Windows Gayness

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Windows Gayness

But given any moderately fast PC, Vista CAN compete with Ubuntu,

no. Vista can't even compete with XP on "relatively modern systems", and that's why enterprise (read: the non-gaming world) is passing on Vista. that's why Vista sales are buoyed not by people lining up to buy retail copies (as was the case w/win 95/98/XP and gov't, corporations w/NT/2k), but by people who walk into BestBuy and walk out with a PC with the Vista tax preapplied/installed, and by corporations that buy new workstations with Vista installed, and reformat with XP. if you want the hard data for Vista adoption, PM me and i'll forward you some linkies.

since neither OS is going to make your program load off your hard drive faster

that's true; perhaps some folks were plumb confuzzled about it, and you clarified for them nicely. a lot of folks who don't use the mouse as a footpedal, however, understand that the difference between operating systems isn't--generally--how fast your HD accesses data (a hard drive with a 15 minute random access time will take 15 minutes on average to find the right sector, lol), it's how well the operating system integrates into random access memory (aka RAM) and what size footprint it leaves for other processes to do the samel, and how much processor horsepower is required to coordinate all this hocus pocus black magic.

(Which contrary to popular belief does not take a $1,500 PC)

build me a complete system capable of theoretically running full Vista w/glorious DX10 gaming @ 1080p for less than $1500 and i'll eat a vanilla-beer float and post the results.

Lets remember that Vista does use Superfetch and Readyboost to cache your programs in faster means of storage (RAM and removable flash memory respectively) than just loading the program off your hard drive, which can allow your programs to open much quicker which may infact give it the edge in office work over Linux.

very cute tricks, no disagreement there. worth an $800-$1100 investment? that's not my call with other people's money.

Personal preference, in this instance, takes more importance than an office program opening a minuscule unit of time quicker.

i've had the pleasure of having to try and figure out how to make programs work on win2k machines running 386mb of ram. the "feature" of being able to cook oatmeal, shave, and feed the pets while your operating system boots to an accessible interface is not a trivial issue.

In summary, an operating system won't make your hardware ANY faster,

Quite right. However, installing Vista on top of a satisfactorily performing system has the profound likelihood of SLOWING IT DOWN, which is why the world+dog isn't buying it, with the exception of gamers who want it all, right now*.

*Nothing against that at all and more power to them, by the way :)

i've got nothing against folks that want to buy vista (the DX10 screenshots from crysis do indeed feature some mighty shiny rocks and eerily shadowy shadows), and i've got nothing against MS feeding their people. For many in the world, however, Ubuntu can accomplish what Vista does, quicker, without new hardware, and without having to pay for a Vista disk.

btw, i wuv my XP for gaming :), edit, probably more than i wuv my ubuntu lappy for just getting things done at work and on the road. MS has scored some home runs, they just happened to strike out w/Vista, even if you just follow market trends and leave out the technical consideration.

[AlecJ32]

Re: Windows Gayness

no. Vista can't even compete with XP on "relatively modern systems", and that's why enterprise (read: the non-gaming world) is passing on Vista. that's why Vista sales are buoyed not by people lining up to buy retail copies (as was the case w/win 95/98/XP and gov't, corporations w/NT/2k), but by people who walk into BestBuy and walk out with a PC with the Vista tax preapplied/installed, and by corporations that buy new workstations with Vista installed, and reformat with XP. if you want the hard data for Vista adoption, PM me and i'll forward you some linkies.

Operating System Adoption doesn't paint an accurate picture of how good a product is or isn't. Vista has a lot of bad rap from hearsay and lack of consumer experience with the product. A trend I see emerging is that the majority of people bashing Vista have never even used it, let alone having actually owned the operating system and had it installed for a long enough period of time to form any real conclusions.

Microsoft recently employed a new marketing tactic to improve people's opinions. They let many Vista-haters test drive their new OS, Windows Mojave, and after a thorough test drive most of the people were very impressed. Then came the part where these consumers were informed that the product they were so impressed with was actually Windows Vista.
There's a thread about this on another forum that can be found right here:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=707203

And if adoption rate is what people are basing things off of, Linux based GNU operating systems aren't in that good of a spot either. At least, not in the desktop market.(And even in the server market, Windows and Unix are very big platforms and Linux isn't exactly top dog there, either)

that's true; perhaps some folks were plumb confuzzled about it, and you clarified for them nicely. a lot of folks who don't use the mouse as a footpedal, however, understand that the difference between operating systems isn't--generally--how fast your HD accesses data (a hard drive with a 15 minute random access time will take 15 minutes on average to find the right sector, lol), it's how well the operating system integrates into random access memory (aka RAM) and what size footprint it leaves for other processes to do the samel, and how much processor horsepower is required to coordinate all this hocus pocus black magic.

Which both Ubuntu and Vista do a very good job of.

build me a complete system capable of theoretically running full Vista w/glorious DX10 gaming @ 1080p for less than $1500 and i'll eat a vanilla-beer float and post the results.

The problem with that is, there are few/no games that properly take advantage of DirectX 10. Given proper utilization of DirectX 10 and it's improvements over DirectX 9, games on Vista+DirectX 10 should outperform games on XP+DirectX 9. However, I'm not aware of many games that do take such advantages. Crysis for example, from my understanding was built in DirectX 9, but ported over to DirectX 10, and even though it used the DirectX 10 API's, it doesn't actually take advantage of any of it's features.

I do have a thread on another forum about DirectX 10. It's certainly not a technical manual for it, but it does help clear up basic misconceptions.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=686414

very cute tricks, no disagreement there. worth an $800-$1100 investment? that's not my call with other people's money.

Considering that Vista Home Premium OEMs are cheaper than Windows XP OEMs, if you're buying/building a new PC and you need to pick your operating system, you might as well go with Vista.

In my opinion, it's not worth the $100 to upgrade to Vista on a working PC that already has XP installed, but if you're moving forward and have to buy a new operating system anyways you're better off getting Vista than XP.

i've had the pleasure of having to try and figure out how to make programs work on win2k machines running 386mb of ram. the "feature" of being able to cook oatmeal, shave, and feed the pets while your operating system boots to an accessible interface is not a trivial issue.

I've noticed that Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit boots faster than Windows XP Professional (x86) did on my current PC.

Quite right. However, installing Vista on top of a satisfactorily performing system has the profound likelihood of SLOWING IT DOWN, which is why the world+dog isn't buying it, with the exception of gamers who want it all, right now*.

*Nothing against that at all and more power to them, by the way :)

When I installed it on my PC, it sped it up by a quite noticeable margin. The reason not everybody is buying Vista is because there are a lot of misconceptions and bad rumors going about Vista (Usually from people who've never used the operating system) and because people don't want to pay the money for the new operating system. They figure "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", which I don't blame them for, but if you always took that approach to things the technology industry wouldn't have advanced nearly as quickly as it has.

i've got nothing against folks that want to buy vista (the DX10 screenshots from crysis do indeed feature some mighty shiny rocks and eerily shadowy shadows), and i've got nothing against MS feeding their people. For many in the world, however, Ubuntu can accomplish what Vista does, quicker, without new hardware, and without having to pay for a Vista disk.

It can, and sometimes it can't. If your grandpa is buying a new PC with Vista on it, do you really think you're better off trying to teach him how to use and maintain Ubuntu when in all likelihood the only PCs he's ever used had Windows on it? For people who are used to and know their way around Windows, but have never even heard of Linux before, it's probably worth the extra $100 to have an operating system they're at least somewhat familiar with.

btw, i wuv my XP for gaming :), edit, probably more than i wuv my ubuntu lappy for just getting things done at work and on the road. MS has scored some home runs, they just happened to strike out w/Vista, even if you just follow market trends and leave out the technical consideration.

The problem is, technical considerations should not be left out, especially considering that on a technical level Vista has more to offer than XP. (More security, better performance on modern PCs, better resource management, newer APIs, a new and improved GUI, Windows Display Driver Model, etc. etc.)