Vista/XP

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Original post by Herbal Confused at what Microsoft at doing. What do you guys think?

I'm not confused, it's just the gears of the Microsoft capitalist machine grinding away as usual.

IMHO: Of course they're going to ship crappy crippleware, it'll convince people to buy the next step up just in case they might need the extra feature the next step up needs.

In your case, it's the oh so trivial matter of DirectX10. I think MS are also thinking in terms of money - game companies targeting Windows systems using DX, they'll be forced to get the new OS to develop for the new OS, and the new hardware that has to be built to match DirectX10. Microsoft are sure to make a killing out of it, and also from computer newbies buying new PCs with some arbitrary version of Vista installed (probably Home Premium or whatever the hell it is).

As I say, Microsoft is getting too greedy, in my opinion - and they've badly misjudged it this time. I'm not hearing too much in the way of overwhelming praise for Vista at this moment, but it's not too long until release.

this seriously reminds me of the dos/windows 95 switch back in the day... almost word for word.

Yeh, I was just thinking that if DirectX 10 games can only run on Vista, it's going to be quite a while until DirectX 10 is actually used... I mean, how many teams are going to want games that will run on Vista only when they can have it work on XP + Vista.
Also, I don't like the way MS have just stopped supporting XP users with the Vista update. They're just encouraging people to move to free operating systems like Linux.

The reason (or, at least, part of the reason) Direct3D 10 (it's D3D 10, not DX 10) is not appearing on pre-Vista systems is the revised display driver model - and they're not going to back-port this model to XP.

Sorry for that mistake. My main problem is that I will be getting a new PC without an OS, so I can't wait until all the Vista bugs are cleaned out unless I get XP while I'm waiting... (or let the PC go dusty in a cupboard).
At the moment I'm leaning towards getting XP first, but I'm really not sure yet. I think this will partly depend on the UK prices aswell, so I'll be keeping an eye open, and I might delay building the PC (give myself more time to save up for better parts too...).

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There would be few, if any, immediate benefits of an early upgrade to Vista, according to Ted Woodhouse, director of IT strategy at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

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If there are any benefits to be had we'll be six months or more behind the early adopters who can do their usual public service of shaking out the bugs.

If I do build the new PC before I'm ready to upgrade to Vista, then I guess I can work on building my Linux Game Development distro for a while.

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Original post by kryat this seriously reminds me of the dos/windows 95 switch back in the day... almost word for word.

Big difference:


DOS -> Windows = major usability paradigm shift.
XP -> Vista = slower and more glossy graphics.



IMO: people are stupid enough to buy into it, so of course Vista will succeed.

Yeh, but where XP got decent reviews when it came out, you'll struggle to find any for Vista. Linux is popping up all over, and MS are trying to get more involved with the open source communities.
For the while though, Windows dominates the OS market, and thats why I have to consider getting Vista, because I intend to go commercial with my games (when I get sorted out that is ^^), and the real money is still with Windows.

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Original post by Herbal Yeh, but where XP got decent reviews when it came out, you'll struggle to find any for Vista. Linux is popping up all over, …

Where are you getting these reviews? Every review of Vista I've read so far has been complimentary.

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Original post by benryves Quote: Original post by Herbal Yeh, but where XP got decent reviews when it came out, you'll struggle to find any for Vista. Linux is popping up all over, … Where are you getting these reviews? Every review of Vista I've read so far has been complimentary.

He reads Slashdot comments. His posts all reek of it. [grin]

Anyway, like was mentionned, the reason D3D10 isn't backported is because of the new driver model. There will be a partial backport of D3D10 on XP [code?]named 9.0L, where MS will include the features that are easy to hammer in without forcing people to totally rewrite their drivers.

As for hardware compatibility, it might be worse than XP, especially in the 'old products not supported by manufacturers' market, but it will still be ahead of any *NIX. Case in point: my laptop which runs Vista flawlessly but had all sort of issues with Ubuntu. I haven't encountered any drivers that didn't work well on Vista either (4 machines). The only drivers problems I had were dumb installers refusing to fire.

Is it worth it ? It is for me, I cringe when I have to go back to XP. I say give it a try and make your own call.

Will D3D10 usage be slowed since they loose the XP market ? Maybe, doubt it. If I start a cutting edge game right now, assuming I get it done in 2 years, none of the PCs that came with XP will be supported meaningfully anyway. Where's the loss ?

From a developper point of view, XNA and D3D10 rock my socks.

[Edited by - jfclavette on November 14, 2006 2:26:05 PM]

^^ Thanks for that. How I see it though is that I wont be using D3D10 for a while anyway, so for now Im pretty sound using XP. The price difference makes a big difference to me. So atm I still think I'll be getting XP and waiting for SP2 of Vista. There's no point developing with D3D10 until the majority have migrated to Vista.

Thanks for all the replies, they've all been really helpful.

[Edit] I've been reading reviews in my Linux mag too, benryves. Sorry =). Kind of biased views there as you can imagine, but I stand by Linux in being better than Windows in most things apart from gaming and hardware support. [/edit]

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Original post by Herbal Yeh, but where XP got decent reviews when it came out, you'll struggle to find any for Vista.

I can smell the slashdot. I've read tons of great reviews on Vista and have used from beta 2 through RC1 to now RC2 and it's a great OS.

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Linux is popping up all over

Actually it's not at all, that statement again reeks of slashdot.

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For the while though, Windows dominates the OS market

I'll correct your point:
Forever, Windows will dominate the OS market for desktop use.

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and thats why I have to consider getting Vista, because I intend to go commercial with my games (when I get sorted out that is ^^), and the real money is still with Windows.

You could always buy your PC before Vista launches (pre January 30th) and you would get Windows XP and the free Vista upgrade coupon. That means you can run XP and order your copy of Vista (free) and install it when you feel like it.

Problem solved.

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I've been reading reviews in my Linux mag too, benryves. Sorry =). Kind of biased views there as you can imagine

Yeah you really have to watch those mags as they really are full of garbage and FUD type crap. They can fill your mind with dibble and baseless "facts" quite easily.

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Quote: Linux is popping up all over Actually it's not at all, that statement again reeks of slashdot.

Ehm, no... I searched on google for something along the lines of 'Windows Vista Price' and 3-4 of the pages are about moving to Linux.

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Quote: For the while though, Windows dominates the OS market I'll correct your point: Forever, Windows will dominate the OS market for desktop use.

Lets think. You get tens of thousands of people migrating from Windows to Mac and Linux and other OS's, while very few go the inverse. Hold on, doesn't that mean Windows is losing users...?

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You could always buy your PC before Vista launches (pre January 30th) and you would get Windows XP and the free Vista upgrade coupon. That means you can run XP and order your copy of Vista (free) and install it when you feel like it. Problem solved.

I'm building the PC.

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Yeah you really have to watch those mags as they really are full of garbage and FUD type crap. They can fill your mind with dibble and baseless "facts" quite easily.

Actually , it was a line up of Vistas new features against Linux's alternative. So, it was pretty much fact based.

Thanks...

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Ehm, no... I searched on google for something along the lines of 'Windows Vista Price' and 3-4 of the pages are about moving to Linux.

Those posts are always around, and it's funny because the majority of these posters either never move to Linux, or try it for a week to be "cool" to their friends and then move back to Windows. That is the reason the desktop marketshare is not moving up at all. Also I can find just as many "Linux Sucks" posts or more, and I would considering those crap just like the ones you are finding... unless you want to rate them on the same scale?

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Lets think. You get tens of thousands of people migrating from Windows to Mac and Linux and other OS's, while very few go the inverse. Hold on, doesn't that mean Windows is losing users...?

Actually it doesn't and Windows has constantly gained marketshare. You are mistaken in thinking that Mac and Linux even compete with Microsoft because they aren't even on the scale, Windows 2000 and XP are the main competitors to Vista.

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I'm building the PC.

Exactly, the voucher I mentioned is given when you purchase an OEM copy from various stores (such as TigerDirect, etc)

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Actually , it was a line up of Vistas new features against Linux's alternative. So, it was pretty much fact based.

Considering on the desktop Vista is light years ahead of Linux, you obviously read some pretty biased crap. Please note the point in bold.

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You get tens of thousands of people migrating from Windows to Mac and Linux and other OS's

And you get these statistics from...?

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Actually , it was a line up of Vistas new features against Linux's alternative. So, it was pretty much fact based.

Such a "lineup" can be easily biased in one direction or another. You're like to find a Linux magazine biasing the lineup towards Linux, and a Windows magazine biasing the other way. This doesn't mean anything.

Linux has a serious, serious usability barrier that will keep it from widespread desktop use for a very long time, if ever. It's not about features, it's about inertia. XP -> Vista is a much smaller change for end users to make than XP -> Linux, and consequently the latter change is less likely to happen.

You have to remember that you are a minority. You build PCs, you read Linux magazines. Hell, you know what Linux is. The overwhelming majority of people who use computers think Linux is a cleaning agent.

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Original post by Mithrandir XP -> Vista = slower and more glossy graphics.

Cutting out the inflammatory portions of your post and leaving in the bit that's just wrong, it seems that everybody assumes that, because Vista is using 3D hardware, that it's going to be SLOWER.

What kind of logic is that?

Remember when 3D hardware became mainstream? Remember how it made games run faster?

Yeah, it's kinda like that.

People seem to be under the assumption that Windows Vista does some sort of game loop, where it's blitting the screen over and over.

In reality, it doesn't redraw any more than XP does. It may even require less redrawing (at least, less redrawing of components on windows - since each Window gets its own window-sized bitmap, windows only have to redraw when they're actually changing something in their display, as opposed to the XP-and-earlier version where a window has to repaint when other windows move off of them and more area becomes visible).

Vista uses the hardware to handle the compositing - which is a brilliant idea that some other operating systems (OS X anyone?) have also done, to great effect.

Vista's windowing system is way more responsive than XP's (in my own personal experience, running it at home), specifically because of the new compositing system. If you can say anything bad about the new system, it does use a bit more RAM (since you're giving each window its own bitmap). But software design is frequently a tradeoff between size/features/speed, and they managed to hit 2 of the 3, in my opinion.

And, before someone goes off and reads some of my previous posts and says "that guy's just defending it because he's a Microsoft employee..." Yeah, I work at Microsoft. I do not, however, work on Vista, so I get no "company pride" or any sort of thing like that out of "defending" it. I'm not posting this on Microsoft's behalf, these are my own personal views.

I say these things because the misconception of Vista being "slower" because of its new use of 3D graphics hardware seems to be a prevalent thing, and it's blatantly wrong. You can knock Vista for all sorts of other things, perhaps, that it has failed to live up to or that it has not done well, or whatever. But that's not one of them.

Vista may not be the paradigm shift that moving from DOS to Windows was originally, that's fine. But don't go spouting misinformation for the sake of hating on a product. Dislike it if you want, but spreading bad info is uncool.

Sauruman, Jpetrie. Please stop with this cold hearted crap.
I don't know why people even bother posting just to be awkward.

Its strange how every site I visit is 'crap' and every text I read is innacurate... 2%+ use Linux. Yes, that's tens of thousands, and OSX is becoming increasingly more popular. The magazine I read is not 'crap', I've met some of the writers, and we email from time to time.
The lineup is not biased. Compare Xgl and Compiz to Vistas 'Aero' graphics. Guess who wins hands down?

Thanks.

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Original post by Herbal Sauruman, Jpetrie. Please stop with this cold hearted crap. I don't know why people even bother posting just to be awkward. Its strange how every site I visit is 'crap' and every text I read is innacurate... 2%+ use Linux. Yes, that's tens of thousands, and OSX is becoming increasingly more popular. The magazine I read is not 'crap', I've met some of the writers, and we email from time to time. The lineup is not biased. Compare Xgl and Compiz to Vistas 'Aero' graphics. Guess who wins hands down? Thanks.

My guess is Vista!!! Hands down!

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Original post by Herbal Compare Xgl and Compiz to Vistas 'Aero' graphics. Guess who wins hands down?

For your comparing pleasure:

Xgl
Compiz
Vista

You can all form your own opinions. (Images found using google image search)

Do Xgl or Compiz come installed default on any current major stable distro? (I have no idea I am asking) If not the comparison is obviously a moot point for the vast majority of computer users.