SamG wrote:I think this is not so cut and dried. Outside of gamers, I know very few consumers who buy hardware just to encourage progress. Businesses are often no less conservative.
I didn't quite mean the users themselves are encouraging progress. This clearly isn't the case. However, if there were no customers, there would be no progress. The
industry releasing new technology or software, and yes,
forcing customers to purchase it or be left behind is what brings about progress. But in the end, without the customers, there is no technological progression.
The “complaint” (and I'm using that term very loosely) is that system overhead effectively reduces “utterly massive” to “marginally improved.” Now, in fairness, system overhead is not only OS driven. Certainly a good deal of horsepower is consumed by the various security products most of us consumers feel obliged to support. But the point remains: We now have video cards with more muscle than yesterday's computer's, but it doesn't really feel like it.
Agreed to a certain extent. As I said earlier in many cases hardware has far exceeded Moore's Law. There have been times where hardware progression has taken massive leaps. The introduction of dual-core (and now quad and octo-core) is one of these, in my opinion. The main reason we aren't seeing the effects of this in the consumer market is the software developers haven't had much of a chance to keep up with the progress that's being made in the static-free labs. This is one thing, IMO, Microsoft was trying to prevent when they released the specifications for WDDM and etc. well in advance from Vista's launch date. Moreso than any other MS OS release was Vista open information from Alpha and available to developers. The developers failed to take advantage of this (and yes, even some hardware manufactures WRT DX10 and drivers), which is why we're seeing that bit of a lag-time. This is hardly Microsoft's fault.
I'm not sure it's fair to make this sound so much like an open choice. That kind of choice is not part of “the nature of technological progression.” It's not as if sticking with Win2K is cost free, especially within the Microsoft product family. Got a three-seat OneCare license but have the bad luck of having two XP machines and a Win2K box? Oh well. That's the nature of technological progression.
Agreed. There are many transition points within progression. This happened back when Windows 95 came along and Windows switched to 32-bit computing. My point was originally that for the
time being, Windows XP is a fine OS to be sticking with. However, they day will come when no software will support it and users will be forced to upgrade. Exactly like you said, that's the nature of technological progression.
Will this be Windows 7 (aka Vienna)? Who knows. Most likely it will be as Microsoft recently confirmed that it will be exclusively 64-bit.
So back on topic, if I can swing that, is just the probably unavoidable fact that Vista costs money well beyond the upgrade fee. And that was what I was driving at earlier. The OS pushes the hardware envelope significantly. That may be a good thing, or that may be a bad thing, or it may be some of both. But I think people who question whether the total cost of ownership is demonstrably worth it, especially in the case of typical consumers, aren't necessarily missing the point of technical progress. They're thinking in terms of a more general kind of progress, I think.
I agree to some extent. If we go back to the other argument that everything in Vista can be accomplished with add-ons, we need to consider exactly how much purchasing that software would cost in order to bring the two into the same plane. I could probably assure you the cost of the third-party software would 1) cost more and 2) be no where near as stable or of as high performance as these features are built into the OS itself rather than being on top as a layer. We also must realize that Vista came, what? 5.5 years after XP? How large of a cost is it really when looked at from that perspective?
beatme101 wrote:
All games that have been made before Vista came out will run slower on Vista than on Windows XP or 2000. I'll bet there will still be many made in the future that will still be faster on Windows XP and 2000. Such happens alot between XP and 2000; everything is just faster on Windows 2000, because it's not bloated by pretty colours, shaved corners, and all these extra useless services and background tasks.
So disable them and revert to Windows Classic mode? It's ridiculous to say "OMG! Aero takes up more system resources!" ... well, no kidding. It's a more advanced system. You can't compare apples to oranges. Comparing Aero (and Glass) to Luna are not the same thing.
EDIT: I think this was mentioned in another thread by someone else: Alot of people hate the Playskool look of Windows XP and Vista. And it's true. My parents think the same thing. Looks like it was made for toddlers as a toy.
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That's subjective. While I personally don't like the Luna look and feel, I certainly don't think it's that bad. Others may disagree. I personally think OS X's Aqua is hard on the eyes. The same thing with GNOME or KDE. Again, others disagree. I happen to
really like Windows Classic and
moreso Aero (Glass).
- Adam
