Charlie said:
MS made a lot of noise about how Vista was scratch-built... and
indeed it appears to have all the bugs and problems of a new OS.
I think they scratched rather badly with it; and it seems they're still
scratching their heads on how to make it work properly.
It really depends on what you're doing.
If you're running most Linux distros any machine from a 286 up will suffice.
That's a good thing in that it recycles hardware; but a lousy thing in that
old computers heat the room better than actually computing.
Again, it all depends on what you're doing. The person who mainly
uses a computer for Internet access and office tasks won't see much
improvement with a HWi upgrade.
Agreed; and here's my plug for kustomkomputa.co.uk: We build individual
machines for customers to use, rather than mass-produce them to sit on
shelves and be bought by people who might never use even half of their
capability - So not only does the customer get what they want but the cost
is also more like what they want to pay. They *are* all high-quality
utilising some of the best components; but why sell a person a nuclear bomb
for a small fortune when they only want a cheap flashbulb?
It is a pattern that MS would like to extend indefinitely. Look back
over the past two decades. For many years, frequent hardware/software
upgrades brought massive improvements in system performance and ease
of use... DOS to Win3x, Win3x to Win95, Win95 to Win98 and then to
2k/XP.
But the leap from XP to Vista is of dubious value. What can a user do
with a computer running Vista that wasn't possible (and just as easy
if not easier) under XP?
Agreed; most of the security enhancements in Vista are overhyped and
outdated already in a way. Vista *is* more advanced than XP in a few ways;
but most of it could have been accomplished with a decent (And fairly huge.)
SP3 for XP without the need for major hardware upgrades. The greatest thing
with Vista IMO is its support for Direct X 10 which utilises a number of
conjoined pixel/texel rendering streams to provide much greater clarity and
resolution; but there are still pitifully few graphical renderings of games
or anything else to utilise DX10 to this day.
Similarly, what is the benefit of running a new dual-core CPU as
opposed to a 1.5ghz Pentium from a few years back? It matters if you
are rendering video or playing the latest games... but most people
aren't doing that.
I like multi-core CPUs: I have 2 main comps; 1 with an Athlon 64 single-core
that I use mainly for watching web video only, as well as a stand-in in case
the other one running a dual-core Athlon 64x2 goes tits-up.(I just installed
XP SP3 RC2 on both of them and will be monitoring for performance.) The
versatility and multithreading of the dual-core far exceeds anything
available from the single-core though.
I wonder what Windows 7 will be like... will it be even bigger and
more resource-hungry than Vista?
Reports from M$ indicate that it will run a stripped-down condensed kernal
which will add greater functionality in terms of performance speed; but it
will be backwards-compatible with Vista hardware. M$ are also planning on
incorporating further web-vased features such as Windows Live.
And will it come with a EULA in
which the consumer is understood not to have actually bought
anything, but merely to have acquired a lease to software that must
remain tethered to a license server for as long as it is used?
I wouldn't be at all surprised; unless M$ have learned anything from their
mistakes with Vista.
Hmmm. That's too bad. I hope your experience with Linux improves.
I'm sticking to XP until 7 is released. I will try the latest Linux distros,
particularly Ubuntu, but on an old comp with a P2 CPU that I have stored
away somewhere. There's been another Ubuntu release since Gutsy hasn't
there?
