So in general I'm pleased with how Vista is working on my laptop, but they keep doing stupid things with it. The latest round of patches/updates from a couple of days ago completely wiped out support for quite a few different logitech pointing devices. After looking online, so far the only fix is to roll back the updates, so I can either have a working mouse, or a more secure, updated machine. Grrr :x
SP1 broke compatibility with certain device drivers because they enforced rules that drivers were supposed to be programmed with initially (like UAC enforced user permissions). The third parties knew this WELL in advance. Get mad at Logitech, not Microsoft, for that one.
jonxp on
Every time you write parallel fifths, Bach kills a kitten.
3DS Friend Code: 2707-1614-5576 PAX Prime 2014 Buttoneering!
So in general I'm pleased with how Vista is working on my laptop, but they keep doing stupid things with it. The latest round of patches/updates from a couple of days ago completely wiped out support for quite a few different logitech pointing devices. After looking online, so far the only fix is to roll back the updates, so I can either have a working mouse, or a more secure, updated machine. Grrr :x
SP1 broke compatibility with certain device drivers because they enforced rules that drivers were supposed to be programmed with initially (like UAC enforced user permissions). The third parties knew this WELL in advance. Get mad at Logitech, not Microsoft, for that one.
Well, you can get a little mad at Microsoft for not starting this process a long time ago with XP. Or 2000. Or 98. Or 95. But only a little. Devs have had like two to four years now to get their shit together, and still haven't managed it.
So in general I'm pleased with how Vista is working on my laptop, but they keep doing stupid things with it. The latest round of patches/updates from a couple of days ago completely wiped out support for quite a few different logitech pointing devices. After looking online, so far the only fix is to roll back the updates, so I can either have a working mouse, or a more secure, updated machine. Grrr :x
SP1 broke compatibility with certain device drivers because they enforced rules that drivers were supposed to be programmed with initially (like UAC enforced user permissions). The third parties knew this WELL in advance. Get mad at Logitech, not Microsoft, for that one.
Well, you can get a little mad at Microsoft for not starting this process a long time ago with XP. Or 2000. Or 98. Or 95. But only a little. Devs have had like two to four years now to get their shit together, and still haven't managed it.
This is the same shit that happened with 98ME... there was a long-standing rule that you can't use the REAL mode on the processor but everyone was ignoring it and hacking the system anyway.
Microsoft finally released an OS that enforced it, which crashed as a result of these developers breaking rules... and ME was called a failure.
but it gave developers a wakeup call and since all future OSs would enforce the same thing they got their act together
FaceballMcDougal on
xbl/psn/steam: jabbertrack
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Superfetch doesn't use more RAM, it just makes sure it's ready for your usage patterns - if you need the RAM it drops it instantly. Aero doesn't either, as the whole point is it's processes offloaded to the GPU.
By my understanding, it's other tools, like the indexing, sidebar, and other services that slow it down. The drop in FPS is entirely due to the new, immature, outside-the-kernel driver model. Wouldn't surprise me if it far surpasses XP once Nvidia and ATI have five or six years to work on it.
There's so much utter bullshit out there about Vista. The internet is full of parrots.
The total and complete list of things they have changed would probably fill a book (which is to be expected after all this time has passed). But what is Vista, to me, to you, to Bob who doesn't know a kernel hook from a fishing hook? It can only be properly measured by how the human interface has changed. What has actually changed is virtually irrelevent. What seems to have changed could have been run on a 500Mhz Pentium 3 with 128MB of SDRAM and a Radeon 8500.
I'm not trying to justify anything, I am using Vista, I generally like it (at least compared to XP). I'm just saying that resource load of this OS is unjustifiable. I don't even believe there's much room for argument here.
This OS could be implemented, with full feature parity, with virtually the same requirements as XP (with the obvious exception of some form of 3D acceleration). Microsoft chose not to actually work on any serious optimizations, because of their implicit (possibly even explicit if you like conspiracies) agreement with hardware OEMs to push sales of new hardware. And because they botched it the first time around and were already a few years behind schedule.
I give Vista credit where credit is due (and it is due in a lot of areas), but Microsoft is still Microsoft. They're sort of inherently evil. Like zombies. or anything from the 80's.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
If your computer can reasonably be described as "new" (ie dual core, 2 gigs of DDR2, recent chipset) then there is little to no performance hit, in fact Vista seems to react smoother and more efficiently than XP on such machines. Oh big whoop, it uses up 500 megs of RAM idle, but that number drops to like 200 when necessary, also you have two fucking gigs and they cost like $40.
A 500MHz Pentium, are you shitting me? That can only barely run XP. I have a 466MHz Celeron with 192 megs of RAM and XP and it can't even handle Firefox, you have to close the fucking thing whenever the memory cache gets too big or else it will start endlessly paging data, hard drive thrashing around like an epileptic seizure. Or if you hit a page with Flash, Java, or even just a lot of JavaScript.
It's not Aero alone that causes the high system requirements. Once developers begin to take advantage of desktop compositing you'll see why Aero was a good idea. All the behind-the-scenes features that noticeably contribute to improve performance and responsiveness over XP cause high system requirements.
It's really quite simple. Computers are vastly more powerful than they were in 2001. Microsoft built vista with the intent of pushing today's computers farther than XP ever could. Multithreading, 64-bit support, DDR2, paging and caching are all accordingly improved. If you have an old computer, stick with XP. If not, it's worth it to upgrade to Vista.
I mean, sure, it's unreasonable but it's not ridiculous. If all you needed to run Vista was a 9-year-old P3 and one-eighth of one gigabyte of RAM, then it really would be XP with a paint job.
Azio on
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited April 2008
Celerons have approximately no cache whatsoever (iirc, many celerons of that era literally lacked L2 cache), and are not indicative of anything except what happens when you take all the cache away.
I didn't say anything about Aero, I'm not talking about Aero. Aero is just a theme. The window manager probably isn't the cause of the issue. I don't know, I hardly think anyone outside of microsoft really knows what elements of the OS are the worst offenders.
But Vista is absolutely unusable with a full gigabyte of RAM. I know, I've tried. The sucker hits swap so often running any sort of game or intense application that you have time to make a sandwich and learn Sanskrit.
Now I admit it runs just fine with 2GB of RAM, AND that RAM is cheap. But how many people do you know that know how to upgrade their own ram? Heck, 2GB is the limit of my motherboard. It literally will not accept any more RAM.
When you program, you have to take three things into consideration: the readability of the code, the time complexity of the algorithm (how my cpu cycles per iteration), and the space requirements of the algorithm (how much ram does it use? Are there memory leaks?). Nobody will ever see Microsoft's source code, and people probably wouldn't even notice a significant increase in processor requirements since we have more FLOPS than we can shake a stick at now.
But they completely flopped on the ram requirements. I know people who are, TO THIS DAY, running XP on 128MB of ram. Have you ever tried that? It's painful.
Dual Core and 2GB of DDR2 is beyond new, it's borderline bleeding edge. People like us are in the vast minority.
I feel that this issue is the primary reason Vista has had such abysmal adoption rates.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
Dual Core and 2GB of DDR2 is beyond new, it's borderline bleeding edge. People like us are in the vast minority.
Nonsense! You can buy a computer like that for less than $600 nowadays. Once Christmas hits and all the yuppies buy their kids new computers, everyone will be able to run Vista. Except poor people. But as I have outlined above Vista isn't exactly for them.
RAM is pretty much the easiest thing to upgrade, I know a guy who doesn't even know what Windows is, who successfully upgraded his RAM. Go into Best buy and what do you see? Giant ad banners screaming, "Computer slow? Buy our overpriced memory! And if you have any idea what Google is you'll shop around and find the same shit for half the price!"
Dual Core and 2GB of DDR2 is beyond new, it's borderline bleeding edge. People like us are in the vast minority.
Nonsense! You can buy a computer like that for less than $600 nowadays. Once Christmas hits and all the yuppies buy their kids new computers, everyone will be able to run Vista. Except poor people. But as I have outlined above Vista isn't exactly for them.
Also, RAM is pretty much the easiest thing to upgrade, I know a guy who doesn't even know what Windows is, who successfully upgraded his RAM. Go into Best buy and what do you see? Giant ad banners screaming, "Computer slow? Buy our overpriced memory! And if you have any idea what Google is you'll shop around and find the same shit for half the price!"
I just upgraded from Socket A and SDRAM 3 months ago. And I consider myself a computer enthusiast. A dirt poor computer enthusiast, but still.
But, yeh. It won't matter in a year or two. Heck, in four years we'll wonder how we ever lived with only 2GB of RAM.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
So basically Vista is for newer PCs. We've been over this.
Apple customers got used to this sort of thing a decade ago
OSX has been OSX since dinosaurs roamed the earth, I'm not sure I follow. Though I have never actually owned a Mac of my own. But I could have sworn it came out in the 90's.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
Dual Core and 2GB of DDR2 is beyond new, it's borderline bleeding edge. People like us are in the vast minority.
Nonsense! You can buy a computer like that for less than $600 nowadays. Once Christmas hits and all the yuppies buy their kids new computers, everyone will be able to run Vista. Except poor people. But as I have outlined above Vista isn't exactly for them.
Also, RAM is pretty much the easiest thing to upgrade, I know a guy who doesn't even know what Windows is, who successfully upgraded his RAM. Go into Best buy and what do you see? Giant ad banners screaming, "Computer slow? Buy our overpriced memory! And if you have any idea what Google is you'll shop around and find the same shit for half the price!"
I picked up a low-end pre-fab Dell with a fucking Dual Core (AMD Athlon X2) and 1GB of RAM for $400. Back in September. I then spent $25 or so getting a second gig for it.
It was a refurb. But still...hardly "borderline bleeding edge."
So basically Vista is for newer PCs. We've been over this.
Apple customers got used to this sort of thing a decade ago
OSX has been OSX since dinosaurs roamed the earth, I'm not sure I follow. Though I have never actually owned a Mac of my own. But I could have sworn it came out in the 90's.
I was a Mac-Head of olde... right there at Mac World every year, drooling over new hardware to run the newest Apple OS release... buying the math processor chip for my Quadra...
I'm just saying it's a pretty common practice for a software company, even one that makes OSes part-time, to get the most out of modern hardware. It's not something new, never was.
One year I took a laptop home from the show... 75mhz! The next year a new release came out and I couldn't even meet the minimum reqs.
I picked up a low-end pre-fab Dell with a fucking Dual Core (AMD Athlon X2) and 1GB of RAM for $400. Back in September. I then spent $25 or so getting a second gig for it.
It was a refurb. But still...hardly "borderline bleeding edge."
EDIT: And it runs Vista like a dream.
Hell, I'm running an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB DDR, and an nVidia Fx5200 and Vista runs significantly better than XP did on this machine.
I'm freakin' tired of hearing "1GB is not enough RAM for Vista olol!" The hell it's not. I can comfortably run everything I need to on my machine. This includes Visual Studio 2008, Firefox, etc etc. 1GB is not ideal, but Vista will run just fine on it. Of course... anecdotal FTW, but still. I've used 3 machines running 1GB of RAM w/ Vista on them and have not had a problem at all.
I'm actually really curious as to what it is that other people are running/doing that brings Vista to it's knees.
I picked up a low-end pre-fab Dell with a fucking Dual Core (AMD Athlon X2) and 1GB of RAM for $400. Back in September. I then spent $25 or so getting a second gig for it.
It was a refurb. But still...hardly "borderline bleeding edge."
EDIT: And it runs Vista like a dream.
Hell, I'm running an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB DDR, and an nVidia Fx5200 and Vista runs significantly better than XP did on this machine.
I'm freakin' tired of hearing "1GB is not enough RAM for Vista olol!" The hell it's not. I can comfortably run everything I need to on my machine. This includes Visual Studio 2008, Firefox, etc etc. 1GB is not ideal, but Vista will run just fine on it. Of course... anecdotal FTW, but still. I've used 3 machines running 1GB of RAM w/ Vista on them and have not had a problem at all.
I'm actually really curious as to what it is that other people are running/doing that brings Vista to it's knees.
When Superfetch and Readyboost are running, Vista (unfortunately) more aggressively swaps RAM out to disk when it sees it going idle to free up more RAM to preload in to. It goes off the (correct) assumption that most people's perception of speed on a computer are application startup times. While it will help with that, it is not a good thing for games. It leads to longer load times as assets are loaded into memory, not touched, swapped out from memory, and then loaded back when the loading time is "over" and the game is preparing to start. So while the game and libraries are already prefetched, and that part of the startup is fast, the aggressive swapping is not ideal.
Note: It doesn't happen while in game as much as it slows down the loading thereof, except in cases where a certain texture or model is not rendered for a long time (and therefore that memory stays untouched).
jonxp on
Every time you write parallel fifths, Bach kills a kitten.
3DS Friend Code: 2707-1614-5576 PAX Prime 2014 Buttoneering!
That's a good point, Monkey [edit: the customer perception/not caring about tech advances thing]. Can I call you Monkey?
I often see Vista as a technology test. The sacrificial lamb to public opinion to push the ecosystem forward. Considering, though, what's been done with Server 08 and the Server Core concept, it's interesting to think the benefits such would have with the desktop system.
And inherently evil? Slayer came from the 80's and...
Er... in interest of full disclosure, I both love Slayer and work for Microsoft. And there's a lot of us new folks who don't exactly see eye to eye with the old guard (as it were) and might have blown some whistles at certain points that may be a little more resonating these days. Particularly when coming from the current golden child of the NA customer service org (warranty warranty lol).
None of which has anything actual to do with how much I like Vista. I wasn't too sold until I got my hands on RTM and actually had to use it 'till it clicked. To the point where it's almost painful to use XP, now.
If you have enough money to purchase a copy of Vista to install on your computer, then you can probably afford two buy two gigs of ram for less than $40.
Fraz on
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
If you have enough money to purchase a copy of Vista to install on your computer, then you can probably afford two buy two gigs of ram for less than $40.
I believe you are missing something vital here.
Which, ironically, leads to a question. I'm downloading a legal, free, student copy of Vista Business. it's the only version available. However, I have, up to this point, been using Ultimate. What am I going to lose? From what I understand it's mostly crap like DVD authoring and games.
This will be, ironically, the first legal copy of windows I've run since my first computer, which came with ME.
Still think Microsoft owes me something for subjecting me to that... abomination.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
So, you can play games on it, just like you could with XP Professional.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
Business has full Aero support. Just none of the media functionality (and a reg edit can "unlock" the games).
What was so bad about ME? I never had the chance to be subjected to its legendary horror.
ME truly was a horror to work with. Incredibly unstable. Actually "had to be warmed up" on a friend's computer (Don't ask).
To date, it has been the worst version of Windows ever released.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
If you have enough money to purchase a copy of Vista to install on your computer, then you can probably afford two buy two gigs of ram for less than $40.
I believe you are missing something vital here.
Which, ironically, leads to a question. I'm downloading a legal, free, student copy of Vista Business. it's the only version available. However, I have, up to this point, been using Ultimate. What am I going to lose? From what I understand it's mostly crap like DVD authoring and games.
This will be, ironically, the first legal copy of windows I've run since my first computer, which came with ME.
Still think Microsoft owes me something for subjecting me to that... abomination.
You'll be losing Media Center and DVD maker, I think, but pretty much everything else will still be there. You'll have to reinstall though, you can't just downgrade it.
I think if you hold CTRL while closing an Explorer window it will remember the view settings for the folder it's on. Vista seems to pretty much randomly pick a view a lot of the time though.
I really really hope they fix it because Explorer would be the tits if it didn't behave like a drunken two-year-old.
I think it has something to do with how you enter a given folder.
If I just open up the Documents folder through the Start Menu, my icon view never changes. But if I use search to open up the Documents folder, it completely changes my view and grouping scheme only for that one moment. If I just close the Window, and open up the Documents folder using the Start menu like I usually do, my settings are still there intact.
It's almost like each different method that you use to approach a folder has it's own view setting.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
I think if you hold CTRL while closing an Explorer window it will remember the view settings for the folder it's on. Vista seems to pretty much randomly pick a view a lot of the time though.
I really really hope they fix it because Explorer would be the tits if it didn't behave like a drunken two-year-old.
I think it has something to do with how you enter a given folder.
If I just open up the Documents folder through the Start Menu, my icon view never changes. But if I use search to open up the Documents folder, it completely changes my view and grouping scheme only for that one moment. If I just close the Window, and open up the Documents folder using the Start menu like I usually do, my settings are still there intact.
It's almost like each different method that you use to approach a folder has it's own view setting.
Yeah I just got that .reg file that prevents explorer from trying to "auto-detect" the folder type, so basically all folders load in Details unless I change them. And if I change them, they stay.
But Vista is absolutely unusable with a full gigabyte of RAM.
Dual Core and 2GB of DDR2 is beyond new, it's borderline bleeding edge. People like us are in the vast minority.
That's rubbish, complete rubbish.
I used Vista on 1GB of RAM fine for months before I upgraded. Also, bleeding edge and the minority? That would've been true over a year ago -- go look at the computers Dell are selling and have been for quite some time.
Dual cores, quads, 2-4GB of RAM, 7600-8800GTs, etc. I know a ton of families who have Intel C2Ds with 2GB of RAM.
Azio, could I have a link to the .reg too. I'm sick of the random grouping/view Vista has started doing (It never used to..).
But Vista is absolutely unusable with a full gigabyte of RAM.
Dual Core and 2GB of DDR2 is beyond new, it's borderline bleeding edge. People like us are in the vast minority.
That's rubbish, complete rubbish.
I used Vista on 1GB of RAM fine for months before I upgraded. Also, bleeding edge and the minority? That would've been true over a year ago -- go look at the computers Dell are selling and have been for quite some time.
Dual cores, quads, 2-4GB of RAM, 7600-8800GTs, etc. I know a ton of families who have Intel C2Ds with 2GB of RAM.
Azio, could I have a link to the .reg too. I'm sick of the random grouping/view Vista has started doing (It never used to..).
That always bothered the crap out of me too about Explorer. I followed the directions here though, and Explorer behaves how I want it to now. Which is to default to "Detail" view unless I specify otherwise and then it'll remember whatever I tell it.
Note: I followed the directions under "METHOD TWO" and "DO RESET BY A DOWNLOAD". I downloaded the linked .reg file, applied it, and rebooted and all was well I think. Please inspect the .reg file yourself if you don't like applying settings to your registry without looking through them first.
Right now NCIX is selling AMD and Intel dual-cores with integrated video, a gig of DDR2 and a case with a power supply for less than $200. Add an $80 hard drive, another gig of RAM, and maybe a cheap videocard and you've got a machine that will make Vista tremble in its boots.
If I am currently running Vista 32 that came with my computer could I install a Vista 64 upgrade or would I still have to purchase the full version?
You can get the 64-bit version for the cost of the dvd it comes on, I think. And that applies to all versions of Vista, you just have to ask Microsoft.
Here's a possibly useful link!
Doomulon on
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Also, bleeding edge and the minority? That would've been true over a year ago -- go look at the computers Dell are selling and have been for quite some time.
How often do you think people buy new computers?
Let me tell you, it's not nearly as often as any person in this forum.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
If I am currently running Vista 32 that came with my computer could I install a Vista 64 upgrade or would I still have to purchase the full version?
You can get the 64-bit version for the cost of the dvd it comes on, I think. And that applies to all versions of Vista, you just have to ask Microsoft.
Here's a possibly useful link!
Or if you can find a copy laying around somewhere, you can just install off of that. It's perfectly legal, because you're using your own license key.
If I am currently running Vista 32 that came with my computer could I install a Vista 64 upgrade or would I still have to purchase the full version?
You can get the 64-bit version for the cost of the dvd it comes on, I think. And that applies to all versions of Vista, you just have to ask Microsoft.
Here's a possibly useful link!
If I am currently running Vista 32 that came with my computer could I install a Vista 64 upgrade or would I still have to purchase the full version?
Generally OEM products have the license right to run both, but you can only get alternate media if your OEM wants to supply it (or use someone else's).
The link above is only for Retail (boxed) versions. I haven't seen anyone with an OEM CoA try it, though.
If I am currently running Vista 32 that came with my computer could I install a Vista 64 upgrade or would I still have to purchase the full version?
Generally OEM products have the license right to run both, but you can only get alternate media if your OEM wants to supply it (or use someone else's).
The link above is only for Retail (boxed) versions. I haven't seen anyone with an OEM CoA try it, though.
If I am currently running Vista 32 that came with my computer could I install a Vista 64 upgrade or would I still have to purchase the full version?
Generally OEM products have the license right to run both, but you can only get alternate media if your OEM wants to supply it (or use someone else's).
The link above is only for Retail (boxed) versions. I haven't seen anyone with an OEM CoA try it, though.
You are correct, the OEM CD key did not work.
Do you have a "generic" (local, Newegg, etc...) or named OEM license (Dell, HP, etc...)?
If I am currently running Vista 32 that came with my computer could I install a Vista 64 upgrade or would I still have to purchase the full version?
Generally OEM products have the license right to run both, but you can only get alternate media if your OEM wants to supply it (or use someone else's).
The link above is only for Retail (boxed) versions. I haven't seen anyone with an OEM CoA try it, though.
You are correct, the OEM CD key did not work.
Do you have a "generic" (local, Newegg, etc...) or named OEM license (Dell, HP, etc...)?
It's an HP. Contacting them might not be a bad idea. I have actually had decent experience dealing with HP in the past.
It's basically up to them whether or not they'll provide a disk, but it's worth a try. I've had a Pavilion for about a year, and have been nothing but impressesed by HP.
Also, if you can find a "matching" disk from a friend or something, that'd work to. It would likely have to be an HP 64 disk, and the same edition, of course.
Gahh, I hate Vista OK, now that is off my chest have any of you guys seen this before...
I have 2 laptops, my personal one (Win XP) and my work one (Vista, which working in IT we are "testing"). I now have the following problem;
* When using Live Messenger on Vista the groups show up fine with the correct contacts in each group.
* Logging into Hotmail, the contact list shows the correct groups
* When on XP, the contacts are all mixed up and in the wrong groups.
I can move the contacts into new groups in XP, but then when I log off / on they revert back to the wrong versions. This has only happened since using Vista on the second machine, had no problems when that was on XP. Any ideas?
Posts
SP1 broke compatibility with certain device drivers because they enforced rules that drivers were supposed to be programmed with initially (like UAC enforced user permissions). The third parties knew this WELL in advance. Get mad at Logitech, not Microsoft, for that one.
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PAX Prime 2014 Buttoneering!
Well, you can get a little mad at Microsoft for not starting this process a long time ago with XP. Or 2000. Or 98. Or 95. But only a little. Devs have had like two to four years now to get their shit together, and still haven't managed it.
This is the same shit that happened with 98ME... there was a long-standing rule that you can't use the REAL mode on the processor but everyone was ignoring it and hacking the system anyway.
Microsoft finally released an OS that enforced it, which crashed as a result of these developers breaking rules... and ME was called a failure.
but it gave developers a wakeup call and since all future OSs would enforce the same thing they got their act together
The total and complete list of things they have changed would probably fill a book (which is to be expected after all this time has passed). But what is Vista, to me, to you, to Bob who doesn't know a kernel hook from a fishing hook? It can only be properly measured by how the human interface has changed. What has actually changed is virtually irrelevent. What seems to have changed could have been run on a 500Mhz Pentium 3 with 128MB of SDRAM and a Radeon 8500.
I'm not trying to justify anything, I am using Vista, I generally like it (at least compared to XP). I'm just saying that resource load of this OS is unjustifiable. I don't even believe there's much room for argument here.
This OS could be implemented, with full feature parity, with virtually the same requirements as XP (with the obvious exception of some form of 3D acceleration). Microsoft chose not to actually work on any serious optimizations, because of their implicit (possibly even explicit if you like conspiracies) agreement with hardware OEMs to push sales of new hardware. And because they botched it the first time around and were already a few years behind schedule.
I give Vista credit where credit is due (and it is due in a lot of areas), but Microsoft is still Microsoft. They're sort of inherently evil. Like zombies. or anything from the 80's.
A 500MHz Pentium, are you shitting me? That can only barely run XP. I have a 466MHz Celeron with 192 megs of RAM and XP and it can't even handle Firefox, you have to close the fucking thing whenever the memory cache gets too big or else it will start endlessly paging data, hard drive thrashing around like an epileptic seizure. Or if you hit a page with Flash, Java, or even just a lot of JavaScript.
It's not Aero alone that causes the high system requirements. Once developers begin to take advantage of desktop compositing you'll see why Aero was a good idea. All the behind-the-scenes features that noticeably contribute to improve performance and responsiveness over XP cause high system requirements.
It's really quite simple. Computers are vastly more powerful than they were in 2001. Microsoft built vista with the intent of pushing today's computers farther than XP ever could. Multithreading, 64-bit support, DDR2, paging and caching are all accordingly improved. If you have an old computer, stick with XP. If not, it's worth it to upgrade to Vista.
I mean, sure, it's unreasonable but it's not ridiculous. If all you needed to run Vista was a 9-year-old P3 and one-eighth of one gigabyte of RAM, then it really would be XP with a paint job.
I didn't say anything about Aero, I'm not talking about Aero. Aero is just a theme. The window manager probably isn't the cause of the issue. I don't know, I hardly think anyone outside of microsoft really knows what elements of the OS are the worst offenders.
But Vista is absolutely unusable with a full gigabyte of RAM. I know, I've tried. The sucker hits swap so often running any sort of game or intense application that you have time to make a sandwich and learn Sanskrit.
Now I admit it runs just fine with 2GB of RAM, AND that RAM is cheap. But how many people do you know that know how to upgrade their own ram? Heck, 2GB is the limit of my motherboard. It literally will not accept any more RAM.
When you program, you have to take three things into consideration: the readability of the code, the time complexity of the algorithm (how my cpu cycles per iteration), and the space requirements of the algorithm (how much ram does it use? Are there memory leaks?). Nobody will ever see Microsoft's source code, and people probably wouldn't even notice a significant increase in processor requirements since we have more FLOPS than we can shake a stick at now.
But they completely flopped on the ram requirements. I know people who are, TO THIS DAY, running XP on 128MB of ram. Have you ever tried that? It's painful.
Dual Core and 2GB of DDR2 is beyond new, it's borderline bleeding edge. People like us are in the vast minority.
I feel that this issue is the primary reason Vista has had such abysmal adoption rates.
RAM is pretty much the easiest thing to upgrade, I know a guy who doesn't even know what Windows is, who successfully upgraded his RAM. Go into Best buy and what do you see? Giant ad banners screaming, "Computer slow? Buy our overpriced memory! And if you have any idea what Google is you'll shop around and find the same shit for half the price!"
also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv8PPl7ANU
I just upgraded from Socket A and SDRAM 3 months ago. And I consider myself a computer enthusiast. A dirt poor computer enthusiast, but still.
But, yeh. It won't matter in a year or two. Heck, in four years we'll wonder how we ever lived with only 2GB of RAM.
Apple customers got used to this sort of thing a decade ago
OSX has been OSX since dinosaurs roamed the earth, I'm not sure I follow. Though I have never actually owned a Mac of my own. But I could have sworn it came out in the 90's.
I picked up a low-end pre-fab Dell with a fucking Dual Core (AMD Athlon X2) and 1GB of RAM for $400. Back in September. I then spent $25 or so getting a second gig for it.
EDIT: And it runs Vista like a dream.
I'm just saying it's a pretty common practice for a software company, even one that makes OSes part-time, to get the most out of modern hardware. It's not something new, never was.
One year I took a laptop home from the show... 75mhz! The next year a new release came out and I couldn't even meet the minimum reqs.
I'm freakin' tired of hearing "1GB is not enough RAM for Vista olol!" The hell it's not. I can comfortably run everything I need to on my machine. This includes Visual Studio 2008, Firefox, etc etc. 1GB is not ideal, but Vista will run just fine on it. Of course... anecdotal FTW, but still. I've used 3 machines running 1GB of RAM w/ Vista on them and have not had a problem at all.
I'm actually really curious as to what it is that other people are running/doing that brings Vista to it's knees.
When Superfetch and Readyboost are running, Vista (unfortunately) more aggressively swaps RAM out to disk when it sees it going idle to free up more RAM to preload in to. It goes off the (correct) assumption that most people's perception of speed on a computer are application startup times. While it will help with that, it is not a good thing for games. It leads to longer load times as assets are loaded into memory, not touched, swapped out from memory, and then loaded back when the loading time is "over" and the game is preparing to start. So while the game and libraries are already prefetched, and that part of the startup is fast, the aggressive swapping is not ideal.
Note: It doesn't happen while in game as much as it slows down the loading thereof, except in cases where a certain texture or model is not rendered for a long time (and therefore that memory stays untouched).
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I often see Vista as a technology test. The sacrificial lamb to public opinion to push the ecosystem forward. Considering, though, what's been done with Server 08 and the Server Core concept, it's interesting to think the benefits such would have with the desktop system.
And inherently evil? Slayer came from the 80's and...
Er... in interest of full disclosure, I both love Slayer and work for Microsoft. And there's a lot of us new folks who don't exactly see eye to eye with the old guard (as it were) and might have blown some whistles at certain points that may be a little more resonating these days. Particularly when coming from the current golden child of the NA customer service org (warranty warranty lol).
None of which has anything actual to do with how much I like Vista. I wasn't too sold until I got my hands on RTM and actually had to use it 'till it clicked. To the point where it's almost painful to use XP, now.
Reading blogs using XP or OS X.
If you have enough money to purchase a copy of Vista to install on your computer, then you can probably afford two buy two gigs of ram for less than $40.
I believe you are missing something vital here.
Which, ironically, leads to a question. I'm downloading a legal, free, student copy of Vista Business. it's the only version available. However, I have, up to this point, been using Ultimate. What am I going to lose? From what I understand it's mostly crap like DVD authoring and games.
This will be, ironically, the first legal copy of windows I've run since my first computer, which came with ME.
Still think Microsoft owes me something for subjecting me to that... abomination.
So, you can play games on it, just like you could with XP Professional.
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What was so bad about ME? I never had the chance to be subjected to its legendary horror.
ME truly was a horror to work with. Incredibly unstable. Actually "had to be warmed up" on a friend's computer (Don't ask).
To date, it has been the worst version of Windows ever released.
I think it has something to do with how you enter a given folder.
If I just open up the Documents folder through the Start Menu, my icon view never changes. But if I use search to open up the Documents folder, it completely changes my view and grouping scheme only for that one moment. If I just close the Window, and open up the Documents folder using the Start menu like I usually do, my settings are still there intact.
It's almost like each different method that you use to approach a folder has it's own view setting.
I used Vista on 1GB of RAM fine for months before I upgraded. Also, bleeding edge and the minority? That would've been true over a year ago -- go look at the computers Dell are selling and have been for quite some time.
Dual cores, quads, 2-4GB of RAM, 7600-8800GTs, etc. I know a ton of families who have Intel C2Ds with 2GB of RAM.
Azio, could I have a link to the .reg too. I'm sick of the random grouping/view Vista has started doing (It never used to..).
Computers are dirt.
You can get the 64-bit version for the cost of the dvd it comes on, I think. And that applies to all versions of Vista, you just have to ask Microsoft.
Here's a possibly useful link!
How often do you think people buy new computers?
Let me tell you, it's not nearly as often as any person in this forum.
Or if you can find a copy laying around somewhere, you can just install off of that. It's perfectly legal, because you're using your own license key.
Excellent! Many thanks.
Generally OEM products have the license right to run both, but you can only get alternate media if your OEM wants to supply it (or use someone else's).
The link above is only for Retail (boxed) versions. I haven't seen anyone with an OEM CoA try it, though.
You are correct, the OEM CD key did not work.
Do you have a "generic" (local, Newegg, etc...) or named OEM license (Dell, HP, etc...)?
It's an HP. Contacting them might not be a bad idea. I have actually had decent experience dealing with HP in the past.
Also, if you can find a "matching" disk from a friend or something, that'd work to. It would likely have to be an HP 64 disk, and the same edition, of course.
I have 2 laptops, my personal one (Win XP) and my work one (Vista, which working in IT we are "testing"). I now have the following problem;
* When using Live Messenger on Vista the groups show up fine with the correct contacts in each group.
* Logging into Hotmail, the contact list shows the correct groups
* When on XP, the contacts are all mixed up and in the wrong groups.
I can move the contacts into new groups in XP, but then when I log off / on they revert back to the wrong versions. This has only happened since using Vista on the second machine, had no problems when that was on XP. Any ideas?