Is it just me, or is Vista, literally, a waste of space?
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I read somewhere that due to their architecture, laptops can only make use of 115MB of their 4th GB. Meaning that the max available memory for any 32bit laptop is 3GB 115MB. I'm tracking this down, I'll edit this with the citation as soon as I find it. --Modified Here are the citations: Clickety 1[^] and the confirmation from MS: MS Confirmation[^]
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib "Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?"
Hardware limitation in the design of PCs: some (indeed most modern) I/O devices, particularly your graphics card, use memory-mapped I/Os, and therefore the memory address ranges mapped to those devices cannot be used to map memory. This problem will happen on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux, whatever OS is run on the computer. In theory physical addresses were extended to 36 bits on the Pentium Pro processor in Physical Address Extension mode. To be able to move devices above the 32-bit boundary or to remap the memory above this boundary, the device has to support 64-bit addressing and the driver also has to be able to cope. In developing XP SP2 - which turns on PAE mode if the No Execute bit is supported, because NX requires PAE mode (the NX bit is bit 63 of the Page Table Entry, there was no space to add it in the compatible 32-bit PTE) - Microsoft basically discovered that most 32-bit drivers didn't, so while it actually turns on PAE mode, it will not map anything above 4GB. I believe you could force XP SP2 to do full PAE by booting with the /PAE switch.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991 -
Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment,
That's your problem right there. Everyone who posts here how much they hate Vista inevitably seems to be running it as a "test" on some old hardware it was never designed for in the first place. Most of the supporters of it seem to have bought it with a brand new system that is powerful enough to run it. No offence but making a comparison that way is as looney as anything I've ever seen posted in this message board. We're supposed to be software professionals, people who actually *know* a thing or two. What you're doing is the equivalent of hitching a brand new motor home to a model T ford and bitching that the motorhome is crap.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Regardless, Windows XP runs better than Vista on most hardware. By logic, if Vista runs well on new hardware, XP will run even better.
ROFLOLMFAO
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I'm having a hard time believing that anything useful can be done in 25MB these days. The smallest version of Windows I know of is something called WinPE (or BartPE, see google), which boots directly from CD (no hard disk needed) and takes up about 150MB of space on the CD. It excludes both Explorer and IE, but it is still a handy thing to have around if your main system refuses to boot. Incidentally, has anyone seen (as I have) Windows XP running on a cash till at a checkout? Now that's what I call overkill!
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
Hmmm... Not XP per se, but I've actually worked on a limited version of XPe (XP Embedded) Clickety[^] for a till. Back then I was trying to break into the embedded systems development. My have things changed.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib "Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?"
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Actually, the laptop in question is 6 months old, but that's not really the point. I saw some benchmarks recently that showed that MS Office runs twice as fast on XP as it does on Vista, That, to me, is not progress. And I know that RAM is cheap but many machines have a 2 GB limit (and all 32 bit machines have a 4GB limit) so requiring the best part of 1GB to even boot is just plain greedy. The benchmarks in question are here: http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/windows-xp-sp3-yields-performance-gains.html[^]
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
modified on Saturday, December 08, 2007 3:17:12 PM
I'm happy with Vista, I've been using it as my only os for almost a year now, doing all development on it etc. However I have a quad core with 3gb of ram and a raid 0 SATA array and I knew going into it I would probably want that. My point is that XP wouldn't be any faster, it can't be, nothing takes any time at all on this system. I think the problem is Microsoft set the bar too low for Vista certification, they should have set it higher as it's allowing a lot of unscrupulous hardware vendors to sell underpowered hardware for it. Those "benchmarks" are nothing of the sort, they don't give any facts and their graphs don't even say what the difference was, just some mysterious numbers up the vertical axis. One thing I've learned over the years with benchmarks is they are all but useless unless they are done in hyper controlled conditions and people are very quick to publish them under sloppy conditions if it meets their point of view they are pushing. They may be correct but they are highly suspect. I agree that needing 1gb to boot *is* greedy, but on the other hand my system uses one gb to boot and I have a sql server, web server, all manner of other stuff loading so I'm not certain it would be a huge amount lower with XP. In any case I have 3gb of ram and never run low so it's a moot point. To answer your bottom line yes Vista is wholly unnecessary and XP was sufficient but as a software developer it's encumbent on me to be up on the latest thing and we have a *lot* of customers now using Vista and even had some using the Beta over a year ago with our software so again it's a bit of a moot point whether you like it or not, you can't stick your head in the sand.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
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Regardless, Windows XP runs better than Vista on most hardware. By logic, if Vista runs well on new hardware, XP will run even better.
ROFLOLMFAO
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I agree completely, in fact I've installed Vista onto my primary desktop machine and it runs like a dream. In fact almost everything seems faster on Vista than XP. Testament to this fact is that I've got XP installed on another hard-drive which is in the computer and all it requires is a reboot and since I've had Vista I've run XP once to find out if a sound problem I was having was drivers or hardware. Turned out it was hardware. I'm don't know whether this plays any factor but it is Vista x64 which I'm running, I had a few issues to begin with but those were down to driver issues with Vista x64, since those have been sorted it's been wonderful. I still use XP for somethings but run it inside a VM because some programs required for my course flatly refuse to install on Vista x64 and by the sounds of it these VMs are running on higher specced machines than his "host". Specs of machine in question: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz) overclocked at 5% 2GB DDR2-6400 RAM nVidia 8800GTS 320MB Graphics Card (SLI-capable but couldn't afford two) 2*120GB 7,200RPM IDE drives (spares from old machines), one with XP one with Vista. Will probably get rid of the XP one over Christmas 500GB 7200 RPM SATA II drive for data 500GB 7200 RPM External IDE (USB 2.0) for backups & CD images, on most of the time. Machine seems quite happy running Half-Life 2 etc under Vista 64 at high resolutions.
Ed.Poore wrote:
In fact almost everything seems faster on Vista than XP
That has been my experience here using our test development machine with XP and Vista. I *know* our own .net 2 app runs faster on Vista on the exact same machine and a few other apps I tried as well. I didn't try the 64 bit version though, maybe even faster. Again I think it always seems to come down to people trying Vista on inadequate hardware for a lark. I don't blame them, I blame MS for setting the bar too low. To me it seems when the bar is high enough for the hardware Vista is faster but I've only done a direct comparison on one machine.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
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Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP?
I agree here, i have been using Windows XP for over 3 years now. I find it a rather amazing OS considering it is MS software. Compared to ealier MS Operating Systems, XP is very good indeed. I do believe MS bought out Vista to early, at the early stages of sale, people were scared to buy it after hearing stories of bugs in it and errors. Maybe MS should have used Vista alot themselves before realising it to the public. Well, thats what i think, but with very little use of Vista i can't say much, although my brother uses it on his 1GB speed Laptop.
Benjamin Dodd
The huge irony for those of us old enough to remember is the exact same arguments being used against windows 95 when it was first released and even more so against XP when it was first release. People said the same stuff about it. I look forward to whatever succeeds Vista when people will post about how much better Vista was than that new waste of space o.s.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
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Ed.Poore wrote:
In fact almost everything seems faster on Vista than XP
That has been my experience here using our test development machine with XP and Vista. I *know* our own .net 2 app runs faster on Vista on the exact same machine and a few other apps I tried as well. I didn't try the 64 bit version though, maybe even faster. Again I think it always seems to come down to people trying Vista on inadequate hardware for a lark. I don't blame them, I blame MS for setting the bar too low. To me it seems when the bar is high enough for the hardware Vista is faster but I've only done a direct comparison on one machine.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
John C wrote:
Again I think it always seems to come down to people trying Vista on inadequate hardware for a lark. I don't blame them, I blame MS for setting the bar too low. To me it seems when the bar is high enough for the hardware Vista is faster but I've only done a direct comparison on one machine.
Same here, I was curious about trying out one of the Betas so dug up a spare hard drive and tried installing it. It flatly refused to so perhaps they should just up the minimum specs in the installer script to prevent all this :rolleyes: I've got curious now, I'm going to try installing it inside a VM on this machine and see how it runs :-\
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I recently bought the wife a laptop that came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium. On boot it was using 650MB of RAM - and with only 768MB total that's a whopping 85% of memory gone just to get started. Even after disabling as much fluff/craplets as possible, I still couldn't get memory usage below 500MB - and it ran like a dog. So I upgraded it to XP SP2 and it feels like a totally different PC (and even with the neat Google Desktop sidebar installed it's only using 200MB on boot - a third of the memory required by Vista.) I was both annoyed at the manufacturer for supplying a machine that clearly isn't up to running Vista and MS for an O/S that eats through memory like there's no tomorrow. Sure, XP uses more memory than 2000, but only tens of MB, not hundreds! The experience has put me off Vista - however, that's a moot point as the company I work for has banned it's use and has no plans to switch - the only machines with Vista installed are a couple of QA PC's.
You might want to read this[^] first.
Kind regards, Pawel Krakowiak Miraculum Software[^]
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Your logic is flawed.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
I believe that the results can be scaled proportionately. No? Why don't you explain then.
ROFLOLMFAO
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Hmmm... Not XP per se, but I've actually worked on a limited version of XPe (XP Embedded) Clickety[^] for a till. Back then I was trying to break into the embedded systems development. My have things changed.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib "Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?"
Interesting. Thanks.
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
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The huge irony for those of us old enough to remember is the exact same arguments being used against windows 95 when it was first released and even more so against XP when it was first release. People said the same stuff about it. I look forward to whatever succeeds Vista when people will post about how much better Vista was than that new waste of space o.s.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Well, there is something in what you say, but, speaking as a programmer, I couldn't wait to see the back of Windows 9x. I don't think anybody (well, anybody who is anybody) would dispute that moving to an OS based on Windows NT was the only way forward. Vista, on the other hand, seems to me to be mostly eye candy. I really don't think that one can in any way claim that it is revolutionary. What I think / fear will happen is that Vista will displace XP simply because of Microsoft's marketing muscle. The situation will arise where new software and drivers will increasingly only work with Vista and people with otherwise perfectly good machines a few years old will be forced to buy a new PC simply to cope with Vista's ridiculous resource requirements. Nothing new there, I guess, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I'll say it one last time: Vista is obese, and it didn't need to be that way. PS: How could the next version of Windows be even bigger? Lawks!
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
modified on Sunday, December 09, 2007 12:40:11 PM
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I believe that the results can be scaled proportionately. No? Why don't you explain then.
ROFLOLMFAO
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Well in my experience apps run faster on Vista than on XP on adequate hardware. The OS itself loads faster as well.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
I've been getting a lot of conflicting reviews of Vista lately. I don't know what to believe anymore. X|
ROFLOLMFAO
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I've been getting a lot of conflicting reviews of Vista lately. I don't know what to believe anymore. X|
ROFLOLMFAO
Well it's up to you to decide but I'm completely unbiased and I firmly believe that if you have a powerful enough machine with enough memory and a fast enough hard drive you will find Vista loads faster, runs applications faster and is more secure that Windows XP. I also believe that Microsoft underestimates how powerful a machine is required and so buying a low end laptop or desktop computer to run Vista eve if it says it's vista approved is a mistake.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.