What does MS Vista really offer?

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croddie
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Post by croddie » Fri Dec 01, 2006 7:31 pm

Beyonder wrote:
jaganath wrote:still, I think XP SP2 was a big improvement over SP1, what with Security Center and all.
Oh, I totally agree with you there. Although with Vista, I feel like MSFT has gone a overboard with User Account Control. It's too intrusive to me.
Apparently you can turn it off from the control panel. That sounds like the right solution to me because:
If you can turn it off it is probably safe for you to do so.
If you can't use the control panel you are best off with it on.

ciz28
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Post by ciz28 » Fri Dec 01, 2006 8:18 pm

croddie wrote:Apparently you can turn it off from the control panel. That sounds like the right solution to me because:
If you can turn it off it is probably safe for you to do so.
If you can't use the control panel you are best off with it on.
:lol: The truth of this statement just caught me completely off guard. Very well worded!

But back to UAC, I personally keep it enabled on all five (:o) of my machines and have no problems with it. Although, I will admit that when I'm first setting up the system after a fresh install I do disable it until things are settled. Rearranging my start menu is the only thing that I find to be excessively UAC prompt ridden.

Terje
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Post by Terje » Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:13 pm

Rusty075 wrote: Not really SPCR-related, but the ReadyBoost feature is pretty slick. For most of us its essentially a free performance boost.
ReadyBoost is definately SPCR related.

What it tries to do is to detect the disk I/O that are the most random and caches this on a flash style device so you reduce that costly harddisk seeks.

A harddisk today has much higher throughput than a flash key on a USB port, but if you throw in 12 ms access time for the disks, the flash device will often be faster.

The effect of this is that your HD does less random I/O and we all know that the seeks are the worst cause of noise and vibrations.

I noticed it immediately when I had accidentally pulled out the memory stick I have plugged into the backside of my PC. The 3 disk raid I have immediately got more noisy thanks to increased seeks.

You definitely want ReadyBoost for this reason. Just make sure you get a large and _fast_ memory device for the purpose. I use a 2GB high speed stick (26MB/sec according to HDTach).

Also be careful with access times. Many flash devices have worse access times than harddisk due to poor controller logic on the flash device. I got a CF card with 26ms access.

The memory stick I use clocked in between 0.6 and 2ms access in series of HDTach runs which seems to be in the upper medium half in terms of performance for such a large memory stick.

The memory sticks in general gets slower access times as they get larger. I guess that is because the controller on board has to map to more memory chips/banks.

In any case, I definitely recommend ReadyBoost for SPCR. On my PC, the noise effect is in general more noticeable than the performance, but this is a pretty high end PC with 3disk raid 5 and 4GB memory, so it very quick without the ReadyBoost although ReadyBoost does add a little bit of extra snap even to this machine.

Regards,
Terje

nightmorph
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Post by nightmorph » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:37 am

What's it offer? In mathematical terms:

diddly
-------
squat

What's it offer? In financial terms?

A third mortgage to pay for the new computer you'll have to buy to run it. Yet another method of profiting the global cartel that is the Winbox hardware makers and cementing the (more expensive) status quo.

Really, three or four versions isn't enough? Now we have what, seven, nine different Vistas?

Pick a view (a Vista, if you will); they're all looking pretty dismal.

vertigo
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Post by vertigo » Sat Dec 02, 2006 3:26 am

Sounds like ReadyBoost reduces the greater amount of seeks that Superfetch will incur...

Erssa
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Post by Erssa » Sat Dec 02, 2006 7:02 am

AZBrandon wrote:I don't know what kind of stuff you guys are doing but the only time I've ever gotten BSOD under XP is with extreme overclocking. I've actually never had a BSOD when not overclocked. Ever. I've been stunned at how solid XP has been, although I didn't upgrade until SP1 came out. It's a shame too, since I upgraded from Windows ME - possibly the saddest OS since Windows 3.11.
This is the case for most. Only time I have gotten BSOD with Xp was when my memory failed.

The BSOD-crying is old. It was justified with win95-win ME, but not since windows 2000. The crying is just an old habit that linux nerds and mac gurus can't seem to break off from.
nightmorph wrote:Really, three or four versions isn't enough? Now we have what, seven, nine different Vistas?
And this is microsofts fault? With all the litigation from the EU, monopol accusations etc. it's really suprising, that we are limited to these numbers.

Microsoft has to be the most hated company in the world history. No matter what they do, they can't do it right for these people...

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Post by Rusty075 » Sat Dec 02, 2006 8:08 am

nightmorph wrote:Really, three or four versions isn't enough? Now we have what, seven, nine different Vistas?
There's currently 10 versions of XP available. :wink:

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Post by AZBrandon » Sat Dec 02, 2006 8:11 am

nightmorph wrote:Really, three or four versions isn't enough? Now we have what, seven, nine different Vistas?
Because apparently choice is bad? Really, three or four versions of linux isn't enough? Why are there seven, nine, or twenty different versions of linux?

AZBrandon
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Post by AZBrandon » Sun Dec 03, 2006 7:47 am

Windows XP head-to-head with Windows Vista. I thought it was worth sharing.

Separately, it dawned on me that the big deal interface for Vista is Aero, which means your video card will be pushing high resolution 3D graphics at all times. For those that have tested it, how does your PC's idle power draw or idle video card temperature compare in Vista's interface versus a plain 2D interface like Windows XP?

peteamer
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Post by peteamer » Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:46 am

AZBrandon wrote:Windows ME - possibly the saddest OS since Windows 3.11.
:shock:


That's a little harsh on 3.1.1

Erssa
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Post by Erssa » Sun Dec 03, 2006 9:40 am

AZBrandon wrote:Separately, it dawned on me that the big deal interface for Vista is Aero, which means your video card will be pushing high resolution 3D graphics at all times.
Aero is not a part of the Vista Home Basic, which will be probably the most sold version of Vista. Personally, I think Aero is useless. Windows Vista Standard looks the same, but it doens't have the transparency, 3D effects and animations.

GamingGod
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Post by GamingGod » Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:50 am

what exactly is rc3? I know its something to do with not letting you make illegal copies of software ect. but anyone know more about it, and how it works?
Vista doesnt seem to offer me anything except dx10 which they are making you upgrade to. Basically MS is shoving vista down our throats.

Erssa
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Post by Erssa » Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:28 pm

GamingGod wrote:what exactly is rc3? I know its something to do with not letting you make illegal copies of software ect. but anyone know more about it, and how it works?
Probably release candidate 3. Release candidates are the final version before the RTM (released to manufacturing) version.

vertigo
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Post by vertigo » Sun Dec 03, 2006 1:06 pm

Windows ME - possibly the saddest OS since Windows 3.11
Not as sad as the people who stood in line to buy it.

Beyonder
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Post by Beyonder » Sun Dec 03, 2006 4:00 pm

DryFire wrote:I always wondered what was the point of the windows media center. Does it do anything I can't do with free software anyway (other then adding drm)?
You are misinformed. Media Center doesn't add any DRM to anything. It basically allows your PC to function like a tivo if you have a cable card. I would schedule recordings, and then watch the recordings later at my leisure (forwarding through commercials as well). It was also a great front end if you had a large media library, and had a very well thought out remote control.

From what I could see, however, there was no DRM aspect to media center (or it was transparant enough that I didn't care anyways). I was very impressed with media center for the several months I had cable (canceled cable because it was too $$$).

That being said, I'm happy that they're simply making it an application, rather than its own version of Windows, which is a total joke.

floffe
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Post by floffe » Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:37 am

Well, I don't think there was any DRM as such in MCE2003/2005, but cablecard and Vista will bring it in, at least for encrypted stuff (which is the whole point of cablecard, enabling you to record stuff you could only watch through a set-top box before). But the older MCE versions still used a proprietary format so that you had to re-encode them if you wanted to watch them in some other program than MCE itself.

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Post by Beyonder » Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:33 pm

floffe wrote:But the older MCE versions still used a proprietary format so that you had to re-encode them if you wanted to watch them in some other program than MCE itself.
Not exactly.

DVR-MS doesn't strike me as being a proprietary format, although the wikipedia article (incorrectly?) labels it as such. The definition of proprietary is that a party, or proprietor, exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties. However, converting DVR-MS to something else would be very easy using video processing APIs provided by Microsoft (e.g. DirectShow, which is a standard video API that XP--and Vista--both use to render audio and video). MSFT even has articles posted where they illustrate how to convert from DVR-MS to WMV. From WMV, it'd be pretty easy to convert to whatever format one desired. I would call DVR-MS a "custom" format, but I would not call it a proprietary one. A proprietary format implies that the owner is denying other people the ability to work with said format, but that isn't the case with DVR-MS. DVR-MS in Vista is slightly different; it's now in an ASF format. ASF is a completely open format (I've written an ASF parser in C#, for example), and MPEG2/MPEG1 are licenced formats provided by the MPEG group. How is that "proprietary?"

To play on another device, the video would not need to be re-encoded. It would need to be re-formatted. The video is already in an MPEG2 format, and the audio is MPEG1 layer II; DVR-MS isn't a video compression type, but a wrapper format.

It is true that DVR-MS detects if incoming programs are marked as being copy-protected; they may still be saved, but they may not be played back on any device except the one that recorded it. I highly doubt that MSFT desired this "feature"; implementing this costs them money and effort, and hassles users. It is far more likely that they were legally forced to comply by content providers. That being said, it would still be trivial to convert it to another format, and strip out this information.

Lastly, why would you want to watch it in some other program besides MCE? This would be like recording video with a TIVO and then demanding to be able to view it on a PC; the use-case is weird, to say the least. It doesn't make sense to me that a consumer would want to use MCE to record video, but the abandon the application for actual viewing.

Anyways, I digress....back to finals.

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Post by Rusty075 » Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:48 pm

OT aside: VLC and WMP will play back DVR-MS files recorded off tv with MCE. I've also watched them on WMP over the network on non-MCE machines.

Mar.
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Post by Mar. » Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:56 pm

Beyonder wrote:
floffe wrote:But the older MCE versions still used a proprietary format so that you had to re-encode them if you wanted to watch them in some other program than MCE itself.
Not exactly.

DVR-MS doesn't strike me as being a proprietary format, although the wikipedia article (incorrectly?) labels it as such. The definition of proprietary is that a party, or proprietor, exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties. However, converting DVR-MS to something else would be very easy using video processing APIs provided by Microsoft (e.g. DirectShow, which is a standard video API that XP--and Vista--both use to render audio and video). MSFT even has articles posted where they illustrate how to convert from DVR-MS to WMV. From WMV, it'd be pretty easy to convert to whatever format one desired. I would call DVR-MS a "custom" format, but I would not call it a proprietary one. A proprietary format implies that the owner is denying other people the ability to work with said format, but that isn't the case with DVR-MS. DVR-MS in Vista is slightly different; it's now in an ASF format. ASF is a completely open format (I've written an ASF parser in C#, for example), and MPEG2/MPEG1 are licenced formats provided by the MPEG group. How is that "proprietary?"

To play on another device, the video would not need to be re-encoded. It would need to be re-formatted. The video is already in an MPEG2 format, and the audio is MPEG1 layer II; DVR-MS isn't a video compression type, but a wrapper format.

It is true that DVR-MS detects if incoming programs are marked as being copy-protected; they may still be saved, but they may not be played back on any device except the one that recorded it. I highly doubt that MSFT desired this "feature"; implementing this costs them money and effort, and hassles users. It is far more likely that they were legally forced to comply by content providers. That being said, it would still be trivial to convert it to another format, and strip out this information.

Lastly, why would you want to watch it in some other program besides MCE? This would be like recording video with a TIVO and then demanding to be able to view it on a PC; the use-case is weird, to say the least. It doesn't make sense to me that a consumer would want to use MCE to record video, but the abandon the application for actual viewing.

Anyways, I digress....back to finals.
MediaPortal uses the .dvr-ms file type for recording as well. Someone on their online community made a converter to go to a regular MPEG format; I'm sure it wuold work for the MCE-recorded .dvr-ms files as well.

bendit
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Post by bendit » Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:58 pm

exactly, the people that talk BSOD have an axe to grind.
they don't happen in an up to date XP system.

regards
AZBrandon wrote:
floffe wrote:
aristide1 wrote: The ability to tab between 4 separate blue screens of death? :shock:
It might be funny if it wasn't so true :lol: :lol:
I don't know what kind of stuff you guys are doing but the only time I've ever gotten BSOD under XP is with extreme overclocking. I've actually never had a BSOD when not overclocked. Ever. I've been stunned at how solid XP has been, although I didn't upgrade until SP1 came out. It's a shame too, since I upgraded from Windows ME - possibly the saddest OS since Windows 3.11.

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Post by Devonavar » Mon Dec 04, 2006 2:44 pm

I wish that were true. They're certainly less common than in Win9x days, but I've run into tons of BSOD conditions under XP. To be fair, they're often hardware or driver related, but they still happen. The most reliable way I know of reproducing an BSOD condition is to try installing nVidia's driver pack on a system that previously had ATI Catalyst installed. This has happened for several driver generations on both sides, and AFAIK, it has never been fixed.

bendit
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Post by bendit » Mon Dec 04, 2006 3:04 pm

tweakers get them but the average joe sure won't. :D
they are very rare and I stand by my statement that when
they are brought up on forums its because the ole axe
needs grinding.

regards
Devonavar wrote:I wish that were true. They're certainly less common than in Win9x days, but I've run into tons of BSOD conditions under XP. To be fair, they're often hardware or driver related, but they still happen. The most reliable way I know of reproducing an BSOD condition is to try installing nVidia's driver pack on a system that previously had ATI Catalyst installed. This has happened for several driver generations on both sides, and AFAIK, it has never been fixed.

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Post by Devonavar » Mon Dec 04, 2006 3:13 pm

I suppose all I really meant to say is never say never. I think we both agree that they're rare, but your words above implied that they never happen, so I felt obliged to give examples...

As for axe-grinding, I'm all for it if it results in Microsoft improving Windows. I just get the feeling that all our little axe grinding has been overshadowed by the much bigger axe that the entertainment industry is grinding.

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Post by floffe » Mon Dec 04, 2006 4:45 pm

Beyonder wrote:...
My bad, I wasn't aware MS had released the specs for DVR-MS. The format is still proprietary in the sense that MS are the ones who control it though. I think we'd rather not get into philosophical discussions about that in this thread though ;)

As for watching with other programs: What if I want to send my recorded show to my friend who missed it? Or watch it somewhere else than the computer where it was recorded? OK, Vista lets you watch it over your LAN IIRC, but what if I don't have the media center features on the computer I want to watch it on?
Devonavar wrote:I just get the feeling that all our little axe grinding has been overshadowed by the much bigger axe that the entertainment industry is grinding.
In other words, time to tell them what you think, and vote with your wallet </zealot type=linux> :twisted:

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Post by Beyonder » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:33 pm

floffe wrote:My bad, I wasn't aware MS had released the specs for DVR-MS. The format is still proprietary in the sense that MS are the ones who control it though. I think we'd rather not get into philosophical discussions about that in this thread though ;)
If you're talking about who "owns" the format, then you are correct: it is owned by MSFT. However, the format itself uses a number of MPEG codecs which MSFT definitely does not own.

To be totally honest, I've worked in the digital video space as a programmer for years now, and there isn't a free piece of software in the entire business. The fact that MSFT has very decent codecs that are completely free to use on Windows platforms (there are licencing costs--still cheaper than MPEG--for Linux or disparate hardware platforms) is amazing. Don't expect that sort of pricing scheme from the MPEG group.
As for watching with other programs: What if I want to send my recorded show to my friend who missed it? Or watch it somewhere else than the computer where it was recorded? OK, Vista lets you watch it over your LAN IIRC, but what if I don't have the media center features on the computer I want to watch it on?
In any event, you could transcode the content. The APIs are available to do it, but nobody has taken the time to write the code. With most DVR-MS files, you could send them to your friend, too. Most of the content on cable television isn't marked as being protected, from my understanding.

As for television over the LAN, you can use a MCE Extender, although I think it's one of the worst products MSFT has ever made (even worse than ME, sadly).

To be honest, I can't think of why I'd want to watch it over my LAN anyways. I watch TV in the TV room. I don't really care about seeing it other places in the house (This is the "digital home" bullshit they regurgitate every January at CES, which I do my damndest to expunge from memory).

Devonavar
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Post by Devonavar » Mon Dec 04, 2006 11:12 pm

floffe wrote:In other words, time to tell them what you think, and vote with your wallet </zealot type=linux> :twisted:
Doing my best, but my first foray hasn't been a success. I'm not so hot about having to compile my graphics driver or needing to tweak configuration file to enable my second monitor. The lack of a decent HTML editor and Photoshop substitute are also issues, though I will take suggestions. Perhaps I shouldn't have started with the 64-bit version...

All in all, I'm thinking OS X is my best bet. It's stable, I'm reasonably familiar with it, and it's big enough that I can get Photoshop for it. Final Cut Pro is a bonus too.

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Post by floffe » Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:15 am

Beyonder:
http://www.theora.org/theorafaq.html wrote:Q. What is Theora?
Theora is an open video codec being developed by the Xiph.org Foundation as part of their Ogg project (It is a project that aims to integrate On2's VP3 video codec, Ogg Vorbis audio codec and Ogg multimedia container formats into a multimedia solution that can compete with MPEG-4 format).
Free as in both beer and freedom :D True, it might not be as mature as the currently most popular options, but it is getting better and better.

Beyonder
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Post by Beyonder » Tue Dec 05, 2006 6:43 pm

Yeah, I'm aware of Theora. First off, it's not even past alpha stage, so it isn't viable for a production environment. Second, the quality so far is not impressive.

Lastly (and this spells the doom of Theora ever gaining any sort of market traction), theora's platform support is hidious. Codecs (and most technology) have a networked externality aspect. Basically, this means that as more people use a given technology, the technology becomes increasingly valuable. With audio and video codecs, this is painfully obvious: a portable music player is only useful to the extent to which it plays back my media files. I no longer encode my music to WMA or AAC because MP3 seems to be the safest bet, and plays back on the most devices, for example.

The WM codecs are incredibly valuable, simply because decoders are available on every single Windows OS since 98. They are available on a huge amount of portable devices, PDAs, and cell phones. And, like I pointed out before, it's also totally free. Why would a business go with a codec that has limited device support, immature APIs, and almost no market penetration when there's another codec with equivalent cost (nothing) and all of those qualities?
http://www.theora.org/theorafaq.html#11 wrote:Q. Why use Theora?
It's open and free. Do you need more reasons?
Umm, yes. There are other facets to the issue beyond "open" and "free." I'm a firm believer in free beer; however, there's more than one beer to choose from, so why drink the natty light?

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Post by mr. poopyhead » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:27 pm

vista: if i wanted something that looked like a mac and sucked up all my resources just to run windows explorer, i'd just buy a mac...

not saying vista looks LIKE a mac... but they're definitely trying to go for the slick interface thing. which mac does better ANYWAYS. not for me, thanks...

i have 2GB of RAM right now and what i think is a pretty decent computer. vista would bog my computer down to no end and make my specs look like chumps....

besides, there are plenty of conversion packs to change XP into a pseudo-mac or pseudo-vista interface. check out bricopacks and flyakite...

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Post by Aris » Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:18 pm

Like with every operating system Bill Gates has ever released, i'll be waiting at least a year or two before i get it. Everyone knows MS products need AT LEAST 2 patch updates from the initial release to work correctly. Plus you gotta wait till the corperate and school copies that dont require cdkeys to leak out into the public so you dont have to pay for it but still get all the updates without worry.

Havnt ever paid for any MS product yet, never will.

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