It makes me wonder why the requirements are so high... it's also quite worrying. It seems as if coders are going with the 'all out no matter how unoptimised and how high the requirements are' approach. XGL on Linux can do most if not more things than Aero can do on Vista, but doesn't have insane hardware requirements, infact it will run on quite old 3D cards quite happily. My main concern here is that it's going to be a slippery slope. Requirements for things start increasing exponentially, forgetting about trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of older things (which in turn would make it more efficient on newer hardware anyway) and just relying on the brute force of better hardware to pull things through at an acceptable pace. This makes matters worse as then with the OS taking up so much of the system, the requirements for things to run ON the OS will in turn be higher due to a large amount of resources already in use...
1. "The USB memory device must meet certain performance and storage characteristics (2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes; 64 MB to 8 GB of free space; 256 MB of overall storage or more)". He totes this as a viable way to add RAM to your PC. I just couldn't keep a straight face. Your HD's virtual RAM/Pagefile will far surpass this in speed so I don't see how this does anything other than slow your PC down further and it would cost you to do it. Seems lose/lose to me.
2. "Vista's search technologies are better than that offered by competitors". Someone has obviously never used Beagle (which I may add has also been around a lot longer and also has the ability to search through your other personal things such as address books, emails, etc. Nice feature but it should be there by default to be honest.
3. Media Center? It's going to be nice for old people and kids that use their machine but how many of us "experienced users" like using Windows Media Player? I'm guessing less when it becomes even larger.
4. Windows Photo Gallery. A nice feature but not something that stands out and not something that isn't already provided by at least a dozen other programs, of which anyone that wants the feature will likely already have one of those programs and prefer it to the 'to be implemented' Vista version.
5. ... the fact it installs is a 'great feature'? That's a little concerning, it's something I would have taken for granted, although, given XPs track record with my RAID SATA drives it may be a nice change.
1. "The USB memory device must meet certain performance and storage characteristics (2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes; 64 MB to 8 GB of free space; 256 MB of overall storage or more)". He totes this as a viable way to add RAM to your PC. I just couldn't keep a straight face. Your HD's virtual RAM/Pagefile will far surpass this in speed so I don't see how this does anything other than slow your PC down further and it would cost you to do it. Seems lose/lose to me.
I tried it last night, I have a fairly new, nice OCZ Rally2, which is supposed to be very fast, and when I tried ReadyBoost, windows told me the drive wouldn't perform fast enough to be used for this, so I can't really comment on this except to say "what the hell kind of flash memory do they WANT for this?"
2. "Vista's search technologies are better than that offered by competitors". Someone has obviously never used Beagle (which I may add has also been around a lot longer and also has the ability to search through your other personal things such as address books, emails, etc. Nice feature but it should be there by default to be honest.
3. Media Center? It's going to be nice for old people and kids that use their machine but how many of us "experienced users" like using Windows Media Player? I'm guessing less when it becomes even larger.
Don't confuse Media Center with Media Player. Media Center is REALLY NICE for HTPCs. Having it integrated is very, very cool.
4. Windows Photo Gallery. A nice feature but not something that stands out and not something that isn't already provided by at least a dozen other programs, of which anyone that wants the feature will likely already have one of those programs and prefer it to the 'to be implemented' Vista version.
I use a combination of DxO Optics Pro and Picasa 2 for my photo management stuff. While Picasa 2 is nice, I tried out Windows Photo Gallery, and I think I will switch over to it. It's kind of a step above Picasa, yet a step below something like Extensis Portfolio.
5. ... the fact it installs is a 'great feature'? That's a little concerning, it's something I would have taken for granted, although, given XPs track record with my RAID SATA drives it may be a nice change.
Just a few thoughts.
The installation is much improved over XP. I've installed Vista about four times now and it has been very smooth.
Don't confuse Media Center with Media Player. Media Center is REALLY NICE for HTPCs. Having it integrated is very, very cool.
Just curious, have you used the Media Center for HTPC? What features does it have? Does it record in open format or DRM? The reason I ask is because I just bought BeyondTV and I'm getting ready to build up an HTPC and I am wondering if maybe the Vista Media Center will be better.
From what I've seen so far, Vista Media Center is the same as the current Windows XP MCE that is out, but with a slightly different interface.
Yes, it uses DRM - if recording content that contains one of those 'broadcast flags', it will restrict the content based on what the broadcaster tells - i.e. you can't copy it, or redistrubute, etc.
1. "The USB memory device must meet certain performance and storage characteristics (2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes; 64 MB to 8 GB of free space; 256 MB of overall storage or more)". He totes this as a viable way to add RAM to your PC. I just couldn't keep a straight face. Your HD's virtual RAM/Pagefile will far surpass this in speed so I don't see how this does anything other than slow your PC down further and it would cost you to do it. Seems lose/lose to me...
The point was made that this feature would be most useful for laptops with limited expansion capability. I'd agree that it's not likely to be all that useful for desktops.
WinXP stated it could be run on a 300 MHz PII but no one in their right mind would do so unless they turned off all the fancy stuff (Fading, slidine menues, etc.). Until you had at least 256 MB and a PIII 1.0 GHZ could you start to be able to make XP look flashier.
Vista is the same. It will determine the best settings to maximize performance. My place of employment will be installing Vista on systems all the way down to 1.0 GHz. It has worked so far on our test stands. Will it be slow, yes but it will work for 50% of our general workers.
I hate it when a company forces you to work on a slow POS, it does just as Daxxx mentioned, slows you down, and cuases unneeded irritation.
Considering we're a government funded research facility with VERY limited budgets... we try to get by as long as we can while keeping the system under MS support (Windows 2000 is "End of Life").
Office 2007 has given me and my co-workers nothing but grief... mostlyin the area of Outlook being very instable and such, itis a beta, but what makes it so glorious is that our head of ops or whatever his title is, advised us....
getting quote...
"Go ahead and install 2007, it works flawlessly with our stuff!"
No it doesn't lol... I was the only one who didn't install it
Comments
I'm going to have to comment on this...
1. "The USB memory device must meet certain performance and storage characteristics (2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes; 64 MB to 8 GB of free space; 256 MB of overall storage or more)". He totes this as a viable way to add RAM to your PC. I just couldn't keep a straight face. Your HD's virtual RAM/Pagefile will far surpass this in speed so I don't see how this does anything other than slow your PC down further and it would cost you to do it. Seems lose/lose to me.
2. "Vista's search technologies are better than that offered by competitors". Someone has obviously never used Beagle (which I may add has also been around a lot longer and also has the ability to search through your other personal things such as address books, emails, etc. Nice feature but it should be there by default to be honest.
3. Media Center? It's going to be nice for old people and kids that use their machine but how many of us "experienced users" like using Windows Media Player? I'm guessing less when it becomes even larger.
4. Windows Photo Gallery. A nice feature but not something that stands out and not something that isn't already provided by at least a dozen other programs, of which anyone that wants the feature will likely already have one of those programs and prefer it to the 'to be implemented' Vista version.
5. ... the fact it installs is a 'great feature'? That's a little concerning, it's something I would have taken for granted, although, given XPs track record with my RAID SATA drives it may be a nice change.
Just a few thoughts.
I tried it last night, I have a fairly new, nice OCZ Rally2, which is supposed to be very fast, and when I tried ReadyBoost, windows told me the drive wouldn't perform fast enough to be used for this, so I can't really comment on this except to say "what the hell kind of flash memory do they WANT for this?"
Totally agree.
Don't confuse Media Center with Media Player. Media Center is REALLY NICE for HTPCs. Having it integrated is very, very cool.
I use a combination of DxO Optics Pro and Picasa 2 for my photo management stuff. While Picasa 2 is nice, I tried out Windows Photo Gallery, and I think I will switch over to it. It's kind of a step above Picasa, yet a step below something like Extensis Portfolio.
The installation is much improved over XP. I've installed Vista about four times now and it has been very smooth.
Just some of my thoughts
Yes, it uses DRM - if recording content that contains one of those 'broadcast flags', it will restrict the content based on what the broadcaster tells - i.e. you can't copy it, or redistrubute, etc.
Vista is the same. It will determine the best settings to maximize performance. My place of employment will be installing Vista on systems all the way down to 1.0 GHz. It has worked so far on our test stands. Will it be slow, yes but it will work for 50% of our general workers.
getting quote...
"Go ahead and install 2007, it works flawlessly with our stuff!"
No it doesn't lol... I was the only one who didn't install it