scott wrote:
> Of course some people have different experiences, but I've been running 
> Vista for a while now as my main work machine (and at home) and have 
> never had any stability issues.

Same here. There's a couple of annoyances. I like the Vista media center 
less. If I do a chkdsk during boot (which I do before making a ghost 
backup), sometimes some programs won't start, as if there's some system 
library or service they're depending on that didn't get initialized until I 
reboot again.  Other than that, no problems here.  Hard to judge the speed 
since I upgraded the processor and drives as well.

> Actually the new GUI uses your 3D card to draw the graphics, under XP 
> your 3D card sat idle while the CPU did all the graphics...  BTW you can 
> always turn it off if you don't like it.

I like the new GUI. It has benefits besides just the glass borders. The 
drawing all happens in the background and gets composited, so it's real easy 
for the system to give live thumbnails of a program's window and stuff like 
that.

It does thrash a bit more than XP did with the same amount of RAM, but not 
so much as I find it a PITA. Just lots of disk activity when you switch 
between big programs. I think it manages to keep a much better track of what 
parts of the working set need to be swapped in first.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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scott wrote:
>>  Have you ever heard of the concept of disk caches? You can even 
>> configure
>> how much is cached.
> 
> Isn't Vista's SuperFetch just a very clever disk cache that uses more 
> RAM than its predecessors?

Sort of. It's more like a cache prefetch/readahead, based on the paging 
behavior of previous runs of the same program. Plus, if a program gets 
swapped out by something, when that new something exits, the old program 
gets swapped back in preemptively rather than on demand, making the system 
more responsive.

> Really, what is the disadvantage with keeping as much stuff from disk in 
> RAM as possible?  It just seems silly to me to erase stuff from RAM for 
> the sole reason of making the "free RAM" counter higher, why not just 
> erase it later when that RAM is actually needed by something else?

I think you're talking past each other. Scott is saying the kernel uses up 
all free RAM as disk buffers. Warp is saying "why would you want the kernel 
to use up all memory?" Clearly using it as a resizable cache is a good idea, 
while using all memory for something the kernel cannot discard when needed 
is a bad idea.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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On 4/2/2009 12:44 AM, scott wrote:
> That's 2D acceleration, not 3D. In the graphics card it's quite
> separate,

For the past several years, they've been the same thing.  You just 
access them using different API calls.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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On 4/1/2009 11:31 AM, Warp wrote:
> [GDS|Entropy]<gds-entropy    AT    hotmail   DOT  com>  wrote:
>> I'd be happy to stay with xp pro...but MS seems hellbent on forcing the
>> issue with pissta, and that I do not like..
>
>    That's one of the problems with Windows: You are more or less forced to
> submit to whatever whims Microsoft may have today. (The only other
> alternative is not never upgrade your system, leaving you wide open to
> any discovered security holes.)

That's one of the problems with providing commercial software: you have 
to actually pay your support staff!

MS can't (or won't) afford the staff to support 3 versions of Windows 
simultaneously, so they're trying to cut down.

Makes perfect sense to me.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Chambers wrote:
> 
> MS can't (or won't) afford the staff to support 3 versions of Windows
> simultaneously, so they're trying to cut down.
> 

MS might actually stand a chance to afford that. They won't, because
it's not profitable.

-Aero

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> Makes perfect sense to me.

  That doesn't change in any way what I said.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 4/4/2009 9:05 AM, Warp wrote:
> Chambers<ben### [at] pacificwebguycom>  wrote:
>> Makes perfect sense to me.
>
>    That doesn't change in any way what I said.
>

No, but you seem to be criticizing them for not supporting older 
operating systems.  I merely pointed out that their refusal to support 
older OSs makes perfect business sense.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> No, but you seem to be criticizing them for not supporting older 
> operating systems.  I merely pointed out that their refusal to support 
> older OSs makes perfect business sense.

  I didn't criticize them for not supporting older versions. I said that
if you use Windows, you will at some point be in the situation that you
will not be getting any security updates anylonger and you will be forced
to buy a new version. Not only will the new version cost quite a lot of
money (I bet usually more than your current version), but the differences
between Windows versions are rather big. If you don't like the new version,
then you are stuck.

  (The main problem with Microsoft is that they have this mentality that
every new version of Windows has to look different just for the sake of
looking different. Whether the change actually improves anything, or on
the contrary, degrades usability, is completely irrelevant.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   (The main problem with Microsoft is that they have this mentality that
> every new version of Windows has to look different just for the sake of
> looking different. Whether the change actually improves anything, or on
> the contrary, degrades usability, is completely irrelevant.)
> 

It sells, if something :(. Most people won't understand a bit if you
tell them you've rewrote memory management and tweaked the scheduler,
but they do understand if you tell them you have a new shining desktop
environment available.

-Aero

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On 4/6/2009 8:15 AM, Warp wrote:
>    I didn't criticize them for not supporting older versions. I said that
> if you use Windows, you will at some point be in the situation that you
> will not be getting any security updates anylonger and you will be forced
> to buy a new version.

Fair enough, it sounded like criticism but it seems you didn't intend it 
that way.

> but the differences between Windows versions are rather big.

If the differences were small, why would anyone upgrade?

>    (The main problem with Microsoft is that they have this mentality that
> every new version of Windows has to look different just for the sake of
> looking different. Whether the change actually improves anything, or on
> the contrary, degrades usability, is completely irrelevant.)

 From what I understand, it's the users that are the problem, and MS 
doesn't like it any more than you do.  But, they have to eat, which 
means they have to sell the new OS, which means they have to convince 
people to buy it... which means, if they put a lot of work into the 
system, and make it really great, and give it the same look and feel, 
people will just go "Huh?" and move on.

The problem is one of noticing things... ideally, an OS shouldn't even 
be noticed.  Of course, if you don't notice your OS, then you probably 
don't think about buying a replacement either.

MS is in the sticky situation of needing people to notice their OS to 
sell it, but needing people to NOT notice it for them to like it.

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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