Windows 7

Libra Monkee · Post by **Libra Monkee** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:02 am

According to this article the next manifestation of Windows is set to come out in the second half of next year as opposed to 2010 as it was originally planned.

Lynx

chicken n waffles · Post by **chicken n waffles** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:06 am

if it's true, it kind of confirms my suspicion that windows is treating vista like it did winME. i kinda like(d) vista, even if i'm one of five who did.

oh well.

Post by **Sabre** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:17 am

chicken n waffles wrote:i kinda like(d) vista, even if i'm one of five who did.

There was a small percentage of people that liked Vista.... that same percentage was also in the Special Olympics

Vista is beautiful, but it's also a hog, even after you turn alot of the memory hogging services off. Why couldn't M$ take a hint from the KDE foundation? KDE 4 uses less resources while looking better that KDE 3.

Hopefully 7 does this, we'll see.

Mr Kleen · Post by **Mr Kleen** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:18 am

the 47 tiered pricing system didn't help Vista either...

chicken n waffles · Post by **chicken n waffles** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:28 am

Sabre wrote:
chicken n waffles wrote:i kinda like(d) vista, even if i'm one of five who did.
There was a small percentage of people that liked Vista.... that same percentage was also in the Special Olympics

ah, so i'm retarded for liking the good points of vista. got it.

Post by **Sabre** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:35 am

chicken n waffles wrote:
Sabre wrote:
chicken n waffles wrote:i kinda like(d) vista, even if i'm one of five who did.
There was a small percentage of people that liked Vista.... that same percentage was also in the Special Olympics
ah, so i'm retarded for liking the good points of vista. got it.

Post by **complacent** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:44 am

I still use Vista here at work. I like a lot of it compared to XP. But there are a number of issues with it that still really chap my arse...

I'm curious to see what the differences are going to be. Because two complete redesigns in an OS (UI and all) does not a happy developer team make.

And Sabre is *right* on the money - that Gecko rendering engine (and related projects) have made KDE verrah niiiiice without hogging the jeebus out of the system resources.

WRXWagon2112 · Post by **WRXWagon2112** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:31 am

Isn't it time that Microsoft completely overhauled Windows? It just seems like they've tacked on more and more functionality without addressing the integration of the new features/functionality. I know that Apple users hated having a new, incompatible operating system, but it has ushered in a better OS (I believe OS X was incompatible with the prior OS, right?).

Perhaps it's time to go exclusively 64-bit?

--Alan

avriette · Post by **avriette** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:38 am

WRXWagon2112 wrote:Isn't it time that Microsoft completely overhauled Windows? It just seems like they've tacked on more and more functionality without addressing the integration of the new features/functionality. I know that Apple users hated having a new, incompatible operating system, but it has ushered in a better OS (I believe OS X was incompatible with the prior OS, right?).

Perhaps it's time to go exclusively 64-bit?

--Alan

Vista was a complete overhaul. Almost no code is shared between Vista and XP. Vista is actually a lot more like 2003 Server under the hood, but almost all the apps changed because all the frameworks changed.

The real interesting change will be when Blackcomb (the next server version due, what, end of this year? Earlyish next year?) gets to the market. They do the important kernel work on the server end, and then roll the good stuff from there back into the client (e.g., Vista). That will make subsequent client pretty cool. The problem of course is that we can't see that far down the road, hardware-wise. We could see dual sixteen-core machines in three years. That's fine, but you have to teach yer developers how to handle code with 32 threads executing at once.

Also, for what it's worth, that screen shot is fake. The build number is way wrong.

Post by **Sabre** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:23 pm

WRXWagon2112 wrote:Perhaps it's time to go exclusively 64-bit?
--Alan

They'll need to have 64b and 32b versions for awhile since not everyone has a 64b CPU :/

avriette wrote: Vista was a complete overhaul. Almost no code is shared between Vista and XP. Vista is actually a lot more like 2003 Server under the hood, but almost all the apps changed because all the frameworks changed.

The real interesting change will be when Blackcomb (the next server version due, what, end of this year? Earlyish next year?) gets to the market. They do the important kernel work on the server end, and then roll the good stuff from there back into the client (e.g., Vista). That will make subsequent client pretty cool. The problem of course is that we can't see that far down the road, hardware-wise. We could see dual sixteen-core machines in three years. That's fine, but you have to teach yer developers how to handle code with 32 threads executing at once.

Also, for what it's worth, that screen shot is fake. The build number is way wrong.

Actually, there is a lot of XP code in Vista

The kernel's core is the same, but they added layers of security and DRM to it. This patched a lot of holes in the XP kernel and made it so that they could control what device drivers and such are allowed to execute. Basically, they took the XP kernel, moved more things to user land and made it so that anything that has ring 0 access needs to be DRM'ed (aka, approved by them). This definitely helped security, but it did nothing to all the supporting libraries.

They REALLY needed to do a whole rewrite, but that isn't what happened. At the end, they pulled quite a few of the XBox dev's to the Vista team and it still didn't help.

Blackcomb *should* ship with WinFS and Monad, which should have shipped with Vista in the first place but were pulled.

I had very high hopes for Vista. I expected a 95->XP jump for all the hype that they put into it, but in the end I got a 98->ME jump.

They really do need to sit down and rewrite everything. They have the man power and the knowhow. There is no reason to support API calls from 10 years ago. If they actually sat down and rewrote it from scratch, they could do it in such a way to be secure, beautiful and minimalistic from a hardware stand point.... But that wouldn't sell more hardware, would it.... and M$ is VERY close with it's hardware vendors.

And I *TOTALLY* agree with threaded development. Compiler coders need to start thinking more on how to help developers get their applications multi-threaded and developers need to learn to develop multi-threaded code. Developers for years have had the mind set that a faster CPU will solve their lazy coding styles. This is no longer the case. For now, Moore's Law is holding, but not in the traditional sense. Computing power will increase, but not speed. Because of this, developers need to write better, more logical code rather than letting the compiler do it (or try to) for them. It's a very different mind set when you get into it. You have to worry about things like thread safety and deadlocks. Efficient multithreading is hard, I'm not going to lie, but that's why they get paid the "big bucks".

Ok, I need to stop so I can get some lunch

Code: Select all

steps off soap box

spazegun2213 · Post by **spazegun2213** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:02 pm

I agree with julian.... vista sounded cool in 2003, when there was supposed to be this winFS and indigo and other cool crap...

vista came with NONE of that.

Osiros · Post by **Osiros** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:33 pm

I guess I should buy my ticket to the next Special Olympics as well because I kinda like my Vista rig. Now, I'm definitely a UI whore....there's no denying that. So, I see pretty and I'm instantly in drool-land. (i know, i've already handed over a few geek cards for this already).

But, short of all of the benchmarks and all that other stuff I don't really see all of the "hogging" issues that everyone talks about. I mean, yeah, you need a good amount of power to successfully run the OS but hardware needs are constantly changing anyway. It's simply a matter of moving us forward.....if we wanted systems to run blazingly fast on 16 megs of ram we wouldn't put the effort into developing newer, prettier....well...stuff. Watch a futuristic movie about a kick-ass computer and it's likely that the "theoretical" system is some kind of futuristic setup that packs a terrabyte of ram and an incomprehsible amount of hard drive space and processing power into something the size of a laptop. By Windows 95 standards - that's a freaking hog.

But, my rig boots fast, it loads apps way faster than my old XP based system used to, it's got a nice interface....this makes me happy. And it's got dual hard drives, 2 gigs of ram, dual video cards, a pretty quick processor....and it's a laptop. Drastically over-powered for Windows 3.1 - but for a "modern" operating sytstem with all the "modern" stuff we like? Just right. *shrug* Such is progress.......

chicken n waffles · Post by **chicken n waffles** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:08 pm

no eric... people should just expect the latest o.s. to run smoothly on their 4+ year old hardware!!!1 DUH!

BryanH · Post by **BryanH** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 9:02 pm

I am a huge windows nerd and I do have to admit being more than a little pissed at what they released. I was expecting a full rewrite and they simply didn't deliver.

The early discussions I read about Vista actually alluded to a "start fresh" frame of mind and Microsoft was actually NOT going to be backwards compatible. Well...guess what....somewhere along the line this got abandoned the old kernel got used and someone made the very stupid decision to even support Win 98 apps. THEY ARE MAKING SURE THEY ARE BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE WITH AN UNSUPPORTED OS!

As I was discussing with Julian today I still think they should have made it 64 bit ONLY and not even worried about 32 bit.

But this also brings me to my next point about the hardware requirements as a whole....please spend some decent money if you want a vista box. No one bitches about having to pay out the ass for a OS X box but if they can't slap Vista on their 386 OMGWTF lets BBQ Microsoft.

Get real.

Vista NEEDS some horsepower.....just like OSX needs horsepower.

The exciting part will be when they get the 64 bit *REALLY* done with WinFS and see how well it performs.