Cost analysis of Vista

f666

f666

f666

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Saw this elsewhere interesting read

UG-Member wrote:
Slashdot posted an article that I couldn't help but find interesting. It does something of a cost analysis of Windows Vista. And by cost I mean a lot more than just the cost of the software itself, but the effects it has on the hardware industry, not all of which are immediatly visible to the consumer other than higher prices (or lower quality at the same prices.) The article is rather long, so I can't quote it all here unfortunately. Here's the link: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

It's interesting to note that much of what they mention there has a lot more meaning to it from our perspective as well. For example, many of us gamers like to overclock, but, if I'm reading some of this carefully, if you overclock your hardware, Vista will start raising flags and you may well find that the driver for your hardware gets revoked, making it unusable. Apparently even a minor voltage fluctuation can cause a "tilt" flag to get raised whatever that means, and any excessive number of these flags would probably cause an investigation that likely ends up with the driver's certificate (which is required for it to function -- no non-certified drivers allowed) to be revoked. Honestly, it sounds to me like even cheap power supplies are going to cause these tilt flags to pop up left and right, and quite a lot of people are going to find out the hard way that those 600+ watt power supplies that don't really offer what they promise are raising flags on a constant basis.

From reading this article, I can't help but think that Microsoft was so focused on security that they went way too far and put security into areas that not only should not have security, but which will cause no end of problems for the end users. Even the most secure operating systems (eg those like Linux) have never even considered some of the measures MS has decided to do... Personally I can't help but think that Vista sounds like it belongs in high security government facilities and no where else at all. Personally, Vista has me really worried since from a computer repair/consulting/etc kind of perspective (which is what I do) it sounds like it's going to be a nightmare. Especially after I read this article now I'm positively terrified that I'm going to need to find another job because I just don't think I can deal with Vista once all the OEMs start pushing it out there. All I can do in the meantime is tell everyone who actually ASKS me to avoid Vista at all costs, but I can't do anything about OEMs like Dell who will likely eventually start putting Vista on new machines (after all, consumers want the latest software, including the OS, and as far as the uneducated know, Vista is the latest, so it must obviously be the best -- at least, that's how the [il]logic goes.)
Click to expand...
 
There is already a thread on this. Basically, Microsoft is just complying with the HD DRM standard. This is not a Microsoft technology. They have merely just implemented it on Vista so it can play HD media.
 
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17670884

Driver revocation is real but it's not as extreme as the author makes out. I can't see Microsoft ever having to use this facility either - simply because all the attackable DRM logic is hard coded into the GPU chips, it is not software/firmware. A driver can be revoked and it will only prevent HD content from playing in HD. It won't (paraphrasing) "delete the driver from your PC" nor will it "cause planes to fall out of the sky". It will simply downgrade your HD playback to SD. Big deal. You'll just have to upgrade your driver to fix it.

Tilt bits, again these are true. The author likes to call them "grenade pins" which to me sounds a bit zealot'y - but that's beside the point. Tilt bits are just there to detect and prevent people from attacking the DRM mechanisms in the first place. They won't destroy your PC in the event that a few too many tilt bits are triggered.

Encryption CPU cycles... well again, who cares? By the time HD content becomes common place, people will have 8 cores on their CPU. I don't think dedicating around 20% of one of those cores to DRM encryption duties is going to be too much to ask. Although with the way things are heading, that might not be required anyway. AMD's Hypertransport and Intel's CSI can support "accelerator" chips - so it's not unreasonable to think that somebody will make a chip to do DRM encryption all by itself.

I get the distinct impression the author is lacking any vision of where this industry is heading.
 
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Some hd media has already been hacked, iam porting over to linux once xp goes **** up. Vista sends back every month a list of software running on your pc and does afew other things.
 
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