Vista only for Halo 2!
- Thread starter fozzybear
- Start date
Soldato
What does DRM have to with third party drivers or codecs?dirtydog said:
Not a lot is the answer.This is exactly what I mean. People see the word "DRM" and they run for the hills, needlessly. For the foreseeable future DRM is only going to be used for protecting copyrighted or sensitive data. That's why the MPAA/RIAA are pushing HDMI and next-gen HD DVD formats because they can protect the copyrighted media from casual piracy. This is DRM because it is "managing" the user's "rights" to the "digital" content.
Vista won't prevent any of those things from being installed. Although note Vista X64 only allows signed drivers to be installed so anybody that wants to distribute driver code for Vista X64 will need to get a license and certificate from VeriSign. This could easily be mistaken as being a form of DRM. It is not. It is just operating system security, mostly against root kits. Moreover, the protection can be temporarily disabled by selecting an option from the Safe Mode boot menu.
Oh and Vista prices will be almost identical to the XP prices today. So no need to worry about that. You'll easily be able to get an OEM copy of Vista for less than £100, and I don't mean the most basic edition either. It'll be around the mid-range edition for that price.
So why not play Halo 2 on the Xbox then????NokkonWud said:
Why would anyone buy a new operating system to play a single game that's already out on a console and by then will have it's successor out on the 360??
Given the technical level of most of the people on these boards I'd expect most of them to buy Vista in some form in the first 6 months after release. Having a smattering of games that will take advantage of DX10, the new audio and networking stacks etc will be a step in the right direction.
Perhaps we should have just stopped with 16 colour EGA graphics and DOS 3.31 (ahhh, Falcon AT, my first combat flight sim on the PC) although even then someone would moan the game wasn't playable on their nice CGA video card (four colours is more than enough I tell you!!!!
)Just because someone can't afford something or can get it cheaper in a slightly different form doesn't make it alright for people to steal it. People wouldn't walk into a large shop, pickup a couple of games and an OS for say £150 and just shoplift it out the door. Why do people seem to think it's ok to do it if it's "just a download"?
Nathan can explain in more detail I suspect (sorry NathanTunney said:
). The jist is the one of the ways to make the OS more stable and secure is to tighten up on random substandard or security vulnerable bits of code being introduced into a low level of the OS. It's a fine line between locking the OS down to give maximum stability and security and having the flexibility to support a wide range of software and hardware.If you think about it people like Apple own the hardware and software. They have full control over the entire infrastructure and still have problems. The fact that Microsoft manage to produce an OS that gives pretty much everyone the same experience and funtionality given the mind boggling combination of hardware and software that it has to support is a massive task in itself.
It's not new either, Windows 2000 Datacenter would not accept un signed drivers.. Stick a wierd bit of hardware in, load up the driver and instead of being warned it's an unsigned driver, are you sure you want to proceed (everyone just hits yes) you just get warned it's an unsigned driver and will not be accepted at all. 2000 DC is perferctly capable of giving 99.999% uptime (not just as a by product of drivers of course but you get the idea).
GordyR said:But they are a company. Making money is the aim of companies you know.
I don't understand how you can prefer apple computers without ever having used one.
The only reason there are less virus's and spyware us because the user base of Windows XP is so much higher. If you're a virues writer you want maximum exposure. You want the virus to spread as much as possible. Therefore you code a virus to infiltrate the OS with the largest user base.
I sincerely hope it is the right choice for you.
I enjoyed your comments, thanks for the reply. Ive used Mac OSX round a friends house for hours (on a mac mini) and generally found it the O/S for me. Yes I now Microsoft are a company and they obviously want to make money, I just dont like the way they use desperate techniques to make sure a product sells well. I think a good company is a company that thinks of their customers, not the profits. If Microsoft were a good company, and looked out for their fans, they wouldd make Halo XP compatible.
-White-Knight- said:
Hehe
This gave me a chuckle. Apple is probably the worst company going for screwing its customers over And they still refuse to implement basic things such as a right mouse button on their mice or laptops so that most of their customers have to buy a 3rd party mouse. (oh wait.. of course it's actually BETTER to have to left click and press CTRL isn't it.. I forgot)Ummm... that's not actually true anymore.
But as people have said, Microsoft are company. Their goal is to make money, like any other company.
If you don't like it, don't give them your money! It's that simple.
Soldato
Getting the license from Microsoft is free, but the certificate from VeriSign is something like $400/pa.Tunney said:
The vast majority of device drivers can be written in different ways in Vista which won't require distributing kernel drivers. For instance, the new UMWDF (user-mode Windows driver framework). This is being pushed by Microsoft as being the standard way to write drivers for Vista. Anybody who can't afford the annual certificate fee will have to use this, and rightly so! I certainly wouldn't trust somebody who can't afford $400 to be running their code in my kernel, would you?
Microsoft has also exposed new programming interfaces for anti-virus and firewall developers to "hook" into the OS with. They won't need to write their own, often unstable, kernel hooks anymore.
The kernel space is now very much a restricted area in Vista. Pretty much the only companies that will need access to it for development purposes is the big hardware manufacturers. E.g. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ATi, VIA, SiS. These of course can afford the $400 for a VeriSign certificate
- infact they already have one.Also note, all of this only applies to Vista X64.
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Soldato
This whole thing looks like a ploy to sell more 360's, whichever way you react ms win. To the layman, this implies the 360's graphics are mega and you can get it now, secondly, dads very unlikely to upgrade to vista just for halo2, more reason to get a 360,
These type of releases are aimed at the masses who react instinctively rather than logicly and get caught up in the hype.
The fealing I'm getting is that vista is not a big improvement, (why do you need hardware rendered window frames) and vienna or whatever will be the real deal.
Yes ms have to keep growing their profits, look at the oil companies, this is the way the market works it doesnt matter where you are now you have to get more next time.
All apple stuff is great on style, but at the end of the day they are making money too, they all have to strike balance between blatant ripoff and maximising income. Sometimes marketing men go to far thats all, they probably have some sort of target to meet before they get their bonus or something.
In short, as an individual you have to try and stand back from the hype and see things as they really are, the xbox 360 and probably ps3 will probably be (are) kids games consoles and nothing else, how many they sell depends on how the playground hype goes, press releases are designed to move it in a particular direction.
But hey we all want new toys to play with dont we, bring on quad core cpus and vid cards + 5 gigs of mem then we'll see some decent action.
These type of releases are aimed at the masses who react instinctively rather than logicly and get caught up in the hype.
The fealing I'm getting is that vista is not a big improvement, (why do you need hardware rendered window frames) and vienna or whatever will be the real deal.
Yes ms have to keep growing their profits, look at the oil companies, this is the way the market works it doesnt matter where you are now you have to get more next time.
All apple stuff is great on style, but at the end of the day they are making money too, they all have to strike balance between blatant ripoff and maximising income. Sometimes marketing men go to far thats all, they probably have some sort of target to meet before they get their bonus or something.
In short, as an individual you have to try and stand back from the hype and see things as they really are, the xbox 360 and probably ps3 will probably be (are) kids games consoles and nothing else, how many they sell depends on how the playground hype goes, press releases are designed to move it in a particular direction.
But hey we all want new toys to play with dont we, bring on quad core cpus and vid cards + 5 gigs of mem then we'll see some decent action.
Soldato
Hi
Welcome to the forums
A lot of that rings true but even basic Intel graphics has some hardware DX9 features now. Having a hardware rendered GUI can greatly increase the speed and efficiency - it avoids using up a lot of processing power to just render the windows on the screen
Welcome to the forums
Slam62 said:
A lot of that rings true but even basic Intel graphics has some hardware DX9 features now. Having a hardware rendered GUI can greatly increase the speed and efficiency - it avoids using up a lot of processing power to just render the windows on the screen
ajgoodfellow said:
Drawing windows does not use up a lot of processing power - anyone would think that our PCs slow to a crawl every time we open a window or drag it around! As I've said before, if we were all still using 386 processors then this might be an issue but we're not.
Btw, cpu usage does NOT spike to 100% when you drag a window around as I just tried it.
If you drag a window round the desktop reasonably fast and keep your eye on processor usage, it will hit 99%. (There was a thread in 'Windows...' the other day where someone posted proof of this). Everytime you move a window or change window, Windows has to poll the app and get it redrawn again.dirtydog said:
If all these GPU's are in PCs, they might as well be used. As all the windows are stored as textures on the graphics card, the apps don't constantly need redrawing - unless the content's changed, of course.
Soldato
I'm not saying that it slows to a halt or that it causes the CPU to spike. It does use up CPU power though and if this can be reduced then all the better
As for the amount used, it depends on the graphics card/drivers to an extent. For example, if I move around a window on my X800Pro it only peaks at about 40%. On my 9250SE though it peaks at 90%
As for the amount used, it depends on the graphics card/drivers to an extent. For example, if I move around a window on my X800Pro it only peaks at about 40%. On my 9250SE though it peaks at 90%
The point being that even now a huge number of PCs have massively powerfull GPUs that end up mainly used for games. Vista will use that power to deliver more eye candy as well as speeding up response. Effectively you get an enhanced experience at no cost in terms of PC slowdown.
It's really a non issue, it's all about taking advantage in the hardware that has been around for a long time now and will only get better over the next 5 or 6 years. Even the new Intel integrated graphics appearing in laptops now can run glass just fine.
Vista isn't just an OS for late 2006, you'll still be using it in 2011 and processor/GPU power will have reached the point here even cheap low end machines will have several times the power of todays PCs.
In any case, the visual enhancements are a very minor part of it as far as i'm concerned. Pretty id fine, but ultimately an OS is there to let me access the applications and resources i need to do the jobs i want to do. The big improvements are in reliability, security, communications etc...
It's really a non issue, it's all about taking advantage in the hardware that has been around for a long time now and will only get better over the next 5 or 6 years. Even the new Intel integrated graphics appearing in laptops now can run glass just fine.
Vista isn't just an OS for late 2006, you'll still be using it in 2011 and processor/GPU power will have reached the point here even cheap low end machines will have several times the power of todays PCs.
In any case, the visual enhancements are a very minor part of it as far as i'm concerned. Pretty id fine, but ultimately an OS is there to let me access the applications and resources i need to do the jobs i want to do. The big improvements are in reliability, security, communications etc...
csmager said:
Not on my machine it doesn't. I had Task Manager opened (which of course stays 'on top') and I opened My Computer. I dragged this window around as fast as I could and the cpu usage barely hit double figures. Explain that then.
Soldato
I,ve just tried this out on mine (although I did it quite franticly), and my cpu usage went from 1% to 69% in a flash, I really like the idea of vista making more use of the 3d hadware that so many people have laying doorment in thier machines these days.
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