[Descenterace]

All Software Sucks.

...That would include SCP!
BURN HIM!!

All Software Sucks, because it is software (even SCP has its moments). The level of suckage varies widely, though.

[Nuke]

my optimisation tactic is less code is faster. this involves mainly shutting down services and 3rd party apps that try to make themselves boot at startup. why is it that every piece of oem software that comes with any periferal device (wether it be an mp3 player, digital camera, webcam, printer, ect.) tends to not only be very poorly coded, but try to load themselves at startup? i mean i dont leave my camera plugged in all the time, and i only need to load itunes when i add tracks, and i only turn my printer on when i want to print. things like my logitech drivers (which make the extra buttons on my wireless keyboard and mouse work), and my sound drivers can stay in, because they are offten usefull (yet ineffitient as hell, 7 megs so i can use about a dozen extra buttons on my kb and mouse, hell even trillian uses less ram). i also notice that oem software lately seems to be lacking the dont run on startup checkbox. its just mad. i hope vista does something to fight this phenomena. perhaps a stricter registry. i wish software makers woul;d avoid using the registry, so i can reinstall the os without having to reinstall photoshop (importing all my settings is a *****).  another feature vista should have (and probibly wont) is the abity to clean the system directory of files that do nothing. i personally thnk an os should be more compartmentalized. subsystems should be seporated from eachother as much as possible, for security as well as crash proofing. for example internet explorer shouldnt have a direct path to the registry, and when i uninstall it it should be gone from my system all together seems in any other windows all uninstalling ie does is remove the icon in the start menu. im glad that they liberated windoes update from ie for example.

[Grug]

The Office  2007 beta2 looks pretty spiffy too. Looks even purtier in Vista.

Anyone can sign up and download it for free over at microsoft . (office 2007)

[Kosh]

my optimisation tactic is less code is faster.........

But writing less code is taking steps away from creating a run-away AI that will try to wipe out humanity!!!

[Fury]

Windows graphics system to be overhauled

[Nuke]

Windows graphics system to be overhauled

this could hurt microsoft, it means if you want to upgrade windows, you will need to buy a new video card as well. that will cut into their upgrade market profits. of course lack of reverse compatability has always been an issue with them.

[Mars]

Damn, I was just about to buy a video card too... should I go ahead?

[neoterran]

This is just yet another in a long line of FUD-spin anti ms article types.
 
The WDDM driver overhaul has been known about for at least a year. It doesn't mean you have to upgrade your graphics card to upgrade to vista, it doesn't mean you won't get aero glass, it simply means that during the testing of aero, they realized that they could improve the experience even further by changing the way graphics cards are made in the future.

Currently 0 percent of the market has WDDM 2.0 enabled cards, WDDM 2.0 drivers don't exist, and won't exist until next year.

All it means is that the upgrades to UI techonology won't stop with Vista's release. You'll still be able to run Aero on modern cards without any issues. They just want to improve it going forward, is all.

[IceFire]

Windows graphics system to be overhauled

this could hurt microsoft, it means if you want to upgrade windows, you will need to buy a new video card as well. that will cut into their upgrade market profits. of course lack of reverse compatability has always been an issue with them.

Nope....modern video cards are just fine.  To run the Aero UI you need a DirectX 9.0 capable card with Shader 2.0.  The Radeon 9700Pro would run Aero fine and thats from 4 years ago.  You can get a card for less than $99 that fulfills the requirements of Aero.  If you can't run Aero then its not like Vista won't work...it'll look like Windows XP does... it will look exactly like my Windows XP because I'm running a Vista theme.  And Classic Windows still is present so you can make Windows Vista look like good ole Windows 2000.

There's of garbage information out there about Vista's requirements. The folks running the beta test are running it on all sorts of minimum hardware.  They DO say that its a memory hog in comparison to XP...but XP was a memory hog in comparison to 98...and 98 was to 95...and 95 was to Win 3.1...I'm sure you see the connection.  I'm very much hoping they optimize like crazy for the next few months. One would expect.  But you don't need a SLI GeForce 7900GTX to make Aero work....thats not what they are saying.

I figure my 6600GT will be fine.

What will benefit on a new DX10 related card with the WDDM 2.0 stuff is games.  Not sure if the DX10 cards are due out by the end of this year in that comming generation or in the next.

I'm actually excited to see what benefits the 3D accelerated desktop is like.  If it brings some of the advantages that the MacOS has under Quartz then I'm very interested to see.  No more waiting for the icons to redraw themselves, no more waiting for the interface to redraw because the CPU was already busy loading a program, no more problems displaying video while moving windows and trying to manage a multimedia project.  If they do it right...I think its going to be a big boon for myself...if not for everyone (I realize the flash and detail isn't for everyone).

[Nuke]

the article was a little misleading, however i have a feeling there will be a major difference in perforance between running aero using a wddm 1.0 card and a 2.0 compatable card.

[Fury]

Hopefully the upcoming nVidia G80 and ATi R900 will support WDDM 2.0 fully. I believe driver level task scheduling would also improve performance.

Edit: BTW, ATi has published a Windows Vista technology page.
http://www.ati.com/technology/windowsvista/index.html
There is also a link to a tech brief pdf file. The pdf is a good read.

[Kosh]

Nope....modern video cards are just fine.  To run the Aero UI you need a DirectX 9.0 capable card with Shader 2.0.  The Radeon 9700Pro would run Aero fine and thats from 4 years ago.

That's still going to lock out a lot of laptop owners. Lots of them use integrated "solutions", IIRC.


EDIT: Although I see why they would want to do it, still it is going to bite them a bit.........

[CmdKewin]

The "new" Intel 950 video Chipset is a fully DX9 256 MB compliant card.... Comparable to Ati's X200 chipset, performance wise.

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/

So, if you're buying a new laptop, it should run Vista no problemo.

[Kosh]

Maybe Intel might start making some good integrated solutions for once because of this.

[IceFire]

Kosh: Yeah...Intel and the other vendors have been anticipating the need for that kind of spec so they are beefing up the video cards on laptops...and have been for the last year or so. Even Intel!

An artical I read today suggested that the AeroUI may be a bit of a hit on battery life as it'll require a little more juice to the video card.  So it may be a mixed blessing on laptops.  I think they are trying to optimize...I understand they are now working on RC1 so I think there may be some big changes in terms of memory and performance between Beta 2 and RC1.  One would hope.

[neoterran]

I have Beta 2 and I've been testing it and I can tell you this :

1.) Memory management is different in Vista than it is in XP
2.) It appears to use more memory, but it's just because 1.) is different.
3.) There are several bugs in the new explorer.exe that inhibit the performance
4.) Aero glass means : no more corrupted glitchy desktop redraws. If an application dies, instead of other applications painting all over it and making everything look a mess, the last draw to the window gets nicely faded out and a non respoding app tag gets put on the window. There are no redraw or overpaint issues. It's clean.
5.) Desktop is smoother, like Mac OS X
6.) Windows feel slightly sluggish moving around, a la OS X

[IceFire]

Thanks for the update neoterran...thats what I had been reading over the last few days.  Number 4 particularly makes me excited.

[Mefustae]

Number 4 particularly makes me excited.

Yes, and numbers 1, 2, 3 and 6 worry me.

[Fury]

I've been using Windows Vista x64 for half a day now and generally I am quite impressed with it. Almost everything has been clearly improved from XP, including user interface (Aero), new Start-menu, Internet Explorer, Media Player. Internet Explorer 7 deserves a special mentioning since for the first time I actually felt like I could abandon Firefox and Opera and use IE7 instead.

I think I should also mention that Vista does support Windows XP drivers on some hardware. I have 3COM 3C940 as my NIC card and it is integrated on my Asus motherboard, Asus has not released XP x64 drivers or Vista drivers. So I grabbed Marvell XP x64 drivers and surpisingly enough the XP x64 drivers did work.

There are a few things worth nagging about though. During installation the user is not prompted to type a password for the Administrator account which I think is foolish. The user account created by user after installation is finished is by default an admin and not a standard user. UAC is annnoyingly nagging about everything, I have sent feedback to MS that there should be at least three levels of nagging and disable, currently it is only either enabled or disabled. The default two quick buttons to shut down your computer are sleep and lock, IMO the default buttons should be user selectable and be by default restart and shutdown. Then there's folder icon grouping, once I enabled it in control panel, I couldn't figure out how to disable it again. I also reported this so I hope it is more obvious in the first release candidate.

I'd like to continue using Beta 2 of Vista longer but bloody Creative still has not released Beta 2 compatible Vista drivers and neither Vista Beta 1 or XP x64 drivers worked for me. Some people have reported that Beta 1 drivers do work but no luck in my case. I think there's a good chance that I will install Beta 2 again once Creative releases Beta 2 drivers, or if not Beta 2 then the first publicly available Vista release candidate.

From the initial impression I got, Beta 2 is good enough to be installed on main computer if you have all hardware drivers covered. If not, it's still good enough to be tried out on another rig. The public beta is available from http://www.microsoft.com/Windowsvista/

[SadisticSid]

I'm sure I read somewhere that XP drivers would work only for the Vista betas because of the lack of native ones. Will this compatibility layer still be present in the release versions?