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[stefcep2]

With Vista, the usual mouse and folders and icons way of launching programs has been made unusable because everything is all over the place.  Its virtually impossible to find anything because there is no logic to it. If you look at most tutorials, the search function is used to first locate what you want then launch it. Thats why Vista does an index of everything you have on the hard drive when you first install it. Its THE way to work with windows now, forget icons which no longer resemble the things they represent, forget even the start menu, and good luck finding what you want by opening folders. Everything is Start Orb->search.  Anything else is just too tedious.  So why bother with icons to launch programs at all? Why not just replace the start up orb with a search widget?

[stefcep2]

Argo wrote:
Odd, I don't use Vista that way. Opening folders and clicking on icons seems to work for me. Not to mention the start menu and quick launch.

Yes I thought so too.  I tried to work the "Classic" Windows way like you but I quickly learned that PC magazine tutorials on Vista launch things with Orb-> search.  I recently got Vista and too was using Start-menu or my computer to double click through folders.  I looked at what other people-most of whom are just computer users, not geeks- around me were doing and they were all orb-> search to launch things. Try for example to find defrag, or disk partitioning tools by opening folders, and try with orb-> search "disk".  See which is faster? For me this is the biggest shift in the way people use Windows.  Very few people I know double click through folders or pin things to the start menu or orb->programs->program executable. They just orb->search

[stefcep2]

Argo wrote:
That's because PC Magazine is not for the knowledgeable computer user but the common bearly computer literate computer user, as you noticed.

which is most PC users. I really think that launching from search is going to be the way that people do things in the future..

[stefcep2]

what i really hate about it is its multi-tasking eg the way it ignores my request to make a particular window active when i click on it or open the start menu until it finishes some crappy task eg indexing, defragging or some other rubbish that should have a lower priority.

how anyone can be happy with a system that multitasks so poorly and takes 3 minutes to be fully booted whilst running on several CPU cores, each running at 3000 mhz, in 3000 meg of ram is beyond me.

Someone said its OK if you have capable hardware.  Well my experience is that the critical thing is RAM: you NEED 2 gig minimum and 3 gig preferably.  But the CPU-if its 2-3 years old or newer and about 1.6 ghz and higher-makes little difference, even if its a multicore as vista is not multithreaded.  But 32 bit vista can't use more than 3 gig RAM so it aint gonna get any faster than what your getting today, even if you up your cpu's speed or cores.  So barely two years after its release, its performance has already maxed.  What a joke.

[stefcep2]

Tron2k2 wrote:
Wait..  What?  I am going to buy this OS on a modern dual core or more CPU with two gigs minimum of RAM and then..  I need a 4GB USB stick to make it faster?!  is that what you're telling me??

My god, what kind of piggy OS is this?  And the advantage of this versus XP is exactly what now..?

I'm sorry but this is just the most absurd thing I've ever heard of-needing a USB stick to make your OS faster!  I thought that's what efficient coding, plentiful RAM and 8MB hard drive caches behind modern IDE interfaces were for?

My next x86 box will have Linux on it for sure!  Or maybe AROS if it gets a tight web browser.

its ridiculous isn't it.  We now have hardware which 3-4 years ago would be considered a super computer, yet the OS still gives us wait cursors when all you want to do is open the start menu.  No vista says, I'll listen to you when I'm good and ready.. Or try and drag a solid window and watch it tear up as the OS struggles to redraw it even though its running on 4 cores and 3 gig ram 512 mb graphics card with super fast ram, but then you see it work smoother in Winuae.  Put two Vista windows next to one another.  How easy is it to tell which is the active one?- oh yeah its the one with the little red close window gadget in the corner.  Really intuitive, isn't it?  

[stefcep2]

Trev wrote:
Some facts:

The maximum path is limited to 260 chars for compatibility with legacy software. Paths beginning with \\?\C\... have a practical limit of about 32000 wchars.

32-bit Windows can use more than 4 GB RAM via PAE and AWE, but it's up to the application to use it. The "3 GB" limit is used in marketing materials by third parties, so users that install two 512 MB display adapters aren't surprised when they're mapped below the 4 GB boundary to make the accessible to 32-bit drivers.

Most delays in the shell can be attributed to waits in kernel code or deadlocks and race conditions in user code.

whats PAE and AWE

[stefcep2]

Hammer wrote:

Calde wrote:
OK look,
for a bunch of geeks you all are overlooking the obvious.
Windows Vista comes on a DVD, and the whole OS takes up about
10 GB to install on your hard drive, way way to much room for
me. Then to run with any speed at all, no lags or stutters, you'll need
at least 2 GB of ram, preferably pc6400 dual channel. I'm either running win xppro
or amikit or af. Oh and don't forget the dual core or even better
upgrade to a quad core. I have to deal with windows for my customers
but have started to migrate a select few to a linux based os.
They love it and since I build the servers and file systems
theres very little surprises. only problem will be going from
linux to xls docs or word docs, that comes next year. I'm thinking
about doing everything in adobe format. hmmm
down with windows!
LOL
Calde

For general MS Windows Vista usage, it doesn’t need a quad core CPU since slowest device in the system is the hard disk.

And why, may i ask does the damned thing need to access the hard drive soooo much?  4 gig of super fast ram and several megabytes of sup super fast cpu cache not enough?  to do what, exactly? i am sitting here typing away in a web browser and other than punching the keys there is nothing else I'm doing yet the hard drive is ticking away and I've turned off indexing, defrag..so what the hell is it doing?

The text of the  Encyclopeadia Brittanica fits on one CD ie 650 meg.  An OS needs about 10,000 meg?  Absurd.

[stefcep2]

zipper wrote:

 am sitting here typing away in a web browser and other than punching the keys there is nothing else I'm doing yet the hard drive is ticking away and I've turned off indexing, defrag..so what the hell is it doing?

That's what taskmgr is for - check what's happening.
I've turned everything extraneous off and just my antivirus software does those slowdowns every now and then, mostly when joining new drives to the system or downloading something.

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?

[stefcep2]

I've thought about Mac but here in Aus, Macs ARE expensive relative to the hardware specs eg Macbook Air 1.6 ghz 2gb ram 80 gb hard drive RRP $2899 Aus.  I don't really care about the single block of aluminium, ultrathin stuff.

I'm thinking Apple more and more is about style over substance.  And i don't like the way Apple makes perfectly good hardware obsolete when it feels like a series of model shouldn't be allowed to run their latest OS, which means you can get the latest Web browser etc.

I may borrow a mac for a week and see if it lives up to the hype..

[stefcep2]

the encouraging thing this time around is that long-term PC users themselves are having enough of their hardware being seriously hobbled by Vista.  The PC market is maturing, a large slice of it is onto the second or third OS, and many are far from happy that it takes them longer to do things they did before on new hardware that SHOULD BE far faster.  If MS "does another Vista", I hope that it might be the tipping point where people just say " Forget it, MS.  I'll stick to my XP machine until its circuits burn out, and no money for you this year or the next or the next."  History tells us no empire has lasted forever.