dylansmrjo: It takes a fast machine (like a P4 @ 2.4 GHz - it's still a fast machine - and far away from lowend machines - remember - clockspeed hasn't got higher on x86 for a few years) to run Vista reasonably.
I take it this is from personal experience.
I've read that Vista works fine with 512 RAM, with or without 3D. 2GB RAM is probably for the early beta, which had a lot of debugging services enabled.
Note that minimum specs have to account for what apps are going to run on the OS, not just the OS itself.
What point is there to making an OS that runs in 4MB of memory when a web browser happily swallows 50+ MB just to render a CSS web page, and 512MB of memory is less than $45?
Microsoft has special versions of Windows to deal with lower spec systems and embedded hardware. Vista is designed for desktops which have high-end hardware. That's all there is to it.
For Vista (and Mac OS X) to become decent systems requirements for 3D MUST disappear.
Have you really thought about how much legacy junk can be thrown away by switching to 3D?
It's been a long time since I've used an S3 VergeDX. :-)
It adds NO functionality at all.
Maybe you just lack the creativity to see beyond old-fashioned desktops. Granted, OSX-style eye candy is a waste, but moving to vector graphics has huge advantages over traditional bitmaps. Just look at what Flash has done for animation and games on the Internet. It's outright killing Java, and is a hell of a lot smaller and uses less memory.
Whether 3D in a desktop environment is a good idea has more to do with implementation than concept. I don't like the way OSX does it, and haven't really used Vista, but banning 3D altogether is a very rash idea.
If Amiga had a 3D desktop before Windows, what would your opinion be? ;-)
You'll just have to live with the fact, that what your computer could do in 10 minutes in 1985 still takes 10 minutes today. Just with hardware much much faster
In 1985 we used floppy disks. Trust me, functionality was not faster back then. Maybe you're spending a bit too much time using ADFs. ;-)
It requires more work from the CPU to draw windows and widgets.
Today's CPUs aren't just faster, they have special instuctions that do that stuff much better. It never ceases to amaze me how fast Flash can render anti-aliased vector graphics with gradients, and all I can think about is, "I wish GUIs could do that."
Also, I think you're underrating caches and LOD. You don't always have to render things over and over again.
In regard to functionality Vista has nothing.
One word: thumbnails.
C'mon, man, you can't judge Vista before it's released.
I
am disappointed the new shell (meaning, the CLI), isn't going to appear in Vista. I've really been looking forward to that, because I've quickly found out that Windows is next to useless without Perl (and trust me, Perl is one big piece of bloat).
REPEAT after me: Eye candy is evil!
At least you can still turn it off in Vista, in pieces. OSX doesn't give you much choice. :-)
Cymric: Pray tell, how would you like the 3D features to be used? Rotating windows, putting them sideways, or displaying directory trees in 3D is cool, but from a usability point of view, absolutely horrible.
That's becuase people have no imagination (especially GUI programmers). Vista is important not because of 3D, but because the whole drawing system is being rethought.
seer: Let's see... Lets draw everything on screen using the GPU or using the CPU ? The whole idea of LDDM is to take even more of the GUI from CPU to the GFX card.
Yeah. Funny, I would think that hardcore Amigans would appreciate this kind of coprocessor-driven design.
minator: There has been experimentation in 3D user interfaces but it's largely unsuccessful for the desktop itself or desktop apps (I think that's what the previous poster was complaining about). I think they'll become more useful when we get real 3D displays - some of which on the market already.
It could also be argued that most control devices are 2D. I think every mouse should have a zoom axis, not just a scroll wheel. Keyboards could also be a lot more versitile. Most people don't use the keypad for entering numbers, anymore, so I'd replace it with a good set of configurable zoom/undo/redo/history buttons. Hotkeys and other multi-key sequences should be bannished. They are difficult to memorize in a lot of cases, are largely architecture dependent (key combos differ on each system). The Mac doesn't have "better" key combos than the PC -- they're just different. I have my Microsoft keyboard media keys remapped to the back and close buttons on my web browser, and it's a million times easier to browse the web, now. Using my Mac, that has no support for media keys, and extremely limited support for action remapping, is a
real pain.
There's plenty of interface design books on the subject of "failed" interface concepts, including ZIP, or the Zooming Interface Paradigm. People just aren't thinking beyond the input devices that have been with us since the 80's, let alone the graphics techniques.
If someone really doesn't like eyecandy, open a shell and kill the workbench. On Linux (or other Unix) kill the X server. If it's early 1960's* UIs that float your boat, have fun..
God, I really wish we could have a new shell. With UNIX, you have to wait for things to finish before you get a response, thanks to all the piping the commands are designed to handle, thus limiting what you can send to STD_OUT. Maybe we should have a STD_STATUS or something. We could abolish a lot of libraries and APIs that way.
seer: I guess I come over as a Windows fan boy but honestly, I never really liked XP. It's as bad as most Amiga user make it out to be IMHO but Vista I like to use.
I use Win2K. I don't need XP's features as I use apps like ACDSee to keep my photos organized, and I don't obsessively collect MP3s or movies. My big beef with XP is that it complains big time whenever you swap hardware. Win2K doesn't care. I don't suppose Vista does this better, no? :-)
coldfish: While the majority of us can look forward to computer technology advancing onward, others can stick with good ole' 2D.
Microsoft does deserve a lot of credit, here. Windows is very configurable and allows you to do things the old-fashioned way. I'm finding it difficult to get used to OSX compared to my OS8 days as a Mac sysadmin. New versions of Windows, however, don't bother me at all. I mean, so long as they don't BSOD when you swap your motherboard. XP is a real pain how it outright rejects new hardware, while Win2K will dilligently eat anything you throw at it. :-D
