Windows Vista question

[digitalcraft]

Sitting in the bathroom at work I read an article in an e-weekly magazine that said 50% of company's computers do not meet the minimum requirements for windows Vista, while 94% do not meet the requirements for vista premium!

Now I'm wondering, why does vista need such higher requirements? Does that mean it uses up a lot more ram and cpu processes while operating? Are the enhancements worth it?

[jediali]

is it a prompt for people to buy newer more expensive computers that stimulate the industry/market?

[jcp123]

is it a prompt for people to buy newer more expensive computers that stimulate the industry/market?

I'd buy that. My father, after 30 years in the computer industry said he's glad he's out of there. Now that he's distanced himself from it a little, he says he's now realizing just how un-ethical the computer industry is.

[jediali]

I'd buy that. My father, after 30 years in the computer industry said he's glad he's out of there. Now that he's distanced himself from it a little, he says he's now realizing just how un-ethical the computer industry is.

wow 30 years? was he making acorns and stuff?

[jcp123]

wow 30 years? was he making acorns and stuff?

Started with some (primitive, admittedly) hard drive / storage media companies way back when. Been in that segment ever since, worked for Seagate, Conner, IBM/Hitachi, and was even a founding father or the old Quantum HDD company back in the early 80's, as well as a few other start-ups here and there. Only time in all those years he didn't work hard drives directly was during a brief stint at a small server company that sold primarily to the Government and Defense Department, and at a SCSI company (which of course is now going down the can...)

[digitalcraft]

Probably IBM mainframes with punchcards! oooh. You know it'd be fun to be in the tech industry for 30 years, to see such a rapid transformation of our society firsthand.

well... besides the un-ethicalness of it.

[Kitdy]

Probably IBM mainframes with punchcards! oooh. You know it'd be fun to be in the tech industry for 30 years, to see such a rapid transformation of our society firsthand.

well... besides the un-ethicalness of it.

Name a busisness that IS ethical.

[coolieman1220]

yeah Vista is crazy. makes no sense to me what so ever. out of 3 laptops and 2 desktops, only one desktop can handle it barely.

[Rockefella]

yeah Vista is crazy. makes no sense to me what so ever. out of 3 laptops and 2 desktops, only one desktop can handle it barely.

Out of the two laptops and one desktop I own/have in the household, both laptops support Vista, and the desktop is 5/6 years old, so obviously if it does, it either wouldn't work well, or not support Ultimate.

The RAM/processor capability makes little difference compared to XP, but a good video card is important. In Vista they have a feature that rates the performance of your computer, based on your processor, memory, hard drive, general graphics, and gaming graphics. On my run of the mill, $1150 Dell laptop, I have an average of 4.5 for the processing power, RAM, and hard disk, but my 3.1 and 3.0 scores for both graphic assessment tests puts me at a score of 3.0/5.0 (on a scale of 0-5. I have to note that my notebook computer has an integrated Intel graphics card, so to achieve a 3.0 out of 5.0 is fine when speaking about 'handling Vista'.

I fail to understand all the negative rumors about Vista and compatibility.. maybe it was started by those Mac asshats.

EDIT: The scale is from 1 to 5.9, not 1 to 5.0.

[digitalcraft]

Yeah, my question is, what is it doing with all this extra ram and processor cycles? Is it working on a cure for cancer or something???

[Guest]

its got more code and (imho) got bloated, it has fancy effects etc and that all uses more stuff.

XP here, probs gonna get a Vista Laptop, if i like it then Vista goes on the desktop, if not then the laptop will get Vista or Linux (maybe even Solaris)

[Matra et Alpine]

Well the fancy effects require a decent vid card as teh OS tries now to off-load as much as possible. SO that hits folks most.
But next comes the extra protection of the new internal security model and the user-space drivers. I expect we will see newer/better drivers developed as the Vista sales increase and developers see a growing user base.
But yeah "bloat" as it's called -- or more precisely fast coding My first program commercially sold was in 1976 !! I selected which part of memory each instruction went in to because the "memory" was actually a rotating drum. Each instruction had an execution time and so you wanted the next instruction to be coming under the drum heads as the previous instruction compelted. Could take hours of manually optimising but in the end coudl run 100 times faster if got it right !!!

Nowadays, we have become used to Moore's Law so know that in 18 months it will be twice as fast, twice as big and so why spend valuable development $$$$ when the problem goes away so quickly.

Despite needing new h/w investements many businesses will do so as soon as VIsta proves stable. Mainly for the vastly reduced costs of netwrok deployments. Vista requires a fraction of the effort of XP or NT/2K. So business can save a fortune by spending a little Not to mention new hardware is getting smarter on power consumption and usage, if you have 70,000 PCs on the company desks and can save a few dollars in electricity it all adds up !!!

[NuclearCrap]

I see that the main issue of Vista is security and compatibility, not requirements. Of course lower-spec machines can just run the classic theme. I had Vista Beta installed on my old computer a while ago (Pentium III, 512MB RAM, FX5200) and it ran as fast as XP in terms of desktop performance, but I couldn't run most of the apps.

Nowadays, we have become used to Moore's Law so know that in 18 months it will be twice as fast, twice as big and so why spend valuable development $$$$ when the problem goes away so quickly.

It was 24 months, but scientists working on CPUs said that they would probably take more than 24 months to double the number of transistors since they're about to hit a wall soon. They're at 45nm and 22nm is as far as they can go with silicon, unlike the graphics card industry which doubles the power like every every 6 months.......

And yeah hardware power is no problem seeing how fast the industry is moving as you said, unless when it comes to parents who upgrade like once every decade...........Lol.

[Matra et Alpine]

It was 24 months

Being pedantic -- ME ? Never - Intel said the count was 18 months and the performance 20 months. Some areas were a year.
I have tended to see the technology I was in move faster so I am guilty of stating it as 18 ( mid point ). Correct tho' Moore said 2 years.

but scientists working on CPUs said that they would probably take more than 24 months to double the number of transistors since they're about to hit a wall soon. They're at 45nm and 22nm is as far as they can go with silicon, unlike the graphics card industry which doubles the power like every every 6 months.......

Yeah graphics designers are still on the development of the algorithms and h/w implementations. They will get to the wall quicker than it took alu and bus designers.
re the hardware tho' even it has innovations and the new HP crossbar construction has lots of promise to keep things going. "Rocks Law" predicted a slow done of Moores as the cost of fab plants is doubling every 4 years, so whilst we think we can get to 4nm it is liekly to take a long time due to those cost inhibitors.

[digitalcraft]

Or just use linux! :P Networking made easy