I know its running stuff in the background but what is it doing, in the sense that its not achieving anything tangible to the user. Why doe sit need so much crap to run just so that i can get a window displayed on screen, make a TCP connection and move the mouse pointer and use the keyboard to type? As this is a rant thread, I'll rant some more..
I think we've lost perspective on the hardware specs that this OS is running on: hard drives are still 3.5 inch but store terabytes of data, that's unimaginable data density, hard drives rpm at 7200 and 10000, so data should be packed in and accessible very very quickly, we have GIGABYTES of RAM ( some are talking 8 GB !!!), 3000 mhz CPU's with on board caches bigger than system RAM of past machines, display cards capable of pushing pixels on screen at insane speeds, all communicating with multiple CPU's via super fast data buses, but I've still gotta wait for the start menu to pop up and draw itself on screen, or stay half drawn for a few seconds after i close it?
Overall hardware specs have increased by factors of 10, 100, or 1000, inj recent years, yet the user experience is just as frustrating as ever. What is the point of the hardware getting better if the OS just negates it all?
EXACTLY! I have been ranting about the exact same things for the past 10 years (at least). You'd think that by 2008, Windows could at least open a frigging menu or popup without leaving the screen half drawn! User interaction should be TOP PRIORITY!
The next version of Windows will probably use the GPU to speed up the GUI, but I bet they'll add loads of useless crap (and DRM checks) just to slow it down again. Then we'll see posted comments like "why is my 4Ghz 8-core PC so [beep]ing slow!".
It's a tragedy that BeOS didn't catch on. They had the right idea. On a 200Mhz PC with 64Mb RAM, it boots fully in 5 seconds. Window opening is nearly instantaneous. Applications open in 1-3 seconds. Everything feels fast - like it should be. BeOS is old and dead now, but if it had survived, I'm sure it would absolutely blow Vista away. (on the same hardware, running applications of the same complexity)
I may borrow a mac for a week and see if it lives up to the hype..
I did the same and found it
didn't live up to the hype. I was extremely disappointed. It's better than Windows (what isn't?), but it can still be very frustrating and limiting. Linux was even more disappointing.
