with like 4 megs of ram.

elitericerocket

02-06-2008, 09:44 PM

Vista Ultimate 64-bit is actually pretty nice. I run that on my Quad Core rig and Windows XP on my Asus Eee.

Esker

02-06-2008, 10:37 PM

Um, either you're ignorant or you're deceiving people. DRM isn't new to Vista. The idea that it is is ridiculous at best.

DRM isn't exactly new to Vista, but it's the first OS that I know of that runs any DRM stuff at such a low level. Polling hardware every few microseconds? Stuff that.

The huge biased article you linked to is a joke of inflammatory rhetroric. If anybody has their head stuck that far up their ass, I better not ever see them buy a DVD player or a VHS player or any other modern video device because if they do, they're a fucking hypocrite.

I've got no specific issue with media players utilising copy protection methods (beyond the blanket 'DRM bad'). It's a dedicated device, it plays stuff, that's all it needs to do; the content protection doesn't interfere with anything. And, if I so choose, I can obtain a different media player that DOES enable me to format shift (and those will exist for HD-DVD/BluRay given another year or two).

Vista is not a dedicated media player. Nor is it a media player at all. It is an operating system. It is supposed to sit there and allow applications to interface with the computer's hardware. Not impose arbitrary restrictions based on how much profit some executive wants to make off me.

How about this: think: "the goal of certain content providers is to protect their content from being ripped off. I may strongly disagree with their goal, but how can they MINIMIZE (not solve!) that problem?" Then you read that same article in a whole new light.

A light of a slightly different shade, perhaps. But not a whole new one. There is no "minimising" of the "problem". Putting roadblocks in the way of content access is a bad thing for both legitimate and illegitmate users, and once the contant protection is cracked or evaded, only a bad thing for legitimate users. The pirates actually come out the winners over the people who paid cash.

And again, the idea that DRM is new to Vista? That's not true at all. I like how suddenly XP (and Me and 98 and ...) and Apple get a free pass on DRM technologies. That's interesting. :rolleyes:

I totally respect that you hate content protection. It's not really meant to be your friend, it's meant to be a necessary evil that shady people have engendered. I'll gladly join you in your anti-Macrovision picket line, but let's not be fucking liars and claim "DRM is new to Vi$ta!"

It's not a necessary evil. It's just evil.

Perhaps you merely were saying that you don't like that Vista supports HDCP for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD playback? Again, you might find that annoying, I actually like that I can play my content. And again, welcome to the world of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD and hell, VHS. Content lockdown is imposed elsewhere, and last I knew you HAD to implement this stuff if you wanted to play it back.

I don't recall VHS having content protection. You needed a VHS player to be sure, but you could given skill and time kitbash such a player together. It wasn't exactly a complex thing.

The only actual argument I've seen here is that "Microsoft shouldn't support this stuff and just not play it back because that would sure teach hollywood LULZ", which -- again, it's not really a compelling consumer scenario to crucify yourself. :smile:

Not "because that would sure teach hollywood LULZ", but because an OS has no business being a media player. Stick your DRM into WMP11 or something, but leave the OS alone.

The name of the game is It Just Works. So go read that very same article with the understanding that you really really need to make this consumer scenario work. I believe there already have been several other rebuttals of that article, but even at face value that article is not a compelling "cost analysis".

edit: Yeah, re-read this very old article again, and again: really not a compelling or good article. They gloss over the content playback requirements imposed, which is deceptive at best. Sure, it's easy to slag on something as long as you ignore why it's required. Glossing over those external licensing requirements sure is a cute way to try to win an argument.

It Just Works. At what cost? I'll stick with my regular DVDs for now (on my region-free player) and wait until a decent standalone player appears before I embrace HD. And I'll stick with XP for now too.

Preppy

02-06-2008, 11:15 PM

You skirt or ignore Secure Audio Path, supported back to WinMe. Whatever. :smile:

I've got no specific issue with media players utilising copy protection methods (beyond the blanket 'DRM bad'). It's a dedicated device, it plays stuff, that's all it needs to do; the content protection doesn't interfere with anything.Yeahhhhhhh, it does. *thumbs up* Macrovision, DVD upscaling over component, lots of LOLz in this space.

Vista is not a dedicated media player. Nor is it a media player at all. It is an operating system. It is supposed to sit there and allow applications to interface with the computer's hardware. Not impose arbitrary restrictions based on how much profit some executive wants to make off me.Non-arbitrary. Nothing to do with how much profit. :tup:

If you're defending "zero profit is OK", I can't stand with you. People have to be able to make a living. I'm not into paying Shaq or Brad Pitt $20,000,000 , but at the same time I'm OK with people getting money back for the years they put in. Not everything has to be rippable/stealable.

A light of a slightly different shade, perhaps. But not a whole new one. There is no "minimising" of the "problem". Putting roadblocks in the way of content access is a bad thing for both legitimate and illegitmate users, and once the contant protection is cracked or evaded, only a bad thing for legitimate users. The pirates actually come out the winners over the people who paid cash.Yes, I agree that the pirates fuck over the average user. They're so determined to beat the system and steal stuff that instead of having the rational discussion about region-freeing everything and "managed copies" and et cetera that we should be having, content licensees are having to continue to impose restrictions on playbacks.

*shrug* If the pirate world stopped being assholes for two years, I think you would have a monumental step forward in fair use. Everybody should suffer under the actual rules, and then you'd pretty instantly jump forward as execs finally Got It.

"It's not so much as we want to stop piracy as much as we'd like to keep it in the same ZIP code."
I don't recall VHS having content protection.Maaaaaaaaacrovision.
Not "because that would sure teach hollywood LULZ", but because an OS has no business being a media player. Stick your DRM into WMP11 or something, but leave the OS alone.That keen design decision is a great example of why you're not in charge. Jingoistic rhetoric does not a solution make.

So your net suggestion is that Vista just shouldn't play HD content. *shrug* Moving on back to the world of reality and "trying to meet consumer desires"...

I totally get you're anti-DRM. Who is *for* DRM? I know the DRM team, it's led by a friend that you'd really like (we played Transformers Risk outside of the theater while in line on opening day), those guys aren't pushing DRM, those guys are enabling key scenarios. If all of a sudden those key checkbox customer scenarios aren't important and/or critical to customer satisfaction, you've got your head up your ass and there's no point in talking to you. I'm assuming you DO NOT have your head up your ass and are merely saying Man I Hate Them Darn New HD Content Playback Rules Imposed By The Industry, and hey, welcome to the club.

But you can't blame Microsoft for that, and railing against Microsoft here is fucking counterproductive as all hell. Take it directly to the people SETTING the rules, plz. Stop wasting your time fighting the wrong battles. :smile:

PS: New Zealand is top tier. I totally want to move there. If you need a flatmate, lemme know.

EDIT: Update to my New Zealand av in your honor.

TripleChin

02-07-2008, 12:27 AM

If you're defending "zero profit is OK", I can't stand with you. People have to be able to make a living. I'm not into paying Shaq or Brad Pitt $20,000,000 , but at the same time I'm OK with people getting money back for the years they put in. Not everything has to be rippable/stealable.

You can't pay them 20 million but paying MS 20 billion is just about right. They're not just making a living. They're raping everyone. This isn't about the little guy making a few bucks to live. This is about a few people controlling everything.

Yes, I agree that the pirates fuck over the average user. They're so determined to beat the system and steal stuff that instead of having the rational discussion about region-freeing everything and "managed copies" and et cetera that we should be having, content licensees are having to continue to impose restrictions on playbacks."

No, the pirates aren't fucking over the average user. They're just fucking over those who are trying to fuck them. The average user is just not paying attention and getting fucked.

*shrug* If the pirate world stopped being assholes for two years, I think you would have a monumental step forward in fair use. Everybody should suffer under the actual rules, and then you'd pretty instantly jump forward as execs finally Got It.

I'm sure if the pirates just stopped then the criminal corporations ,out of the kindness of their hearts, would just stop raping everyone and help bring fair use out into the forefront for everyone. Very funny.

That keen design decision is a great example of why you're not in charge. Jingoistic rhetoric does not a solution make.

What's wrong with DRM only in the media player and not in the OS? How is that jingoistic? Why would I want to pay for an OS that doesn't trust me on my own computer?

"trying to meet consumer desires"...

The desires would be to be left the fuck alone. Also , don't call me a consumer.

I know the DRM team, it's led by a friend that you'd really like (we played Transformers Risk outside of the theater while in line on opening day), those guys aren't pushing DRM, those guys are enabling key scenarios. If all of a sudden those key checkbox customer scenarios aren't important and/or critical to customer satisfaction, you've got your head up your ass and there's no point in talking to you.

I love this rationalization for this crap. So those guys are just following orders. That's wonderful. So who is the customer here. Sounds like their corporate buddies and not the average Joe. We pay to get raped.

But you can't blame Microsoft for that, and railing against Microsoft here is fucking counterproductive as all hell. Take it directly to the people SETTING the rules, plz. Stop wasting your time fighting the wrong battles. :smile:

I can blame MS for this. Who is imposing what on them? They pretty much have a desktop monopoly. What are these companies going to say? We won't allow HD playback on your operating systems? I can see that happening.

Here's the bottom line .If you have XP then it's pointless to actually pay for Vista. You get a bit better eye candy and maybe a few neat little features in exchange for worse performance and DX10 is pointless now. It has none of the great special features it was supposed to have. If you get a new PC then SP1 might make it as good as XP is now. It still never came close to the hype , as usual.

Preppy

02-07-2008, 12:57 AM

This isn't about the little guy making a few bucks to live. This is about a few people controlling everything.I'm wholly unaware that there's some solution by which we can "free" content after someone has made a "reasonable" amount of money.

I'm sure if the pirates just stopped then the criminal corporations ,out of the kindness of their hearts, would just stop raping everyone and help bring fair use out into the forefront for everyone.It'd be interesting if everyone who ever had a good reason for "ripping" something called that content provider instead and demanded to know what the fuck was going on with those rules. The entire worldwide telephony system would probably collapse, and maybe some sense would rein. It won't happen because people get their half-ass solutions and don't get focused on fixing the real problems. Case in point here, you.

*shrug* You can go look at the specifications and requirements same as anybody else. Getting your panties in a bunch over this is great when you focus your anger the right way. Sure seems if you led the fight to change these rules, instead of railing at Microsoft's implementation, that a later MS release could relax the implementation to match those rules/requirements.

It's really boring talking about this with people who haven't read the specifications. I totally get your passion, but you're so badly misdirecting it. Stuff like people grousing over "free MPEG2 codecs", etc etc etc. There's so many people interested in this space, but so few that are actually standing up to the right people and demanding better.

CrouchingTiger

02-07-2008, 09:05 AM

Man, I feel like Homer Simpson when the camera would zoom into his brain and show just two monkeys grooming each other.

To me, it sounds like you guys are arguing over whether or not cotton is soft enough.

In other words, something pointless.

I still don't get the complaint. DRM sucks, yeah we all know that. But it's there, and stuff works, so who cares. You buy stuff the legal route, and it works. You pirate stuff for free, and it works.

Where is the problem?

DRM is on the way out anyway. Amazon wants nothing to do with it. Apple has dropped it. Other retailers are following suit. If it is nearly dead in the audio world, it's only a matter of time before it dies in the video world. Of course Sony is probably going to go out kicking and screaming... but still.

vapulus

02-07-2008, 10:26 AM

Sabin

02-07-2008, 01:28 PM

I like how MS gets this image of the giant, overbearing nazi company... when there are plenty of companies out there with far worse business practices that sell you things every day that you gobble up without a word. How did MS get categorized as evil by so many when Sony have been fucking people left and right for decades in far worse ways? Whatever.

I agree with this statement, but we're not necessarily talking about Sony here (which is just as bad, just for different reasons.) They don't necessarily get a free pass, either..

Also, far worse business practices? I dunno about this one. Do you guys just forget that MS has been strong arming it's way into the PC domain since the days of MS-DOS? Did you guys forget about their monopoly trial back in the early 90's?

I know there are a lot of intelligent and smart people workign at MS, like Preppy for instance. That doesn't mean that MS necessarily puts out great software, or does not practice unethical business practices (which MS has repeatedly done in the past.)

Vista's DRM was put there to actually help the consumer in the long run.
Bro, you can't be serious here.
if you buy DRM-protected music/movies you cannot play it just anywhere. It has to be on specific devices or under specific conditions. And this is pro-consumer again how?

DRM is finally showing signs of being on the way out, because the consumer woke up and realized they were being fucked. (ie, sony rootkit/drm scandal, etc.)

For what it's worth, I hated Vista on my old machine, but on my brand new dual-core, it runs like a dream. Frames/sec didn't drop from XP one bit with new nVidia drivers. I like the added management and security options, and the OS runs fluid in general if you have the horsepower to back it up.I bolded what I feel is the biggest problem Vista has to date. Seriously, from a end user standpoint, Vista is nothing more than MS's latest gimmick to make you buy new hardware. Bloated software which requires more powerful hardware to run does not = better, which is why the geek population has largely not embraced Vista with open arms. Furthermore, with the upcoming release of Windows 7 and their compact kernel, I have a feeling that MS is finally starting to wake up and realize t