Windows Vista Rules.

[Nothinman]

If so, the answer is no, it's not an XP limitation, it's a limitation of the hardware architecture on the 32bit platform. To truely use all the memory you'll need to go 64bit.

Or PAE, a 32-bit system with PAE should be able to use all of the memory just fine. Win2K3 Server can do it so the only reason that XP can't is because MS artificially limited it to 4G.

 

[stash]

Win2K3 Server can do it so the only reason that XP can't is because MS artificially limited it to 4G.

Only Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs. Standard is limited to 4GB also. One reason is the following:

PAE mode can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later versions of Windows to support hardware-enforced DEP. However, many device drivers designed for these systems may not have been tested on system configurations with PAE enabled. In order to limit the impact to device driver compatibility, changes to the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) were made to Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 Standard Edition to limit physical address space to 4 GB. Driver developers are encouraged to read about DEP.

 

[Nothinman]

Only Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs. Standard is limited to 4GB also. One reason is the following:

Odd, I thought he used standard (and I thought it went to 8G) but I guess he used Enterprise since I remember him saying that it worked. And I know about the driver compatibility line but I think it's B.S.

 

[stash]

No, 2003 Standard (both R2 and non-R2 Standard Editions) are limited to 4GB of RAM. Enterprise x86 (non-R2) goes up to 32GB (64GB for R2 x86). Datacenter R2 x86 supports up to 128GB, can't remember what the non-R2 version supported.

 

[jjyiz28]

i think i read that the office suites are totally revamped, so you will have to kinda relearn it. i mean nothing relatively changed as far as the look from office 97 to office 2k3.

 

[JasonCoder]

Nice to see some positive Vista comments. Also nice to see the haters staying out of it.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Only Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs. Standard is limited to 4GB also. One reason is the following:

Odd, I thought he used standard (and I thought it went to 8G) but I guess he used Enterprise since I remember him saying that it worked. And I know about the driver compatibility line but I think it's B.S.

Afraid it's not, too many folks did a hard check at >= 0x80000000 to determine if they had a kernel address or a user mode one. This, of course, is incorrect and causes horors with DEP macines and different address space layouts.

 

[Nothinman]

Afraid it's not, too many folks did a hard check at >= 0x80000000 to determine if they had a kernel address or a user mode one. This, of course, is incorrect and causes horors with DEP macines and different address space layouts.

I'm not saying that drivers don't do that, but forcing them to fix their drivers seems to me to be the better solution.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: jjyiz28
i think i read that the office suites are totally revamped, so you will have to kinda relearn it. i mean nothing relatively changed as far as the look from office 97 to office 2k3.

The new office is fantastic as well, its a huge leap. It takes you 5 minutes to relearn it, and then another half hour to realize that you can now easily use dozens of features that you didnt know about because they were tucked away in a menu somewhere. If I had to choose between just having vista or office 07, I'd prob take office - it's that good.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Fox5
Immediately disabled the sidebar, just out of prior experience (the sidebar hurt performance, generally took up a significant amount of cpu time, and several hundred megs of memory) and a lack of need for the currently weak widgets.

I've got 10 widgets running(clock, sysmons, outlook stuff), and it's using 20mb of memory at less than 1% CPU...dunno why you had such a problem with it.

I do hope DX10 comes out sometime soon (along with DX10 supporting graphics cards), since it'd be nice to be able to swap out of games as fast as you can swap between windows. DX10 is supposed to bring that right? As of now, Vista handles minimizing games and exiting them more gracefully than XP, but not much.

I thought DX10 was already built in? And the 8800 was a DX10 card?

Either way, it'll be a while for the games, and although task switching is supposedly improved, it's not quite going to be at the level of other apps yet. I forget where I read that, something to do with "context switching", but apparently it is not going to happen for a few years.

 

[aka1nas]

There are no Vista drivers for the 8800 series yet, so technically you can't run the only DX10 card on a system with Dx10 yet.

 

[stash]

I thought DX10 was already built in?

It is.

 

[OSX]

Oh man, I can't wait to spend 400$ for a new UI.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: OSX
Oh man, I can't wait to spend 400$ for a new UI and more memory usage.

:roll: No one is forcing you, and why do you presume you must have the Ultimate version?

 

[OSX]

Fine, I can't wait to spend 300$ for a new UI and bonus DRM.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: OSX
Fine, I can't wait to spend 300$ for a new UI and bonus DRM.

Why is someone (with the handle OSX) who presumably isn't going to even run Vista bothering to thread crap?

 

[OSX]

The OP suggests that I do, am I not allowed to say what I think about it?

It seems like the only big difference here is better caching. I only run a couple apps (Firefox, Foobar2000, games, uTorrent and others) so superfetching doesn't seem like that big of a deal. I have a better use for a flash drive, besides burning up the writes using it for a cache. If I need more memory, which I don't, I can just buy RAM, and I can feel the effects on any operating system.

The name 'OSX' came from when I was a big mac user/fan a while back. I still use the mac, but have moved on to The PC.

 

[Nothinman]

The OP suggests that I do, am I not allowed to say what I think about it?

Sure, just add some real content to your posts next time.

 

[bsobel]

that big of a deal. I have a better use for a flash drive, besides burning up the writes using it for a cache.

An average a flash drive should last 5-10 years with ReadyBoost (they do write averaging and other techniques to avoid wearing the drive unevenly). So, while you may not want the feature, try not to knock it unless you actually know what your talking about.

The name 'OSX' came from when I was a big mac user/fan a while back. I still use the mac, but have moved on to The PC.

Aww, sorry, shouldn't have assumed, really just looked like you want to tc.

 

[drag]

An average a flash drive should last 5-10 years with ReadyBoost (they do write averaging and other techniques to avoid wearing the drive unevenly). So, while you may not want the feature, try not to knock it unless you actually know what your talking about.

I beleive that that sort of feature is built into the hardware of flash drives also.

Right now I am using a (USB pen drive) flash drive for to host a server OS. (I built the OS in a Qemu VM and transfered it to the pen drive also to avoid undo stress and speed up the installation proccess) It's reliable (no moving parts, very little heat) and I expect it to last several years. The data and most of the read/write stuff happens on a RAID 5 array.

Nowadays solid state storage like flash drives are starting to become very usefull items.

 

[OSX]

Sorry nothinman, I will take that into account for next time.

I don't have all that much RAM (only 2 GB,) and I've never had an issue with waiting a couple seconds for programs to switch, so I don't see the benefit in using it. I'm sure that it's going to sell like hotcakes for the people that like to heavily multitask, but it's rather pointless for people like me that don't use many applications at once. I also don't have an issue with the second or two it takes to redraw the screen really is a non-issue here.

 

[stash]

There are just a few other features in Vista besides Superfetch and Readyboost.

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

 

[mechBgon]

The parental controls will probably be a hit.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: OSX
Sorry nothinman, I will take that into account for next time.

I don't have all that much RAM (only 2 GB,) and I've never had an issue with waiting a couple seconds for programs to switch, so I don't see the benefit in using it. I'm sure that it's going to sell like hotcakes for the people that like to heavily multitask, but it's rather pointless for people like me that don't use many applications at once. I also don't have an issue with the second or two it takes to redraw the screen really is a non-issue here.

Why not just run Win95 then? It uses the least amount of memory, I guarantee you.

I personally know very few people with 2gb. I've been running 1gb just fine until a few weeks ago. Most non-gamers I know are still running 512mb. 2gb IS all that much ram. It would take concentrated effort to fill up that much ram outside of gaming, photoshop or video editing.

Your post is painfully ironic. You have 2gb of ram, so you clearly care about performance, and are willing to buy the hardware. But when it comes to software improvements, it's a waste?

There is nothing in the world that can flush your cache faster than downloading a torrent measured in gigabytes. And there's no amount of memory that can prevent this. Back when I was using XP, I put together an old 500mhz server with one of the driving reasons to get those horrible performance drains off my main PC...and now, that's no longer an issue.

There's much more to vista then that one feature. It just happens to be the one that particularly sticks out to me, because I'm more concerned with performance than anything else.

I get it though, I'm normally hesitant to upgrade OSes as well. There is very little about XP that I considered to be much of an upgrade over 2000...I honestly can't come up with anything significant. But this case is honestly different. If you have any sort of modern PC (1ghz/1gb+), and you run more than one application, vista is superior to XP. It's just that simple.

The only thing that I'd consider is cost....If I was paying $159 for the premium upgrade, I'd have to weigh my options. But if you're going to consider the cost of the OS, the only valid comparison would be to consider the cost of XP at the same time, and Vista is about ~50 more, and it's certainly worth at least that.

 

[JasonCoder]

Originally posted by: BD2003

There is nothing in the world that can flush your cache faster than downloading a torrent measured in gigabytes. And there's no amount of memory that can prevent this. Back when I was using XP, I put together an old 500mhz server with one of the driving reasons to get those horrible performance drains off my main PC...and now, that's no longer an issue.

Have to agree. I used to offload as much as I could to servers for dev work but now I load down my vista box with multiple servers in VMs and don't have to fiddle with the extra hardware. The trick with the flash drives is very nice for this when you need that extra boost in main memory.