OT- How bad does Vista suck?

[whitepapagold]

The REALITY is, CPU wise, Vista is fairly close to XP.

 

Its statements like this throughout your malarky blathering Vista posts that just prove again and again you have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about.

 

I have 5 computers in my studio from 2008 Mac Pros to the {censored}ty Compaq Im typing this on with Vista.

 

And it still has HUGE driver issues... Yes still.

 

But go on and pretend you have a CLUE. I do think its neat you like to read PC magazine though...

 

And yeah I bet you are right- Vista is way better than OSX in many many applications... idiot...:poke:

 

If YOU used YOUR computer for more than the internet and didn't just quote theoretical specs, then you might understand, but to imply what you have is just stooooopid!

[mate_stubb]

 

D'oh. Someone quoting bits from stories they hear without quite understanding things fully. First off, you won't be running OSX either then, will you?

 

 

Thanks for the condescension. I must just be a dumb ass consumer instead of a software engineer and development director who has been coding Windows apps since Windows 3.0.

 

I don't need a lesson in Windows crashes, either. I was very excited when NT was first developed, but then they screwed the pooch with 3.5 by giving drivers ring 0 access. Oh well.

 

My current company which develops audio visual medical applications could not be possibly affected by an OS shutting down high resolution video output because it thought we were pirates, or by disabling a driver on a whim, could it?

[TowJam]

 

I don't need a lesson in Windows crashes, either. I was very excited when NT was first developed, but then they screwed the pooch with 3.5 by giving drivers ring 0 access. Oh well.

 

 

Wrong. Graphics weren't moved to ring 0 until NT 4.0.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/ntwrkstn/reskit/archi.mspx?mfr=true

[Birdienumnum]

I tell ya, when it comes to 'puters, I've never seen such male nerd strutting & huffing & puffing as I've seen on this thread. You guys are all too macho for me.

 

[kooki_sf]

the odd thing i find with all of these holy wars is how people forget about how long they spend with maintaining drivers and such on the windows side. sure it might be close to the smoothness of a mac box, but how long did you end up screwing with settings to get it that way? and if one is ok with spending time with configuration, why not save your money and use linux?

[P321]

Vista is not currently stable enough or lean enough to get anywhere near these babies.

Your response suggests you thought perhaps I was taking issue with your experiences.. I wasn't, honest

 

The problem for Microsoft is compatibility. Unlike Apple, who could care less whether or not you can run old software, Microsoft is chained to running the old software because of business customers. So they have to consider how to push the OS forward whilst still maintaining compatibility with your old applications.

 

Inevitably that involves kludges. Some are even visible, like the fact that Vista uses symbolic linking to maintain compatibility with the old Documents And Settings user paths on XP. But there are others which mean certain XP apps won't have optimal performance on Vista without additional work from devs. So now you likely have applications (and drivers, and hardware) that was primarily developed under XP. That fact doesn't change just because they slap a Vista checkbox on their product description. So it's going to take time (several years) to mature and find issues introduced. XP got off to a 2 year running start because it was essentially the same driver model as Windows 2000..

 

In many regards Vista itself will likely be more stable than XP thanks to removing kernel mode access. But, for a time to come, many applications will certainly have new issues created because they were not developed with Vista in mind. So you get a more stable OS with less stable apps! It's easy to criticize MS here, but they have an unenviable job. The only real alternative MS have is to start fresh, and force everyone to begin again, just as Apple did with OSX, then the Intel platform switch. Then nobody will need complain, because you'll have to buy a new machine and software in order to run it.

 

Personally, I prefer the MS way, even with all the issues. I like the fact that I can still run music plugins purchased 7 or 8 years ago on current hardware. People are always free to go to a company like Apple that could care less what the hell you can run, as long that icon animates nicely.

 

I just don't quite get the reaction when what you're experiencing now is largely no different to any other new version of Windows. Win98 runs much slower than 95, largely thanks to integrating the browser into the shell, and ME was slower than 98. In fact, for basic folder browsing, Win95 can still feel faster (on old hardware) than the latest quad core running XP! MS have always designed Operating systems to run well on the next generation of hardware rather than the current. Vista is no different there. Its problem is that most of its improvements aren't very tangible for the cost.

 

 

Maybe we'll put Vista on some of our administrative boxes in a couple of years but for now we can't take the quite solid speed loss we'd see on current machines. I've tested the OS in real world applications with CAD/CAM machines. Its a {censored}ing pig. Period.

But there are reasons it's causing performance loss, some of which I'm trying to explain. The sad fact is the main reasons for using Vista (increased OS stability and security) are NOT visible improvements, and so people wonder why the hell they should use it over Vista. The answer is, if security on XP isn't an issue for you, and your current XP system is very stable, there is likely NO real justification for using Vista! That's why they're having a tough time selling it to business (added hassles, no huge benefits, potential performance penalties) and why they have to make things like DX10 Vista only in order to appeal to consumers. For a business purpose such as yours, you're unlikely to get much if any benefit from Windows 7 (the version after Vista) either.

 

Again, depending on tweaks and background processes, Vista itself shouldn't be THAT much worse than XP. The first thing anyone concerned with performance should do is certainly shut down background processes and the new GUI. To be clear.. Vista will still eat more CPU and memory, and part of that IS feature bloat, but mostly it's the new layer getting between the hardware and (for memory) because it's been designed to cache more ram. You only need to look at DAW bencharks for evidence of that - Vista performs significantly worse than XP at very low latencies, but usually only a bit worse if you disable the new GUI and run at maybe 6ms. That doesn't mean there aren't specific apps out there that will run like crap, but the above is generally true

[P321]

My current company which develops audio visual medical applications could not be possibly affected by an OS shutting down high resolution video output because it thought we were pirates, or by disabling a driver on a whim, could it?

You're referring to an argument first raised by researcher Peter Gutmann about Vista's DRM. Although I'd wonder why you'd be watching a DRM'd BluRay movie at the same time as using such an app (Btw protected disks won't even ship until at least 2010.. But anyway.. )

 

My understanding is that's correct - it won't touch anything that isn't in the DRM stream, and even the DRM stream will continue to play! It will simply downgrade itself to standard definition resolution. I think Gutmanns (eventual) main argument WASN'T that some bizarre bug could potentially cause other images to degrade too, but simply that the DRM would eat more CPU cycles needlessly than if DRM wasn't implemented.

 

Is such a bug possible? Who knows. Is it likely? No. And, if you're worried about such scenarios then you do what people do in any mission critical situation.. you wait until the software and drivers prove themselves over a period of time..

[P321]

the odd thing i find with all of these holy wars is how people forget about how long they spend with maintaining drivers and such on the windows side. sure it might be close to the smoothness of a mac box, but how long did you end up screwing with settings to get it that way? and if one is ok with spending time with configuration, why not save your money and use linux?

You can get Windows hardware that will surpass the hardware inside a Mac, in terms of hardware stability. Apple tend to use upper mid range components that remove much of the headaches buying cheaper hardware causes. As for everything else, it's much the same as the Mac side of things. Windows has 3 annoying things Vs the Mac.. Its more common for apps to like to start background processes (traybar apps etc), the Windows registry (which gives the Mac some advantage in maintaining an installation longer term, especially with novice and even average users), and a BSD foundation that was built for multi-user environments, which makes it more secure (ask for passwords to do anything critical etc). MS then made it worse by putting Internet Explorer into the shell, so they couldn't be forced to stop shipping a browser with their OS. This then opened the spyware door to the world.

 

Apart from that, there's really no huge difference. If anything, I'd say XP tends to squeeze a bit more from the hardware usually, probably thanks to more development on the driver side of things

[P321]

Its statements like this throughout your malarky blathering Vista posts that just prove again and again you have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about.

Whereas you obviously do But weren't you the guy who called Wes Taggart a "noob" when he offered advice on tuning your Minimoog? So I wouldn't expect anything less

 

I have 5 computers in my studio from 2008 Mac Pros to the {censored}ty Compaq Im typing this on with Vista.

Congratulations.. your mother must be very proud.

And it still has HUGE driver issues... Yes still.

That's an outrage. I'd call Bill Gates if I were you, and demand a refund. A man should be able to download pr0n and still have his machine work well. It's a basic right..

And yeah I bet you are right- Vista is way better than OSX in many many applications... idiot...:poke:

Depends what you run, and I'd rather compare XP btw But you've already checked real world benchmarks before making such remarks, and know what you're talking about, of course It's pretty well known that hardware is generally better catered to on the Windows side of things, before you even introduce OS factors.

 

If YOU used YOUR computer for more than the internet and didn't just quote theoretical specs

Maybe I use stuff and check numbers for myself.. Now there's a thought..

[kooki_sf]

well yes but you seem to be ignoring the second part of what I was saying. if your going to customize, why not go all the way and run linux? sure, you might have to do a little research to get all your drivers and software working happy like, but from the sound of things on this board, that hasnt exactly been cake in vista land either.

 

there is the big issue that most of the standard DAW's dont run under linux, but given the vista debacle its only a matter of time...

[BeowulfX]

While I appreciate the "eye-candy" stuff/GUI of Vista...I think that the system requirements adds to the "forced obsolescence" marketing tactic employed by hardware and processor manufacturers.

 

Good examples of companies/manufacturers using forced obsolescence as marketing tactics are:

 

1) Intel and AMD's constant processor upgrades even if we really can't FULLY utilize yet the inherent capabilities of a 64-bit/multi-threading feature of today's processors; given a relatively limited amount of apps/games that fully that take advantage of such features. At this point, let me EMPHASIZE that given the current crop of powerful 64-bit/multi-core processors available, WHAT WE REALLY NEED WOULD BE ABUNDANCE OF 64-BIT APPS that would take advantage of the current processors...and THEN, may be, an octa-core offering from both Intel or AMD may become a viable option in the future.

 

2) Creative Labs (yes, the creator of the SB Live series soundcards now under fire and criticism for PURPOSELY disabling some features of its Xi-Fi series soudncards in VISTA to force consumers to either buy their sloppy drivers or buy a new soundcard that they'd probably be releasing in the near future)

 

3) And yes, I guess VISTA's microsoft may well be included in this list of major companies. Considering that Windows XP has pretty much proven its worth and stability throughout the years...plus the fact that it's "lifetime" has been extended up to 2015...attests to its continued popularity and reliability among PC consumers. I would like to think if it hadn't shown good reliability and stability as an OS (Windows M.E. anyone?), it wouldn't have gained such enormous popularity throughout the years.

 

4) Cellphone manufacturers, especially Nokia and Sony Ericsson. I appreciate smartphones, phones with camera/3G/video features...don't get me wrong...but in releasing new ones in every 6-8 months or so...I wouldn't be surprised if the world would be filled with electronic junks in a few years (coming from both the cellphone manufacturer market segment and the PC/processor market segment).

 

We are the consumers...we have the "purchasing power" (i.e. money), we can send out a powerful message against "forced obsolescence" by not "blindly" or continually supporting companies that seek to drain our hard-earned money by forcing us to buy newer stuff and leave behind fairly recent stuff that is still very much up to the task.

 

In line with this, Microsoft is set to release yet another OS. If ever, I do hope it wouldn't be such a MEMORY HOG/SYSTEM-HOG as VISTA is. Sorry guys, I don't mean to sound anti-VISTA and disagree with some of you...but I'm entitled to my opinion here. IMHO, Windows VISTA is a memory/system-hog...there maybe more service pack releases later on...but I just don't like the idea of giving my 2GB DDR2 RAM memory to VISTA for "consumption" as part of its "minimum system requirement"...I'd rather have it fully utilized by other applications that need it more and that really matter to me (i.e. Cakewalk Sonar 6 P.E., VSTi, Soundforge etc.).

[syncretism]

Vista sucks so badly that grown men write hysterical emails about it and the Little Phatty.

[mate_stubb]

You're referring to an argument first raised by researcher Peter Gutmann about Vista's DRM. Although I'd wonder why you'd be watching a DRM'd BluRay movie at the same time as using such an app (Btw protected disks won't even ship until at least 2010.. But anyway.. ) My understanding is that's correct - it won't touch anything that isn't in the DRM stream, and even the DRM stream will continue to play! It will simply downgrade itself to standard definition resolution. I think Gutmanns (eventual) main argument WASN'T that some bizarre bug could potentially cause other images to degrade too, but simply that the DRM would eat more CPU cycles needlessly than if DRM wasn't implemented. Is such a bug possible? Who knows. Is it likely? No. And, if you're worried about such scenarios then you do what people do in any mission critical situation.. you wait until the software and drivers prove themselves over a period of time..

 

OR... I simply keep my office on XP, which runs all the industry standard 3D rendering and 2d publishing tools we need to communicate with our clients. I still haven't heard a good reason why we should ever "upgrade" to Vista.

 

BTW, some of my developers use Mac laptops, and run their necessary Windows processes via Parallels. But there is no clear advantage that I can see other than that Macs are hip at the moment.

 

Linux is not a desktop option as our bread and butter apps don't run on them. We sure use the hell out of it on our server apps though.

[The Real MC]

 

Whatever. I'm I.T. for a living . I'm also Machine Shop Lead with a stable of about 25 CNC machining centers and four cutting lasers. Vista is not currently stable enough or lean enough to get anywhere near these babies. *IMG* Maybe we'll put Vista on some of our administrative boxes in a couple of years but for now we can't take the quite solid speed loss we'd see on current machines. I've tested the OS in real world applications with CAD/CAM machines. Its a {censored}ing pig. Period. Currently the administration tools in Vista are a mangled non-homogeneous mess. This is another thing that makes it unattractive besides its {censored}ty performance.

 

 

James, that looks uncannyly like my line of work. I'm not in IT but I am the senior engineer responsible for anything with a vision system or a laser. I work with Co2 class IV lasers that can cut through metal. Due to IP issues I can't post a pic.

 

Vista has no friends over here either. Despite working for a cutting edge technology company, the IT department has decided against embracing Vista. I have just finished converting the vision software over to multi-threading which gained us a big production increase, and Vista would be a step backward.

 

My next computer purchase at home will be a Mac, I do not want DRM on my home computer. SO much for "Trusted Computing"...

[Khazul]

 

and if one is ok with spending time with configuration, why not save your money and use linux?

 

 

Yer pays for what yer gets - nuff said...

[P321]

well yes but you seem to be ignoring the second part of what I was saying. if your going to customize, why not go all the way and run linux?

The amount of customisation required to make Windows run well for DAW usage is actually pretty minimal. It only involves a few points and clicks and only takes a couple of minutes. What's more important is you chose the right basic hardware to begin with and have the know how not to bugger it up once it's running (installing bloated software which craps all over the registry being the main problem, as well as spyware trojans). Linux is often much more involved, despite distros like Ubuntu. It can require more editing of files and command line variables. So it's generally more difficult to get up and running.

 

The other problem is, whilst you can customize linux to your exact hardware, many of the drivers available offer significantly less performance than the equivalent Windows drivers. So you've got the theory that less bloat should = more performance, but the reality is different because the drivers make the system run slower. Windows is the bread and butter for most hardware companies, so that's what they spend most of their time optimizing for. The Mac faces the same problem from developers to a degree. That's if the driver even came from the developer in the first place. It's pretty common for individuals to do Linux drivers. They'll often work, but give limited functionality and have quirky behaviours etc.

 

Then there's the software support. If Linux had native apps like Photoshop and all the major DAW apps it might stand a chance, but it doesn't. Its native DAW software is horrible. You can now run Windows VST's under Linux with pretty reasonable performance, and Receptor is evidence of that too. Constructing the actual GUI tends to drain peformance more though. Either way it's far from ideal for now and what's there tends to be sore on the eyes, even for those not bothered by eye candy

 

A Linux solution would be nice, but it still doesn't seem like major devs are willing to get involved, and I don't see it changing soon, short of a billionaire philanthropist getting involved Dan from Korg did say that the Korg Legacy Cell plugins get about double the performance on the Oasys (which runs Linux of course) than the equivalent hardware running as a Windows plugin. So, if there's really that much extra performance to be had from other software, it'd be great to see Linux take off for DAW usage. Alas I won't hold my breath

A realtime OS, rather than Linux, would be the most ideal situation for a DAW though..

[Hoopaa]

A realtime OS, rather than Linux, would be the most ideal situation for a DAW though..

What is a "realtime OS?"

[llamastorm]

Which is why there is realtime Linux, ooooh, snap!

[P321]

OR... I simply keep my office on XP, which runs all the industry standard 3D rendering and 2d publishing tools we need to communicate with our clients. I still haven't heard a good reason why we should ever "upgrade" to Vista.

That's because, outside of improving OS stability and security, there isn't much at all And even that, at least initially, was offset by more unstable apps and poor drivers, and new bugs, all of which continue for some people. Plus some of the stability changes hit performance noticeably. Even the most visible difference, the GUI, is one of the main things that makes performance worse than XP There ARE lots of small improvements in Vista too, but it's mostly stuff nobody cares about. What's funny is some people seem to get the impression I'm saying Vista is great even when I'm pointing out these things and saying I use XP personally!

 

I'm simply trying to keep some balance and perspective by saying, actually, it's not THAT different from XP once you switch some of the crap off, understand it's trying to cache with more ram, and that some (not all, by any means) of the remaining performance differences happened for somewhat sensible reasons.

 

The fact that those changes should harm performance sucks, but you can only do so much when you're trying to keep as many things working with XP as you can. There's many things I don't like about Vista (not least is the fact that its search doesn't work properly unless you allow it to index a drive, regardless of what command switches you feed it). All I'm pointing out is that, as far as evolutionary OS changes from Microsoft go, it's nothing out of the ordinary. Microsoft allow feature bloat because they always figure the hardware will bail them out. And, so far, they've mostly been proven correct (Intel Octa Core CPUs, albeit with 4 cores being HT, launch in Q4 this year.. ) Performance percentage differences with XP will continue to decrease as hardware gets faster, and you won't have much of an option if you want good 64 bit and decent 16+ core processor support anyway. It's nothing MS haven't being doing for the last 30 years!

 

At least virtualisation technology maybe offers MS a way out the compatibility trap. MS started out thinking Vista was going to be very different from XP. Then they started thinking out Windows 7 would be different from Vista (It was originally planned to have things like a compact kernel and scraps the registry.. ) But now it's only going to be a Vista update. They had to scrap much of the changes. Even with all their resources it was too complex to do in so many years. MS do realize the direction they're supposed to be heading in, but it's difficult when you've got 1 billion people holding you hostage to keeping things compatible. So I suspect we'll see virtualisation technology used to keep old software running eventually, whilst they switch to a new kernel. But we're stuck with Vista and its variants for the next 3-4 years..

[P321]

What is a "realtime OS?"

Wikipedia knows all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realtime_os

 

In plain English what it's saying is that your OS can prioritize things better, so that your system will never freeze up for some seconds waiting for some program to load or do its thing etc. That would not be a good thing if the software was controlling a planes early collision warning system or something For audio it'd mean a glitch free system that wouldn't suffer from clicks and pops.

[syncretism]

It's a bit of a tangent, but my friend's running Reaper and VSTs on Ubuntu Studio {an -rt Linux distro} and WINE. 2ms latency with an Echo Layla, no glitches, stable as hell.

 

I'm surprised the CNC types here aren't using some flavor of -rt Linux, QNX or the like in their machines, if I'm reading this right. I didn't know that Windows had a toehold in that marketplace {the only CNC guy I know uses a realtime Linux kernel on the machines he built}.

[alexibm]

 

Vista sucks because it actually runs slower than XP on the same hardware. As I.T. guy at a metal fab place, I've been paid good money to remove Vista from machines. I'm not going to run it on any of our administrative machines or engineering stations. It's a bloated resource hog. I run a number of different OSs at home, Vista is not one of them.

 

 

If it not bigger of the secret, what fab are you working for ?

[Numina]

MS shouldn't "fix" what isn't broken! I am currently using Vista as my third computer - mostly used for things like internet surfing and entertainment (I use a Carillon XP system for recording). Truth be told, I haven't had any major issues - yeah a few aggravating moments for sure like getting use to the interface AND I can't run my version of NERO or KARMA MW on Vista.

 

As for the "big brother" monitoring, please tell me more. Is there any links that discuss this in further detail?

 

J.

[whitepapagold]

Vista sucks so badly that grown men write hysterical emails about it and the Little Phatty.

 

pwned...

[whitepapagold]

Wikipedia knows all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realtime_os In plain English what it's saying is that your OS can prioritize things better, so that your system will never freeze up for some seconds waiting for some program to load or do its thing etc. That would not be a good thing if the software was controlling a planes early collision warning system or something For audio it'd mean a glitch free system that wouldn't suffer from clicks and pops.

 

And I was laughing so hard as I wrote my post knowing your panties would skyrocket! I am truly amazed at how much you have written... But AWESOME you wins teh internet.

 

Not really of course- you can attempt to quote all the BS you like, but you again - as far as application goes- not a CLUE! You need to read up on your information!

 

Please, make this one really REALLY long.

 

(note to self- get girlfriend... hell, get ANY friend!)