Windows Vista...welcome to SUCK?

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Rilex

Also, since someone brough up eye candy and cpu cycles did anyone mention that Vista will offload from your CPU to your GPU?

I think very few people realise that ever since the accelerated functions became available in GDI+, offloading to the GPU is common (the fade effects, mouse shadows, etc. since Windows 2000). Even some of the early drivers for the nVidia TNT were capable of doing this.

Yeah, that's just directdraw though. Partially controlled through that hardware acceleration slider. My point was that although Vista will introduce eye candy, it will do it fast.

 

[bsobel]

I wasn't aware what TC was or the rational behind it until the other poster actually spelled it out for me. From the little research i've done into this, all I can say is it doesn't sound like something I'd be that keen on having on my desktop. We'll have to wait and see.

It is a trade-off. TC exists to support content distributors. The reason DVR's exist (and things like satellite television) is the providers are confident enough that the boxes the use in the field are secure 'enough' to prevent wholesale piracy.

Now try to do that on todays PC (e.g. order a film online and watch it on your TV) and there are no real controls keeping you from stealing the data. TC exists to provide that confidence layer for the providers.

That said, no one says you have to want any of their data. In that case, the TC components are much less usefull to you (albeit, you'll also see them used for local sw licensing and some other such uses)

It's a tradeoff. Many people want the same content on the MCE they can get on their sat boxes and cable boxes today. And some people, rightfully, don't.

Bill

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: bsobel

I wasn't aware what TC was or the rational behind it until the other poster actually spelled it out for me. From the little research i've done into this, all I can say is it doesn't sound like something I'd be that keen on having on my desktop. We'll have to wait and see.

It is a trade-off. TC exists to support content distributors. The reason DVR's exist (and things like satellite television) is the providers are confident enough that the boxes the use in the field are secure 'enough' to prevent wholesale piracy.

Now try to do that on todays PC (e.g. order a film online and watch it on your TV) and there are no real controls keeping you from stealing the data. TC exists to provide that confidence layer for the providers.

That said, no one says you have to want any of their data. In that case, the TC components are much less usefull to you (albeit, you'll also see them used for local sw licensing and some other such uses)

It's a tradeoff. Many people want the same content on the MCE they can get on their sat boxes and cable boxes today. And some people, rightfully, don't.

Bill

Some of us just don't trust this trusted computing, since there's no way to make sure it isn't doing something other than protecting someone else's data the way it should be.

 

[Nothinman]

His example is false, though. There are obvious situations where timeslicing doesn't have a noticible impact on performance to the end user. That is my point.

My example wasn't even an example. But you can't deny that if you have 3 CPU bound tasks all wanting 100% of the CPU that interactiveness will suffer. Hell I've seen times where 1 process is taking up 100% of the CPU and it took around a minute for taskmgr to start after I hit ctrl+shift+esc.

What I was trying to say is that the person who said CPU cycles were cheap just like diskspace was wrong. Diskspace can be added linearly and generally there's no peformance change from using more disk space. But right now we're sort of at a plateau of CPU speeds and since only one process can use a CPU at a time there's going to be contention and the more CPU intensive tasks that you add the more the contention will be visible.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

His example is false, though. There are obvious situations where timeslicing doesn't have a noticible impact on performance to the end user. That is my point.

My example wasn't even an example. But you can't deny that if you have 3 CPU bound tasks all wanting 100% of the CPU that interactiveness will suffer. Hell I've seen times where 1 process is taking up 100% of the CPU and it took around a minute for taskmgr to start after I hit ctrl+shift+esc.

What I was trying to say is that the person who said CPU cycles were cheap just like diskspace was wrong. Diskspace can be added linearly and generally there's no peformance change from using more disk space. But right now we're sort of at a plateau of CPU speeds and since only one process can use a CPU at a time there's going to be contention and the more CPU intensive tasks that you add the more the contention will be visible.

Yeah, you don't see disk usage spiking from 5 to 100% in the blink of an eye. CPU power is definately sparse compared to disk space (if such an apples to oranges comparison is allowed)

As for responsiveness under load, it's all going to depend on how it's written and tuned. It may take a minute for task manager to come up, but I bet winlogon would have responded in a fraction of a second to a ctrl-alt-del. I would imagine Longhorn (server) will place little emphasis on GUI responsiveness.

 

[Nothinman]

As for responsiveness under load, it's all going to depend on how it's written and tuned. It may take a minute for task manager to come up, but I bet winlogon would have responded in a fraction of a second to a ctrl-alt-del. I would imagine Longhorn (server) will place little emphasis on GUI responsiveness.

So what if winlogon responds? That just means I can lock my screen, if I hit the "Task Manager" button it'll still take the same amount of time to start the process.

 

[Rilex]

This is why if you're smart you change the priority of the task...

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

As for responsiveness under load, it's all going to depend on how it's written and tuned. It may take a minute for task manager to come up, but I bet winlogon would have responded in a fraction of a second to a ctrl-alt-del. I would imagine Longhorn (server) will place little emphasis on GUI responsiveness.

So what if winlogon responds? That just means I can lock my screen, if I hit the "Task Manager" button it'll still take the same amount of time to start the process.

I was trying to point out that the OS designers have the flexibility to make something respond immediately (winlogon, lsass etc.), or make something respond after other jobs have completed (task manager).

It won't make much difference how much eye candy there is in Vista. The GUI will be quite responsive and the hit on the rest of the system will be minimal. "human interrupts" take little time to process. Unless a three year old gets ahold of your mouse and starts clicking everywhere and dragging a window in circles for five minutes the GUI just isn't that much load on a modern (and video hardware accelerated) system.

 

[timswim78]

I'll break ranks here. I think that I'll definitely buy it for the eye candy and the coolness factor.

 

[bsobel]

But right now we're sort of at a plateau of CPU speeds and since only one process can use a CPU at a time there's going to be contention and the more CPU intensive tasks that you add the more the contention will be visible.

I disagree. More than one thread of execution can be in the processor at one time (e.g. hyperthreading). Further, while CPU speeds have flattened we are going to see more and more cores available (starting with the dual core systems now, and continuing to multiply). That will actually cause less contention than just pushing clock rates.

Bill

 

[Markbnj]

You may have a lot of CPU cycles, but since only one process can be on the CPU at a time the latency switching between 2 or 3 apps that want a decent amount of CPU cycles will be noticable.

Hah, tell that to the guys who don't think Windows benefits from a dual core... which I have by the way.

What I was trying to say is that the person who said CPU cycles were cheap just like diskspace was wrong.

Don't be a n00b. I didn't make any claims of relative "cheapness" between CPU cycles and disk space. It was just a way of saying that you're never going to notice the cycles taken up by the so-called eye-candy.

And disk space maxes out at some point as well, unless you go external.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Nothinman

His example is false, though. There are obvious situations where timeslicing doesn't have a noticible impact on performance to the end user. That is my point.

My example wasn't even an example. But you can't deny that if you have 3 CPU bound tasks all wanting 100% of the CPU that interactiveness will suffer. Hell I've seen times where 1 process is taking up 100% of the CPU and it took around a minute for taskmgr to start after I hit ctrl+shift+esc.

What I was trying to say is that the person who said CPU cycles were cheap just like diskspace was wrong. Diskspace can be added linearly and generally there's no peformance change from using more disk space. But right now we're sort of at a plateau of CPU speeds and since only one process can use a CPU at a time there's going to be contention and the more CPU intensive tasks that you add the more the contention will be visible.

Yeah, you don't see disk usage spiking from 5 to 100% in the blink of an eye. CPU power is definately sparse compared to disk space (if such an apples to oranges comparison is allowed)

Thank you for being the first person not to abuse my post(I forgive Nowhereman because I know he's more than knowledgeable enough to know what I meant).
As for the GUI stuff, I'm not worrying about it using up my precious CPU time, it just wastes space on my desktop.
If all I cared about was CPU time, I'd just leave the default blue theme on WinXP, but it's ugly and uses an assload of space, that's why I turn it off, people saying they turn it off to "optimize" their computers are just being silly.

 

[imported_Bassmaster]

I'll never understand the MS, or should I say, the M$, bashing at every site I've ever gone to.

This is by far the best forum with the most knowledgeable members I've ever seen and I look forward to learning so much from you all. I'm not too much of a forum noob to know we all won't have our little disagreements from time to time and then hopefully make up afterwards but I can't believe the knowledge of so many people here. It's great! (edit: This wasn't meant sarcastically at all. I honestly mean you guys are the most knowledgeable I've come across in any forum)

I'm not an MS fanboy by any means but it gets old after a while guys. I'm new to this forum so I don't mean this one as I haven't seen enough of it yet to know but others are terrible about it. They act like Linux is the shizz. I like a few *nix distros also so am not saying it isn't but these fanboys all talk like it's all that. It's not. Neither is MS. They both have their good and bad points as anyone who's used both can tell you.

MS hasn't been known for security and should very well be held accountable for it. But with 90% of the market, who do you think hackers and script kiddies are going to go after? It's all in the way the updates/patches/service packs or whatever you want to call them, are done. Yep, I agree it has problems but it just seems to me that a lot of people feel it's en vogue to cut down MS and think you're 1337 if you use a *nix distro. It's not. Use what serves your needs best as they are all good but your needs may not be what the next person needs.

Ok friends, flame away if need be but I don't see the point in all this bashing to be serious.

 

[SnoMunke]

As the OP, I wasn't bashing MS. I was bashing their new OS. I can't think of a whole lot of features that XP has now that MS didn't copy, steal, or buy (takeover) from another company or individual...and now they are trying to steal Apple's image. XP was definitely in the right direction as far as stability and power...my original point was, I think MS was overdoing the eye-candy in Vista (maybe to be able to say "theirs" is bigger and better than Apple's?). I would give up flashy eye-candy any day for power, stability, compatibility and interoperability.

Of course, my comments on Vista are based on my first impressions and we all know impression can change.

 

[Nothinman]

This is why if you're smart you change the priority of the task...

And if you set it's priority to below normal it gets virtually no CPU time while a normal task wants to run.

I disagree. More than one thread of execution can be in the processor at one time (e.g. hyperthreading)

HT CPUs share at least the FPU regs, I'm not sure about the rest, so to get any real performance benefit you have to run two task that don't contend for anything.

Further, while CPU speeds have flattened we are going to see more and more cores available (starting with the dual core systems now, and continuing to multiply). That will actually cause less contention than just pushing clock rates.

Definitely, but dual core machines won't be common for at least a few more years.

Don't be a n00b. I didn't make any claims of relative "cheapness" between CPU cycles and disk space. It was just a way of saying that you're never going to notice the cycles taken up by the so-called eye-candy.

And I'm saying you're wrong. Hell I can notice a difference in XP now on a machine with onboard video.

And disk space maxes out at some point as well, unless you go external.

Irrelevant, you can add as much storage as you want as long as you have a place to plug it in. That's not true for CPUs and CPU usage doesn't scale linearly like hard disk storage does.

 

[imported_Bassmaster]

Originally posted by: SnoMunke
As the OP, I wasn't bashing MS. I was bashing their new OS. I can't think of a whole lot of features that XP has now that MS didn't copy, steal, or buy (takeover) from another company or individual...and now they are trying to steal Apple's image. XP was definitely in the right direction as far as stability and power...my original point was, I think MS was overdoing the eye-candy in Vista (maybe to be able to say "theirs" is bigger and better than Apple's?). I would give up flashy eye-candy any day for power, stability, compatibility and interoperability.

Of course, my comments on Vista are based on my first impressions and we all know impression can change.

Oh I know SnoMunke and I understand.

Like I said, this wasn't for this forum in particular and I apologize if you or anyone thought that's what I meant. We'll all have our times we post about being mad about some aspect about MS. Me included also.

Thank you for understanding and not flaming me for it.

 

[Rilex]

And if you set it's priority to below normal it gets virtually no CPU time while a normal task wants to run.

Ah so I take it you run 3 programs that'd love to have 100% CPU 24/7/365?

How many situations do you need to invent to be told you're wrong?

 

[mosco]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx

Eye Candy aside, there doesn't seem to be too many new features that set it apart from other Operating Systems. The current Mac os X already has most of those. I am really interested to see what comes out of Mac os x 10.5. Its coming out sometime around the Vista launch.

 

[arsbanned]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Rilex

You may have a lot of CPU cycles, but since only one process can be on the CPU at a time the latency switching between 2 or 3 apps that want a decent amount of CPU cycles will be noticable.

You say that as if it were gospel when you know it is a falicy.

This thread reaks of "I saw a picture of the cover of a book, and it looked so gawd-awful the book must suck!".

I put it down as good old fashioned Microsoft bashing. I mean, come-on, the OS hasn't even released yet and people are bitching about it? That is almost the exact definition of prejudice. Pathetic.

Not only that, but the screenshots they are citing may not even look remotely like the final product.

 

[spyordie007]

Definitely, but dual core machines won't be common for at least a few more years.

About the timeframe to where Vista will be common.

Not only that, but the screenshots they are citing may not even look remotely like the final product.

Yup, ever compare Whister vs XP?

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/whistler_beta1.asp

 

[Nothinman]

Ah so I take it you run 3 programs that'd love to have 100% CPU 24/7/365?

I used to, not so much any more.

How many situations do you need to invent to be told you're wrong?

I'm not inventing anything, just running a game gives you at least 1 process wanting 100% CPU time then if you have something like SETI or Folding@Home running there's 2.

 

[SnoMunke]

As the OP, I see alot of comments in here that have nothing to do with my original topic... I was the OP wasn't I? I should know what I was talking about right?

 

[Rilex]

So you're telling me that you're not bright enough to run a program like SETI at below normal, or even low priorities? Hell, even the Genome project would start the program off at low by default.

 

[jimmyj68]

Maybe this is a surprise to the experts and hobbyists that populate forums like this, but we are a minority of Microsoft's consumers. The bulk of the computer users out there could care less and no less than we might imagine about processor cycles and off loading to the GPU etc. They are hooked by eye candy and enticing marketing lingo. They react to increased security and additional whiz-bang features. And - microsoft produces a very good product.

They also are not aware that it is in the ranks of hobbyists and experts that all of microsoft's security problems are created. Joe blow knows nothing about creating worms, viruses or trojans but is lead to believe that something is wrong with microsoft's operating systems because hobbyists and experts spend all of there time trying to break or otherwise screw up the operating system. I'm not implying that anyone here does that, but I'm saying that microsoft targets mainstream consumers of prebuilt systems. it has to defend itself against the minority of consumers that live to wreak havoc on the operating system and to bash microsoift.

So let's not raise a stink about "eye-candy" and bash microsoft. Their target market doesn't even know what "eye-candy" is.

p.s. As a hobbyist, I'm not concerned with eye-candy or CPU cycles or any of the other highly technical aspects of the arguments against Vista. I like building computers and snazzy new operating systems. So I try to keep my computer technically capable of utilizing the whiz-bang stuff and go from there. That's all Dell and Gateway minimally do at the low end of their product base. Your avarage consumer loves it.

 

[Nothinman]

So you're telling me that you're not bright enough to run a program like SETI at below normal, or even low priorities? Hell, even the Genome project would start the program off at low by default.

Yes, I am. But I shouldn't have to do that just to use the system. Launching one or two CPU hog processes on Windows virtually monopolizes the CPU and makes it take forever to be able to launch a new process, like taskmgr for killing said processes.