Microsoft operating system (Vista)

CurlyWhirly · 17 Jan 2006 at 23:39

Atomic said:
Curly, even with that the games have to be programmed and designed properly, and games like Half Life don't come out every year. I'm sure they'd still need a costly GFX card as well.

Well if that's the case then I can't think of any reason to upgrade either, at least not straight away.

Also Microsoft have now had a rethink as they had planned on ending official support for XP Home Edition after 31/12/2006 but I think this has now been extended, and just as well as I wouldn't fancy using XP if I couldn't keep it up to date with security patches.

This would probably drive people to migrate to Vista as after security threats like the recent WMF vulnerabilty, if XP could no longer be patched it may make people paranoid about security.

And yet having said this, Microsoft will continue to offer official support for Windows 98 and Windows ME until at least June 2006 so it was inevitable that they wouldn't be consigning XP Home Edition to the scrap heap just yet.

Caged · 17 Jan 2006 at 23:44

Even when Microsoft end support, they still release critical security updates.

Caged · 17 Jan 2006 at 23:46

knowlesy said:
they will be keeping direc x 10 from us no doubt (from xp users , since it hasnt been decided yet) i think it will force people to either go to linux few i rekon will do or to actuly vista ....

Why the hell would people who want DirectX 10 but have to stick with 9 (like . . gamers) then decide to move to Linux, where there is no such thing as DirectX?

And the DRM / HDCP stuff is there because the studios say it has to be there, not because Microsoft are big and evil.

CurlyWhirly · 17 Jan 2006 at 23:50

Caged said:
Even when Microsoft end support, they still release critical security updates.

Well I read this the other day!

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060103-5891.html

Below is an extract from the 6th paragraph:

When that day comes, XP Home users may feel left out in the cold, because they will no longer qualify for security updates, and will not be able to purchase support from Microsoft.

Caged · 17 Jan 2006 at 23:55

Hmm, interesting. They would definitely support Professional, I guess Home users replace their PCs quicker than businesses anyway. I can't see ending support at the end of 2006 being a huge issue, if it's true.

NathanE · 18 Jan 2006 at 00:02

knowlesy said:
to me thats the trouble you have to have the best of the best of the best... to run it, and to get the best out of it you need all the new motherboards graphics cards etc ...... so that it can check what your playing though them its also going to eventuly kill of crts ...and you may have to play hd movies at a lower quality since it hasnt got "protection" (refering to custom pc here) ..... itll only realy be implimented to businesses and dell buyers personaly it does seem a bit ott however since they will be keeping direc x 10 from us no doubt (from xp users , since it hasnt been decided yet) i think it will force people to either go to linux few i rekon will do or to actuly vista ....

HD-DVD's copy protection has nothing to do with Vista. All those new HDTVs that you can buy now have exactly the same protection in them. It's forced upon manufacturers by the film and music industry. If Microsoft didn't add satisfactory support for this copy protection then the RIAA/MPAA simply wouldn't grant Microsoft the license and if Microsoft shipped the OS without the license they'd get sued to kingdom come!

This really is a non-affair. It's out of our and Microsoft's control. By the way, it was only a month ago Microsoft was campaigning to support HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray because Blu-Ray errodes consumer rights considerably more than HD-DVD does... Microsoft aren't evil. They hate copy protection too. It's bad for their Media Center product. They want people to be able to access their films and music "from anywhere, on any device". Copy protection is proving to be a big hindrance to that effort.

Nobody is going anywhere. There is simply no alternative to Windows as a gaming and media platform. Linux is barely a desktop OS let alone a gaming platform. If people don't like Vista then they'll stick with XP. But eventually everybody comes around...

Since Linux is an open sauce affair, if the copy protection cannot be broken then Linux simply won't be able to play HD video content. Period. End of story. So it's not like a green nirvana where HD content falls from the sky and grows on trees. Far from it.

Curly Whirly said:
snip

This was just a media whirlwind. Forget about it. After the countless delays that Vista has had the XP lifecycle had to be extended. Unfortunately the media picked up on it before Microsoft did and they got bad press for it. They've extended the product lifecycle of XP now considerably. Circus over!

Atomic said:
snip

The "Longhorn sidebar" is being readded to Vista in Beta 2. It will function in a very similar to way Mac's Konflabulator. But instead of "widgets" they will be "gadgets"

CurlyWhirly · 18 Jan 2006 at 00:36

NathanE said:
This was just a media whirlwind. Forget about it. After the countless delays that Vista has had the XP lifecycle had to be extended. Unfortunately the media picked up on it before Microsoft did and they got bad press for it. They've extended the product lifecycle of XP now considerably. Circus over!

Well I was certainly fooled at first until I saw the 'official' Microsoft response a few days later:

In an updated support lifecycle listing, Microsoft said that all Windows XP products--which include Home, Pro, Embedded, Media Center, and Tablet PC--will enjoy mainstream support for "two years after the next version of this product is released."

Assuming Vista releases in November of this year, XP's mainstream support will end November, 2008.

I only quoted the arstechnica link to try and explain to Caged why I had said that Microsoft were (allegedly) going to end support for XP Home.

I will be more careful when posting quotes in future by making sure that the info is correct

Atomic · 18 Jan 2006 at 03:25

Nathan, Microsoft I think hate other companies copy protection and DRM and want their own DRM to be the industry standard and then they have so much control over it and many other things as well.

NathanE · 18 Jan 2006 at 08:36

Atomic said:
Nathan, Microsoft I think hate other companies copy protection and DRM and want their own DRM to be the industry standard and then they have so much control over it and many other things as well.

Where did you hear this? It's false. Microsoft isn't a media producer so it has no reason to produce its own form of media copy protection/DRM. It only does the bare minimum to stay in compliance with the law and to allow Windows users to play the maximum possible amount of media formats.

Microsoft cares about DRM in e-mails and Word documents though. But these features of Windows have had the DRM option available to administrators for several years now...

Seriously. If you think "warez", illegal MP3s, hacked iTunes downloads and god knows what else are suddenly going to stop working in Vista. You're in for a surprise

dayloon · 18 Jan 2006 at 10:20

Curly Whirly said:
Well I have heard rumours that Vista will require a minimum of a 3 Ghz processor and 1 GB of memory but if you use dual channel memory than you need at least 2 GB

I don't know about the graphics card requirements but I expect they will be quite high as well.

To be honest that is a moronic rumour. Totally ludicrous.

purejamie · 18 Jan 2006 at 10:37

Indeed, we have had every beta and CTP build running on much less than that comfortably.

Baz · 18 Jan 2006 at 11:37

dayloon said:
To be honest that is a moronic rumour. Totally ludicrous.

I have the latest CTP version on my centrino laptop 1.6Ghz with 512MB ram and it uses all that up on boot up.

Otacon · 18 Jan 2006 at 11:41

Remember that the betas are compiled with all sorts of debug options enabled, and extra logging. It's bound to use a lot more memory.

NathanE · 18 Jan 2006 at 11:43

Baz said:
I have the latest CTP version on my centrino laptop 1.6Ghz with 512MB ram and it uses all that up on boot up.

Does that laptop have a dedicated GPU with graphics memory? Probably not, right?

So Vista is having to store all its WPF textures in system RAM. Not good.

The biggest requirement for Vista is that you have a good GPU with plenty of graphics memory (128MB minimum IMO.)

Otacon · 18 Jan 2006 at 11:44

And that

Baz · 18 Jan 2006 at 12:35

NathanE said:
Does that laptop have a dedicated GPU with graphics memory? Probably not, right?

So Vista is having to store all its WPF textures in system RAM. Not good.

The biggest requirement for Vista is that you have a good GPU with plenty of graphics memory (128MB minimum IMO.)

Yes it does, it has a Radeon X700 series graphics card with 128MB ram

NathanE · 18 Jan 2006 at 12:42

Is that powerful enough though? Who knows...

toy_soldier · 19 Jan 2006 at 16:22

I may be totally off track here but here goes anyway:

If just the OS (Vista) needs so much to run, wont this hinder the performance of games significantly?

Caged · 19 Jan 2006 at 16:32

None of the drivers are optomised for Vista yet, and Vista itself isn't even finished. It's stupid to start comparing performance.

JimmyEatWorms · 19 Jan 2006 at 18:12

From what I can gather, Vista will have a gaming mode where all non-core services will be shut down when you start your game and kicked back into life when you quit.

I'm pretty sure that Vista will run comfortably on a middle of the road PC. MS would be shooting themselves in the foot if it didn't. MS haven't got where they are today by shooting themselves in the foot.