News Acer takes a swing at Vista

Lenovo/IBM Cheesecake

Vista still has windows... Nothing much else in XP is worth keeping in a "new" operating system.

As a systems engineer support several businesses, I can see the reasons for vista. I can also see the big changes, graphics, drivers, security, etc. From a technical point of view, the operating system is extremely good. But it could have been much much better.

e.g. Graphically, has anyone used an OS-X system lately?
e.g. Speed, it shouldn't be slower than XP, but it is - I expect this to improve.
e.g. Drivers, need a lot more work...

And there was this sudden push for everyone to ship Vista machines when no-one was ready. Now most manufacturers are offering downgrade rights for the Vista machines.

Business is certainly not ready for Vista. There is no reason. All the big apps tend to be XP only or limited Vista support. Security is largely fine in XP SP2. It's on all the machines currently and all the users are familiar with it.

Pros:
Security
Management
Experience

Cons:
Retraining
Cost
Speed
Compatibility

Users do tend to self learn well, but if only a handful of machines are changed then supporting them all becomes time consuming handling the easy questions they have to ask because Microsoft have changed silly little things.

Vista will penetrate the market, but not for another 3 - 5 years. Once everything works well and the OS has been fully explored.

For now, it's just my work machine and one other laptop running Vista.

 

That's why I don't say "M$" - I say Macro$loth /me runs & hides





Ok, I hardly ever say that (unless they do something really stupid - which still happens ) nor do I call thier OS WeenieDOS (anymore).

 

vista doesn't allow 4gb ram - well vista32bit doesn't, and vista64bit is the same as XP64bit

Yeah but its like saying a BMW8 series is new because it has a different engine under the bonnet, a new spoiler, and a couple of extra bits in the cockpit

And from what ive seen so far, 64bit support in vista is just as pitiful as XP

 

lack of 64-bit support (especially in the way of drivers) is barely Microsoft's (MoneySoft ) fault, seeing as they don't write the drivers (except for a couple of their own products). 64-bit means a new framework, and the 32-bit drivers can't be copy+pasted over. if your going to blame anyone for the lack of 64-bit drivers, turn to the hardware manufacturers and start hounding on them (some of them are quite good however and have 64-bit support for almost their complete catalogue)

once again going back to the car analogy, vista is the next model in the series. the seats and interior are nicer, the sound system is slightly better, there's more footroom and luggage space, there's more and better safety features and they've completely reworked the engine and the rest of the mechanics. some will run out and trade in for the new model straight away, while others will probably wait until the next in the series is about to come out meaning they can get the current model for much cheaper, along with some of the slight revisions made along the way (security updates and service packs)

 

technically, there is less footroom (less ram available), the safety features haven't changed (except a message, do you really want to swerve to avoid that car ?)

And the car interfaces with your mobile phone and dials up the police every minuite to report the speed you have been doing, and where you are

 

completemadness, I don't mean to be rude about this, but I can't possibly fathom where you're getting your information. Aside from the "less ram available" (which I go back to, WHY ARE WE ALL BUYING 2-4GB NOW IF WE CAN'T USE IT?!), none of these are really true. Just because the VISIBLE safety feature is a pop-up message does not mean the entire kernel methods have been left the same (which is why Symantec had so many problems). And as for the phone home, you're WAY overinflating the amount of information and frequency. I understand you're extending a car analogy, but you're more turning this into an utter hyperbole.

It's important in any conversation to be dealing with the facts, lest you become quickly a fanboy or anti-fanboy. I'm not feeling like you're even posing logical or factual argument anymore - just running with the "herd" of bloggers who know very little about what's actually inside their computer but opine on it anyway. I understand that reading all of these opinions on it may have distorted the view and certainly given you enough outside ideas to consider it 'researched,' but I think you should consider the source.

Anyone familiar with OS technologies or who has programmed for Vista at a driver or kernel level or who has released hardware for Vista has acknowledged that the entire way it functions is changed. And believe me, if it's one thing that working for Bit has given me, it is a lot of people in this industry that I have the privilege to talk to that actually work with this stuff.

 

well i do have a couple of facts (and OK i may have distorted what Ive said a little)

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3044

hell even you have said about the vista phone home stuff
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/07/03/built-in_vista_probing_tools_exposed/1

and as for the re-writing driver thing, its just another thing that makes me think, if you have to redo everything for vista anyway, why not just it for 64bit - 2 versions just causes far more problems

as for the 2-4gb ram (although 3.2gb is the max in 32bit ?) - if you launch quake 4 on max settings, it will happily eat about 1.8gb ram for breakfast (possibly more)
I can understand in Linux where the ram is used for caches and stuff, but in windows, its actually being used, its not just a temporary store
And windows still doesn't utilise all the ram available for caches and stuff, which Linux has been able to do for ages

 

But yet, none of this accounts for your argument. You say Vista is XP only prettier, yet the anandtech article you cite goes on to talk about the huge disparity in WDDM vs. old driver methods. Does Vista use more memory? Yes. Which brings ME back to...why not?!

Yes Vista is young and no it does not show the optimisations of a now almost 6 year old Windows XP. And yes, it does indeed take up more memory. With nothing else going on and using a 7-series GPU, it takes a whopping ~100MB more than XP did in the same position. Considering that when XP launched, most computers had 128MB of RAM and when Vista launched most computers had 512MB-1GB, I'd say doubling isn't really that unrealistic.

And as you can see by the anandtech article, at least some of that is due to drivers using Vista's memory addressing in an odd way. Which also brings me back to how companies were sleeping while Vista was made, then came up with some half cracked "Oh, we just got this!" excuse. If you'll remember, I wrote a column about that in regard to NVidia specifically - which ruffled a lot of feathers. As the drivers have improved (slowly) overall memory usage has gone down...so with this in mind, where do you think the finger should point?

What I'm not seeing is where all this vitriol that it is a resource hog and just does things prettier than XP is coming from. Which was my whole point against your argument - yes, it takes up more but the average computer has way more to give. And no, it is absolutely not just a nicely skinned XP. The worst we can say about it right now is that it phones home on occasion, and even that is more sensational than actually dangerous.

 

i don't know where you get ~100MB from - it seems to be about the lowest figure they ever recorded

even the conclusion says

If you can actually tell 1 feature about Vista that really makes it worth buying over XP i will drop it (apart from DX10 and the nice search in the start menu)

Also MS now have the limited number of activations, which is complete tosh - if i payed for the rights to a copy of vista, it should be usable as long as i have the right to a copy, limiting users to 10 computers is bogus
On top of that if you pay for an upgrade from XP, you cant install freshly, and will end up with all the junk that happens with upgrading(well without jumping through loads of hoops, which Microsoft will probably fix in the next Service pack anyway)

Yes there are nice things MS have done in vista, i will admit that, but all the crap they are now putting users through, its just not right

 

reminds me of the other thing that Vista has actually done very well...memory virtualisation. XP's was very poor, and if you had upwards of 1 or 2GB in RAM it was sometimes a better performer with no pagefile set. Vista, its a very different story (though this might largely be because XP was built during the 128MB RAM era, like Brett said)

 

It won't, as they allow you to upgrade from one edition to an other.
Example: If you have Home Basic and want to upgrade to Ultimate, you can.

 

You can turn that off if you want.

 

You've already mentioned the Search bar - for me, that makes up a pretty large component of Vista: usability. The interface and the way it's used is much more refined and works far better in Vista than it does in XP.

I moved to Vista purely for the sake of it - Vista didn't offer anything I immediately needed, I just wanted to do it. Aside from an audio problem I'm having (that isn't even Vista's fault directly), I'm very happy with it. It looks fantastic, it works very well, it's stable, and it's very quick (potentially quicker than XP in some aspects).

I didn't cling to Windows 98/Me when XP came out, and I'm not clinging to XP now that Vista is out either. I'm quite happy to move on (although I'll have still XP for sometime because I won't be upgrading my notebook).

 

the major downside of vista was and is the drivers.... but, thats something you cant really blame microsoft for....

the eye candy sure is useless, except for making the os require a high end pc..., but other than that, vista aint too bad.

 

As a self confessed Linux fan (RHCT) I am staying away from Vista for a long time. XP works for me and until I want to buy something that requires Vista, I won't be moving to it at all. My next upgrade will be to a quad core system with 4GB RAM, and I may even buy the Vista 64 license (Home Premium or Ultimate, I haven't yet decided) as an OEM product. But, and it's a big but, I won't install it until I have to.

As I said, until I have to get Vista, I'll be dual booting with XP and Linux (Fedora 7 at the mo). As an aside, does anyone know if Office 2000 works on Vista 64?

You see, that's the other problem; with having 4GB RAM (2x2GB OCZ sticks, hopefully) and hoping in the future to upgrade this to 8GB, I need a 64-bit OS. I have heard that 64-bit application support in Vista, especially games, sucks at the mo. So, until I can guarantee that my games (CoD:UO, CoD2 and Civ4) all work under Vista 64, I won't be moving that way at all. Under Linux, I won't have a problem. I foresee loads of problems in the future under Vista.

Sorry if I rambled, too many late nights lately (and not because of gaming either!)

Andy

 

well... 64 bit vista just means its 64 bit compatible, not that ms went and developed the whole thing new from ground up to actualy take advantage of 64 bit.

 

32-bit programs will happily run on 64-bit systems under "Windows on Windows64" (aka emulation)...fortunately, included with all 64-bit versions of Windows (it would be a bit like shooting themselves in the foot to not include it, wouldn't it?)

 

Actually, vista is 64-bit code. It IS redesigned from the ground up...hence needing two full versions. It's not quite the same as XP 64's idea. 32 bit code does run just fine on it, but it's not native. Someone with more programming knowledge would have to step in here as to what's done under the hood, as I will say that above knowing it IS proper 64 bit code, I'd be speaking above my knowledge on the subject (of 32 bit vs. 64 bit interoperability).

 

i thought all you really had to do was compile it with a 64bit compiler, but as you can (apparently) run 32bit apps in 64bit, its much easier for Dev's just to support a 32bit version

Drivers on the other hand, i don't think its just a case of a 64bit compiler (due to the interaction with the kernel and such)

 

Well for one the kernel is better protected in x64 edition (patchguard + requiring signed drivers).
And of course the x64 architecture is cleaned up from x86, so I assume that Vista takes advantage of extra registers and such.