http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2245

In my own testing Server 2008 has not shown to have any kind of workstation level advantage over Vista SP1. The way it is tweaked to be a server may allude to some magical performance gain, but that would only be recognized if you're doing activities that are more server-ish anyway like heavy file I/O or network activity. For typical workstation tasks the two are identical.

I don't know what you're doing then, because I have it booting in 365MB of RAM, so that should leave you with like 3700MB for your apps. Unless you're referring SuperFetch preloading (caching) things in RAM as killing it? I don't know... It runs just fine even on 2GB. It might be worse if you're using media center or such, but overall it's quite good.


And Vista would be tuned for slowness and unreliability?

What makes the server versions more reliable is things like video acceleration disabled i.e. at the expense of speed, things like audio being disabled, and the lack of user apps running (and the user behind the keyboard doing strange things). Similarly, if you'd leave a XP or Vista box alone, just to serve files on your network or such, you'd see record uptimes too.


Ditto. It's basically Vista + extra server components (e.g. active directory) and some limits removed (e.g. IIS 7's conn limits). The extra server components sure don't make the system any faster. And it's definitely not worth the price tag. Plus, I remember back then trying to use Win 2003 as a desktop (needed IIS 6 to test stuff and XP comes with crippled 5.1) and it wasn't exactly a great experience. I had to edit msi's for installers to even run, I had to use compatibility mode on a lot of apps and all that -- not counting those that couldn't possibly work (using things that were incompatible with 2003), apps that refused to install (you need to buy the expensive server version of it), and those I've given up onto (didn't want to start using apps like TweakNT for them to run). And there was basically zero performance benefits. That's also not counting all the extra work to make win 2003 even usable as a desktop in the first place (enable sound, video acceleration, disable shutdown tracker, etc) -- that was certainly more work to configure than it is to get Vista "tuned" in the first place.




This post has been edited by crahak: Jul 19 2008, 10:15 AM

I do lots of multitasking, eg photoshop (takes huge amount of ram) and few video encoding as well. Without running these apps, vista runs just fine, but on server i can run these apps, and still use my system without any sluggish performance. Not only that, my games load faster and gives me slitghly more FPS (did not benchmark, but it runs much smoother compare to vista)

If MS did give us the freedom to choose which components to install during vista setup, then vista would have been much better, and less resource hungry, unless you decide to install all the bloat stuffs.


This post has been edited by shahed26: Jul 19 2008, 10:06 AM

Same here. I've had firefox 2 + vmware + photoshop cs3 + visual studio 2008 + many more open at once (sometimes using them while encoding xvid's with VirtualDubMod), even on 2GB, and it worked just fine... 4GB should be a complete non-issue. Photoshop isn't really incredibly memory intensive anymore. It's not quite like it was back when we only had 3-digit RAM sizes (most of which being used by the kernel) where every MB counted... PS CS3 opens in 90MB of RAM and even with a decently sized pic loaded, it only shoots up to 110MB or so. Add a couple layers, and you still don't even hit 150MB. It's not a big concern by today's standards (especially not if you have 4GB+). Games wise I dunno, I don't play any, but then again you could basically buy a PS3 (40GB) + a Xbox360 Pro + a Wii for the price of a Win 2008 license. That should have most of your gaming needs met...


Perhaps, but then people would have a bunch more questions to answer during the install... And components installed shouldn't make much of a difference except for disk space. Services running by default perhaps would (then again, the same thing applies to XP). And realistically, it's not much more work to disable stuff post-install, just like we've been doing with XP anyways (like disabling system restore and such things). Personally I don't really disable much anyways (system restore, the defender stuff, and that's about it). Either ways, for those who want to do that, there's apps like vlite I guess.

Nah, Windows Server 2008 is (legally!) free for over half a year (240 days), and its not much hassle to format that often.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948472 for the 240 day thing,
and see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en
or http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008...l-software.aspx
for the ISOs, all geniune direct from Microsoft themselves

True, even i don't have a server 2008 license, (way too expensive), i usually format my hdd every 4-5 months, and that is exactly what i do to extend my trial time (LEGALLY), unless you use win2008 for server stuffs usage, then a license is a must.
For workstation use, i modified the whole install.wim for my personal use, so i have all the workstation stuffs out of box, eg sidebar, tweaks in registry by hiving the reg, and more stuffs, basically its all tuned to act and work as a workstation out of box.

Of course there are trials. Then again, you could use a WinXP eval on your box too. Same thing for Vista. And I suppose I could get the 30 day trial of every shareware too, and reformat when those expire. And then again, you could buy a HDTV from a large retailer with a 30 day money back warranty, and return it the 29th day, and do that year-round.

And resetting your trial period all the time + reformatting and reinstalling everything more than once a year sure is a big hassle if you ask me, considering all the time it takes to install & configure everything if you use a lot of apps (after 240 days, it finally has pretty much all I need installed, configured & tweaked how it want it...)

Besides, it's illegal to do so. Just read the EULA:
"Not for Production Use"
"Solely for purposes of demonstration and internal testing"
"After this time, you will need to uninstall the software or upgrade to a fully-licensed version of Windows Server 2008." -- as in, stop using it, or buying it (NOT reformat as a way to bypass the trial limit)

It's wrong on many levels. It's meant for testing ONLY, NOT perpetual use for free.

This post has been edited by crahak: Jul 19 2008, 12:18 PM

QFT

Surely if they cared that much, they would only allow 1 product key request from a person's "windows live" login? Thats what they did with Server 2003.

I would say that if you have a PC with XP installed, keep XP. Vista is not worth the hassle of a reinstall and investment.
Vista is suitable only on new computers. Pre-installed, on a new machine it's good, don't lose time reverting to Xp or dual booting (unless you real need to). Of course it's sad to know that it's slower, and not faster than XP, but with 3.4 Ghz dual cores, the difference is minimal.

However I prefer the look and feel of Vista over XP.

Sure there are a few more annoyances and absurdities than on XP, but when you know them, they are smalll details.

Everybody bashes UAC, even experts, but I do like it. It gives me a sens of safety, that my system is protected (I hope it's true). Unlike XP it allows you to install or modify stuffs without being permanently on Administrator privileges. On XP you need to switch usership to do that because running XP connected to the internet on Administrator account is suicide. I don't mind licking 3 or 4 times "Continue" when I install a soft once in a while. I don't understand why so many poeple disable it.

So far I'v met only one software (Encyclopedia Universalis) not running on Vista while running on XP and w98. I thought it was usualy old softs, but this one is not that old and much older things, even Windows 3.1 era programs, work surprisingly well.

I don't find Vista more difficult nor easier to configurate than XP (without external apps).
It needs maybe more customization, performance tweaks than XP, but XP was already like that. Nothing realy new here.

This post has been edited by Fredledingue: Aug 10 2008, 04:42 PM

What a completely nonsensical statement. It has not changed in being a memory intensive software package. The memory it uses depends on what you're doing with Photoshop. And by the way, the latest PS CS is a humongous heap heavier and more resource hungry than *any* older version of Photoshop.

Nonsense once more. This all depends on how dumb you are as a user. It's not the kitchen, it's the cook. I have never been running ANY Windows OS without being root (or Administrator as they call it) in my user-space, and I have yet to start feeling any suicidal tendencies or be contaminated or be at risk for any threat out there.

i am using Vista x64 at the moment. its stable (dont get explorer.exe being corrupt) but definitely (much ) slower in start ups at least. opening apps wise maybe its slower a little. kind of not sure if i shld install XP x64 or Vista x64 at the moment. x64 since i have 4GB RAM

i am on:
- Intel C2D T9300
- 4GB DDR2
- 1280MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

oh yes and i must mention it really takes up lots of HDD space, even after vLite.

looks wise, i used to like it but i got bored of it now actually, kind of like Mac OS X's looks but what prevents me from using Mac is its software compatibility ... i need to get a Mac version if i still want to use Windows as my main OS... if only windows and mac share the same software, eg. if i get "Software A" it can install in Windows and Mac without needing another version.

This post has been edited by iceangel89: Aug 10 2008, 08:42 PM

It makes perfect sense.

Back when Photoshop 2.5 was out (on 4 floppies -- back when we were running win 3.11), people had like single-digit memory sizes, and the OS used pretty much all of it. Opening any moderately sized image used all the resources you had pretty much.

Back when Photoshop 4 was out (Win95 era), we still had very little RAM (most people having 16MB or less), and the OS used all of that too. Opening anything still used all your resources.

Back when Photoshop 7 (CS) was out (early win XP era), we still had around 128MB of memory, and XP's core uses more than 128MB, yet again leaving you with hardly any resources. Opening anything even remotely big (high resolution scans, drum scans, etc) or doing anything more than than the very basics still quickly brought your machine to its knees.

Nowadays, Photoshop CS3 opens on ~90MB of RAM which basically is nothing at all for any modern computer. You can also get 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 for as little as $70. I you have 4GB, and have Vista running + Photoshop CS3 open (nothing else, like in other scenarios), you still have over 3.5GB of RAM left to work with, without making use of any virtual memory (or 1.5GB on a box with 2GB) In the previous scenarios, you had a negative amount of RAM left after the OS loaded (anything you could use, was due to memory paging i.e. virtual memory), whereas now you have entire gigabytes left on commodity PCs! Even opening a 12 megapixel RAW file and adding a couple extra layers only uses an extra ~1% of my free RAM. Even an old box running XP with 512M of RAM could handle it. And processor wise, even a several years-old P4 will suffice for over 90% of tasks. In all those gigabytes of RAM free left, not only you can load a LOT of images at once, and do complex things with them, but you can actually multitask! Something I wouldn't even have attempted before (it would have been excruciatingly slow). I very often have Photoshop open at the same time than other apps that use hundreds of MBs of RAM and it works great.

Long story short, save for a couple exceptional cases/uses, Photoshop isn't one of those monster processes that brings any computer to its knees anymore.

It was a perfectly good point. I didn't think anyone wouldn't get it.