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.

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.

XP64 is where it's at

Well I said "suicide" to put it shortly. I meant, you are more at risk of infection using Admin account than on a restricted account. The fact that XP is almost twice as much infected than Vista is probably because few poeple knows that.

My point was that I didn't understand why so many gets epileptic as soon as the UAC ask them to click "Continue" twice.


Normaly Windows quintuplate (5x) its size every 3 years. So, normaly Windows7 (if released in 3 years) should weight 60 Gb after install. But with the multi Terabyte HDD we will have at this time, it won't be an issue.

oh lol, then i hope other parts like RAM, HDD and CPU will be dirt cheap too?

I've generally found Vista and XP on the same (newer) hardware to perform basically identical since SP1. Also, I've found that the video card (and good drivers - I'm looking at you, nVidia...) actually make a HUGE difference in speed of the OS. When aero (dwm) is enabled, and the video card drivers are subpar, the CPU and memory subsystem have to make up the difference and thus the system will get noticeably slower. I've gotten a P4 2.4GHz 1GB system to perform almost as snappy as a quad-core 4GB system just by installing an ATI Radeon 2650 into a box that previously had an Nvidia 7600 card.

Not that ATI drivers are great, but I gotta say nVidia Vista drivers have got to be some of the worst engineered pieces of software I've ever had the misfortune to be stuck with.

Also remember that in 2001, when XP was released, a 733MHz single-core CPU with 256MB of RAM and a 15GB hard disk was considered "mainstream" from the big-box vendors, so it's not surprising that XP on double that RAM and 4 and 5 times the processor speed and 2 to 4 times the CPU cores will seem snappy. Vista was designed to use "mainstream" hardware from 2007, which means ~3GHz dual-core CPU with 2 to 3GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk. As to hard disk footprint, if you consider XP SP3 has a hard disk footprint of ~1.23GB on average (according to Microsoft) when system restore is disabled, and Vista SP1 has a footprint of 13GB for x64 (excluding the space eaten by system restore, which can be lowered to 1GB with a quick command), Vista actually uses right about the same % of disk space according to available disk sizes at release as did XP. 1.23GB is 8.2% of 15GB, and 13GB is 8.13% of 160GB.

My vote goes to XP/XP64.


I used Vista extensively for almost a year. I was turned off of it because of the running out of memory while copying files bug, which is still present. I wiped my machine clean and waited for SP1 to come out. The issues I had with RTM were still present in SP1. The "WOW" factor is just not there for me. I see no reason (yet) to move from something that works to something that STILL has major problems for something that's been out for 20+ months now.

Sticking with XP.

Should this be in the Poll Section!

For context, let me state where I stand on the Win/MAC/Linux debate.
Having been exposed to numerous MAC & Linux fanatics over the years, I had become a Windows Fanboy almost to spite them. And then over the years I've learned to appreciate just how impressive it is that MS had developed an OS that just about anyone, could load and get to run on just about any PC hardware. The same can not be said of Linux or MAC. Of course that is also the reason Windows is "so unstable" compared to them. It's all about how committed MS was to making it compatible with every piece of hardware under the sun.

That being said.

Vista is to XP as ME was to 98

For a company with more money than the GDP half the countries on the planet, Vista is disappointing steaming pile of feces. They have the resources to put out the best OS in the history of computing, and yet because they are so bloated with all those resources, they can't get out of their own way. Do some research on how screwed up their development process is.

Think back to all the promised new technology that was supposed to be in Vista and then one by one those new technologies got pulled. In the end, we have a fancy new skin on top of an XP core that wasn't designed for it. Sound familiar to anyone? Oh yeah, that's right, that's what they did when they made ME.

When XP came out, it was a bad OS that was very unsecure and "called home" ALOT. Then 6 months later then released SP1 and it fixed 90% of the problems and made it a very good OS. And if you are/were in the IT support industry and had to support "users", you could easily make it look like the Win2000 they were all used to and drastically cut down on silly support calls.

Now I will admit that Vista looks very nice and has some cool features, but other than that, it is a horrible OS compared to Windows. It is so bad, MS has to force companies to sell it and stop selling XP, because no one would but it if they had a choice. Thank God for Dell who is listening to their customers and using a loop hole in the Vista license to provide customers what they want.

I had some hope that they would fix a lot of the problems with it when SP1 came out, but while it did provide better driver support, most of the software compatibility issues where not addressed and none of the annoyances were addressed. Oh and it took them over a year to get it out, instead of the 6 months it took for SP1 for XP.

There is no way to change any of the dialogs to resemble XP, so support staff are forced to learn a whole new way of walking users through doing things. Of course this is after they spend 5 min walking the user through figuring out which version of Windows they have, so they even know which dialog boxes to walk them through.

All of that in context of the OS they should be able to produce is what makes it so disappointing.

/endrant

Wow you sound really upset. You also have not stated a single thing about Vista that makes it comparable to Windows ME.

For the record, I currently run Vista x64 on five machine:

Gaming rig: Business x64
Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz processor
Intel DP35DP motherboard
8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 RAM (Mushkin value stuff)
nVidia 8800GT video card
using onboard Sigmatel audio

Activity/gaming laptop: Ultimate x64
Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5Ghz processor
Intel PM865 chipset
4GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia 8800M GTX video
onboard Realtek audio

Test Laptop: (varies, I nuke it regularly)
Dell Inspiron E1705
Core 2 Duo T7200 2Ghz processor
Intel PM945 chipset (I think)
2GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia 7950GTX Go video chipset (which I installed myself, destroying the warranty)
onboard Sigmatel audio

Work Machines #1 and #2: Enterprise x64
Name brand desktops
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
Intel Q35 chipset
4GB DDR2 RAM
Onboard Q35 graphics
onboard SoundMAX audio

Five machines. Four of which have fairly varied components. The two work machines are used by a group, so there's lots of profiles and apps and whatever else installed on them. I have to keep telling people not to install <popular bloated 32-bit app> because I already installed <cool 64-bit native freeware/open source lightweight app> that does the same job. Ugh.

All five of these machines run FLAWLESSLY. When I say that, I mean it. They don't blue screen. They don't hang. They don't "app not responding". They don't drop off the network. They don't glitch, or make me think "I should reboot" or anything like that. They run perfectly. Period. They get rebooted for updates. That's it. The work machines especially impressed me, seeing as my coworkers have utterly destroyed the XP boxes with their 9000 installs of Google Talk and Realplayer and Quicktime and every other stupid app there is. The Vista boxes seem to take it all in stride.

As far as speed, Vista x64 runs very well for me on all of these. My gaming rig is very cool, I have some pretty fast-paced games (ie. GRiD) on it and they fly. GRiD is very, very pretty. And it cheats so very, very badly. But anyways, it runs smooth as silk.

Do many of you even remember how ME ran? That was years ago, I'm sure anyone here under 20 either never used it or only remembers it as a pre-teen. It really wasn't as bad as people make it sound.

Xp vs. Vista:

One year later, the question is less and less oportune.
The question is more "do we have a choice?".

One year after XP was released, we still had a choice between Xp, 2000, ME and w98.
Today, if you buy a new computer, it's Vista and good luck if you want another OS.
It's simple Vista is the GUI for computers build after 2007, Xp (and under) for computers build before 2007. It's not like we have the two OSes side by side.

It's still possible to install Xp if you have it, but when you have Vista pre-installed, which is the case of 99.9% of the computers sold today, it's not worth the hassel.
It's also possible to install Vista on pre 2007 machine, but again, it's nt worth it and it's not even recommanded.

Bloat:

Bloatiness is not measured by % of disc space but by the numbers of Mb.
The enormous disc space Vista is taking, has inevitably risen some eyebrowses.
Normaly an Os like vista should make less than one giga. Xp was already bloated so, logicaly, with improvements, the next version should be smaller as it's being cleaned up.

We can understand that M$ doesn't want to spend time and money optimizing, but no one expected that they would find enough stuff to fill 12 Gb!
That's why the size of Vista is quiet a surprise.

It's not a problem while using but it definetly forbid saving your system on a DVD-R back up.

Beyond technical and emotional perception, there is also the questionement of the effeciency of the M$ developement team(s). When you know that probably 10 Gb will never be used and they still write them on your hard disc, you have the right to ask some questions.

Finaly:
It's too sad that most of grievances against Vista found their cause in small little things like different dialog messages, arbitrary special folders renaming, irritating popups, default settings which fits no one etc.
It realy gives a sens that M$ is out of touch with their customers.

Why is it that OS X takes 8 - 9GB of hard disk space on install and yet Vista's 10GB is "raising eyebrows"? Even on a 160GB drive, this is _not_ a lot of space.

Most of the complaints against Vista I see is that "It's not XP" - that's basically it. I do see the odd person who has an app that just isn't compatible, and to that I say it's probably a good reason not to run Vista if that app is important and a new compatible version cannot be acquired. To the vast other majority who don't like Vista because it's not XP, that's perfectly fine - but XP is going to die, just like 98, and if you want to keep running it, you're perfectly welcome to do so. Some of us actually do *like* the features Vista provides, and thus it's not *bloat* to us.

Plus, a 500GB drive is ~$70USD (and most machines you can buy nowadays come with a HDD this size). If you can't devote 2% of a "normal" sized hard disk by today's standards to the OS, that's just odd.

Not really. Microsoft has ALWAYS done this. It's nothing specific to Vista, people just don't remember. Win98 & Win98 SE went out of general availability 6 months after XP was released. 2 Years in WinME's case which is still quite bad considering it was released only a year before XP (it was only available for 3 years total). And 2 years + 3 months for Win2k. Again, they've always been doing this (e.g. NT4 not being available a couple years after Win2k was released). Nothing's changed really.


Hmmm, no. All modern mainstream OS'es use FAR more than this. For example, Mac OS X calls for at least "9GB of available disk space", and my Ubuntu install is about that size too. Even XP doesn't only use 1GB of disk space when you count the paging file, hibernate file, system restore and all that stuff (FAR from it), and that's without counting anything like the recycle bin usage, the client side cache, browser cache, temp files and all that (in which case the gap narrows even further). So Vista isn't really that bad.

Personally, I couldn't care less how many GB it uses, it's dirt cheap anyways. That XP install took ~2GB of disk space back in 2001. A 40GB WD drive in 2001 was $250, which is over $300 in today's dollars (using a very conservative inflation rate of 3%). So it used about $15 of disk space (closer to $20 when you count taxes) -- that's pretty darn bad/expensive! Nowadays, you can get 640GB WD drives for $73, and assuming Vista takes 12GB, that's like $1.50 with taxes -- cheaper than ever! And that's without having to front around $300 for the hard drive in the first place. So XP cost 10x to 15x more in disk space to install -- doesn't look too good when you look at it that way. On that 40GB drive (only ~38 "real" GB), you only had 36GB left. On that dirt cheap 640GB'er (more like 610 "real" GB), you still have 600 or so GB left (over 15x more space left over for your use)

In short: MUCH cheaper prices per GB, MUCH cheaper drive costs overall, MUCH more space left, Windows uses a LOT less $$$ worth of disk space, and other OS'es are just as "bad". I fail to see why some people make it sound like it's a big deal when we never had it so good. It's just like complaining things cost 5x more than they used to 20 years ago, completely disregarding you're making over 50 times what you made back then.

And the complaint about "bloat" is as old as computers are. Yes, Vista takes more space than XP does. XP takes more space than Win9x does. Win9x also takes a LOT more space than Win3.11 did (full CD vs a few floppies). Win 3.11 was also a lot bigger than DOS 6.22 (like 3x as many floppies -- "just for a GUI"). DOS 6.22 used 3x 1.44MB floppies, which is a lot compared to older versions of it which used less floppies, of lesser capacity. And even those used more space than CP/M (one 175KB 8" floppy), which is still a LOT more than many computers of the time had for the OS (a handful of kilobytes of ROM). And even before that, they used even less (a few bytes, entered via punch cards or using plain old switches).

Notice the trend? You could just as easily complain 1975's software was bloated (and most people wouldn't care either). New computers have more power, a vastly different architecture, and also multiple more orders of complexity. Also, the cost of hardware vs the cost of programmers has shifted a great deal (from thousands of $ per kilobyte of space, to over $100/hr of programmer's time -- not counting the extensive testing and all that). And the notion of what people expect out of an OS (and software in general) has greatly changed too. So programming/development techniques/methods and all that have also evolved a lot over the years. Things like using object-oriented programming (to "encapsulate" levels of complexity, by making into several simpler layers), and programming in higher level languages and such (faster to develop, still runs great on commodity hardware, costs less to develop & maintain, etc). And increasingly, more time/money is spent on things like testing & QA, and only optimizing the parts where it really counts (profile the app, and optimize the parts that actually need it), and that's basically market-driven.

Those people who never cease to complain about bloat can just get together and start writing their own OS from scratch 100% written in hand-optimized assembly as far as I'm concerned (right, they don't because it's nearly impossible, but they sure like holding others to different standards). Or then software makers could deliver what those people want, but writing everything like that would take like 100x longer to develop (a new version of Windows every 15 years anyone?), so cost 100x more to make (probably MUCH more than that, considering the added complexity, the increase in lines of code, bugs to squash, and everything to test), and in the end, no one would be willing to pay the price (people already complain Windows costs too much heh).

When you're Microsoft, you just can't win:
-you add new features, they say bloat! you don't, and they say there's no reason to upgrade
-you change things, people complain about change. you don't, and people complain it's stale
-you make things better, people complain about change and having to learn, you don't, and they complain things are still broken
-you bundle a media player and you get sued for billions by the EU, and if you didn't, you'd be the only modern OS that doesn't ship with one
-you make the GUI prettier and people will say it's only a new skin on the same old OS, and if you upgrade the kernel then they won't notice any of the changes because they can't see them
...
No matter what they do, there's always going to be people complaining. Mind you, there's still a LOT of work that needs to be done about Windows and things that suck about it.

Windows Vista should say on the box "New SMB 2.0 protocol - Transfer files upto 10X faster over IPv6" and "IO completion ports, and IO Canecellation functionality", "better memory management" and "Fairer thread Execution on cpu's thanks to Cpu time cycle counters"....ect;
Microsoft really should let the end users know what they are buying and they *might* appreciate it more than just saying (as someone mentioned) "Its a new skin on the same OS".

I think they should too, but then 99% of end users would just say "I have no idea WTF any of this technical stuff means". And most of the people that understand how it works in the first place are already aware of some of the kernel changes. Again, I guess they just can't win.

I said before I won't bite into these discussions, but I really REALLY couldn't stand it. And seeing that the discussion is already developed... so, in no particular order, some of my general gripes with Vista:

1. "Hardware geting cheaper"... so we should use it to serve Microsoft's purposes? Why shouldn't WE use it? Is it an officially mandated tax?

1a. If the most popular CPU at the time of XP's birth was XXX MHz, and when Vista came out it was XXX times 5 MHz (for the sake of argument, let's approximate it's a linear function and just add up the cores), HDDs are 5 times bigger, RAM is 5 times bigger, GPUs are 5 times stronger... Shouldn't be Vista 5X faster than XP? Since I see most agree that it's "just as good as" in the best case, where did all that resources go to? For that kind of power, it should bring a mind-reading interface to the table, not some stupid skin. Because it costs MONEY, what is the VALUE it brings me for my money? (thanks God it's not 5 times more expensive - and that might just show that even Microsoft knows it's not 5 times better ). What I don't understand is why there are 50X more fanboys that persuade others how great Vista is.

1b. Let's say it has more features than XP. What is the USEFULNESS of these features? Has anybody requested them? Just one example, mentioned before, Microsoft invents SMB2 with horrendeous restrictions and that's a feature?! I for one haven't seen anyone bragging how faster his network is with Vista, just the opposite. Most often seen? "I can't connect to Vista". They broke the old that worked and bring the new with dubious value?

1c. I have asked before, I repeat it again: any technical proof (measurements) of how improved is memory management / threading on Vista? Compared to XP? On same hardware?

2. "Easier development with bloated complers"... I have no pity for developers (and that includes Microsoft). Maybe because I ain't one. They should earn their (big) $$$. Why is efficiency ('green') highly valued in hardware, but not in software? My favorite line is: ".Net is for lazy programmers". Microsoft saw there are millions of wannabe programmers and imposed bloat on all of us.

3. "Apple does it, Linux does it, Microsoft has done it before"... this is no excuse. Like everyting in life, if we don't strive to be better, we will eventually return to the stone age.

3a. "When XP came out, you (meaning me and others like me) used the same arguments. You are a a hipocrit..." No I'm not. I still stand by these words and hate those 'features' of XP just as much... Just I've learned to bypass some of them and live with others. Maybe it will take me time to adopt Vista when I'm sure I can manage it... I guess by that time you'll enter your credit card number as reg info in Windows 8...

4. "Progress"... is it? If we leave third-party applications aside, with every new Windows version you can do less (more restrictions). Especially WITH Windows (self-healing in a bad way; obfuscation/encryption; unnecessary complications). Why are nLite/vLite so popular?

5. Even with new skins, do they need to switch them on (make them almost mandatory) in EVERY new version of Windows? Just make a new skin and make it optional! Sell it separately if you want! The number of tech support calls would drop to near zero... (or that's what they DON'T want? So they can sell more training certificates?) Or the skins ARE the new Windows versions?

6. Phoning home... I'll say no more.

I could easily go to no. 99 and back, but I don't have that much time. Bye.

GL

I dunno about you, but I'm sure making use of my new hardware.


Perhaps you meant the same OS be 5x faster on 5x faster hardware. And for the most part, it is the case. That new 5x faster CPU plays 1080p H.264 video just great and all that. Perhaps what you really were thinking is 5x more responsive. But hardware specs vs responsiveness isn't linear or anything (it's a lot more complicated than that).


What? If you're sitting there doing nothing? The box is idle regardless. How much more idle should it be? You should have plenty of them left for use by your apps.


It does bring a LOT of new features. Just because you don't see them, or don't know they're there doesn't mean they aren't there.


There you go. You want something cheap like most people.


By that same logic, Linux and BSD are worth nothing. Price alone means nothing. Everybody with more than 2 brain cells knows software isn't priced like that. Every edition has a specific pricing, and it's all calculated by bean counters to maximize profit (low profit * high volume + medium profit * medium volume + high profit * low volume, to give the maximum total $$$).


So anyone who actually sees and understands the benefits of [insert random software] is automatically a fanboy eh? News for you: there's always been a lot of people welcoming the changes, new features and all that instead of living in the past and resisting change, be it an OS or anything else. Calling people "Vista fanboys" makes as much sense as calling people who upgraded to utorrent 1.8 (for they wanted Teredo or IPv6 support or any other feature) "utorrent 1.8 fanboys" (oh-my-god, you're using the latest version! you fanboys!)


It has more features for sure, that's a fact. Different features are of varying usefulness to different people, like it's been the case for any new version of any new software ever. For all I know, maybe no new feature is useful to you in any software past what a 1977 vintage Apple II provides (a basic GUI an a way to start apps). And yes, people are requesting those things.


Horrendeous restrictions like what exactly? It's a vast improvement. Even the wikipedia page you linked to talks about some of them.


There's a lot of whitepapers and such about this stuff. Go read them, then you'll understand how it works, why certain design decisions were made, etc. And in practice, apps are very responsive too. Plus, some of the stuff is just plain obvious (like not paging half of everything to disk for no reason -- free RAM is wasted RAM).


And it clearly shows from your lack of fundamental understanding of the software development business. Go ahead, write yourself a trivial app in some low-level language, you'll start to see the light. It's 100% NOT about lazyness (that bit about .NET is not only troll-ish but 100% wrong). You want someone to make you an app in C++ instead of C#? No problem, but it'll take like 4x the lines of code, 10x as long to develop, twice as long to squash the bugs (both in developer time and time you're using the app), hence the price will be about 10x higher (and new versions with the new features you want will be out every 4 years instead of every 6 months). Oh yeah, who was saying a few lines above that they wanted cheap software again? (like, "thanks god it's not 5x the price!") You'd rather pay thousands more for software, or finally having to upgrade past 256MB of RAM? Yeah, I thought so too! 2GB of RAM is $30, whereas you can pay like $150/hour for a consultant writing code (add LOTS of such hours, plus a LOT of QA/testing time and all that). In the end, the software does its job great (you can actually spend time adding new & useful features to solve the problem at hand instead of working on low-level stuff), and runs on commodity hardware, and is inexpensive (a big concern for anyone who'd buy your apps). Besides, you bash .NET and call people who use it "wannabe programmers imposing bloat on us", yet you praise nlite and vlite (oh, sweet irony!)

Saying .NET developers are wannabe programmers that need to work hard for their job, is EXACTLY like calling a carpenter who uses power tools lazy, wannabe carpenters who need to earn their wages by cutting every piece of wood with a plain old manual saw, not using nail guns, etc. Both are just tools that let you get the job done quicker, without wasting time on stuff that doesn't really matter, and in the end, costing less for the same end result. Yes, people even have to complete projects on time and budget nowadays! Complex concept, I know.


Yes, because it's hard to right click, picking the theme tab, picking one and hitting apply. God forbid they enable pretty eye candy features out of the box and that the 1% that don't want it have to click like 5 times to disable it. Besides, I'd say probably less than 1% of tech calls are related to "skins". Seriously, I've never seen a trouble call or such placed for that, ever.

First - let me start off by saying you are as right about your opinions as I am about mine, and these are just that. However, since I'm now a Vista fanboi, I'll take my place:

What exactly do you want to "use" the hardware for? I personally prefer the OS to *cache the hell out of anything and everything I use into RAM*, and *utilize the hell out of the processor*. Why? Because it makes the apps and the OS faster, and I paid for the hardware. No point in not using it - and I personally prefer Vista's way of handling it.

Apparently you've never written new features onto existing code. Microsoft is *not* in the business of writing the smallest OS (aka the linux or BSD design) nor are they interested in leaving a small hard drive footprint (although, again, ~8% is where Microsoft has always been, right around what Apple and most laden linux distributions weigh in at). Microsoft's design is about features, providing the broadest support for the most hardware and applications (thus the WinSXS cache, for instance), and backwards compatibility (hence things like WOW64). Again, *I* prefer features over writing the absolute smallest code. It costs lots of money to write hundreds of millions of lines of code, and money is FAR better spent on this scale writing in features rather than making it small and as fast as it can possibly be. When the average consumer buys a machine and gets an OS, is that consumer looking for features, or will they care about having every binary on the box under 4K and running in 3bytes of RAM? for 99.99% of the human population, it's the former, and Microsoft knows this and caters to their wallets.

Eventually you have to force people off of netbios and onto network stacks that weren't last updated in 1996 (SMB 1.0). Netbios doesn't scale, and SMB 1.0 just wasn't designed for the realites of such large file sizes and network speeds we see today, hence SMB 2.0. And no, it's not trivial to backport it, so it ultimately (again, money versus return when writing code) stays a Vista / Server 2008 and v.next feature moving forward. Yes, Vista can be a pain on netbios networks, but at some point you have to pull people into the 21st century, just like when x86 finally dies and we can all live on x64 - someone, somewhere, will complain about it. And yes, when using SMB 2.0 from client to server, it is MUCH faster and MUCH more scalable than SMB 1.0 is/was. Eventually, you can't cater backwards-compatibility to everyone. You make the cut, deal with the wound, and move on.

It's been documented in many places (especially considering Vista actually *understands* the difference between a physical and a logical processor, and can schedule accordingly, for an example; 2000 didn't understand proc differences at all, and XP only really understood hyperthreading at a VERY basic level). Also, some of the major tech rags did comparisons and found Vista and XP to run fairly the same or Vista slightly faster in synthetic benchmarks, which also improved with Vista SP1. Again, don't expect a new OS to be "5x faster" just because the hardware is newer. I'd say with all the features (or bloat, depending on how you see it) and the fact that Vista is doing more "under the covers" during your day-to-day operations, that's quite good.

And that explains your point of view on a lot of these. If you expect every for-profit company to cater to the (vocal) 1% versus focusing on adding the features most people will want to use, they'll all go out of business.

You complain about features bringing bloat, but then you state that if we don't improve (I read this as add useful, functional features) then we'll go back to the stone age. Bipolar much? If you mean better by meaning removing features to increase speed, go buy a VAX.

If the vitriol wasn't so thick on the anti-Microsoft syrup you pour, I'd take stock of your complaints. You just hate Microsoft - admit it.

It's popular because people have control issues. How many people do you know who know about vLite or nLite - probably a lot, right? How many people in the general populace know about it? It's not a lot - probably less than 1% of the computing population that uses Windows (XP, Vista, whatever). And as to "doing less", that's just absurd - you speak of DRM, I know the undertones when I see them. If you don't like DRM, don't use Windows native formats (and you have a choice NOT to use DRM - I fail to see where Windows DRM affects you at all). If you can prove how DRM will impact negatively your Vista experience, with actual facts or proof, I'll listen. Until then you're just spouting FUD.

The market in general *loves* the way the Mac looks, *loves* Compiz, and from what I can assume, *loves* eye candy. Why would Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) ship an OS with the "classic" look (2000 for Microsoft, OS 9.x for Apple)? Seriously? That makes no sense.

Activation is here to stay. It doesn't keep out the hardcore pirates (never will), but the low-hanging fruit (still tens of millions of users) will no longer be able to pirate Vista - they'll either have to actually buy a license, or use something else. That's Microsoft's perogative, and since theft is technically a crime the world over, I see nothing wrong with it.

Part 1/2



To both points: as number 5 seems about right, is it true or not that Vista has 5X more services than XP (including drivers)? Just that alone is 5X code. How can you be sure that that code is working for you (or any individual user; not in the sense it's phoning home - just pure bloat)? You say all users use all features of Vista? I'm not saying XP is a saint either, but it's manageable. With Vista you just can't turn off some stuff.



5X faster booting (although I don't value this treat at all personally), 5X app launch, 5X file copy (OK, if it's the same hardware, at least just as fast, but not many times slower as seen in the famous bug; or - disregard the bug - they could at least invent some improvements/tricks to make it faster - but not SLOWER - as in calculating the time needed when they could just get do it), and yeah, why not get more fps in media playback/games? New algorithms, GPU offloading... There is something of that in Vista, but, again, it is annihilated with the bloat.

Responsiveness - I agree it's not linear, but if something is faster, it's faster - you can feel it. Again, compare it on the same hardware with XP. Calculate the toll of the new features: Is it two times faster? Best I've seen on the net, 'just as' or 20 % faster. Does it get my work done twice as fast? No - about the same. Why should I replace XP again?

And when I say resources, I mean combined RAM + HDD + CPU time.

So, cost vs. benefit:

Cost: Twice as expensive (let's say), 5X more computer resources usage, 5X more restrictions (DRM, phone home, difficult connectivity with other platforms, UAC, incompatibilites with older programs - I know, what were those authors thinking when they wrote programs that write to HKLM or God forbid %programfiles% in the time everyone did - no, that are microsoft's places now)...

vs.

Benefits: 2X faster (let's say, although it isn't), 2X easier to use (only for new users, those who have used previous versions of Windows have to learn from start - can you find any control panel in one try, "where's my run box, dude?"... those things you call 'complaints it isn't XP'), 5X greater security (I'll give it that, although it's implemented in all the wrong ways - through obscurity and UACnoying the user; and it still isn't proven it's THAT much more secure).



OK if you say so.



I want my money's worth, like most people do.

Part 2/2



Yeah, but YOU (not you personally) always say that Microsoft operates on free market principles and has to make up for their costs... what about OUR (user's) costs? Or are we just a milking cow? It's forgiven to Microsoft, but not allowed to the users? If I can't implement my personal WGA to allow/disallow Microsoft access to my computer, If I can't write my EULA as the second side in the contract (to choose my terms), If Microsoft can disable my Windows if it feels like (not saying that they have done that, but they CAN)... Can't I ask something tangible for my money?



uTorrent doesn't need persuading, people choose it themselves (among hundreds other similar programs). Vista is as good as shoved into our throats, coming with most of new PCs.

And funny you should mention Teredo of all things.
(I didn't mention Microsoft breaking standards before because I assumed it's common knowledge).



If I give you that, but again, cost vs. benefit.



"SMB2 brings two substantial benefits to"... who?



Please show me one, if possible from independent source; but any will do.

Full RAM is wasted RAM:

1. You have to fill it with something;
1a. When the situation changes (and it changes A LOT in one second if there is ANY work done) you have to empty it, calculate what you'll do next and refill it;
1b. Repeat forever.

vs:

1. Wait for some program/subsystem to ask for it.

Which of these two is wasteful?



As I said, I ain't one, so can't comment on the techy stuff. I was just wondering how people got by before .net... There still were beautiful aplications. Is there any (worthy) game written in .net? It's OK for programmers to install 500 G of stuff if they want/need to, just don't shove it into every installation.

From what I heard, .net was born because Microsoft wanted to kill Java. Just a rumour, don't mind me. I know nothing.



As much as (you state that) I have opposing claims, so have you. Should the new OS work or should it have all the new stuff turned on by default? To return to your first quote again (and I can't have any more quote boxes in this post so I'm pasting it plainly:

- where did all that resources go to

- What? If you're sitting there doing nothing? The box is idle regardless. How much more idle should it be? You should have plenty of them left for use by your apps.

vs.

filling your ram

etc. etc.

GL

Haven't counted, but it's certainly not 5x. Besides, I fail to see the real relevance of that particular metric. You could have one single service use up more resources than 50 others combined -- the total amount means very little, and it ain't 5x as many regardless. Also, what do drivers even have to do with this? You seem to think coming with more drivers is somehow a bad thing.


I've never seen anyone say that. But a lot of people use a lot of the new features. Again, I fail to see the point here.


Like what? I have yet to encounter such a thing. It's really no different than previous versions. You can still disable services you don't want and all that just like before.


Except it isn't twice as expensive, it doesn't use 5x more resources, doesn't have 5X more restrictions, etc. To quote cluberti: "you're just spouting FUD".

And as far as compatibility goes, just go peek at the "vista software incompatibility" thread. Yep, there's almost nothing on the list (feel free to add some to the list). You're coming off as one of those FUDsters who yap about Vista compatibility without knowing the first thing about it (simply because they never actually tried it). Very, very few stuff doesn't work with it.


Yes, I completely agree there. People need to learn Windows from scratch now, double clicking and all that. And it sure takes a rocket scientist to find the Control Panel and the Run box in this very complicated menu:

$20 goes to the first person who can spot them first (not). Nevermind to find the control panel if you were too lazy or can't see what's right in your face, hit the start button on your keyboard, then start typing "control" (for control panel), and by the time you typed the 3rd letter or so, it'll have found it (right at the top of the list, just hit enter and it'll open)


So if it's expensive, then you don't "get your money's worth", and if it isn't 5x more expensive then "it's certainly isn't 5x better". So if it's expensive, it sucks, and if it isn't, it still sucks. Like they stand a chance winning at that game.


Your costs are whatever hardware is required to run the modern OS of your choice (which is really cheap nowadays), plus the price of the OS. The only thing that's changed here, is that a basic PC isn't $2000+ anymore (plenty of them below $500). Are we a milking cow? Well, we're in a capitalist society, and MS is there to make money for their shareholders. Perhaps you might want to change how the economy works?


If you don't like the licensing terms, then feel free not to use Windows. There's Macs (lots of people are perfectly happy with those), Linux, BSD and all that. Or you can stick to DOS 6.22 for forever -- their last OS to not have serial numbers, activation, WGA, DRM or any of that (well, it did have some "obfuscated" things like you were referring to before, and undocumented stuff), because that's not about to change anytime soon.


Yes, and Bill Gates himself held a gun to my head saying "install Vista or else!"


I talked about two? It brings a lot of benefits to most people (it might be more noticeable to them in the long run though). Read cluberti's points for a good summary.


JFGI. Plus, see cluberti's points.


Except that it's not the case at all. You don't have to "empty" RAM at all. It's not like buckets filled with water... No "calculations" either.


Very easy question: letting it sit there doing nothing, while it could be put to good use. While the computer is doing nothing, if it can pre-fill it with the apps & data I'm likely to load next, to make them load faster, then YES! By all means do it. There is NO advantage to let it sit there unused.

Ok, but I don't want that. Can I turn it off please? Oh well... I must resort to tweaks and there are still some things that can't be turned off.

As much as I'm not a programmer, I'm with computers 20+ years and I know that more code executed is always worse then less (for the same assumed task). More chances for bugs, more attack vectors for malware, more electricity spent.

Why should it use 100% CPU/RAM if (let's say during one power on/off cycle) all I do is write a text in notepad?



Again, all this care about Microsoft... OK, you are an exception since I think I read you work there, but in general - why should the client care about the efficiency of the vendor (and in what part of the production process should he spend his money)? That's their problem, not mine. And if the most efficient design doesn't win, something is wrong with the market.



Actually, this is the first time I fully agree. Netbios was worse (and I didn't bring up SMB2 first), but it's sad really - to replace something worst with something non-standard (as far as I can see).



Any links, please? I didn't ask for links because I thought there weren't any, but because I searched and couldn't find any (at least slightly) technical; only advertising. I really want to see them and try to decide for myself.



I don't expect anything from any company. I expect to get useful features for my money. If anything, I have the impression that in this forum far more vocal are those on 'your' side of the bridge.



You read right. There are features and there are useful features. There is bloat and there's useless bloat. I thought I didn't have to explain myself from start every time. I value efficency and choice. I think that if they decrease, we will end up in stone age (or somewhere worse). Just my opinion, doesn't have to be true.


May I admit I hate monopolies?



Users have control issues and Microsoft doesn't? In which direction does the control shift every time?

I don't understand what you mean by undertones, but, as *everything* in my posts in this tread, I try to abstract and speak out of principle. I didn't mean DRM as in Windows Media (although it is 'suggested' onto the user in oh so many places) but about that Newzealander's paper (and yes I have read all the rebuttals and they didn't convince me - 1. Microsoft has chosen not to push the kill switch yet; 2. They had the power to stand up to Hollywood studios that forced it to make HDCP mandatory (or so the fairy tale goes), but did nada; 3. Maybe I'm stupid, but for the life of me can't see what benefit does the PVP/PUMA bring to the USER.) I tried to summarize my view as short as possible. NOW can I be accused of spreading FUD, but let's just ask Google about it.



You are completely right, but again, seen from Microsoft's perspective.



Correct, but shouldn't they give discount for the inconvenience? Instead, they are trying to make people love it.
Kidding, but I hope you see my point.

GL

I'll try to shorten it...


Drivers running as services; I meant 5x more code; 5x more code running all the time is always a bad thing.


Efficiency, efficency, efficiency! (And you can quote me on that. Why couldn't ALL services (and yes in XP too) be startable on demand? Oh wait, it means more work and less pay for Microsoft programmers....


Just ask any vLite user...



Is it the same price? Is it twice as cheap? (all right, I don't know how can this be measured exactly, but my point was - let's say it's the same price and XP is available now - why should I chose it over XP? There are SOME goodies it brings, but there is also a huge penalty - and IMO it FAR outweighs the goodness).

Incompatibilty - you are right, I never bought/installed/used Vista on my computers - it's just not worth it. But I used it a lot at friends' (when they have a problem and call me over to solve it). I did that, thank you. There were plenty of problems with programs older than Vista, but, again, I haven't installed anything - just fooled around trying to get out of there as soon as possible, so my mind would not suffer too much harm.


Again, what was the *technical* reason for reshuffling? Add the new feature, don't take out the old one. And don't move it unless it's absolutely necessary. Or it was the result of usability testing (I would say phoning home, but that's just me) conducted on secretaries about to be retired (since they are: 1. only ones that don't know how to turn that feature off or even that it exists; 2. having problems hitting the right place with mouse).

I meant to say: find a particular control panel applet in one try. Add new, don't take out old.


Life sucks for the vendors. Just see how many different vendors of the same product are there (any product). And some go down... But we love this one... So life sucks for us now.

No, I want to have a choice so MS would fight for me, instead treat me like their b*tch.



And I won't (besides XP that I already have). I hope I'm allowed to stay here to discuss it.


Always there are exceptions. I can't say what were your reasons, but most people I know don't have much choice (Microsoft-hardware vendors deals).

No, the article I quoted talks about that. I tried to save time/space not to quote the text. Just search it in the article. My example was (might even be a bad one, but I got the impression, like most things Microsoft, that there are ulterior motives).

(About multicore improvements) I didn't dismiss them, I just wanted to see any semi-technical explanation. I'm talking not about TechARP stuff (random choice, no offence) but Mark Russinovich style (if possible).

So it's psyshic? It knows all ahead of time? Why do we even bother with faster cpus? /sarcasm

Sorry, that's how it looks like.



Again, out of principle, it can't possibly know the future. Let's say I take my laptop on a business trip. For a week I watch movies, fool around on the net, play games, and when I'm about to make that career-breaking presentation, it will know what I'm about to do and be ready for that?! (Yeah, overly simplified and brought to the extreme fairy tale, but that's true of every explanation of prefetching I've heard... "When the time comes, it'll know", "Just give it some time"... Yeah right).

GL

As a general reply, and to those who replied:

The reason for my posts was because for a long time I see some things taken for granted and just repeated over and over. IMO they are not true and will not become true if they are repeated more times.

I hope I'm entitled to my opinion.

If it is seen as "I hate Microsoft at any cost", so be it, but I hope 'the other side' admits there are flaws/bias in their arguments too.

There are already many Microsoft-bashing sites out there that have much stronger (technical, specific) arguments than I have (not to mention the law suits), but as I repeated over, my goal was not to blindly attack Microsoft (or Vista), but to give a pull back to the rope 'the other side' has pulled too far over to their side. To restore some common sense (IMO), if you want.

GL

Bleh, I'll never be as good technically or pedagogically as Mark Russinovich, but let me have a stab at this misconception:
A mix of terminology there - drivers run in kernel mode, services run in user mode.
"Code" does not execute - threads do - and that is not semantics, there is a vast difference between processes using virtual memory by their presence/size and the number of threads in the READY state.

The working set of a process is that subset of its virtual size which is actually using physical memory - that is a more useful measurement of load on system resources.
A high number of threads in the READY state at any given time would indicate a bottleneck with the processor(s) - but system initialization is where there will be a lot of competition for all kinds of system resources so is not a good yardstick for comparison.

The number of entries in the process list does not give any indication of "bloat" or work the system actually has queued.
e.g. "There are more svchost.exe process in Vista than in XP, slowing down or bloating my system!"
Vista has added more features