The ludicrous claim that Windows can multitask

[Roof Fiddler]

In Vista (RC2), a process which I'm running is sucking practically all
available memory and a bunch of the swap file, and is swapping constantly,
so that system responsiveness is dreadfully slow. Even pressing alt-tab, it
takes several seconds for the window list to appear. Pressing the windows
key, it takes several seconds for the start menu to even begin to appear,
and when it finally does, I can see it slowly drawing the various parts of
the menu. And "Fast User Switching" takes literally minutes to switch users.

And this is on a 2GHz Athlon 64 with a gigabyte of memory, Nvidia 6600GT,
and 300GB 7200rpm SATA hard drive.

Is Microsoft _ever_ going to PLEASE SOLVE this denial-of-service attack
vector already? Let me specify per-process memory usage quotas! Sheesh!
Microsoft says that Windows is better than DOS because with Windows I can
run more than one program at once, but considering that one program is
sucking all the system resources and the program has no options to
self-limit its own consumption of resources and there's nothing I can do
about it besides kill the process (which is not an option in this case),
this "multitasking" which Windows supposedly enables is just a cruel tease.

 

[DMB]

It's definitely not a crappy program written by a lousy software engineer.
And DOS is definitely better than Windows Vista - especially at
multitasking.

-- Dave

 

[Tom Lake]

In Vista (RC2), a process which I'm running is sucking practically all
available memory and a bunch of the swap file, and is swapping constantly,
so that system responsiveness is dreadfully slow. Even pressing alt-tab,
it takes several seconds for the window list to appear. Pressing the
windows key, it takes several seconds for the start menu to even begin to
appear, and when it finally does, I can see it slowly drawing the various
parts of the menu. And "Fast User Switching" takes literally minutes to
switch users.

There's an issue with your system since Vista multitasks very well on all
our test systems. The first thing you should do is increase your RAM to the
maximum your motherboard can support. 1GB just isn't enough to
run several large apps simultaneously. The speed of your hard drive
is also critical. If you have only PATA drives, I'd suggest getting a
SATA adapter and use SATA drives for your swap file.

Tom Lake

 

[Roof Fiddler]

It's definitely not a crappy program written by a lousy software engineer.
And DOS is definitely better than Windows Vista - especially at
multitasking.

I didn't say that DOS is better than Vista at multitasking. I said that
Vista is as impractical as DOS for multitasking if Vista is running an
application which aggressively consumes all available memory.

 

[Roof Fiddler]

There's an issue with your system since Vista multitasks very well on all
our test systems.

Did you try the standard fork bomb and malloc bomb denial-of-service attacks
on your test systems to see whether Vista is vulnerable? What happened?

The first thing you should do is increase your RAM to the
maximum your motherboard can support. 1GB just isn't enough to
run several large apps simultaneously.

My point was that I have a program (no, it's not "while (1) malloc"; it's
actually something useful) which I need to run on a machine which needs to
be simultaneously usable for other purposes as well, but that program runs
with the assumption that the machine will be dedicated to that program, so
it aggressively uses all available memory in an attempt to optimize its own
performance. It doesn't matter whether the system has one megabyte or one
petabyte of memory.

The speed of your hard drive
is also critical. If you have only PATA drives, I'd suggest getting a
SATA adapter and use SATA drives for your swap file.

I do have my swap on a 300GB 7200rpm SATA drive, but as I mentioned above,
the particular system resources available aren't the issue; the issue is
that Vista allows a greedy program to consume all those resources, whatever
they may be.

 

[Guest]

1 gigabyte is enough memory to run multiple large apps.

 

[Nathaniel L. Walker]

There's an issue with your system since Vista multitasks very well on all

our test systems. The first thing you should do is increase your RAM to
the
maximum your motherboard can support.

This is a problem, the operating system should be able to run on a very
comfortable level of hardware (WinXP runs smoothly with 192 - 256 MB
of RAM on a machine in my home multitasking, and it has a 500MHz
K6-2 Processor). RAM prices are insane around here, 149USD for
a stick of 512 PC3200. I do not order online, as I've had really bad luck
doing that (spare me the recommendations).

1GB just isn't enough to run several large apps simultaneously.
The speed of your hard drive is also critical. If you have only
PATA drives, I'd suggest getting a SATA adapter and use SATA
drives for your swap file.

Again, this is a problem. I know it's the next version of Windows, but its
system requirements far exceed that of its predecessor, and compared to
other OSes that perform the same tasks just as aggresively (hardware
accellerated desktop, et al), Vista seems bloated and poorly architectured.

There are businesses here that don't plan to upgrade because it would
require them to upgrade all of their client desktops and the licensing costs
are just extreme. Also, the security features make it less intuitive than
Windows XP (Programs run restricted even when run under Administrator
account, wtf...). They seem to be going to the extreme to give us this
vision
of faux security. It's not working, either.

- Nate.

 

[Guest]

ITS A REPEAT OF MILLENIUM EDITION ALL OVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!
IT ONLY LASTED 6 MONTHS BEFORE IT DIED!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mo Mo]

Please give more details. What kind of process? What does the application
do on the release. RC2 is outdated and shouldn't be used as a benchmark
anyways.