Given the current availability of reasonably inexpensive multicore processors, and cheap DDR3, how concerned are we of any reasonable innefficnecy the hypervisor may or may not present?
Only enthusiasts are likely to run this and they will have a minimum of 8 GB of fast RAM and four or more processing threads available to them. I'm thinking modern hardware will offset any innefficency the hypervisor may present at this point?
I guess what I'm saying, is I can't see a tangible reason for any user to be all that concered about this. At least not to the degree that it has derailed this thread. If there are efficiency concerns, $29 in RAM should probably solve it?
Years ago, we would say, "that application is a memory hog", and it would mean something when a 64 mb upgrade cost nearly $200. Now we live in a world where fast RAM costs about $10 a gig, 64 bit operating systems are the standard for performance systems, and decent quad core CPU's start at around $100. The relative efficiency of a certain feature in the OS really does not matter that much today. Progress is leverageing this new hardware in meaningful ways. If enableing a hypervisor gives me greater compatability and flexability in using my hardware, I'll add a little RAM if need be. That's what it is there for.
I just get tired of the debate every couple years about minimum resourse requirements for Micrsoft's new OS, as if they are some evil entity that wants to force you to upgrade your Pentium 4. It's called progress, and its good.
Given the current availability of reasonably inexpensive multicore processors, and cheap DDR3, how concerned are we of any reasonable innefficnecy the hypervisor may or may not present?
If you aren't using applications that call hyperv classes, then it's not even an issue. This whole thread derailment is silly and it started with speculative jib-jab and misunderstanding.
It's like a bunch of worrying about how using cruise control is going to effect gas mileage when nobody is ever going to press the cruise control button.
HyperV is not an issue unless you choose to use it, in which case like Clif said you prepared your system already because you know what you are doing and you planned on it.
So what else is new and cool about Windows 8 that has nothing to do with HyperV?
Given the current availability of reasonably inexpensive multicore processors, and cheap DDR3, how concerned are we of any reasonable innefficnecy the hypervisor may or may not present?
Only enthusiasts are likely to run this and they will have a minimum of 8 GB of fast RAM and four or more processing threads available to them. I'm thinking modern hardware will offset any innefficency the hypervisor may present at this point?
That's the point I've been trying to drive home. It's a complete non-issue for anyone who doesn't willingly install the hypervisor module, create a VM and start it up. Anyone with a Phenom II or a Core i7 (or later) can make full use of the feature if they want, or ignore it like it doesn't exist if they want.
As for new features of W8 that are entirely more useful:
Let's talk about the new kernel, and the increased presence of minwin!
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited September 2011
Sheesh-- the old/current way of thinking (optional to desktop or other servers). Windows 8 release to manufacturing will very likely come with Hyper-V(a-for-desktop mini-set) on install media and/or let the installer install it from the web.
A good article on how Hyper-V and MinWin might work together to provide Microsoft a clean break from the burden of legacy software: virtualize all the (old) things.
A good article on how Hyper-V and MinWin might work together to provide Microsoft a clean break from the burden of legacy software: virtualize all the (old) things.
It's going to appeal to buisness customers that have not upgraded due to legacy applications. It's good buisness sense from where Microsoft sits.
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Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited September 2011
Thrax: A good article....
Indeed that article is well worth reading-- thanks. I like a more compact kernel and core associated files set(possibly optional at install time in RTM installer), incrementally lower hardware support resources needed that way.
It's going to appeal to buisness customers that have not upgraded due to legacy applications. It's good buisness sense from where Microsoft sits.
It's good for end-users, too. If Microsoft goes in the direction people are speculating, it'll cut off all the "OMG MY OLD SOFTWARE DOESN'T RUN" complaints dead in their tracks. Microsoft's recent developments in the VM space allow legacy applications to be published and run from the desktop as though they were installed directly on Windows 7. This could be the new face of "compatibility mode."
It also frees Microsoft to do more dramatic things with the heart of their OS, as they'd no longer have to respect the 30 years of cruft that keeps ancient software ticking.
It's kinda sad that the things that please me most about Windows 8 are explorer being able to mount iso's (cutting edge innovation there) and the possibilty that it'll <s>kill</s><skill s=""> replace WinCE for ARM systems.</skill>
I'm most excited about the metro stuff personally. I really really like the design and I'm hoping to hit the app marketplace with some excellent free software that fits right in with the theme. These are exciting times.
Loaded it up on my spare lappy hard drive today while I had my lunch.
I'm digging the Metro front page. Once more apps get there and I customize it the way I want it, I think that would probably be my primary home screen.
It seems they've also somewhat gone with the Android/Mobile model of task switching. You click 'Start' from any of your apps, and it goes to sleep or closes depending on it's capabilities or configuration.
My gripe with Metro is that everything is much, much too large to be used with a mouse and keyboard. It's woefully inefficient and clumsy with respect to how accurate a mouse is.
It also obfuscates the productivity aspects of Windows with a pointless interim layer that merely adds an extra step to switching between tasks.
It's nice for phones and tablets, but it's an egregious waste of space and awful Ux to shoehorn it into the mouse-driven experience.
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
It also frees Microsoft to do more dramatic things with the heart of their OS, as they'd no longer have to respect the 30 years of cruft that keeps ancient software ticking.
I would add more complexly-- Microsoft can more and more do things with smaller/more compact parts/modules of code.
Some advantages they would love to have more of and are trying for:
1. Simpler to debug stuff means less development(expensive to pay developers with lots of experience) and debug time and work and software update and bug fixing(Windows Update) as well as at install time support due to tinier code being simpler to debug, quicker to debug, and cheaper to debug because less time is paid for. Complexity elimination as much as possible means all this will be true more and more.
2. They want a simpler network strategy overal(especially for supportl-- when Windows 7 gets no more support people will flock to Windows 8. Having a Windows 8 based Server/Client network gets them simpler to maintain networking, less need for huge cooled Information Processing Centers due to more compact code genning less heat and giving a smaller footprint impact on any server that supports multi-sessioning in VM.
What does that get them? Less money out means lower costs(business accounting and management principle) to get a decent profit margin-- and that will be passed on to the customers in lower licensing and RTM media prices at least somewhat.
They need to retain what remains of their development staff-- they tried to cut developers and found more bugs slipped through and development had to be slower to be more thorough. More thorough initial code development as well as coding new things(I was taught that the development cycle includes debugging and testing.) also yields less support costs to Microsoft later.
Used to be that users could get to real high-level support (software engineering level) if they knew what to ask for and what to do beforehand and waited 30-45 minutes on the phone. Now, to get to software engineering you have to have special status and/or have employers pay huge amounts per year if you keep old software stuff and/or cannot find and write down or print out what Windows gives as far as specific errors. Even Enterprise folks find it hard to get out of paying for support and as much as possible would prefer to avoid support to lower costs. IT folks and developers that get free support elsewhere may get led astray from what fixes finally, and more things to check increases fixing time.
John.
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
Above: Extremetech tells how to build a frankentablet especially for Windows 8.
Extremetech keeps sending me interesting links to articles they wrote (in enewsletters). That site was established to cover deeper analysis of newer (unto bleeding edge new sometimes) stuff almost exclusively.
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited September 2011
Thrax might research this and write a how-to article... If you have or can run Win7 on your nook the process might work with minor mods to the instructions on Extremetech. I do not have a nook to try on here, so will leave that to Thrax to talk about.
Win7 doesn't support ARM processors, so the short answer is you can't put it on a Nook.
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited September 2011
Not if you do want it to run natively, no-- but inside a hosted session like Virtualbox would support? After installing a Linux kernel on the nook also(Virtualbox runs under the Linux kernel)? I would bet iWindows 7 can be run as a Guest OS at least-- Thrax said he had Windows 8 running in Virtualbox, why not Windows 7? Thrax might be able to do something with this.
Well I also don't have the expertise that Senior Thrax does, but my suspicion is that even if Windows8 could run on a Nook, it would be dreadfully slow because the system requirements are a bit demanding. I don't know anything about Virtualbox so no comment there, but the same thing about system requirements applies to Windows7.
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
Some reading above. Linux version of Virtualbox is available.
Rooting a nook Thrax's way installs the Linux kernel. Linux kernel handles all hardware interellations and to API sets running under Linux kernel the hardware does not matter so long as the kernel supports the hardware. Software API sets are blind to hardware in Linux. Linux Virtualbox is just an API set. It will host Windows 7 per virtualbox.org. I BET Thrax knows all this from research and doing and took advantage of it.
So the ARM issue is a non-issue for Linux except for how the kernel nightly build is made to be supporting ARM.
John.
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited September 2011
Well, the nook was first an ereader tablet made to hold at least 1000 Barnes and Noble ebooks(of large size) at once. Barnes and Noble specified that it have 8GB RAM and also EEEPROM and/or SSD circuitry enough to hold a customed OS of a fairly large size and some apps. They wanted the nook to be able to connect on the web also (so folks could buy ebooks online right from their reader). They specified that Wifi support and an internal Wifi antenna be provided(some nooks have this, absolute earliest ones do not). The Wifi version with a black and white screen is 139.99 at bn.com (it will redirect you to barnesandnoble.com).
I'm loosing more and more reason to keep around my desktop every day... I don't play as many games and the ones I do don't have large requirements. Not to mention my smart phone is capable of doing most of what I need, but on a small screen. Not needing to power up a power hungry desktop daily is very appealing and being able to simply undock a power friendly tablet and take my stuff with me with access via a NAS server for any goodies that are too big to fit on the tablet makes my need for a desktop practically null.
I've been holding off on buying a tablet to see how Windows 8 will pan out which I think it definitely will and then some. Even if most or all of my steam games don't work, it's still worth it to me.
The only question is hardware. Will I ever be able to dock a tablet and get output to a dual monitor setup when I want to? I wonder if Kal-El will run Crysis? hehe
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited September 2011
I would wait to:
get a tablet that comes with Windows 8 installed
get a tablet with a reasonable size of RAM (8-16 GB of DDR3 if you want to game while a few other programs are doing complex things (like folding as one example of one such complex activity)
get a tablet that has a real good graphics chip in it
get a tablet with a real good touch panel
Price range ?
The Samsung tablet that was given out at the developer preview costs about $3,500 on Ebay now. Expect that to drop some for new tablets made for Windows 8. Perhaps in a year and a half or two prices will drop to the $1300-$1500 range for reasonably powerful touch-screen tablets that are truely made for Windows 8 and are loaded with it.
John.
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
The only question is hardware. Will I ever be able to dock a tablet and get output to a dual monitor setup when I want to? I wonder if Kal-El will run Crysis? hehe
Played around a bit more last night. MetroUI is growing on me, but I still end up on the "Desktop" quite often. I could see myself in a 60/40 usage case, where I would spend most of my time in classic desktop, but quick browsing/casual game sessions would stay on MetroUI.
On my 4 year old slowly dying C2D T7700 laptop with a spindle disk, BIOS handoff to Login screen was 14 seconds. UEFI + Modern Processor + SDD should mean almost instantaneous boot.
Considering the strengths of Metro UI, who here would consider paying the premium for a touch sensitive desktop monitor to fully leverage it? Perhaps Microsoft is banking that people will go that route come time for windows 8?
Comments
Given the current availability of reasonably inexpensive multicore processors, and cheap DDR3, how concerned are we of any reasonable innefficnecy the hypervisor may or may not present?
Only enthusiasts are likely to run this and they will have a minimum of 8 GB of fast RAM and four or more processing threads available to them. I'm thinking modern hardware will offset any innefficency the hypervisor may present at this point?
I guess what I'm saying, is I can't see a tangible reason for any user to be all that concered about this. At least not to the degree that it has derailed this thread. If there are efficiency concerns, $29 in RAM should probably solve it?
Years ago, we would say, "that application is a memory hog", and it would mean something when a 64 mb upgrade cost nearly $200. Now we live in a world where fast RAM costs about $10 a gig, 64 bit operating systems are the standard for performance systems, and decent quad core CPU's start at around $100. The relative efficiency of a certain feature in the OS really does not matter that much today. Progress is leverageing this new hardware in meaningful ways. If enableing a hypervisor gives me greater compatability and flexability in using my hardware, I'll add a little RAM if need be. That's what it is there for.
I just get tired of the debate every couple years about minimum resourse requirements for Micrsoft's new OS, as if they are some evil entity that wants to force you to upgrade your Pentium 4. It's called progress, and its good.
Myself: No concern.
It's like a bunch of worrying about how using cruise control is going to effect gas mileage when nobody is ever going to press the cruise control button.
HyperV is not an issue unless you choose to use it, in which case like Clif said you prepared your system already because you know what you are doing and you planned on it.
So what else is new and cool about Windows 8 that has nothing to do with HyperV?
That's the point I've been trying to drive home. It's a complete non-issue for anyone who doesn't willingly install the hypervisor module, create a VM and start it up. Anyone with a Phenom II or a Core i7 (or later) can make full use of the feature if they want, or ignore it like it doesn't exist if they want.
As for new features of W8 that are entirely more useful:
Let's talk about the new kernel, and the increased presence of minwin!
It's going to appeal to buisness customers that have not upgraded due to legacy applications. It's good buisness sense from where Microsoft sits.
Indeed that article is well worth reading-- thanks. I like a more compact kernel and core associated files set(possibly optional at install time in RTM installer), incrementally lower hardware support resources needed that way.
It's good for end-users, too. If Microsoft goes in the direction people are speculating, it'll cut off all the "OMG MY OLD SOFTWARE DOESN'T RUN" complaints dead in their tracks. Microsoft's recent developments in the VM space allow legacy applications to be published and run from the desktop as though they were installed directly on Windows 7. This could be the new face of "compatibility mode."
It also frees Microsoft to do more dramatic things with the heart of their OS, as they'd no longer have to respect the 30 years of cruft that keeps ancient software ticking.
I'm digging the Metro front page. Once more apps get there and I customize it the way I want it, I think that would probably be my primary home screen.
It seems they've also somewhat gone with the Android/Mobile model of task switching. You click 'Start' from any of your apps, and it goes to sleep or closes depending on it's capabilities or configuration.
It also obfuscates the productivity aspects of Windows with a pointless interim layer that merely adds an extra step to switching between tasks.
It's nice for phones and tablets, but it's an egregious waste of space and awful Ux to shoehorn it into the mouse-driven experience.
I would add more complexly-- Microsoft can more and more do things with smaller/more compact parts/modules of code.
Some advantages they would love to have more of and are trying for:
1. Simpler to debug stuff means less development(expensive to pay developers with lots of experience) and debug time and work and software update and bug fixing(Windows Update) as well as at install time support due to tinier code being simpler to debug, quicker to debug, and cheaper to debug because less time is paid for. Complexity elimination as much as possible means all this will be true more and more.
2. They want a simpler network strategy overal(especially for supportl-- when Windows 7 gets no more support people will flock to Windows 8. Having a Windows 8 based Server/Client network gets them simpler to maintain networking, less need for huge cooled Information Processing Centers due to more compact code genning less heat and giving a smaller footprint impact on any server that supports multi-sessioning in VM.
What does that get them? Less money out means lower costs(business accounting and management principle) to get a decent profit margin-- and that will be passed on to the customers in lower licensing and RTM media prices at least somewhat.
They need to retain what remains of their development staff-- they tried to cut developers and found more bugs slipped through and development had to be slower to be more thorough. More thorough initial code development as well as coding new things(I was taught that the development cycle includes debugging and testing.) also yields less support costs to Microsoft later.
Used to be that users could get to real high-level support (software engineering level) if they knew what to ask for and what to do beforehand and waited 30-45 minutes on the phone. Now, to get to software engineering you have to have special status and/or have employers pay huge amounts per year if you keep old software stuff and/or cannot find and write down or print out what Windows gives as far as specific errors. Even Enterprise folks find it hard to get out of paying for support and as much as possible would prefer to avoid support to lower costs. IT folks and developers that get free support elsewhere may get led astray from what fixes finally, and more things to check increases fixing time.
John.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/96431-demystifying-windows-8-changes-additions-and-features
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/96249-5-deal-breaking-flaws-in-windows-8
Above: Extemetech's take on Windows 8. Some praise, some pan.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/96605-how-to-build-your-own-windows-8-developer-preview-tablet
Above: Extremetech tells how to build a frankentablet especially for Windows 8.
Extremetech keeps sending me interesting links to articles they wrote (in enewsletters). That site was established to cover deeper analysis of newer (unto bleeding edge new sometimes) stuff almost exclusively.
UEFI allows faster boot than BIOS did, among a lot of other things. Windows 8 will likely prefer it (or require it in some form)to boot faster.
Some reading above. Linux version of Virtualbox is available.
Rooting a nook Thrax's way installs the Linux kernel. Linux kernel handles all hardware interellations and to API sets running under Linux kernel the hardware does not matter so long as the kernel supports the hardware. Software API sets are blind to hardware in Linux. Linux Virtualbox is just an API set. It will host Windows 7 per virtualbox.org. I BET Thrax knows all this from research and doing and took advantage of it.
So the ARM issue is a non-issue for Linux except for how the kernel nightly build is made to be supporting ARM.
John.
Here's a link to some info about the color screen nooks and the black-and-white screen ones: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/index.asp? I was no longer able to find detail specs there.
I've been holding off on buying a tablet to see how Windows 8 will pan out which I think it definitely will and then some. Even if most or all of my steam games don't work, it's still worth it to me.
The only question is hardware. Will I ever be able to dock a tablet and get output to a dual monitor setup when I want to? I wonder if Kal-El will run Crysis? hehe
get a tablet that comes with Windows 8 installed
get a tablet with a reasonable size of RAM (8-16 GB of DDR3 if you want to game while a few other programs are doing complex things (like folding as one example of one such complex activity)
get a tablet that has a real good graphics chip in it
get a tablet with a real good touch panel
Price range ?
The Samsung tablet that was given out at the developer preview costs about $3,500 on Ebay now. Expect that to drop some for new tablets made for Windows 8. Perhaps in a year and a half or two prices will drop to the $1300-$1500 range for reasonably powerful touch-screen tablets that are truely made for Windows 8 and are loaded with it.
John.
Some hardware info concerning the Samsung Developer's Preview Tablet.
You're gonna need an x86 tablet.
On my 4 year old slowly dying C2D T7700 laptop with a spindle disk, BIOS handoff to Login screen was 14 seconds. UEFI + Modern Processor + SDD should mean almost instantaneous boot.
Great stuff.