Darren New wrote:

> XP had a similar thing with the "prefetch" stuff, but I think Vista took 
> it several steps farther. That's what the bit where plugging in a USB 
> drive gets you faster access does - an extra level of paging cache 
> between memory speeds and disk speeds, and without the seek delays as well.

IME, USB tends to be far slower than IDE (and presumably SATA).

OTOH, USB flash drives don't have a seek delay, which may or may not 
counter the slowness of the bus.

> There's even a "sudo" out there that will take the command line and run 
> it elevated, so if (like me) you keep forgetting you want an admin 
> command-line, you don't have to go back to the menus to get it. 
> (Informationally included for people actually using Vista. :-)

Doesn't XP have this also?

> I liked the Vista look immediately too. Lots of small improvements, and 
> just a nicer look to it. 3D without being too "cartoony". Colors easier 
> on the eyes. Start menu is easier to navigate (eliminating the complaint 
> that you have to carefully move the mouse to the right to keep the 
> submenu from vanishing), sound effects somewhat more muted, the explorer 
> address bar is nice, the new thumbnails are nice, the task bar with 
> previews is nicer.  They once again moved the right-click menu for the 
> directory you're currently looking at, but it only took me five minutes 
> instead of a week to find where it went this time. Not sure I like the 
> "organize/view/..." menu as much as the old one, or the lack of a 
> left-title-bar button (altho a right-click in the title bar serves). 
> Everything has gotten a touch more simplified, which is somewhat 
> annoying to a nerd like me. Some stuff that you're supposed to run in 
> the background (like disk defrags) has gotten much slower to invoke 
> explicitly.

It seems to me that the only "new" thing about Vista is

1. It's more pretty to look at.

2. They added several hundred minor improvements to various things.

There doesn't seem to be anything radically new about it. They just took 
XP and tweaked it slightly.

It's nice that they're trying to make improvements to the thing, but... 
uh, you want *how much* for a few minor tweaks? No thanks.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> IME, USB tends to be far slower than IDE (and presumably SATA).

SATA is about 2x the speed of IDE, on just raw thruput. At least that 
I've seen.

> OTOH, USB flash drives don't have a seek delay, which may or may not 
> counter the slowness of the bus.

Yes. Large reads come from the disk, while small reads come from the 
USB. Plus, by reading from the USB, you don't have to move the head of 
the disk that someone else might be trying to use also.

> Doesn't XP have this also?

I never needed it under XP - I always ran as administrator, because I'm 
cluefull enough to not load up trojans and cluefull enough to make an 
image of the HD before trying out dodgy software from unreputable 
places.  But yes, you could do a "runas" in XP, which is sort of the 
equivalent of sudo.

> It seems to me that the only "new" thing about Vista is
> 1. It's more pretty to look at.
> 2. They added several hundred minor improvements to various things.

Except that all the minor improvements really do add up, yes. Whether 
you think they're overcharging is rather a different question.

> There doesn't seem to be anything radically new about it. They just took 
> XP and tweaked it slightly.

If it were *radically* new, old software wouldn't run. You can say the 
same thing about every UNIX variant since 1970, and every VMS variant 
from before that. :-)  If you want "radically new", go grab a copy of 
Singularity.

Yes, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on that you, as a home user, 
probably won't see. Shadow copies, transactional file systems, OS 
virtualization, stuff like that that lets things like your database 
engine running in the virtual machine know that it needs to complete all 
its transactions and hold off starting new ones and flush its buffers 
*in the virtual machine* because you're about to take a snapshot of the 
host's disk for backup purposes. Or that lets you lose power halfway 
through upgrading a program and not have half the changes on the disk 
and the other half blown away. (I'm not sure how Linux handles such a 
thing, actually. I always assumed I had to do that sort of reliability 
work manually and without any support from the OS. :-)

Not the sort of thing you'll run into when surfing the web.

> It's nice that they're trying to make improvements to the thing, but... 
> uh, you want *how much* for a few minor tweaks? No thanks.

You need to run *something* on your new machine. :-)  You might be able 
to use Linux, depending on what you're doing.  But a lot of the 
"obvious" improvements in Vista are targeted at the server end, not the 
home user, possibly because MS figures they already have a lock on the 
home user OS market.  As they say, "We're number one! Why try harder?"

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> Speaking of which, I don't think I've turned off the computer in about a
> week.  Quite impressive for Windows!  My XP machine got turned off
> daily!

My uptime record on Windows XP is 27 days.

Unfortunately I've yet to beat that since I got Linux (due to electricity
problems, not software).

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Warp [mailto:war### [at] tagpovrayorg]
>   You don't need a ten-year-old laptop. You may have trouble running
it
> in a modern laptop.

And tell me, what were the specs of this modern laptop?  I've seen it
running quite well on several other laptops, none of them considered
"gaming" or "performance" laptops, but typical light-use ones (email,
browsing, office, et cetera).

>   I wish you good luck when MS activates Vista's DRM features in a
> couple
> of years.

Thanks :)

All kidding aside, it's not like MS is the only one playing the DRM
game.  In fact, the worst offenders seem to be involved with the MPAA,
the RIAA or EA.  MS doesn't come anywhere near the top of the list of
draconian DRM companies.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Clarence1898 [mailto:cla### [at] comcastnet]
> The GUI is ok, it looks nice.  It's just taking me awhile to find
where
> MS has
> moved everything.

People keep saying this, but I really have to ask... what exactly can't
you find?  Everything I've needed is either right where I'd expect it to
be, or I found it in less than five minutes (and most things in less
than a minute).

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

I've recently bought a new laptop with Vista Ultimate installed, and I 
have actually been semi-consistently annoyed at it.  It looks very nice, 
and has been stable, and I actually rather like the UAC so far.  My main 
complaint is just that it seems to have bizarre glitches rather 
frequently, such as:

* Sometimes ignoring all mouse clicks until I log off and log back on

* At home it will stop making new connections though my wireless

* In a directory with many files, the page will flip between where I was 
at and the next page if I minimize the window then bing it back to the 
foreground.

* Turns off my wireless unless I hibernate it if I move it from one 
building to another.

etc..

Nothing major has really gone wrong, but it does seem to get minor 
things wrong more frequently than XP did for me.  On the whole I think 
prefer it to XP, but I haven't been all that that wowed by it.

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> People keep saying this, but I really have to ask... what exactly can't
> you find?  

I don't think *I* have actually hunted for anything. Use the search, Luke.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

>  I wish you good luck when MS activates Vista's DRM features in a couple
> of years.

A cunning plan to make us buy Windows 7 perhaps ;-)

Post a reply to this message

> I liked it too, specially with a black glossy glass theme.  It's years 
> ahead of XP's default teletubbies look.  But Blender doesn't play nice 
> with Aero (and perhaps other OpenGL apps as well) so I just turned it off.

Blender seems to work completely fine here with Aero...

Post a reply to this message

> The only thing I like better about Vista is
> it's wireless networking.  Vista is much better at detecting and 
> maintaining
> connections.

IIRC this is one of the things they totally rewrote for Vista.  In XP the 
wireless functionality is kind of hacked on over the top of wired 
networking.  They fixed this in Vista.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>  I wish you good luck when MS activates Vista's DRM features in a couple
>> of years.
> 
> A cunning plan to make us buy Windows 7 perhaps ;-)

OK, *that* made me smile...

Post a reply to this message

>> OTOH, USB flash drives don't have a seek delay, which may or may not 
>> counter the slowness of the bus.
> 
> Yes. Large reads come from the disk, while small reads come from the 
> USB. Plus, by reading from the USB, you don't have to move the head of 
> the disk that someone else might be trying to use also.

Isn't flash quite slow to write though?

>> It seems to me that the only "new" thing about Vista is
>> 1. It's more pretty to look at.
>> 2. They added several hundred minor improvements to various things.
> 
> Except that all the minor improvements really do add up, yes. Whether 
> you think they're overcharging is rather a different question.

Yeah, I guess that's it. And also whether the minor changes really are 
"improvements" or just changes for the sake of changes. (Or changes to 
make M$ customers happy, rather than M$ users...)

>> There doesn't seem to be anything radically new about it. They just 
>> took XP and tweaked it slightly.
> 
> If it were *radically* new, old software wouldn't run. You can say the 
> same thing about every UNIX variant since 1970, and every VMS variant 
> from before that. :-)  If you want "radically new", go grab a copy of 
> Singularity.

Well, for example, when Windows NT came out, they added *file security*. 
That's a pretty major addition. When Windows 2000 came out, they added 
USB support. Not quite so major, but still pretty significant. When XP 
came out, they added... well it's pretty? And Vista seems to have added 
even less. It's like Windows NT already did most of what you want an OS 
to do, so what else is there to add? Let's put in some eye candy!

> Yes, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on that you, as a home user, 
> probably won't see. Shadow copies

Added in NT over ten years ago.

> transactional file systems

Added in NT over ten years ago.

> stuff like that that lets things like your database 
> engine running in the virtual machine know that it needs to complete all 
> its transactions and hold off starting new ones and flush its buffers 
> *in the virtual machine* because you're about to take a snapshot of the 
> host's disk for backup purposes.

...and I care because?

> Or that lets you lose power halfway 
> through upgrading a program and not have half the changes on the disk 
> and the other half blown away. (I'm not sure how Linux handles such a 
> thing, actually. I always assumed I had to do that sort of reliability 
> work manually and without any support from the OS. :-)

I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.

>> It's nice that they're trying to make improvements to the thing, 
>> but... uh, you want *how much* for a few minor tweaks? No thanks.
> 
> You need to run *something* on your new machine. :-)

Fortunately, XP is still on sale. ;-)

> As they say, "We're number one! Why try harder?"

Heh. Yeah, that seems to be about the sum of it.

Post a reply to this message

> Blender seems to work completely fine here with Aero...


Same here.  No problems.

Post a reply to this message

Kyle escreveu:
>> Blender seems to work completely fine here with Aero...
> 
> 
> Same here.  No problems.

Press B in mesh edit mode.  Do you see any cursor for selection?

Post a reply to this message

> Press B in mesh edit mode.  Do you see any cursor for selection?

I get a small solid cross-hair as the cursor, and also dotted lines that go 
horizontal and vertical across the whole page.

Post a reply to this message

scott escreveu:
>> Press B in mesh edit mode.  Do you see any cursor for selection?
> 
> I get a small solid cross-hair as the cursor, and also dotted lines that 
> go horizontal and vertical across the whole page.

Yes, that's it!  Hmm, weird.  Here, it doesn't show at all.

I heard in some blender forums it could be a problem with graphics 
drivers so I didn't think turning off Aero would work, but alas it did.

So, no Aero for me, whatever the reason it was...

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Invisible [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> > Yes. Large reads come from the disk, while small reads come from the
> > USB. Plus, by reading from the USB, you don't have to move the head
> of
> > the disk that someone else might be trying to use also.
> 
> Isn't flash quite slow to write though?

Absolutely, and for sustained reads as well.  That's why it's used for
small files only, where the seek time on a typical HDD would kill
performance.  Large, sustained reads or writes go straight to the HDD,
small / fragmented ones go through the cache on the flash drive.

> Yeah, I guess that's it. And also whether the minor changes really are
> "improvements" or just changes for the sake of changes. (Or changes to
> make M$ customers happy, rather than M$ users...)

Why shouldn't they?  The customers are the ones who pay.

> Well, for example, when Windows NT came out, they added *file
> security*.
> That's a pretty major addition. When Windows 2000 came out, they added
> USB support. Not quite so major, but still pretty significant. When XP

USB support was in 98, and I think you could even get an update for 95
to do it.

> came out, they added... well it's pretty? And Vista seems to have
added

XP was originally 2K made pretty for the masses; a 2K "Home" version, if
you will.  Over time they added to it, such that SP2 was basically a new
OS.

> even less. It's like Windows NT already did most of what you want an
OS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista

A lot of the stuff is under the hood; that is, it just does things
better, even though users won't necessarily notice the difference.

> Added in NT over ten years ago.

Did you actually *use* NT ten years ago?  I guarantee Vista stands head
and shoulders above any version of NT ever published.  NT was great for
it's time, but people keep asking for more features, and MS delivered
them in the form of Vista.

> > stuff like that that lets things like your database
> > engine running in the virtual machine know that it needs to complete
> all
> > its transactions and hold off starting new ones and flush its
buffers
> > *in the virtual machine* because you're about to take a snapshot of
> the
> > host's disk for backup purposes.
> 
> ...and I care because?

Because you claimed that Vista didn't do anything new.

> > Or that lets you lose power halfway
> > through upgrading a program and not have half the changes on the
disk
> > and the other half blown away. (I'm not sure how Linux handles such
a
> > thing, actually. I always assumed I had to do that sort of
> reliability
> > work manually and without any support from the OS. :-)
> 
> I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.

Define "properly" for that situation.  I've had a few interrupted
installs, and it gracefully rolled back all changes for me so that
nothing was left in a half-baked state.  Is that "proper?"

> >> It's nice that they're trying to make improvements to the thing,
> >> but... uh, you want *how much* for a few minor tweaks? No thanks.
> >
> > You need to run *something* on your new machine. :-)
> 
> Fortunately, XP is still on sale. ;-)

So is GeOS.

Your attitude is exactly what I meant in my first post when I said that
some people just like to complain.

On the one hand, you claim that Vista makes hundreds of improvements.
On the other hand, you say that it's a "few minor tweaks."

Which is it?  Whether or not you feel it's worth the price they charge
is a completely different question, by the way.  Personally, I don't
think an Apple computer is worth the premium they charge, but I'd never
say it's a Dell PC with a few minor tweaks.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

> Yes, that's it!  Hmm, weird.  Here, it doesn't show at all.
>
> I heard in some blender forums it could be a problem with graphics drivers 
> so I didn't think turning off Aero would work, but alas it did.

Yeh possibly something to do with the graphics chip and driver combination, 
if turning off Aero fixes it then that seems the simplest solution - 
especially if everything else works ok.

Post a reply to this message

scott escreveu:
>> Yes, that's it!  Hmm, weird.  Here, it doesn't show at all.
>>
>> I heard in some blender forums it could be a problem with graphics 
>> drivers so I didn't think turning off Aero would work, but alas it did.
> 
> Yeh possibly something to do with the graphics chip and driver 
> combination, if turning off Aero fixes it then that seems the simplest 
> solution - especially if everything else works ok.

I also can't do anything by myself, it's the computer at work.  I 
shouldn't even be using Blender or povray or posting here. ;)

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:

> It's the computer at work.  I 
> shouldn't even be using Blender or povray or posting here. ;)

Welcome to the family! :-D

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:

>> Yeah, I guess that's it. And also whether the minor changes really are
>> "improvements" or just changes for the sake of changes. (Or changes to
>> make M$ customers happy, rather than M$ users...)
> 
> Why shouldn't they?  The customers are the ones who pay.

We pay too.

>> Well, for example, when Windows NT came out, they added *file
>> security*.
>> That's a pretty major addition. When Windows 2000 came out, they added
>> USB support. Not quite so major, but still pretty significant. When XP
> 
> USB support was in 98, and I think you could even get an update for 95
> to do it.

Probably. But they deliberately refused to do it for NT.

>> came out, they added... well it's pretty? And Vista seems to have
> added
> 
> XP was originally 2K made pretty for the masses; a 2K "Home" version, if
> you will.

I was convinced that there actually *was* a 2K Home edition... 
apparently not. Oh well!

> Over time they added to it, such that SP2 was basically a new OS.

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

> A lot of the stuff is under the hood; that is, it just does things
> better, even though users won't necessarily notice the difference.

Oh, I think quite a few people have noticed the new lack of speed. ;-)

No, in seriousness... Adding new features under the hood is very nice 
and everything. Just don't expect me to rush out and buy something where 
I "won't really notice the difference", that's all.

>> Added in NT over ten years ago.
> 
> Did you actually *use* NT ten years ago?

Let me see now... It's 2008 today, so 10 years ago would have been 1998, 
the year I started my degree. And although most of the machines are 
Windows 95, some of them were indeed Windows NT 4.0. (And, in fairness, 
those ones did seem to work a lot better than the 9x ones!)

> I guarantee Vista stands head
> and shoulders above any version of NT ever published.  NT was great for
> it's time, but people keep asking for more features, and MS delivered
> them in the form of Vista.

So you're saying the multitude of small improvements really does add up 
to a larger whole then?

I have found from other M$ products that "improvements" are not always 
things you want. (E.g., the "improved" Start Menu that I keep having to 
turn off...)

>> I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.
> 
> Define "properly" for that situation.  I've had a few interrupted
> installs, and it gracefully rolled back all changes for me so that
> nothing was left in a half-baked state.  Is that "proper?"

I still have trouble with software that doesn't install properly 
*without* a power interruption. :-S

> Your attitude is exactly what I meant in my first post when I said that
> some people just like to complain.
> 
> On the one hand, you claim that Vista makes hundreds of improvements.
> On the other hand, you say that it's a "few minor tweaks."

It seems to be that Vista is just like XP, with only minor adjustments. 
But *lots* of them. The question is whether these adjustments are 
desirable, and whether taken together they add up to something 
significant or not.

Who knows? Maybe in another 5 years' time, they will have applied so 
many bug-fixes to Vista that it will actually become a tempting 
proposition. (Much like XP before it. When XP first came out, nobody 
wanted to touch it. Now even I want to get rid of our old NT systems...)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>> Yes, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on that you, as a home user, 
>> probably won't see. Shadow copies
> 
> Added in NT over ten years ago.

I don't think so. WinXP sp1. And they weren't persistent.

>> transactional file systems
> Added in NT over ten years ago.

Uh, no. Transactional, not journaled.

>> stuff like that that lets things like your database engine running in 
>> the virtual machine know that it needs to complete all its 
>> transactions and hold off starting new ones and flush its buffers *in 
>> the virtual machine* because you're about to take a snapshot of the 
>> host's disk for backup purposes.
> 
> ....and I care because?

Well, that's what I said. As a home user, you don't care. If you're 
writing a database engine, yeah, you probably care.

A home user wouldn't also be saying "You're an idiot! You're making the 
wrong kind of Oracle backups!"

>> Or that lets you lose power halfway through upgrading a program and 
>> not have half the changes on the disk and the other half blown away. 
>> (I'm not sure how Linux handles such a thing, actually. I always 
>> assumed I had to do that sort of reliability work manually and without 
>> any support from the OS. :-)
> 
> I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.

Why?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>>> Yes, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on that you, as a home 
>>> user, probably won't see. Shadow copies
>>
>> Added in NT over ten years ago.
> 
> I don't think so. WinXP sp1. And they weren't persistent.

Ah, OK. My database server must by lying when it does a shadow copy 
backup. Explains a few things...

>> I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.
> 
> Why?

Because regular installs don't work properly yet?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Ah, OK. My database server must by lying when it does a shadow copy 
> backup. Explains a few things...

What makes you think it wasn't backported to a NT service pack?

I don't know, I just looked on wikipedia. MS doesn't really advertise 
the features of older stuff.

Plus, shadow copies weren't persistent on clients until Vista. It's a 
lot easier to make transient shadow copies than persistent ones.

>>> I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.
>> Why?
> Because regular installs don't work properly yet?

All the more reason to be able to back them out cleaning without 
committing any changes, yes?

It seems folks just like bashing Microsoft. "Third party software 
doesn't install right, so it's Microsoft's problem."

Plus, of course, the "MS doesn't make any changes" goes along real well 
with "UAC is so common I turn it off" and "I hate all the changes they 
made."

I mean, really, how many home users actually use the file security? 
Obviously not many, or people wouldn't complain when programs don't run 
under Vista because they write to protected locations.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

"Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
>...
> I think people just like to complain about Microsoft for no good
> reason at all.
> ...

Words fail me. A screen image disappoints somewhat less.

Cheers,
Mike C.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'no_reason.jpg' (148 KB)

Preview of image 'no_reason.jpg'

Mike the Elder wrote:
> "Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
>> ...
>> I think people just like to complain about Microsoft for no good
>> reason at all.
>> ...
> 
> Words fail me. A screen image disappoints somewhat less.

First, clearly I wasn't talking about their business practices, but 
about their software.

Second, the number of people who publish news about something where MS 
got in trouble isn't indicative of the number of times they actually got 
in trouble.  Altho I'll admit they do tend to have some shoddy business 
practices, you'll note that (for example) the first 10 hits cover only 
two lawsuits.  Shoddy reporting on your part, that.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> So, I bit the bullet and installed Vista Ultimate 64.

  Btw, Microsoft is publishing the next version of Windows in mid-2009.
So in a way you will be able to use Vista for less than a year before it
becomes more or less obsoleted by Windows 7. Then you'll have to pay even
more money to keep up-to-date.

  (I'm really surprised by Microsoft's timing in this. Windows users as
a whole are not even close to migrating to Vista, and they already are
publishing a new version of Windows. If anything, that will give people
even less motivation to buy Vista. Why buy Vista now, when you can just
perfectly use XP, and if you want to upgrade, just wait for a year and
you'll get something even newer than Vista?)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   (I'm really surprised by Microsoft's timing in this. Windows users as
> a whole are not even close to migrating to Vista, and they already are
> publishing a new version of Windows.

Yah. On the other hand, if people aren't buying Vista now, maybe they 
*will* upgrade to Windows 7?  Hard to know before W7 comes out.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
>> even less. It's like Windows NT already did most of what you want an
> OS
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista
> 
> A lot of the stuff is under the hood; that is, it just does things
> better, even though users won't necessarily notice the difference.

That's why they added the eye candy. If they had only changed that whole
stuff under the hood, home users wouldn't see any reason to upgrade.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> The only thing I like better about Vista is
>> it's wireless networking.  Vista is much better at detecting and
>> maintaining
>> connections.
> 
> IIRC this is one of the things they totally rewrote for Vista.  In XP the
> wireless functionality is kind of hacked on over the top of wired
> networking.  They fixed this in Vista.

Vista rewrote the whole TCP/IP stack AFAIK...

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Invisible [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> Chambers wrote:
> >> "improvements" or just changes for the sake of changes. (Or changes
to
> >> make M$ customers happy, rather than M$ users...)
> > Why shouldn't they?  The customers are the ones who pay.
> We pay too.

That would make us customers, wouldn't it?  Which means that they're
making changes to make us happy.

> > Over time they added to it, such that SP2 was basically a new OS.
> I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

And what about OpenSuse 11 makes it a new OS, compared to OpenSuse 10? 

> > A lot of the stuff is under the hood; that is, it just does things
> > better, even though users won't necessarily notice the difference.
> Oh, I think quite a few people have noticed the new lack of speed. ;-)

As far as I can tell, the *majority* of those are people who have either
a) sub-par machines, or
b) faulty third party device drivers.

I'm not saying none of it's MS's fault; I'm saying most of it isn't.  My
own machine runs great, and I've seen Vista running great on several
other computers as well.  I have yet to witness the fabled slowness that
people complain about.

> No, in seriousness... Adding new features under the hood is very nice
> and everything. Just don't expect me to rush out and buy something
> where
> I "won't really notice the difference", that's all.

As I understand it, this is a common problem for developers.

Devs: Really!  We've cleaned up our codebase, making it use 20% less
RAM, thrash the HDD less, eliminated 70% of the known memory leaks, and
properly refactored the entire system!

Users: But it's just the same thing, though, right?  Why should we pay
for what we already have?

> > I guarantee Vista stands head
> > and shoulders above any version of NT ever published.  NT was great
> for
> > it's time, but people keep asking for more features, and MS
delivered
> > them in the form of Vista.
> 
> So you're saying the multitude of small improvements really does add
up
> to a larger whole then?

Absolutely.

> I have found from other M$ products that "improvements" are not always
> things you want. (E.g., the "improved" Start Menu that I keep having
to
> turn off...)

That can be the case with anything.  But then, we're not talking about
other products here, are we?

> >> I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.
> >
> > Define "properly" for that situation.  I've had a few interrupted
> > installs, and it gracefully rolled back all changes for me so that
> > nothing was left in a half-baked state.  Is that "proper?"
> 
> I still have trouble with software that doesn't install properly
> *without* a power interruption. :-S

Which software?  With the multitude of 3rd party software I use (some
commercial, some open source) I don't think I've had problems with *any*
of it not installing well.

A bad installer would be a death-knell for most packages, as no one
would be able to use it.  As such, I've got a hunch that most developers
work hard to ensure their software installs nicely.

> Who knows? Maybe in another 5 years' time, they will have applied so
> many bug-fixes to Vista that it will actually become a tempting
> proposition. (Much like XP before it. When XP first came out, nobody
> wanted to touch it. Now even I want to get rid of our old NT
> systems...)

I'd say they're already there, but then I'm the one using it on my home
system :)

Anyway, from what I understand a lot of the problems people were having
were due to faulty 3rd party device drivers (video drivers especially),
a lot of which have been cleaned up in the past year and a half.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Warp [mailto:war### [at] tagpovrayorg]
> Btw, Microsoft is publishing the next version of Windows in mid-2009.
> So in a way you will be able to use Vista for less than a year before
> it becomes more or less obsoleted by Windows 7. Then you'll have to
pay
> even more money to keep up-to-date.

Academic discounts save you money!  Besides, I'll probably wait until
2010 to buy Windows 7.

>   (I'm really surprised by Microsoft's timing in this. Windows users
as
> a whole are not even close to migrating to Vista, and they already are
> publishing a new version of Windows. If anything, that will give
people
> even less motivation to buy Vista. Why buy Vista now, when you can
just
> perfectly use XP, and if you want to upgrade, just wait for a year and
> you'll get something even newer than Vista?)

AFAIK, they accelerated development on Windows 7 *because* people aren't
buying Vista.

Faced with complaints about Vista, they had two options to respond with:
1) Fine, we'll continue to sell you XP for *less* than Vista.
2) Wait another year, and we'll sell you W7 for *more* than Vista.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Something's not right here.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike the Elder [mailto:nomail@nomail]
> Posted At: Friday, November 14, 2008 12:18 PM
> Posted To: povray.off-topic
> Conversation: My own Vista impressions
> Subject: Re: My own Vista impressions
> 
> "Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> >...
> > I think people just like to complain about Microsoft for no good
> >reason at all.
> > ...
> 
> Words fail me. A screen image disappoints somewhat less.
> 
> Cheers,
> Mike C.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'no_results.jpg' (137 KB)

Preview of image 'no_results.jpg'

Chambers wrote:
> Something's not right here.

Threw me the first time too.

"or" is not the same as "OR" to google.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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>>>> make M$ customers happy, rather than M$ users...)
>>> Why shouldn't they?  The customers are the ones who pay.
>> We pay too.
> 
> That would make us customers, wouldn't it?  Which means that they're
> making changes to make us happy.

Yeah. I'm sure DRM will make a lot of users very happy. :-}

>>> Over time they added to it, such that SP2 was basically a new OS.
>> I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.
> 
> And what about OpenSuse 11 makes it a new OS, compared to OpenSuse 10? 

Actually, that's a valid question. What *is* the difference between 
those two OSes?? I know that on one the desktop is a different colour... 
did anything else change?

>>> A lot of the stuff is under the hood; that is, it just does things
>>> better, even though users won't necessarily notice the difference.
>> Oh, I think quite a few people have noticed the new lack of speed. ;-)
> 
> As far as I can tell, the *majority* of those are people who have either
> a) sub-par machines, or
> b) faulty third party device drivers.

Depends on whether by "sup-par" you mean a machine that really isn't up 
to much, or whether you actually mean "any PC that's more than 20 
seconds old". The former is acceptable. The latter isn't.

>> No, in seriousness... Adding new features under the hood is very nice
>> and everything. Just don't expect me to rush out and buy something
>> where
>> I "won't really notice the difference", that's all.
> 
> As I understand it, this is a common problem for developers.
> 
> Devs: Really!  We've cleaned up our codebase, making it use 20% less
> RAM, thrash the HDD less, eliminated 70% of the known memory leaks, and
> properly refactored the entire system!
> 
> Users: But it's just the same thing, though, right?  Why should we pay
> for what we already have?

Now if it really *was* faster, people would notice that. And they'd like 
it. Trouble is, they also notice when the reverse happens...

>> So you're saying the multitude of small improvements really does add
>> up to a larger whole then?
> 
> Absolutely.

Fair enough them. I haven't used it personally, only watched other 
people use it. Some of 'em like it, some of 'em hate it.

>> I have found from other M$ products that "improvements" are not always
>> things you want. (E.g., the "improved" Start Menu that I keep having
>> to turn off...)
> 
> That can be the case with anything.  But then, we're not talking about
> other products here, are we?

M$ has a long history of making changes that annoy the hell out of 
users. I don't hear many people complaining that, say, KDE 4 is way more 
annoying than KDE 3.

As to whether Vista specifically suffers from this... I don't know. But 
Micro$oft's reputation preceeds them, shall we say.

>>>> I'd be pretty surprised if it actually works properly.
>>> Define "properly" for that situation.  I've had a few interrupted
>>> installs, and it gracefully rolled back all changes for me so that
>>> nothing was left in a half-baked state.  Is that "proper?"
>> I still have trouble with software that doesn't install properly
>> *without* a power interruption. :-S
> 
> Which software?

How about, say... Micro$oft Office?

>> Who knows? Maybe in another 5 years' time, they will have applied so
>> many bug-fixes to Vista that it will actually become a tempting
>> proposition. (Much like XP before it. When XP first came out, nobody
>> wanted to touch it. Now even I want to get rid of our old NT
>> systems...)
> 
> I'd say they're already there, but then I'm the one using it on my home
> system :)

Well let's just put it this way: I won't be rushing out to buy it until 
it becomes *significantly* cheaper. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Vista rewrote the whole TCP/IP stack AFAIK...

Yes - I do recall somebody complaining that all the bugfix work put into 
the old stack has now effectively been lost, with the new stack having a 
new and unknown set of bugs.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> >>>> make M$ customers happy, rather than M$ users...)
> >>> Why shouldn't they?  The customers are the ones who pay.
> >> We pay too.
> >
> > That would make us customers, wouldn't it?  Which means that they're
> > making changes to make us happy.
> 
> Yeah. I'm sure DRM will make a lot of users very happy. :-}

OK, in that specific case they were pretty much forced to by the MAFIAA.
I read a convincing argument that MS purposely sabotaged their own DRM
efforts in Vista so they could tell off the content companies and say,
"See?  It doesn't work.  Now stop being such dumba**es."

Unfortunately, I doubt that's what really happened - but it would have
been nice :)

> Depends on whether by "sup-par" you mean a machine that really isn't
up
> to much, or whether you actually mean "any PC that's more than 20
> seconds old". The former is acceptable. The latter isn't.

Well, *my* machine is certainly more than "20 seconds old."  I bought
mid-range parts for it more than a year ago, and today you can put
together a machine roughly twice as powerful for $500.

> Now if it really *was* faster, people would notice that. And they'd
> like
> it. Trouble is, they also notice when the reverse happens...

It also depends what they target.  AFAIK, the Windows developers
actually target a 30 second boot time.  If it boots much faster, then
they look for more things they can do during bootup.

> M$ has a long history of making changes that annoy the hell out of
> users. I don't hear many people complaining that, say, KDE 4 is way
> more
> annoying than KDE 3.

No, but I've heard a *lot* of people say that Linux (of any variety!) is
significantly more annoying that Windows!

> How about, say... Micro$oft Office?

Can't comment, mine is running perfectly here.

> Well let's just put it this way: I won't be rushing out to buy it
until
> it becomes *significantly* cheaper. ;-)

That will be after the next version is released...


...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> M$ has a long history of making changes that annoy the hell out of
> users. I don't hear many people complaining that, say, KDE 4 is way more
> annoying than KDE 3.

I do hear lots of people complaining about that. Have *you* tried KDE 4? It
makes more UI changes than XP->Vista did.

Most for the better, but it's still a lot of change that you have to get
used to. "KDE is revolutionary, GNOME is evolutionary"

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> 
>> Vista rewrote the whole TCP/IP stack AFAIK...
> 
> Yes - I do recall somebody complaining that all the bugfix work put into
> the old stack has now effectively been lost, with the new stack having a
> new and unknown set of bugs.

I recall reports of very beta versions of Vista having security bugs in the
TCP/IP stack that had been fixed in Windows 95. (like sending a fake ping
packet with source address 127.0.0.1 caused a kernel-mode infinite loop,
replying to its own ping, locking up your machine very badly)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Now if it really *was* faster, people would notice that. And they'd like 
> it. Trouble is, they also notice when the reverse happens...

I haven't seen any reviews of Vista complaining the actual released 
version was slower. Of course if you turn on debugging in the OS, it'll 
be slower.

> M$ has a long history of making changes that annoy the hell out of 
> users. I don't hear many people complaining that, say, KDE 4 is way more 
> annoying than KDE 3.

Except developers. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Chambers wrote:
> No, but I've heard a *lot* of people say that Linux (of any variety!) is
> significantly more annoying that Windows!

It's also a lot easier to be less annoying when you can blame the most 
annoying problems in Linux on Microsoft anyway. </sarcasm>

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> > Now if it really *was* faster, people would notice that. And they'd like 
> > it. Trouble is, they also notice when the reverse happens...

> I haven't seen any reviews of Vista complaining the actual released 
> version was slower.

  Slower than what? XP? Well, there's at least this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531.html

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Slower than what? XP? Well, there's at least this:
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531.html

That was pretty good. I'm actually rather surprised that there's a 
noticeable difference in speed on computer-bound tasks like encoding. 
You would think that there isn't much you can do to hurt that, but 
perhaps some of the changes like tighter scheduling is adding overhead 
that isn't useful when you only have one compute-bound task running. 
Even so, 20% seems rather a large overhead for something like that.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I recall reports of very beta versions of Vista having security bugs in the
> TCP/IP stack that had been fixed in Windows 95.

Heck, these kind of problems were found and fixed in the first TCP 
bake-offs in the early 70's. Yet, somehow, everyone who writes a TCP 
stack doesn't seem to bother to check for these things.  Ping-of-death, 
christmas tree packets, martian packets, all these are stuff people 
figured out would be problems around 1972, and published their results 
as RFCs, yet implementors seem to never learn.

How many years did Sun recommend you turn off pings at the firewall so 
nobody sent you a ping with a source address being the broadcast address?

I guess by the time it's time to write a new TCP stack, it's a new 
generation of programmers working on it.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Even so, 20% seems rather a large overhead for something like that.

Actually, Vista does power saving by turning down the CPU speed and 
limiting the maximum speed.  Tom's Hardware is generally pretty 
cluefull, and their benchmarks are pretty well documented and all, but I 
wonder if they turned that off.  I'd read someone else say it could take 
a couple of seconds for your programs to get up to speed, but I thought 
that sounded pretty silly. Now I have to wonder if they were right and 
Vista really does keep the CPU slow for longer than I'd expect. Hmmmm...

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Actually, Vista does power saving by turning down the CPU speed and
> limiting the maximum speed.  Tom's Hardware is generally pretty
> cluefull, and their benchmarks are pretty well documented and all, but I
> wonder if they turned that off.  I'd read someone else say it could take
> a couple of seconds for your programs to get up to speed, but I thought
> that sounded pretty silly. Now I have to wonder if they were right and
> Vista really does keep the CPU slow for longer than I'd expect. Hmmmm...
> 

After months of running Ubuntu, I discovered it was throttling the CPU. I
keep nice 19 processes using 100% CPU 24/7, and I want all the speed I can
get from the CPU.

(they're nice 19 just so they don't make the desktop slower, I still want
them to run as fast as they can)

I had to set some relatively obscure parameter to "performance"
(was "ondemand").

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> After months of running Ubuntu, I discovered it was throttling the CPU. I
> keep nice 19 processes using 100% CPU 24/7, and I want all the speed I can
> get from the CPU.

> (they're nice 19 just so they don't make the desktop slower, I still want
> them to run as fast as they can)

  In my experience even if there is only one single CPU-intensive process
running at nice level 19 it will run slower than if it was running eg. at
nice level 4 (which is the default for nice when you don't specify a number).

  I'm not exactly sure why this is so nor do I have any references to this,
but it's what I have experienced. Maybe a process at nice level 19 really
is at the very bottom of the barrel and *anything* will override it, no
matter how light. For this reason whenever I want to make a process (such
as povray) run with a lower scheduling priority I just use the default nice
level (ie. 4). That seems to give basically all free CPU to the process but
will not hinder other processes which temporarily need it more. Also in this
case the nice 4 process still gets a fair share of the CPU and doesn't get
completely halted.

  Also in my experience nice level 4 is completely enough to keep a heavy
process, well, nice. For example I have run long povray renders with nice
level 4 and at the same time watched videos with mplayer without any
problems.

  I suppose the only cases where you want to use a nice value different
from 4 is when you want two or more heavy processes running at the same
time and you want one of them getting more CPU than the others. The
difference in priorites will affect how the CPU is shared between them.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   In my experience even if there is only one single CPU-intensive process
> running at nice level 19 it will run slower than if it was running eg. at
> nice level 4 (which is the default for nice when you don't specify a
> number).

The "task scheduler" (BOINC) already sets tasks at nice 19, using system
calls. I'm not manually running it with the 'nice' command.

If there is nothing else to use CPU, why would nice 19 be slower than nice
4?

>   I'm not exactly sure why this is so nor do I have any references to
>   this,
> but it's what I have experienced. Maybe a process at nice level 19 really
> is at the very bottom of the barrel and *anything* will override it, no
> matter how light. For this reason whenever I want to make a process (such
> as povray) run with a lower scheduling priority I just use the default
> nice level (ie. 4). That seems to give basically all free CPU to the
> process but will not hinder other processes which temporarily need it
> more. Also in this case the nice 4 process still gets a fair share of the
> CPU and doesn't get completely halted.
> 
>   Also in my experience nice level 4 is completely enough to keep a heavy
> process, well, nice. For example I have run long povray renders with nice
> level 4 and at the same time watched videos with mplayer without any
> problems.
> 
>   I suppose the only cases where you want to use a nice value different
> from 4 is when you want two or more heavy processes running at the same
> time and you want one of them getting more CPU than the others. The
> difference in priorites will affect how the CPU is shared between them.

Interestingly there have been some BOINC users complaining that even at nice
19, if a user process tries to use all the CPU at nice 0, the BOINC app
will still use 5% of CPU.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote
> The "task scheduler" (BOINC) already sets tasks at nice 19, using system
> calls. I'm not manually running it with the 'nice' command.

Since I'm already running a version I compiled from source (and modified
quite a bit), I could change the nice level if I wanted to...


There is also new problems now that there are GPGPU applications. When
running at low priority, the application computed REALLY slow. The GPU
starved because the CPU couldn't feed it with data often enough.

But if the app ran at normal priority, it used like 2% of CPU, so it didn't
make the machine slow... So now GPU apps are run at normal priority. (there
is still a problem on Windows, where it's using over 20% CPU).

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Also in my experience nice level 4 is completely enough to keep a heavy
> process, well, nice. 

I think that's probably true of CPU-bound processes. I've had trouble 
getting I/O bound processes to play well with others (under both XP and 
Linux) because the nice value doesn't affect them. Plus, the "ionice" 
bit seems pretty primitve, and the ionice processes don't run unless you 
completely stop using the disk for several seconds, it seems.

Unfortunately, most of my actual paying work is I/O bound, not CPU bound.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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