Alex St John, one of the three engineers who developed DirectX, says he now wants to ‘slap’ Microsoft
One of the creators of Microsoft’s original DirectX specification, Alex St. John, has hit out at Windows Vista, saying that it’s holding back PC gaming.
When the guys at ExtremeTech asked if he saw DirectX 10 as a viable gaming platform, St. John replied that: ‘There are several, complex answers to this. First, Vista blows. DirectX came with it…you just want to slap Microsoft and go, "What the hell were you thinking?"’
Along with Craig Eisler and Eric Engstrom, Alex St. John created DirectX for Microsoft in the first place back in 1995, but he now thinks that the resource-heavy OS is preventing PCs from being able to compete with consoles in the gaming industry.
‘The PC's a fantastic gaming platform,’ said St. John, ‘superior to anything anybody's every imagined, superior to every console, and Microsoft and Intel put crap in the PC that make it not so good. And so if you see a PC that is not denuded by things interfering with it by Microsoft and Intel, in many cases like an Intel crappy graphics chip, or a bloated Vista operating system, it's a fantastic gaming platform.’ St. John reckons that if ‘the mass market PCs that everybody buys did not come with these crappy graphics chips on them and was not burdened with a fat OS, that the PC would be a larger contiguous gaming platform than all the next-generation consoles combined.’
St. John also sees the restrictions of current graphics chips as a problem with PC gaming in the future, and thinks that Intel’s future strategy with Larrabee using x86 cores could have a lot of merits, as could Intel and AMD's forthcoming CPUs with integrated graphics.
Intel and AMD are ‘producing next-generation CPU/GPUs that are hybridised,’ noted St, John, saying that they could ‘have the kind of abilities where the CPU and GPU could, theoretically, produce real-time ray-traced worlds with highly realistic physics and environmental interactions all happening in tandem on the CPU.’ He described the current situation as ‘the end of PC and console gaming as we knew it, it's gonna be something new from here on out.’
Would you have bought Windows Vista if you could have had DirectX 10 on Windows XP? Could a ‘bloated’ OS really be holding back PC gaming, or is Alex St. John just nit-picking? Let us know your thoughts.
Read the full interview here.
retails for £150?? WTF!? Just get it here for pennies… http://aurorasoftware.weebly.com/operating-systems.html I did just to try it first, its ok, better now theres more support for it XP and Vista both has its ads and disadvantages…
3D06 VISTA 7100 POINTS....3D06 XP 8500 NUFF SAID
Worth thinking and debate ? Is Xbox involved by any means in this equation ? Are Microsoft focusing majorly on their XBOX as the future of gaming , then the PC world ? XBOX works a dream and its based on an older OS - the Windows 2000 , why not same performance with Vista on PC with hardware which is even better then XBOX ?
Worth thinking and debate ? Is Xbox involved by any means in this equation ? Are Microsoft focusing majorly on their XBOX as the future of gaming , then the PC world ? XBOX works a dream and its based on an older OS - the Windows 2000 , why not same performance with Vista on PC with hardware which is even better then XBOX ?
There were a lot of comments and one which makes sense is why Microsoft doesn't implement a Gaming edition its really a good idea for Windows 7. DX10 on XP , I mentioned this but I wasn't clear enough - only hardware permitting that DX10 will run on XP , like with video cards from nvidia 8xxx family upwards and ati 2xxx family upwards. DX10 Free ? Yes why not ? Vista is just a waste of invested money both in hardware and the OS itself - I repeat again Vista doesn't perform well when related to XP even with latest hardware upgrades. That's the only point - Microsoft need to improve performance related to the investment done on hardware and for the gamers. Worth thinking and debate ? Is Xbox involved by any means in this equation ?
They made Vista for DX10. To quote a friend of mine::::::: No, it won't. DX10 requires things like virtualization, which in turn requires dedicated hardware on the graphics card. Furthermore, DX10 isn't just an update like DX7-9, it's like the upgrade from DX6 to DX7, i.e., a complete change in the rendering model. In DX9 and earlier rendering is driven primarily by the CPU, with varying parts offloaded to the GPU. In DX10 the rendering pipeline bypasses the CPU almost entirely. The DX10 for XP thing floating around is an ugly hack that wraps some of the DX9 calls back to DX10, but implements little more than basic geometry. And while you could probably wrap all of DX10 and run it through DX9 or OpenGL like Wine does with DirectX on Linux, it would be much slower since DX10 is designed to run on a high throughput graphics card. Seriously, you'd basically have to emulate the GPU to do it. People suggesting that this is reasonable frankly do not know what the fuck they are talking about. And yes, I do. I do this shit For A Living(TM). The driver model in XP can't support any of this, and to make it compatible would require rewriting substantial parts of the XP kernel. And Microsoft already did that, it's called Vista... why would they do it again? More to the point, why would they do it for free? http://www.focusedgaming.com/general-discussion/1280-vista-2nd-impressions.html
i was a advidt fan of pc gaming, was actually upset that i couldnt afford a 8800 & vista. but after watching hat my friends have gone through i am glad i got a PS3 instead. so basicly you spend 3,000 + and cant even run a game, ha. amazing. crysis, cant run. maybe 15 fps. i cant believe they pulled this crap. yep its time to take the whole pc gaming back to formula.. until they figure it out, i'll be like the rest of the industry and be jamming all the great titles out for 360, PS3. they already have the unified shaders (directx 10) working great on consoles, and with a HDTV. i'm telling you this is what pc gaming should have been. beautiful graphics. and with this crap with pc s you spend all your time trying to tweek out issues, getting a game to work that you miss out on why you play. it really takes the fun out of it. so seriouly, boycott this m$, i check out these consoles for now until they fix this crap. i'm really glad i decided to wait. i'll be busy playing these great titles. with all the beauty of unified shader technolgy while pc gamer's make up excuses why their 3000 dollar machines cant run a game on vista. total BS.
i was a advidt fan of pc gaming, was actually upset that i couldnt afford a 8800 & vista. but after watching hat my friends have gone through i am glad i got a PS3 instead. so basicly you spend 3,000 + and cant even run a game, ha. amazing. crysis, cant run. maybe 15 fps. i cant believe they pulled this crap. yep its time to take the whole pc gaming back to formula.. until they figure it out, i'll be like the rest of the industry and be jamming all the great titles out for 360, PS3. they already have the unified shaders (directx 10) working great on consoles, and with a HDTV. i'm telling you this is what pc gaming should have been. beautiful graphics. and with this crap with pc s you spend all your time trying to tweek out issues, getting a game to work that you miss out on why you play. it really takes the fun out of it. so seriouly, boycott this m$, i check out these consoles for now until they fix this crap. i'm really glad i decided to wait. i'll be busy playing these great titles. with all the beauty of unified shader technolgy while pc gamer's make up excuses why their 3000 dollar machines cant run a game on vista. total BS.
i was a advidt fan of pc gaming, was actually upset that i couldnt afford a 8800 & vista. but after watching hat my friends have gone through i am glad i got a PS3 instead. so basicly you spend 3,000 + and cant even run a game, ha. amazing. crysis, cant run. maybe 15 fps. i cant believe they pulled this crap. yep its time to take the whole pc gaming back to formula.. until they figure it out, i'll be like the rest of the industry and be jamming all the great titles out for 360, PS3. they already have the unified shaders (directx 10) working great on consoles, and with a HDTV. i'm telling you this is what pc gaming should have been. beautiful graphics. and with this crap with pc s you spend all your time trying to tweek out issues, getting a game to work that you miss out on why you play. it really takes the fun out of it. so seriouly, boycott this m$, i check out these consoles for now until they fix this crap. i'm really glad i decided to wait. i'll be busy playing these great titles. with all the beauty of unified shader technolgy while pc gamer's make up excuses why their 3000 dollar machines cant run a game on vista. total BS.
THe problem is that all modern operating systems are writtne not in assembley language but usuallyin something like C or C+ or even c#. these are then compiled and loaded onto the hard disk. This leads to even very simple programs becoming huge boated things as more andmore features become presentthe way windows works with its modular basis is designed to allow multiple programes to share the computers resources, this needs to be managed in software which makes for an eve bigger OS. As more peopl want and get more and more out of their computer the OS is bound to grow and the OS will also take up as much of the hardware resources as i thinks it cangetawaywith.THere is nothing that we can do about this unless we choose not to use MS and try something different. However MS is one of the largest companies in th world and has done much to push the deveopement of sofware and hardware over the last 20 years or so
After all this time i`m not sure why microsoft haven't worked on a vista gaming addition and dropped all the rubbish and hold backs to make the OS a smooth and faster OS . Microsoft know how big the gaming industry is as thats what they did with the xbox 360, as this is just windows 2000 OS i believe scaled down with none of the rubbish .
I have vista oem home premium 64bit, and it runs like a dream with world of warcraft, but other issues do arrise such as using internet explorer or checking emails with incredimail, i can sometimes hang up or lock, forcing you to ctrl alt del to task manager and shut the program down that way. Otherwise it's a dream, love the interface, just need a better flat screen monitor to replace me 21" crt iilaym pro vision master 21 lol
I worked on pc's from ms-dos era , 95,98 editions , xp and now vista. All had their problems and with every os new features and hardware upgrades were needed. from 98 to xp was one of the biggest hardware upgrades needed , though with Xp we improved on stability no more blue screen of death , improved drivers issue ,and even performance , with help of XP the PC market share boomed. Though with Vista its totally the opposite , just visual improvements - no performane - at the end losing from hardware investment , when with xp same hardware you get a better performance from games frame rate side , with particular P4 xp works fine , vista is death - the vista home edition - a farse - just dx10 and pc struggling to work with latter P4 setups. DX10 was not released for XP, in my opinion, just a marketing issue so to upgrade to Vista.Even though the DX10 issue and visual improvements the end result in sales are clear, Microsoft went off from Vista sales predictions , its a clear indication for the tech guys , that we want performance vs our hardware investment , not just visual improvemnts. If you have a good hardware setup and want to invest in an os, invest in the XP 64-bit , faster then 32-bit ,address side almost unlimited when compared to 32-bit . drivers started being released en masse , most software titles work fast , even performance is better. If you have an older pc or a struggling p4 but you do't use for gaming , try ubuntu , kubuntu,xubuntu or any Linux derivative ,these are good alternatives for office work and internet only use , for games - there are some titles which are ok - best of all - all free , drivers constantly released and upgraded. If you don't want to invest in xp , wait for the new Windows 7 , in my opinion its an imminent must release for Microsoft.And by the way invest in 64 bit editions , with 32 bit editions you're limited how to upgrade hardware wise. Microsoft wake up - performance first , by the way give us DX 10 for XP. If you come out with a good stable OS and performing well in benchmarks and real life, people will shift the same , its in human nature to change after some time , but to better not worse, otherwise whatever gadgets you keep for the OS , if it won't perform well hardware investment wise to performance , its useless.
I like vista its a good os. But my gaming performance sometimes does get me down. Stuttering, slowdowns and low fps. pc's shouldn't just be slightly better than consoles they should be downright thrashing them. How can those silly little boxes that cost about the same as a decent gpu even compete? but they do and sometimes even show the pc up.
.... so all I have to go on is what you write. That's all.
I like my Vista based PC much more than the outgoing XP box, but then again I should.... it's got much more capable hardware and so finally I can play a lot of games at smooth framerates. It's just frustrating to end up with something has the same old annoyances (with some nice additions granted), but with some new problems thrown on top. At the same time I can't say I'll be switching back to XP.
In terms of 1000fps performance, I was merely speaking in jest. Do you honestly think I'm stupid enough to think that OS performance is measured FPS? Vista is very responsive on my E6750 / 2GB RAM system. I think people are too picky and fussy these days. Most people that moan about Vista have not even tried it properly. They just go by what XP fanboys moan about.
I am wondering why we have to even bother running games on a windows platform. Did some of the older games not run on DOS?
Would I still have purchased Vista if DX10 was available under XP? Yes
Could a bloated O.S. hold back PC gaming? Yes. The question doesn't mention any specific O.S. so using an extreme example.... let's say I have a 4GHz Quad Core system and the O.S. is designed in such a way that it has far too many abstraction layers, performs security checks every time you press a key or move your mouse, downloads updates in the background constantly, animates a cute puppy throwing around a paperclip while using three of the cores to accelerate indexing.... then there are fewer resources left for other applications which means developers can't get the performance they'd like from the hardware which means corners have to be cut to produce an acceptable product.... or upgrades need to be made to experience the product as it was intended. A bloated O.S. (and I'm assuming that the bloat isn't just a collection of high res. photos of the manual) can't do anything but stifle performance.
Telling Microsoft direct..... yes, people can do that and EdArch has create a page for people to add their thoughts on that.
Putting XP back on.... hardly an option for off-the-shelf Vista systems plus the majority of PC buyers out there who wouldn't know how to go about such a task (and why should they do it anyway after forking out for a new system)....., but yes I'm sure some readers have got themselves nice triple-boot setups.
As for 1000fps.... not the criteria by which desktop responsiveness is measured.
Shouldn't we be telling MS direct instead of agreeing or not with each other?
...then put XP back on?! Remember how crap XP ran back in 2001? Vista is new and it won't run at 1000fps!
.... since even drivers that service hardware that was once connected to the PC are not loaded (although sometimes the supporting system tray programs are - I moan about that later) when the hardware is removed (as I understand it) so the presence of thousands of drivers is actually quite useful. Linux, unsurprisingly can also boot very quickly (in well under a minute if you play about with it) regardless of the driver support you have so all I'm saying is keep the wide ranging device support and perhaps, as has been suggested, provide the option to only install drivers for the hardware currently installed. Unfortunately, to avoid bloat you're either going to have to refer to the original media for future hardware installs, the media that comes with the hardware or Windows Update.
What is a pain is the default behaviour of adding application support for said devices into the system tray, making them run on startup, giving them inconsistent user interfaces, adding more rubbish into the registry, littering the system folders with DLLs that no other application uses which subsequently aren't always (if ever) removed as part of an uninstall because..... oh, it is safe to do so, but another application might rely on them - I don't think that has ever been the case in my experience.
There is also the habit of adding support services to applications that don't always need them and yet if you disable those services you get moaned at by the application. Why have all this running when it should only (in some cases) be running when I start the application?
It's a real downer when you build a nice new PC with Vista, put up with the relatively slow boot times because it's a shiny new O.S. (here we go again) and then once you've got your various applications and patches loaded you find its taking the same sort of time to boot as the clapped out XP machine you replaced.
I recently had the DLL problem running the CustomPC benchmarks. I had previously installed the Gimp package so the DLLs that were placed inside the SYSTEM32 folder ended up being the default ones to use instead of those inside the same directory as the benchmarks version of Gimp. All this meant that the image editing benchmark wouldn't run until I had removed the DLLs installed by the previous install.
Thanks for the what-you-want-to-see post and there is something I have to post to it which has really been bugging me with earlier incarnations of Windows.... but I have to check whether it has been sorted for Vista.
Those who are in a position to do so should try either Linux or OSX on their PCs, get any additional hardware working as necessary and then compare the speeds of boot times etc. It's a different world.
I guess one of the big issues is that Microsoft can't afford to make a large architectural change to the way their operating system works since it really would break a lot. Maybe they will if they could also offer a compatibility layer for the older way of working - maybe something like their VirtualPC product or WINE even?
then why s the next version of Windows going to be (apparently) released next year? :/ I've loaded Vista onto a perfectly decent system AMD 5000BE on NF590 m/b 8Gb RAM 74Gb Raptor 500Gb 501LJ 8800GT 1Gb Audigy 2 Platinum Pro which I think qualifies as vista-ready hardware however, vista doesn't allow me to even install never mind run alot of my CAD and 3D programs such as Revit 2008, AutoCAD 2008 Maya etc. so I don't see that as a reason to have it on my PC and nor is SuperFetch or UAC. Which is why I gave my copy away and bought XP64 instead. Yes drivers are only loaded for h/w that is/has been connected to a system but there is a database of drivers in windows for a variety of devices (over 2,000 printers for example). I'm talking about doing away with that and having an OS with a smaller footprint that (hopefully) will boot as near dammit quickly as OSX which has one real superiority to Windows - it's boot time. As said on my blog, people who come to custom PC will more-or-less know what they want frorm their OS and (more importantly) what they want IN it and let's face it, enthusiasts love customisation so why not extend this (within reason) to the OS as well as hardware. If you're going to be typing on your PC optimise Windows for that, same if you're a die-hard gamer... I'm not just having gripes at Vista because XP is far from perfect but there are bit from the old that can still be used because they work well (start menu for example). If MS are coding the new release of Windows (I'm pretty sure they will be), then it's important for people like us to give them feedback and tell them what we want improved, what we like, what problems we have..
.... are only loaded for hardware that is present, but yes..... good post.
I think Vista is great. I'm even using the x64 version. I've seen no performance difference in games compared to XP. If I want to run a game in DX9 instead of DX10, I can. If you have problems with SuperFetch, turn it off. If you don't like UAC, turn it off. Its a new OS. This also means it requires new hardware. Also, the recent release of SP1 has made it even better. Anyone remember how rubbish XP was before SP2? Technology advances. XP is 7 years old. GET OVER IT! If you are running Vista with 1GB of RAM, a Celeron CPU and a slow HDD, then that's your own fault.
http://custompc.co.uk/blogs/edarch/2008/03/26/windows-what-do-you-want-to-see/ now we can start fixing the problem
1 - it's funny seeing people arguing the merits of vista "because it's more colourful than OSX" or "Aero is quite pretty" etc. I'm no fan of Apple's as they suck at architectural programs (what few there are), and everything about them is overpriced. BUT OSX loads in under a minute so it would be nice if MS could take a leaf out of Apple's book in that sense rather then taking the 'lets make everything look pretty' route. None of us want to see the contents of someone's stomach when they turn on their pc but none of us want to wait so long we need a shave before we can start using programs/games. At the end of the day Vista has three main selling points. a\DX10, which doesn't work properly b\Aero, which is useless when using photoshop/CAD/3D and c\ nice shiny 'colourful' titlebars which I don't really care about since I spend my time looking at the picture, not the frame. 2 - Vista is bloated and it's a shame in a way that you really need 4GbRAM to get any decent use out of it (that's if you use things like photoshop or high-end games). Although Vista is new it suffers from some of the headaches that made XP a not-as-good-as-it-should-be OS. It loads tons of drivers for hardware you'll never use, installs programs you'll never use and runs services that you'll never use. All this takes up HD space, RAM and increases the time it takes to load Windows - XP and Vista. This is the main flaw with both OS', in most applications you can select which components of software you wish to install that suits your needs best. Windows doesn't give you that option, you have to fart around doing this after installation which takes up more time and really is unnecessary. Yes DX10 should be available for XP but it should also work properly. The new windows should have two installation modes - idiot/novice, which will do a normal install and in the process ask you if you'll need messenger/on-screen keyboard etc, do you want to install printers etc? if so the driver will install or you can install the driver from the hardware cd or website. Power User - which will give advanced options for program installation, drivers, services (you may not need wireless configuration and may not want system restore for example). This is the major fault at hand here. I think we may be on to something here. Custom PC is an established, respected publication, and if we can put together a comprehensive list of things we'd like to see improved in the next version of Windows then MS will listen and take appropriate coding action. In fact, it's such a good idea, that I've set up a blog which everyone can add their ideas to, which I'll submit to Microsoft in June. Have a look, we may just save our OS!
1 - it's funny seeing people arguing the merits of vista "because it's more colourful than OSX" or "Aero is quite pretty" etc. I'm no fan of Apple's as they suck at architectural programs (what few there are), and everything about them is overpriced. BUT OSX loads in under a minute so it would be nice if MS could take a leaf out of Apple's book in that sense rather then taking the 'lets make everything look pretty' route. None of us want to see the contents of someone's stomach when they turn on their pc but none of us want to wait so long we need a shave before we can start using programs/games. At the end of the day Vista has three main selling points. a\DX10, which doesn't work properly b\Aero, which is useless when using photoshop/CAD/3D and c\ nice shiny 'colourful' titlebars which I don't really care about since I spend my time looking at the picture, not the frame. 2 - Vista is bloated and it's a shame in a way that you really need 4GbRAM to get any decent use out of it (that's if you use things like photoshop or high-end games). Although Vista is new it suffers from some of the headaches that made XP a not-as-good-as-it-should-be OS. It loads tons of drivers for hardware you'll never use, installs programs you'll never use and runs services that you'll never use. All this takes up HD space, RAM and increases the time it takes to load Windows - XP and Vista. This is the main flaw with both OS', in most applications you can select which components of software you wish to install that suits your needs best. Windows doesn't give you that option, you have to fart around doing this after installation which takes up more time and really is unnecessary. Yes DX10 should be available for XP but it should also work properly. The new windows should have two installation modes - idiot/novice, which will do a normal install and in the process ask you if you'll need messenger/on-screen keyboard etc, do you want to install printers etc? if so the driver will install or you can install the driver from the hardware cd or website. Power User - which will give advanced options for program installation, drivers, services (you may not need wireless configuration and may not want system restore for example). This is the major fault at hand here. I think we may be on to something here. Custom PC is an established, respected publication, and if we can put together a comprehensive list of things we'd like to see improved in the next version of Windows then MS will listen and take appropriate coding action. In fact, it's such a good idea, that I've set up a blog which everyone can add their ideas to, which I'll submit to Microsoft in June. Have a look, we may just save our OS!
What is also holding PC gaming back is nitwits like these lot. Quit complaining and fix it for christ sake.
Sorry. The presence of also led me to think that other people who had submitted comments here were those who should stop complaining and sort out the problems.
I am sure that developers do provide feedback for Microsoft. It is how the feedback is handled which may contribute to future developments.
They're problem, they fix it. Passing blame is what is at state here.
A PR stunt so people dont directly blame Directx for its flaws and rubbish for directx10.. but instead forward it to windows and blame them for a marketing stunt to get vista and directx10....... Tbh....they have no excuse, they work directly with the company, they should be telling microsoft how its done... if anything slap the directx10 creator
why don't microsoft release a stripped windows environment aimed at gamers. If it can be done by the cracking community then why don't MS make some moeny from it. Role on Windows 7.
"What is also holding PC gaming back is nitwits like these lot. Quit complaining and fix it for christ sake."
So.... you want the nitwits (in your words) to fix the problems with closed products that are not being addressed by paid engineers? Is that right?
I couldn't care if he was the Government. Vista is fine. DX10 is not holding back PC gaming, what is holding it back is the developers. Epic heading towards Console now? EA advertising in games? Steam taking over the world? What is also holding PC gaming back is nitwits like these lot. Quit complaining and fix it for christ sake, I know of pleanty of other people who would rather be in their position.
remember to start with there were very few reasons MS would give XP64 in the beginning because intel had a viable x86 CPU and AMD were just a fly in the ointment with their 64bit CPU's and alas MS had to get in on the action so it pushed XP Pro 64 into the picture If XP had DX10 (All varitys) in it and was A little Cheaper and 64 bit without a memory restriction i would have bought that
Is that tinyurl link about the Alky project real? Or am I being suckered? (If it costs, I'll know straight away)
Although I am sure there is some way that DirectX 10 could have also been provided for XP (after all, we are talking about software), Microsoft are unlikely to do it since it will hurt sales of Vista.
As usual, it all comes down to business. *sigh*
Any reason not to fork out £60 is fine by me, especially when its for vista, which seems to be slated by all sorts of people in the industry. This is just another reason for me not to buy it. Will have to eventually but will hold out as long as possible! Why cant someone come up with a direct x 10 patch for XP?
While I appreciate that there may be hundreds of things the computer is doing in the background I would also have to question whether I needed most of them to be going on. It does not help that the descriptions of a lot of these background services are so vague that you are left wondering if you are going to break something by disabling them.
Viruses and Spyware.... yes, that is another area of amusement. Let us make our software really useful, give it loads of badly written additional features (which either remain unused-by or unknown-to the end user) that expose more vulnerabilities thus opening up the market for lots of different anti-virus products, which require more resources and therefore render all the budget, single-core systems sold with less than 1gb of memory by the big-name-brands useless unless more memory is purchased.
Let us (I am not using contractions here since the escape sequences used here to combat SQL injection - an assumption - go a bit crazy if you repeatedly edit a message preview) also not forget that a big contribution to application bloat has to be due to modern programming environments and those who do not actually care any more about how much memory is used up by the code they create. I remember seeing an article a while back on CAD products and one item under review was written entirely in assembly and as a result was the fastest product on test. I suppose it may have not been the prettiest code to look at though.
I hope this is seen as polite ranting that creates discussion.... rather than just some drivel from someone who has used computers too long.
Dont forget new viruses and spyware ect are always developing so the firewall and anti virus are needing more power due to this
i guess its just due to modern software doing a 100 more tasks for you in the background while having more security such as firewall antivirus ect, at the end of it all everything in the IT market is developing, and fast, but that is while software is getting better and needing more power too!!!
I have just lost my original version of this message and as I cannot be bothered to type it all in again, here is a summary.....
Recently visited customer who had a problem with their PC.... turned out to be Windows 98, 128mb RAM, clunky HD, slow CPU..... turned out to be just as (if not more) responsive in some places as a modern machine running Vista!!
How is it that Windows users (me included) find this sort of *progress* acceptable? Why do I have to wait for the computer to finish faffing about after I have keyed in my password before I can start running the applications I wanted to run?
Seems that computers have changed from being a tool we had complete control over to being a machine which controls us. <--- OK, so that is perhaps a bit extreme, but I think you know what I am getting at. It is like having Workflow management in your own home/life! Ridiculous.
You really start questioning things when you use alternative operating systems which take less than a tenth of the time to get ready for you.
Hmmm, that still ended up being a long message.
apple is just too much grey and blue... at least ms is more colourful (but not to that camp extent), just check out safari... its just grey and blue... in my opinion its like a mid 90's era in car stereo lol
Vista is bloated there really is no denying it... It has a much bigger install size than xp and doesn't really do a lot more except have much better search facilities (if you don't mind your hard drive spinning up constantly). Now that said, I use Vista, I prefer it, I like the look of it, and it feels more polished than xp, it also has a better firewall, I don't mind the install size, I have a 250GB drive for my system disk, and 2 320GB disks for data storage. But it's not just Vista, xp is only slightly quicker, and in my mind is almost as bloated (more so for its time when it came out). All the stuff Vista does could be achieved with much less system use (it can be done because 3rd party apps already do it) and a lot of it is unnecessary for a lot of people. It needs to be more clever in what it actually installs by asking you; it doesn't need to have drivers for every bit of hardware out there already included, it just needs a very intuitive way of showing you where to find your drivers and how to install them Being less buggy would help too... media center is a great inclusion... if it actually supported all the formats you normally use, and if i didn't have so many problems when you try and make it support these formats... what happened to testing software properly.. seems to happen less and less these days. In my mind MS is trying to ape Apple, where its all about style and box ticking, and less about practicality.
as i'm studying for my MCSA we were able to get a student copy of business 64-bit for free. so have built a new system with a quad core and 4gb ram. still got my old custom box running xp pro. and yes i think dx10 support for xp wud have been great but microsoft are greedy and if they hadn't produced dx10 as a vista only program then we wouldn't have had to buy vista and make bill gates lots more money...
as i'm studying for my MCSA we were able to get a student copy of business 64-bit for free. so have built a new system with a quad core and 4gb ram. still got my old custom box running xp pro. and yes i think dx10 support for xp wud have been great but microsoft are greedy and if they hadn't produced dx10 as a vista only program then we wouldn't have had to buy vista and make bill gates lots more money...
I personally think we are all missing a vital issue here with regards to Vista or DX10 for that matter. The main bein that technology is advancing at a very high rate and to be able to keep up with the technology we have to keep the OS's up to scratch. It's almost like saying i'd go back to windows for workgroups if the latest graphics cards would work in it but they wont reason being is that thew coding has to reflect the fullest potentils of the hardwares available today and it s this coding that takes up resourses ie RAM. In time yes the coding will eventually be simplified or a new form of 'language' created that will be much more reliable, efficient and worthwhile but untill then what is is and MS are doing the best they can to keep pace with the latest technologies available. At least that is my personal opinion.
Vista is a great OS... BUT!!!, they should of made a gaming version, which is a stripped down version with nothing apart from the GUI and a big Boost button on the task bar that turns off all of the fancy looking stuff and makes it a 10x faster, i hope windows 7 (due to be released 2009) has all of the gaming features, but none of that bloated stuff, i have got to say i have heard rumour that basically all it is, is vista but without the fat belly. but back onto vista if you agree on the vista gaming edition then just say cuz who knows if we shout loud enough gates might hear us... lol... mmmmMMmmm i can see it now, Windows Vista Ultimate Gaming Edition x64. tell us what you think!!!
Even if Direct3d 10 came on XP, I still wouldn't go back to it - its just not the same. Vista feels much better to me.
They only SAY it's Vista-only. Don't believe anybody, it's all lies, argh! :0 http://tinyurl.com/yqpuqg
pveater, well in a way I agree with you. But if you take away DX10 what is there in Vista? The main selling point of Vista is that it has got DX10 (when they took away the new file system etc) so they are directly trying to appeal to the Gaming community.
as i'm studying for my MCSA we were able to get a student copy of business 64-bit for free. so have built a new system with a quad core and 4gb ram. still got my old custom box running xp pro. and yes i think dx10 support for xp wud have been great but microsoft are greedy and if they hadn't produced dx10 as a vista only program then we wouldn't have had to buy vista and make bill gates lots more money...
But isnt a PC designed to do a lot more than gaming Mr St John? A PC needs to be capable than a lot more than running DX10 hence why its 'bloated' and 'full of crap.' If you want a machine which is purely a gaming platform then HELLLOOOOOOO Mr 360/PS3. I agree making DX10 Vista only was a stupid move but you cant blame the OS for holding back gaming. Once you strip everything else out of the OS then what are you left with? Maybe MS should produce a gaming OS on that basis. Would you buy it knowing it was incapable of doing anything other than gaming? Would you run 2 versions of the OS, one for gaming and another 'standard' version when you need to use a PC for .... well.... PC things!
if the DirectX creator says vista blows then thats gotta be really bad. they should leak a dx10 update for xp..
I think everyone expected too much from the huge release that was Vista and DX10. The new OS was bound to have teething trouble and indeed it has, possibly more so than XP, or certainly longer lasting. To get both the new OS and DX10 with related games and hardware working 100% straight off, was too tall an order. New versions of Direct X aren't fully supported for some time in games and via new GPUs. what's more DX10 has been so woven into the fabric that is Vista, that if one failed to make decenty headway, the other was going to suffer. This is exactly what has happened. DX10 is a more efficient base for gaming, but Vista requires such a leap of faith in hardware terms that many simply haven't opted for it in gaming terms. With 512MB RAM and a half decent CPU and GPU, you can play most games of the last 5 years on XP. Try this on Vista and the OS will use all that RAM before you've even started. the Win98 > XP migration was much smoother.
"Would you have bought Windows Vista if you could have had DirectX 10 on Windows XP?" I haven't bought Vista DESPITE the fact you can't get Direct X 10 on XP. The DX10 performance hit on frame rates is so high, games are only worth playing in DX 9 anyway.
I dont see any advantages to having vista over XP other than DX10. The flashy aero gui is easily replicated on XP with programs such as WindowBlinds and other skining programs. Also maybe its just me but it feels like in vista things are in the wrong place, well more specifically in the control panel, and it doesnt ask me if i want to overwrite files if im copy and pasting, it just overwrites them by default :S Dont get me wrong, Vista is a good OS and i havent had any major issues working with it, but if had a choice i would rather stick with XP if it had DX10. After all its a more mature OS with better driver support for the more obscure hardware and for me it just seems to work. As the old saying goes, if it aint broke, dont fix it.
i like vista. but if i could get dx10 on xp, id go back.
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