Talk Is Cheap

Even the dang cards are getting fast, Nvidia has a card coming out rated at 768 (GE Force 8800 GTX, hmmmmmm). Even seen a few at 640 and 320. I love Christmas.

Jason isn’t going to want to run any of his old software that might not work on it anyway. His computer is a friggin dinosaur.

As for so many of the “OMG I installed Vista and my computer slowed way down” problems people had were because they had machines with 1gb of RAM and it ran Windows XP just fine.. there’s no way you can run a Vista box with 1gb of RAM and be very happy with it, I would agree.

That’s issue with so many of the millions of $499 computers too.. so many are 1gb of RAM and Vista Home Premium and then people are unhappy.

Another issue is with SuperFetch that treats RAM like a cache memory pool much more actively than XP or any other OS. In MS’s words:

SuperFetch understands which applications you use most, and preloads these applications into memory, so your system is more responsive. SuperFetch uses an intelligent prioritization scheme that understands which applications you use most often, and can even differentiate which applications you are likely to use at different times (for example, on the weekend versus during the week), so that your computer is ready to do what you want it to do. Windows Vista can also prioritize your applications over background tasks, so that when you return to your machine after leaving it idle, it’s still responsive.

That’s great because even though system memory is much slower than level 1 and 2 CPU cache memory, it’s still WAY faster than hard drive speeds.. 37x faster on average. (level 1 CPU cace memory is 280x ish faster and why it’s so expensive.. level 2 is about 80x HD speeds) The big problem is.. it doesn’t want to let all that system memory go very easily when you want to play a memory hungry game or if you rarely encode DVD or something. That’s where a lot of gripes come from and needs some addressing maybe. SuperFetch can be stopped/started like any other service though, I’d reckon.

There are some hardware driver issues still.. amazing after as long as it’s been out. Service Pack 1 is soon and should help those that haven’t been updating all along. Still.. Vista is the operating system to have in the coming few years as XP support will be phased out and applications will require Vista (that may be some time still) and games go to DX10. So if he’s gonna build a computer to keep for several years.. there’s no point in buying an ~$100 OS now and then another in a year when you can’t get security updates as it’s pushed out and the mainstream support phase of XP ends in the first part of 2009.. a little over a year from now. That will be about the time that “requires Windows Vista” stuff hits the streets as software takes advantage of the features found only in it.

As with all their other OS’s, by around the time their first Service Pack is released most of the stumbling blocks and compatibility issues have vanished. It wasn’t any different with Win95, 98, ME (omg they never fixed that POS), MC or XP.

Vista=the future.. XP will remain viable for a few years but become totally inferior as all their other OS have. I’m still running XP Pro on four comps.. but that’s only a financial reason. I’d put Vista on a new machine if I was building it for somebody.. might not on a new comp for me though.. just to save the $$$ I’d put XP on it and pay for the license of course OOPS how did this get struck through? There won’t be a new box for 2008 for me though (won’t need it with my main rig remaining plenty strong for what I’ll require of it anyway) as we got an XBOX 360 for Christmas!
…and did I mention ROCK BAND!