Vista - system requirements unveiled

Doesn't seem too obscene... except the required 15gb of HD space o.O

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4996998.stm#table

everything about vista is obscene and sloppy, the OS shouldnt use up all your resources.

What a ridculous RAM requirement, sigh. Also what the hell is Windows Aero? Is it full of holes?

Totally agree - perhaps they should have a 'lean and mean' system boot for demanding applications such as games - like the XBox OS.

I think the 128 MB of graphics RAM is totally over the top... But, i take it that will be needed for the 3d display. I don't see a normal 2d display using those system specs.

i think that they do... well, uuhhh, sort of, anyways...

still, lets hope that the price of ram doesn't suddenly shoot back up... or there isn't a sudden shortage in the hard drive market... or vista will indeed become the SUV of the next windows millenia...

--Mike

Well hopefully you can set those parameters manually and switch between setups when required.

Ross, there is no 2D version of Vista, it runs under dx9 full 3D mode. The thing that suprised me was that you need shader 2.0 support on your gfx card.

I was at a MSDN conference a few months back when they were talking about vista. Frankly, it's like most of the other windows developments, you need to up your system for it to run the same stuff and maintain performance.

I don't see this as a bad thing though. XP is really just a wrapper of 2000 but it makes it look nicer and friendlier to the average user, this isn't a bad thing.

Likewise Vista has nicked a couple of good ideas from Linux and made the whole thing prettier. The average user who shops at PC world has an over powered machine anyway as all they do is check their email and a bit of image editing. Vista will still run smooth and look really nice.

Anyway... I'm not going to buy it! I'm still on 2000 and quite happy!

15GB of harddrive space? Do F*** off!

Man, this looks like the worst OS MS has made ever, and you say it needs shader support? I do hope that's an early April fool's joke.

With Processors being unable to get that much faster, how much longer are we gonna let MS run their bloaty OS systems?
And I thought XP was bad.

A big OS that eats up over 10GB hard disk space... great....

XP is a great OS. I don't see why so many people have such an issue with it. 98 was a nightmare. Good 'ol blue screen of death.

I thought i heard somewhere you could run a 2d desktop... on vista i mean. Dam, that is harsh...

XP is Microsoft's best Operating System to date - Windows 98 with it's good 'ol blue screen of death like Ross said and hardware incompatibilities.

Wow, so for the first time ever, an OS that requires a gaming PC to run it properly. Budget PC's will no longer be good enough to boot an OS and use all the features, thats brilliant!

So now, you'll check your email using the full power of DX9 and your video card fan will go into overdrive while rendering the window at 50% alpha. Then you can cascade that window at a funny perspective and admire it.

When you switch off at night you can relax knowing the life of your PC is reduced by the extra stress put on it rendering 3D windows all day while you browse the web, check emails and do a spot of programming.

In the end what did you achieve different?

Qube... It looks pretty. That's what it's all about. And I don't think anyone can deny it 'looks' fantastic. It's a great looking thing.

Here's the specs needed to run Vista properly.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capablefootnotes.mspx

The thing is though most PCs will do this with their eyes shut, it's not that much of a biggy and I love a pretty OS, Knoppix had the alpha blended windows and that was cool.

Yeah, it's a big footprint, yeah, it's a system hog.

But most people will just think it's pretty.

I'm not going to buy it. Lots of people will and their PCs for the first time might get a bit of a workout.

Jesus dam... not system ain't got 2.0 shaders i don't think. And i don't think my system specs are particulary bad. I think vista isn't going to have as many people upgrading to it...

I think you're right Ross, I don't think many people will upgrade, but I think everyone shopping in PC world who thinks you need a new computer if the keyboard breaks will buy a new PC with Vista pre installed on it.

The other thing that sucks with Vista is the amount of options you've got too...
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/default.mspx

that's right... by default, hundreds of thousands of new Vista users will join the ranks within the first few months of its release... anyone buying a new pc is gauranteed to be one of the 'volunteers'...

one good thing is that the low end spec will be be raised, and game developers will now be able to specify a platform that will run a lot of the new stuff by specifying the OS required...
with XP this was at best a hit and miss affair...

--Mike

So do I for general use - but when running a fullscreen game it's not visible anyway, so I don't want the Operating System taking all resources.

"the OS shouldnt use up all your resources"
MS lost their grip on that concept decades ago.

They obviously now believe that people run Windows.....
Oh yes, and occasionally run an app.

Won't these minimum specs for vista, push the price of an entry level system right up? As, if you say, someone's keyboard breaks and they go to get a new computer with vista pre-installed. The specs listed are fairly steep. And with PC world charging the prices they charge, it's gonna be quite a bit of money...

If anything though, it will make it even cheaper for you to build your own computer ^_^

i just bought a 1.8 GHz 256k L2 cache, 1600 mHZ system bus, 100 GB hd, GeForce 6100 equipped, el cheapo system for $399 (with a $50 rebate)... came with 512MB ram,CD\DVD combo... and some other stuff...

name brand too... e-Machines (aka Dell)

now, while this surely falls beneath the spiked haired 50 year old game players ideal fantasy box, it will play a lot of stuff pretty decntly...

this should be able to run Vista... shouldn't it...

--Mike

I'm surprised no ones posted a link to the Vista Upgrade Advisor yet.

A bit worthless really as most people would of upgraded (possibly several times) by the time Vista actually appears. ;o)

lol you're all pathetic :)

- I have 2x250GB hard drives. A 250gb hard drive costs £50... what *IS* the problem you people are having with progress?

- If you don't want to spend £50-£100 on upgrading (worst case, both card and hard drive) why are you interested in spending £200 on vista? you make no f**king sense.

- The entry level pc of today is shader 2.0 and you can't find a new card with less than 128 meg!

Isn't anyone even the slightest bit curious what the extra 14gbs extra worth of harddrive space is needed for?

I mean that's 4 average sized DVDs worth of information.

Are they saving all their images as bitmaps only?

> you make no f**king sense.

Aren't you concerned that you have an amazingly fast processor but that is cancelled out by an amazingly slow OS?
I would be, try opening your other eye :)

I'd be interested to know how this 3D app world is going to work with backwards compatibility or even developing for Vista.

cmon E... most of the apps that everyone uses, including games by the way, are making calls on parts of the underlying OS... without the dlls that make up windows and dx , most of the applications and games you see today would've never come into existance...

a lot of people like to delude themselves into thinking that when they type in a line of code, even the simplest code, PRINT "HELLO WORLD"... that they are actually making their computers do something all by themselves... the fact is that you are simply passing a few params to an underlying code library that is doing most of the actual work for you...

the name of this used to be DOS... and the Windows on top of DOS... but now it is WINDOWS...

let us all herald it's coming... let us stand in awe of its magnificence and its benificence...

rejoooiice... rejoice... for no longer do we need to address the binary of the cpu and the videoprocessor...

let us give thanks...

let us bow down before the omnipotent Bill... sing his praises... let us worship him as one... let us admit in chant that we are not worthy, we are not worthy...

lemme hear it!!!

we are not worthy...
we are not worthy...
we are not worthy...
we are not worthy...


there... don't you feel better now... no go forth and make windows based products... consume windows based products...



you are a true believer... of the masses, for the masses... made in the image of man...

buy...

buy more...

buy more now...

... and be happy.


--Mike

not many laptops have 128 MB videoram...

Laptop harddrive space isn't exactly huge either..

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:0kkz-SKlUuiS_M:www.5263.org/duvallchemofinal.jpg

be happy...



--Mike

The specs for XP, are 128 MB RAM. XP will run decent on 512 MB RAM. 128 MB graphics card. Presumably Vista will need most of that. So, as ENAY says, what are you left with?

I'd hardly call the 3d GUI, progress... More like a bit of a waste :o)

Eye candy IS progress that cannot be denied. If you're prepared to pay for it that's a different story.

Graphical enhancement cannot be denied as progress, if we did not think so then we would still be on monochrome screens. After all, you can still play most games in two colours. Word processing, email etc all works fine in monochrome.

Why bother using colour?
Why bother using 3D over 2D?

Because it looks better.

Everyone seems to be focusing on the eye candy elements of vista, it's got some good security stuff in there too.

The Alt-Tabbing is cool as you get a thumbnail of the actual window running.

That's just another reason to love Linux even more. As far as PC gaming is concerned, I hope that game developers will still support XP for a while. If not, it's best to go back to console gaming with some of the next-gen consoles (choosing the Wii myself). As for Vista, well, if Bill Gate$ can't make Windows live up to superiority, then we have a bit of a pickle with some of the new stuff coming out...

Hmmmm, i'm still split. But knowing me i'll end up trying it anyways, so no point in moaning till i see it i guess...

Wow, I was expecting higher specs than those.

Mmm, I was planning on buying a new PC when Vista came out. That has kind of burst my bubble.

i think that a lot of people will be amazed at how seamlessly the resource hogging 3D gui effects disappear when their games are running in full screen...

there's a whole lot more to vista than just the obvious... the eye candy is the hook to get the curious and susceptable consumer's attention (some would argue it's value and enhanced usability)... to the techno nerds, a look under the hood, especially at dx10 might be quite revealing, as well as educational... especially in the current turbulent waters of doom and gloom for all us poor less than min requirement system owners and laptop users...

most of your concerns are unfounded, and based on not knowing the real facts about the great godzilla... he's not gonna be that bad of a monster...

in another year or so, most of you will be happily singing the praises of vista and dx10... and wondering how you ever got along without it...

the rest will either be trying to get it to run on your new age intelmacs, or be closet *Nix devotees, not asking, and not telling...

the future has already happened... we're merely racing to catch up to it... try for a second to imagine yourself a year down the line... things will suddenly start to take on a new definition when viewed from that perspective, and soon you will be able to feel (see, sense, whatever) the future... and you will not fear it as much.

--Mike

I'm definately buying Vista.

I agree that it seems a cool idea to have your apps running in 3D, but you know. I still think that's too a bit too childish like and the trade off you get in hardware and CPU usage, I don't think that's a good step forward at all.

If it were then we'd be using mobile phones with 333MHz processors in them by now.

If you'd told me 3GB I'd be surprised. But 15GB! DOes that include an extra swap file?
I mean a rough windows directory install in 98 is like 200meg. In XP it's 1.2GBish. I mean that's a 600% increase! On what is barely much difference in operating, there's very little in 98 you can't do in XP.

Imagine a console that had a processor, memory space etc increased by 600%. That's a whole lot of extra power. Hence the reason why Windows is just getting far too bloaty.
And then vista is like 1200% even bloatier than XP!

The next generation of Harddrives are gonna die from all that harddisk churning. Microsoft sink to an even newer low.


It's the equivalent of getting a high powered Ferrari and sticking 4 wheels the size of a cup on it. With all that power, it's still basically gonna chug along at a throttled pace.

Part of the higher recommended system requirements is the popularity and lower cost of fixed resolution LCD monitors.

1280x1024 is normal for up to 19" and 1600x1200 for over 20" and widescreen is becoming really popular now too.

You don't need a super dancy puter to run vista, it's similar to XP on lower spec systems.

The problem here is that console developers aren't given nearly enough choice as to what they are doing; it all goes through the console manufacturer, and it costs a lot of money just to get started.
In the case of Nintendo, for example, developers are quite limited in terms of what they can do (especially with WFC) because of Nintendo's aim to be very easy to use and kid friendly.

...And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm just saying that there's not really much choice for the developers.


Very true :P


One of the reasons why PC OSs are required to be so much more bloaty than console firmwares (and I think it's idiotic to even have an OS, but I guess it's happened...) is because every piece of software written for Windows is not run through Microsoft, so we can't trust it to work as we want.
Thus, Windows needs some decent crash protection and other important security features. "This program has performed an illegal operation" is actually protecting you from important processes being destroyed (not killed though, just Destroyed!) which can result in serious consequences including, potentially, your hard drive being blasted.
That accounts for some of its processor use, anyway.
The noticeable use of memory for the GUI seems a bit harsh, but I can run it fine, and my computer is mid-range. I don't see how people can really expect old, low-range computers to run Vista in all its gooey goodness.

Any idea why the minimum graphics memory space is blanked out?
Are the lesser computers running in a text-based mode or something? :P


I'm actually excited about how Vista will be behaving a lot more like Linux.
Hopefully such a thing will make it easier for Windows users to get used to Linux, resulting in world peace and happiness :P

Linux will take over! :D

I love blitzmax, runs faster than the devil in linux :) I'm happy, thanks alot to mark & the guys.

Still stick to Win2000(except my notebook have serious conflict with W2K, so I installed XP on it)

M$ will eventually kill Win2K, like they kill Other OSes, but currently it's my 1st choice imo.

win2k is rubbish anyway, for me XP was the first stable OS from MS and actually ran faster on A pentium 2 400 than win98 or win2k so long as you had 512mb of ram.

some of you are complaining that the 3D AeroGlass GUI will hurt your games performance. But what you don't realize is that MS is actually trying to market Vista as a 'gaming' OS. Especially with the new dx10 coming with it. Some pretty amazing stuff from what I've read. Also I read some editorial on Vista performance in gaming and they mentioned that for games on Vista they will performance 30% better if not more due to optimizations in the OS. And by optimizations they said that Vista will detect dx games and actually turn off unneccesary parts of the OS, freeing up resources (which i think includes AeroGlass GUI). This was not possible in XP, where resources stuck around uselessly churning while you were running a game in full screen.

I'm predicting more people switching to Linux as well. I don't feel like upgrading - XP is all I need, and I don't really need it, because I haven't booted it in three weeks.

I hope more developers look at Linux as a possible market. Hopefully they are freeware developers. :)

>is because every piece of software written for Windows is
>not run through Microsoft, so we can't trust it to work as
>we want.

BS! Most pc developers use either MS tools or MS compliant tools from competing vendors. This should not be a problem provided that all specifics of the API and associated systems have been released.

The problem is in hardware, where every vendor write their own drivers, with more or less success. It doesn't help that MS integrated the graphics subsystem into the kernel of NT and thus created the monolithic 2K. The more cra*p you put into the kernel, the greater the likelihood that the system will crash. Particularly when said cra*p interfaces directly to third party hardware and drivers.

>Thus, Windows needs some decent crash protection and other
>important security features. "This program has performed
>an illegal operation" is actually protecting you from
>important processes being destroyed (not killed though,
>just Destroyed!) which can result in serious consequences
>including, potentially, your hard drive being blasted.
>That accounts for some of its processor use, anyway.

QNX has all of this using less than 25MB and could easily use a windowing manager which utilizes 3D, without much overhead, and certainly not as much overhead as Vista.

Put very simply, a secure, fault tolerant OS doesn't need to take up 15GB or just 1 GB of storage space for that matter.

>The noticeable use of memory for the GUI seems a bit
>harsh, but I can run it fine, and my computer is mid-
>range.

It's not harsh, it's downright silly.

>I don't see how people can really expect old, low-range
>computers to run Vista in all its gooey goodness.

I expect an industry leading company like MS to be able to write a secure, fault tolerant OS which doesn't need 15GB of storage and 512MB of memory just to run.


Andy

Let's take bets on how much of this is useless sample media that noone looks at.

I bet 1 MB of my webspace's storage space for a week that the number is 6.6 GB.

If you spend the hour and a half to disable all the 'enhancements' like the file finder, MSN integration and fisher-price look & feel, XP actually becomes usable. Hopefully the same thing still goes for Vista.

HA HA HA HA HA!!

I have the fisher price mode enabled on my XP (albeit in its 'silver' incarnation). I happen to like it.

It may not make the blindest bit of difference to the way my PC operates, but if I've got the hardware capable of it, why not use it?

I love reading peoples comments regarding how slow and bloated Vista is. Has anyone got a release version yet? No, I don't think so. Any comments on how slow Vista runs are purely conjecture with no basis in fact. I fail to see how offloading windowing features to the graphics card is going to therefore cause everything to run very slowly. I thought the whole idea of a GPU was to free up the CPU for other tasks, is that not what is happening here?

As for gaming, Microsoft have already stated that Vista will unload far more of itself when a game is running than XP does. This might not free up all that many CPU cycles but I would imagine that it would provide the game with more free RAM. Lack of RAM is a fairly common cause of slowdowns and stuttering in complex games, especially considering that even low-end CPU's aren't actually very slow, these days.

Someone mentioned that spending $200 on Vista and not wanting to spend $200 on upgrading is probably a daft attitude. Certainly, it is. How many are actually thinking about paying for Vista though? I know damn well that any installation of Vista that I go through will be on a trial basis until I'm satisfied it's worth the expenditure. I am not going to settle for an OS that requires ridiculous activation (and re-activation after hardware upgrades) procedures.

So because you stopped buying questionable hardware with dodgey drivers and/or manufacturers started making better ones, Windows is a better OS? Are you for real?

You think so? I personally think they where trying too hard and just overdid it slightly. Why can't they just use Window Blinds like normal people?

Of course not, that would be silly. But you can't attribute that to Microsoft. StarDock has been offering a tool for half a dozen years or so, that would let you customize windows look & feel. If Microsoft wanted to make real progress they should improve the API, and/or their documentation, and let 3rd party developers do the progress Microsoft seem so incapable of. I mean maybe some highschool drop out can write WinFS using SQLite in his abundance of spare time? For all the degree wielding geniuses at Microsoft, they can't seem to get stuff to work, maybe it's time someone took a more practical approach.

I'm guessing you haven't played around with XP powertoys much?

This is a hardware feature, not an OS one.

I agree with Andy. If QNX can create a real-time, scalable OS that'll fit on a Flash drive, then Microsoft being the market leader shouldn't be THAT far behind. Hell, you can even get 50MB working and relatively user friendly Linux distros.

only problem with winblinds is that its bug ridden and unstable in systems that are used in anything more than the most basic desktop uses.

More trouble than its worth creates extra background tasks, and for some reason I always end up going back to the windows native GUI anyway.

Last time I just wanted the windows GUI hardware accelerated, but it couldn't even manage that properly.

The sad thing really is that so many people now totally rely on Windows as a foundation of their entire software business that Microsoft can come out with yet another half-baked crappy o/s and people will almost HAVE to upgrade to it if they want to stay on the platform. Because people are slave to Microsoft's monopoly they might well complain but ultimately Microsoft will probably be laughing. Not that I'm defending them, there's no love loss there.

I think it might look a bit nicer and do things a bit smoother visually and scale better and have more features etc, and maybe even the user experience is nicer, but I doubt it's all really worth it.

Go with a Mac ;-D

I guess the whole nt kernel thing escaped you.

Now thats genuine bloatware. I happen to love the olive scheme myself and keep a minimalist look.

Show me these power toys? that are the same?

But it won't work without the os.

You will be doing stuff in linux/QNX/ETC in twice the time it will take for me to do stuff in windows or osx.

The thing that is depressing be mostly is the fact that people WILL buy vista. They WILL play with the gui hours for hours, probably play minesweeper in a new version during work.

There's the TCPA problem that will come with vista if I recall correctly. That's a problem.

But basicly the huge resource hunger of vista is part of a marketing strategy:

People are forced to buy new powerful hardware, power they never needed to write their word letters and emails! Manufactors at the other hand welcome vista for forcing people to buy new hardware, so they start releasing devices that require vista (eg. a new printer requires vista, but vista also requires a new graphics card). The connection between printer and graphics cards manufactors is not obvious, but basicly they just work together on a principal basement. That's why the whole IT industry will support and push it.

For microsoft it is also some kind of monopoly customer drill: in a few years people will even be satisfied with an OS that takes monthly fees.

Unfortunately Microsoft has some powerful connections (eg. right to the bush administration), so the world failed to prevent the Microsoft monopole.

The problem with that application is that it is the worst alt-tab menu I have ever used -- many applications come out with a black box for a preview (B3d apps, various 3d modelling programs), some apps mysteriously end up with two entries in the alt-tab window (IndeED is one of them, and there are others), and it has crashed on me more than once.
Naturally, I uninstalled it and never looked back.


I completely agree with you that MS should do an API to more easily allow for people to do custom GUIs. It would hopefully result in WindowBlinds being killed off by better alternatives that don't feel like they are about to explode.
The problem with that, however, is that fancy UIs is how they sell their operating systems.
(Strangely, I still think Ubuntu Dapper with Gnome looks and feels far better than both Vista and Mac OS).


And yah, 15 GB is both amazing and ridiculous...
Either they're total morons, they added too much sample media, or there are a lot of new programs for viruses to take advantage of and users to screw up.

Heh, plumb straight. Plus, there isn't going to be such a wide variety of games for Linux, and if more games are being developed for Vista, then I guess that I'm gonna have to start playing console games instead of the PC now. On top of that, I'm still going to plan designing games for the XP series of PCs, maybe Linux, too, if people are going to switch to that. Better learn BlitzMax soon, if I want to continue building games for other platforms. If I could afford it, I would've switched to iMac a looong time ago...

As opposed to Aero? Last I checked, Windowblinds didn't have nearly the same hardware requirement as Vista. And I don't know which version you've been using, but it's always worked for me.

Nope. But the main source of BSOD errors wheren't kernel related. They where (and still are) driver related. Apart from legacy support the Win98 kernel is much more stable (and thoroughly tested) than the NT kernel. The NT kernels major advantage was mainly an implementation difference (since it was VMS based rather than DOS based).

Or the more probable scenario, that I'll be done with my Linux or QNX application by the time you figure out which of the conflicting MSDN articles is accurate.

Perhaps you should spend some time actually developing for the platform you're crusading for?

Well it is a Microsoft application after all.

But just to clear up some confusion the Vista "bloat" is not going to be effecting full-screen applications in a significant way (although all you people making windowed mode games are probably screwed), as the task sceduler will prioritizer fullscreen applications to non system critical processes (the downside of this is, that we're probably going to see more performance hungry applications with "full screen user interfaces" - think the original DarkBasic). And people are not going to switch to Linux. Pragmatic buyers go for the market leader, and Linux simply doesn't have that at the moment.

All I have to say is Amiga OS 1.3 came on 3 720K floppies and was absolutely excellent. I am still amazed at what my old Amiga 500 used to be able to do. To bad BeOS died. It was really cool too.

14GB is totally ridiculous. Does anyone know of a good Linux distro with a kernel that supports dual cores? Or better yet a way to load Mac OS on a regular PC?

Later,

Yah, use a nice KDE Linux distro like Kubuntu, SuSe, or Red Hat :P
Lets you customize the desktop, too!

Actually, I do recall people hacking Mac OS to work on a PC.
Of course, it probably didn't work very well since that OS is tethered around Apple's hardware (I don't mean that in a bad way -- just pointing out differences)... and I don't think Apple liked it much that their OS was being used where their hardware wasn't.

For all practical purposes, the Intel Mac hardware *is* generic PC hardware, so there is absolutely no technical reason why it couldn't run on a stock Dell machine, other than some artificial checks... Which apparently have been removed by some enterprising hackers already.

Erm, any 2.0 (or better) Linux kernal will support Symmetrical Multi-Processing (aka. Dual Core CPUs), if configured correctly. Most distros will include SMP enabled pre-compiled kernels.

From what I understand you need particular Intel motherboards that supports EFI. Other than that Intel MacOS X should work out-of-the-box, providing you can find the correct drivers.

Apart from "Dell machines still use archaic BIOS architecture", then no.

Well...if the specs are correct....I can run Vista pretty easily. So i'm game.

Having had a build of Vista on a HD on my PC for quite some time I would say that for many users there will be not that much difference between XP and Vista. The main reason I don't use Vista day to day ATM is the lack of drivers support but I think MS will have nailed this by the time the product ships.

At the moment the main problem with Vista is it's slower than XP but that's mainly because of the lack of driver support.

Darkheart

Except that the vast majority of drivers are actually created by the hardware manufacturers, not Microsoft...

So especially if you have some low-end peripherals (a cheap SATA/IDE/SCSI/USB/Firewire controller/printer), the manufacturer may very well choose not to write drivers for all their old stuff, but only going forward for their new production lines. With many hardware devices literally making pennies profit, its often not economical to keep their old products functional... If nothing else, they probably make more money if you need to go out and buy a NEW firewire controller card that will work with vista...

Which is somewhat of an incentive not to release drivers for outdated product lines.

For recent / high end hardware, sure -- you're bound to see Vista drivers before long. But don't hold your breath when it comes to your $8 sound card, or $12 firewire adapter.

Microsoft does work with nearly all manufacturers to make sure that their products are pretty well supported. I don't think most people would expect Microsoft themselves to write drivers for a manufacturers product. Microsoft does also release generic drivers for most things and this does work although there can be a performance decrease.

Microsoft does however provide plenty of support for manufacturers and I don't think there will be a big problem for most people migrating to Vista.

Darkheart

Perhaps you should spend less time assuming. Is there something wrong? This is the second attack on me in a few days from you.

If you are upset with me for some personal reason then be reassured I don't think about you at all in any capacity :)

Regarding your comments on 9x they are entirely fabrication and I note you have no links whatsoever to back up all your somewhat grandoise claims.

All I'm missing is the much maligned 15GB of free disk space (on my C: partition, at least). Somehow I think Vista will probably not force me to have 15GB free if I do a fresh install of it, rather than an upgrade from XP.

A 20GB partition for an OS is more than enough, and all I'm willing to give. My Amiga had a system partition of 20MB.

out of all the 'disscussion' above, i find two very interesting points that were brought up... one by ENAY, believe it or not :)

hhhhmmmm...
not being a hardware geek, i wonder if this is really gonna become an issue... i mean, even though the drives are already constant spinning, there is sure to be an increased access frequency, more so , i would imagine on systems with lower memory profiles... this may in fact become something one might be wise to consider...

the second, was a comment by 'Duck... again, will wonders never cease :)



in one fell swoop, MS may have not only taken the biggest steps to date to enhance the windows paradigm, and actual user productivity when using the windows gui and os facilities... but they also may have, paradoxically given developers of these same apps, good reason to make their applications full screen only... thus defeating the whole purpose...

of course, final judgement on both these points are reserved for the actual release... but i did find these interesting observations...

--Mike

Fullscreen games are usually the ones requiring of more resources. Windowed games generally aren't expected to hammer the system. If they are in a window, it is not unreasonable for a user to expect them to multitask in a friendly way.

If I run a game in a window, it's because I want to keep an eye on another task. I'd be disappointed to see that task devoid of all CPU cycles.

PLEASE NO!
If I run any utility/tool and it opens in fullscreen, I immeadiately close it and delete it ;)

One of the largest problems with Vista Aero is that it uses DX10 which itself bases on unified shaders ... which only X1000 series even supports today (NV has no series with support of it) ... and without that, it will not be able to use your systems power that good ....

And on the 3D = eye candy.

most stuff shown on the most actual build should run theoretically on a crappy 1Ghz system with a GF2 without any problems. I've definitely nothing seen so far that makes sense for the high reqs.

They are just needed because the media extension in the new desktop system supporst ANY 3d stuff not just the simple window stuff ... so theoretically you could write a really cool desktop and file management system (like Jurassic park had it years ago ;-) ) ... instead of this stupid explorer thingy.

> Also what the hell is Windows Aero? Is it full of holes?

Hahaha, I didn't spot this bit :) Nice one Grey.
Yes, you're right it's probably a silent irony of the OS, full of security holes, just like any other Window OS.

15GB is probably far more than just the OS. There's plenty of media shipped with all versions Windows: including all the wallpapers, themes, documentation...

Windows also copies all microsoft compliant device drivers for purposes of plug and play and/or convenience.

When you add all of that up, it doesn't take much math to figure out why the space requirements increase with every windows release.



I highly doubt it. Writing a non-entertainment app that runs exclusively in full-screen is product suicide. I wouldn't be surprised to see options to running apps that way though.



Or they simply won't upgrade from XP. Microsoft typically supports 3 generations back of their software. That means one generation beyond Vista before Windows 2000 even falls off the support map.

Linux has a long way to go to become as user friendly and idiot-proof as windows is. And by the time they do so, it will run about as efficiently and consume as many resources as Windows does.



You mean every OS. Even the most sound operating system has security issues is misconfigured. I read somewhere recently that OSX has just as many, if not more security problems as Windows. The only real difference is... not as many people care.

The best targets are the ones with the most visibility and utilization. OS's outside of Windows do not really have the luxury of that double edged sword.

You can always turn aero off for the xp experience. Guess people are *totally* missing that...

current OSX Tiger installs over 2GB of hardware drivers if you don't read the install info properly.

If Symantec gets there way, it will be even longer before Vista sees the light of day:

http://www.hardwaregeeks.com/comments.php?shownews=4097&catid=4

In a lawsuit filed last week, Symantec is asking a Judge to halt the sale of Windows Vista before the OS even hits store shelves. Symantec is accusing Microsoft of using trade secrets they acquired in a license agreement with Veritas. Veritas was acquired by Symantec last year.

Symantec is asking a Judge to block the further development and future sale of Windows Vista along with compensation as well as removal of all intellectual property from any Microsoft Software.

Of course, more than likely this is just a grab to have MS throw enough money at them to make them go away, considering that the need for Symantecs product lines is getting more and more irrelevant thanks to the additional software MS keeps adding to windows.

i think that symantec will probably loose this action... as Bill made a prior deal with a smaller company that symantec eventually bought out, regarding the rights to the intellectual property in question, prior to symantecs ownership of said property...

but they may succeed in a motion injoining MS from distributing Vista with any of the disputed code for quite a while...

i really dunno...

--Mike

You say that as if it's a good thing? Maybe when you lose your job because the company you work for, just had Microsoft add an inferior similar product to the one you're making to it's OS, you'll see things in a slightly different light? I don't think it's unfair for Symantic to get some compensation for the people who are going to lose their jobs as a consequence of this.

No they won't. Microsoft have no respect for the judicial system. They'll ship it anyway, and just pay the fine. Unless ofcourse the more likely scenario that they couldn't get it ready on time occurs, in which case this becomes a significant oppertunity for Microsoft to blame Symantec for their own shortcommings.

symantec's virus software sucks anyway, talk about system busive resource hogg. Looks to me like whining because your product is rubbish and layman might notice when Vista comes out.

Besides, anything that makes windows more secure is a threat to the norton people. No wonder they are trying every trick in the book.

I didn't say it as a good thing, it was just an observation on how MS is abusing their monopoly to extend into unrelated markets, making the people in that market very nervous and scrambling for alternative income. It's a bad thing, even though symantecs product lines are mediocre at best in my experience as well.

That's besides the point. So does Windows.

Microsoft are violating patent and anti-trust laws, and you think that's okay for some reason? I bet you wouldn't feel the same way if it where Apple or Nintendo.

Ah sorry. I must have misread you.

You know, I'm just going to go with the "wait & see" thing like I did for 2k/XP back when I was on the Win98 train...., easier to just sit back and see what the general consensus is of said product.....that and it saves me the trouble of possibly purchasing a product that could be bugged to hell upon release.

Anyhow, Microsoft really does sicken me in the fact they just waver everything away with money...dont they have laws in place to prevent such actions to do so over & over again?

I don't think it'll be particularly bugged on release. Anything interesting or new has been scrapped already, so it would surprise me a lot if it was significantly worse than XP.

Yep... <sigh> As disruptive as it sounded, there did seem to be some promise of interesting newness in the early descriptions of Longhorn. The description of what's actually coming out in Vista sounds like XP with nasty DRM added along with unneeded 3D GUI junk.


Hopefully you're right (I like XP a lot better than 98 which I liked only slightly better than 95). But I feel in my gut that moving from a long-established 2D GUI to a new 3D one (plus the other Vista changes) might have some issues, though I'd love to be wrong here with a seamless transition.

BTW, I enjoyed and LOL-ed at your on-target THX 1138 references, Red Ocktober! (or should I call you MIK 1138? <1 grin unit transfered from TWM 999 account to yours, and be happy>).

FWIW, I plan to update to this new Windows as I have in the past: when I buy a new PC with it installed as the first OS rather than trying to retro-fit it onto my current hardware to replace the previous Windows version. That'll probably be between a year or two (and probably a service pack) away.

For all I care about Vista, I just really hope DX10 lives up to what it plans to be with regards to being faster, less obfuscated and what not, and more compatible, rather then just a new DX with better eye-candy support.

Well that's the one thing that is supposed to be a big move forward - DirectX 10. Written from scratch and it doesn't have legacy code to slow it down. But DirectX 9 and below will now work under (slow) emulation, so when Vista takes off games players are going to be forced to upgrade.

Hello.

It seems a ridiculous amount of resource for an operating system, but then I guess we're looking at it from a more knowledgeable perspective than most users will.

The majority of people don't really know or care what's under the bonnet of their PC's, at least in terms of hardware, they just want an OS to do what it's meant to - ie, work with any device they plug in, let them connect to the internet, etc, all in a secure environment. The drivers, graphics, tutorial media, etc, are going to be what bloats the OS out so much - MS is giving the consumer what they want. And with hard drive capacity is increasing so rapidly, graphics cards and CPU capabilities improving so much, any new PC is going to be able to take the strain of Vista. It's all about transparency (boom-boom) to the user.

I think it's more worrying that MS has been sending out mailshots to retailers telling them they're missing out on financial benefits by selling bare PC's and that they could make more revenue by pre-installing an OS, ooh, say Windows for example, so that they can charge for support, etc. Linux providers are getting a little hot and bothered about it, saying it's another attempt by MS to push them totally out of the market.

But again, it comes back to the whole "user experience". No-one really gives a flying sausage about who makes a corkscrew, just that it can get corks out bottles. Ideally, without corking the wine, snapping, needing someone else to screw it up for you, throwing the bottle around the room or giving your wine to someone else. Ok, perhaps I took the anology too far, but hopefully you get the point. Most people really don't care who makes the damn thing, just that it does it's job and that they can get support when they need it.

Goodbye.

Workbench (Amiga) had this wonderful menu option called Quit. If Microsoft put this option into Vista then I might buy it... Just so I can quit out of it.

That all sounds cool, but how well is it documented? Better than DirectX 9 I hope.

Most consumer PCs still only come with an 80Gb harddrive. The fact that you can buy a 250Gb monster for less than 100 bucks isn't going to interest many oridinary users. They think the harddrive is the case and the components in it - good luck trying to get them to upgrade.

So an OS they takes up 5% of your total harddrive capacity? I haven't one of those since I got my 52Mb external A500 SCSI harddrives, and that booting quite a bit faster than XP - never mind Vista. And they tell me technology is moving forward.

Linux providers get hot and bothered about everything Microsoft does. If they spent half as uch time working on delivering a whole product for a pragmatic customer, and less time watching Microsofts every move, perhaps they could successfully lauch a truely competing product.

Hello.

@Duc a la flambe: Agreed, most consumer PC's do come with piddling little HD's ;o) but with the advent of vista and the coming of HD/BlueRay it's unlikely that they'll stay so small for long - they'll be expanded to fit requirements. The majority of users won't upgrade to Vista themselves so PC-Pro will make bucks upgrading OS and HD at the same time. Because people absolutely, definitly need to upgrade, donchya know.

Re the Linux crowd. I find it interesting that one of the reasons why PCs 'won the battle' against the Amiga was (other than not being seen as a gaming machine and having Doom) it's ability to be a multi-component machine so that you didn't have to rely on a single manufacturer to provide it's parts. Open Systems and Standards were embraced so expansion became a doddle. And then we got stuck with Windows! From what I've seen, and tbh I've had limited exposure, Linux is perfectly capable, dependable and efficient as an OS, it's applications are the same so why don't we see more PC's sold by retaillers with a Linux OS as standard? Because MS have pushed Windows a) in a very impressive fashion and b) more recently, as mentioned above, in a very aggressive fashion - "There is no alternative". I know, I know, it goes a lot deeper than that, customer familiarity, software and support availabilty, etc, but what's missing? Perhaps it's a lack of single supplier that causes the problems, people can't identify with many suppliers offering the same product in different flavours. I wonder why there are so many types of vacuum cleaner?

Goodbye.

Of course, the people doing the actual *work* wouldn't see a dime of it and still lose their jobs, while the CEO's are getting themselves a nice golden parachute... If history is any indication.

Well yes, that's a highly probable scenarios. It's almost a universal truth that the has nots are going to be screwed. In either case, Microsoft should be punished for breaking the law - and it's unfortunate that financial compensation is the only option.

Personally, while I'm not usually in favour of the death penalty, I think it would be okay if white collar business criminals where crucified along public roads. Maybe it would bring meaning back to the hollow oxymoron "Business Ethics".

uuhhhh... exactly which law would that be counselor?

:)


--Mike

Hmm, didn't the rights belong to Veritas? Didn't Symantec buy them out?

yep... i think that's correct... but after MS had already penned a deal with Veritas... or so they say...

--Mike

Pick one, you won't be much off. In this particular case it's patent and anti-trust (again).

Thats exactly what I was saying though. The deal was made. When one company buys out another one do all of the signed deals become invalid? o.O

Because it is nowhere close to as user friendly, it crashes on half the hardware out there and isn't even intended for a home environment. It would take years to bring it up to the consumer friendly level windows 98 is, let alone vista.

i'm not sure... from what little i know, i think that the new owners assume all liabilitites and existing licenses, contractual agreements...

this is why i think that Symantec will loose this one...

--Mike

Well you're wrong on both counts there. The reason Linux isn't a mainstream OS, is for the same reason OS/2, QNX and MacOS aren't mainstream OSes. They are not the market leader, and believe it or not, people buy products from market leaders. Quality is not a significant factor - history shows us that better products almost never achieve mainstream success. What matters is that people will buy brands that their friends have. Do Nokia make the best mobile phones? Hell no. Is the iPod the better portable MP3 player? Hell no. Is Windows the better OS? Hell no. Do cisco make the better routers? Hell no. Do Intel make the best Processors? Hell no. Do AT&T have the best telephone services? Well the NSA thinks so, but otherwise hell no.

Says Microsoft - who hasn't yet managed ro produce any evidence, or even hearsay to support their statement.

it's a matter of public record... and the terms of the contracts will be made available to a court... a real court, not a court of opinion...

read...



--Mike

FD: Linux simply has one major missing point, that will always prevent it become great on home sector: It has no standardized surface.
How the heck shall any commercial company create apps for it if the user for example must first install the needed windowing system, because he uses KDE instead of Gnome and vice versa?

If Linux ever gets to the point where core stuff (used windowing system and other stuff) is standardized for ALL Distros, then it could perhaps get somewhere ...
But until that, its only interesting for users that want/need to modify the kernel etc to optimize it for their purpose.
Or why the heck do you think is even Apple performing better on the home user market than Linux although you pay 10-15% extra just for the brand?

I use windows because thatis the only platform that caters to the the majority of software I use on a daily basis. So long as developers and publishers put their biggest effort into windows there is no incentive to look elsewhere.

Linux and OSX without the software are just going to make you less productive. I use office because its convenient, I use windows because I can then play games, develop games with industry standard Applications and tools for my trade that simply aren't avaliable else where.

That's not entirely accurate, but it still doesn't matter. Windows doesn't have a standardized interface either. It has Win32, Win64, MFC, .Net 1.1 and now .Net 2.0.

What windows does have is market leadership, and that's why people buy it.

The same way they do with Windows now.

Because Apple is the market leader in their market segment.

I think you've got that around backwards. Windows doesn't cater to anything. Software developers (just like everyone else) develop for the market leader. For instance if you where making a non-linear videoediting and effects suite it would be suicide to make it not run on IRIX. If you're making a 3D game it would be suicide to make it not work on Windows. If you where making a web server it would be suicide to make it not work on Linux. If you where making a DTP application of image manipulation tool, it would be suicide to make it not work on Macs.

Oh, and I disagree that Windows makes you more productive. There are too many distractions, and even the simplest tasks take forever. Everyone I know from back in the Amiga days, creative geniuses making the kind of things that would make game companies jelous, almost without exception stopped doing anything cool with their time once they got a PC.

Surely that has more to do with the hardware than the OS? When anything you do elegantly one year can be done sloppily the next year due to the inevitable increase in available clock cycles, then where's the exclusivity (and therefore the appeal) of cool stuff?

What distractions and what takes forever? Probably that tablet PC of yours flameduck :)

BTW, Windows is still a lot more responsive than OSX. And if your distracted, thats probably because theres so much more fun things you can do on a windows pc than on other OS's.

Actually, I believe my Ubuntu installation can run both Gnome and KDE apps from the same desktop interface since I have both installed.
I believe this is a common capability among Linux desktop environments / distros, too...

Yup. You can run KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, whatever, developed apps in any DE.

Although we all know that Fluxbox > *

All this talk about Microsoft's overwhelming dominance is making me sick. The majority of us are stuck with it, like it or not. Our systems at work are frozen currently at Windows 2000 and hampered by multiple passwords and permissions on every application because of 'security', (another sickening concept). As a result, you can't do multiple apps usably. I feel like I might as well use a speedy 8 bit computer and use my apps one at a time. Most business apps are mostly text swapping and storing frameworks at best, with calculators and pictures. How about a C-128megabyte with ethernet? With Blitz as operating system!!

That's what I love about Windows, you either use this shoddy OS, or you don't.

Well, you know, Windows Server... ;)


Paint Shop Pro... not that it's a market giant or anything.

I could just have not said anything, I suppose.

Yesterday I intalled Windows Vista Build 5381 and honestly, even on my system it took ages to start up, Ages to log in, and ages to open up paint :/ The whole thing is so damn bloated too, 600+MB of memory used on a fresh startup, plus to make it worse its almost impossible to find advanced settings. Everything is covered up in a layer of candy easyness that makes you want to puke. At least they could have sped the damn thing up. Slower than early longhorn builds.

@Leiden, thanks, all I wanted to know.

I have been testing Vista since last year and it is a nice OS. If people spent some time looking at Vista instead of hating, they might find they actually like it!

As coders, the story of Vista is interesting. The reason Vista was delayed from 2004 is because they went back to their most stable code base, 2003 server and built from there. They made software checking tools to be sure all code was organised, stable and compliant. I wish I could find the original article I read, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal. Any coder would appreciate what they have done behind the scenes.

Beta 2 will be available in a couple of weeks for the public, I suggest people try it out. It installs a no hassle dual boot and the last version will upgrade XP(I haven't tried that feature.)

Wow, so much mis-information.
- Vista will have a gaming mode which turns off a lot of features to release memory and processes to the game.
- Vista will have a scalled down UI so that embedded video can use the system without having DX9/10 compatible card

It is funny, every since Windows 98, I have read how terrible the next version of windows will be. The only valid concern was Me and it died quickly because those concerns were valid. Vista will not die as Me because it is a major rewrite of OS and will be their flagship, Me was a stepchild and just a transition version until XP came out.

Oh, and of course this is the best time for Linux/Mac users to come out and bark at it. It is sad to see how people react to some information when the software is about 10 months away and all we are reading are specs. Plus, the point of Aero (HOme Premier and above editions) was to make your UI eye candy so that is why it uses your PC like a gaming machine. If you do not want this, do not purchae that edition of the Vista and use it with scaled down UI that will not utilize the sytem 3D graphics - very simple choice.

Here's the various Vista versions, includes Windows Starter Edition 2007 which isn't even called Vista and pretty much bare bones.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_editions.asp

Maybe people want more than just looks from a mainstream OS?

Which begs the question, why would you want to 'upgrade' to Vista, and not even have a pretty UI?

Talk about misinformation. Vista was meant to be a rewrite. It isn't. Look at your system information - it's still running on the NT kernel.

Warning: List of Linux/Mac users may include die hard Windows fanatics. Nice try tho'.

What is that anyway? For people who havn't had an OS before?

Re the 15GB HD space:

Since newer systems no longer ship with restoration discs it looks like you'll be spending the best part of a day burning Vista onto a pack of DVD's.

I also wonder how much of this 15GB will be shovelware?
Time-limited / restricted applications (Norton pap, Office 2005, AOL, Napster) and other 'in-your-face' desktop shortcuts to more unwanted programs.

If they can get QNX running on a 1.44MB floppy (complete with a web browser, notepad, game demo!) I can't understand why Vista has to be such a monster.

Vista - The SUV of operating systems.


Why? How stupid is that?

So a person who doesn't know what they're doing will spend 10 minutes connected to the internet, after which their PC becomes a paperweight with Bonzi Buddy, Weatherbug and Gator/gain on it?

Anyway, the *reason* is of course so they can double-dip -- by introducing an excessively crippled version, they can sell a whole lot more copies of windows: first the system builder can pay them a (slightly discounted) fee to bundle the craptastic edition with a new PC they sell, so they can offer a slightly cheaper PC. Joe user who doesn't know any betters buys the system, and before long it pretty much becomes unusable and they'll shell out for the 'normal' version of windows. Ca-ching!

Microsoft gets to make money twice on the same PC.

Brilliant scheme, really... Maybe next they'll start selling insurance, too. Nice computer you have there. Shame if anything... were to, you know, happen to it. Real shame.

Of course, the *real* scheme is the upcoming 'Windows Live' plan, thats in the works, where you get a 'cheap' copy of windows and get to pay a continuing rental/usage fee. Of course, the only thing that will do is make sure that people who can't afford windows in the first place get to pay for it many times over spread out over a longer timeframe.

More importantly, how is that going to work? My PC is running well more than 3 applications when it starts up, would it just die flat out during booting? Sounds like a briliant ideas. Useless cretinous morons.

Windows Starter 2007 Edition supposedly is only going to be sold in "emerging markets" if you read a bit more. I don't exactly know what that is but my gut feeling is it is not most of the Western world, although I could be totally wrong there.

Wow, this thread is still going on, it appears with a brisk read though of the posts that Vista is indeed going to be the next generation of pap, bloatware? You ain't seen nothing yet. :)

With all these reports of slowness I wonder how Microsoft are gonna fix that in Vista, they can't rely on the next generation of faster processors to speed up the OS, because erm, there aren't really any that are gonna get much faster. :)

Hopefully soon, people are gonna realise that their PC is just shovelling around bloaty code for no good reason. Other than a monopolised fan base.

uuuhhh... they're gonna ship the release code... and not the debugging beta version code...

maybe...

huh...

--Mike

I read elsewhere that the Starter edition would be sold to museums and libraries to more easily restrict what can be accessed by systems avaliable to the public.

That kind of thing anyway.

Nobody will go to a store and buy Vista upgrade. Well, not most of us. Most of the upgrades come from new system purchases. So it is not a question of why would you upgrade but when will you buy your next Dell or Gateway or Alienware?

Plus, why would you upgrade? Well, M$ has found a way, DX10 and DX10 video cards. Just like PCIe is phasing out AGP. I still have an AGP and have to wait 6 months for a top of the line card to come out in AGP and some are not at all. You will upgrade because DX10 cards will hit the market and DX10 games too, so XP will not be able to run those. But I expect that around 2008 or 2009 to be an issue.

Microsoft learned their lessons with XP. I know a lot of folks that did not switch to XP from 2000. And why would they? So, M$ is building a lot of "non-backwards-compatible" features. Hate it or love it, but you will assimilate (sp?).

They have the same thing with XP already as well.

To enforce the 'emerging market' thing, they do not have an international (English) language, but only the local ones... IIRC they have it in Thai, Malaysian, and some others like that.

The main selling point is the very low price: XP was something like ~$5 or so. They are competing with cheap pirated software, and hoping to convince people that they should buy the 'genuine' version instead, at a pricepoint they can afford.

Unlikely to have much effect though, considering that in most of those countries people don't give a flying hoot about western intellectual property rights / copyright, and 90% of the software is pirated anyway. I doubt they'll convince many people to switch to a crippled-beyond-usability version for the same price as a full-fledged pirated edition, just for the warm fuzzy feeling that bill gates get the couple of bucks he deserves.

Just to say I've been using the betas of Vista in my computer (PIV 512 RAM) and performance was great. much better than XP performance. I used the 2D non accelerated Desktop. It has very interesting security changes that will affect BlitzMax usage on PC, as EXEs can only be built in a user's documents folder, and not in a program installation folder (as instance). there are also a lot of changes in the way windows handles files and resources. It's not as good as a MacOs OS, but it's better that XP (except for OpenGL support in window mode, wich is slower becouse it's simulated)