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THE resource KILLER - Windows Vista


pay_c
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Hi there!

Some warning words for anybody here, who is about to get some new PC/laptop etc.

I got my new laptop right this weekend (ooooouuuuuweeeee!!! :) ) and started it right away (typical). As I got it from Dell I had no choice but to get it along with Windows Vista. So I started the machine:

It's a brand new laptop with Duo processor and 1 gig RAM. Vista *alone* is occupying about 900 MByte of RAM!!!!!! So if you put another virus scanner there and a firewall here you have your whole RAM already occupied and Windows slows down dramatically! It's unbelievable! I bought that new laptop as my old one is slowing down as hell with XP (1,2 Ghz and 256 MB Ram) - but NOW my OLD laptop is even faster than my new one with Vista!!!  :o :o :o

And all that because of some f***** graphical - not needed in any case - effects. There's not one big difference to XP as far as I got to know Vista right now, just that it needs RAM like hell and it's popping up messages every minute. Also the new menus are so dumb like whatever. The hardware management consists only the very very soft buttons, whistles and bells. The real hardware changing is burried down SOMEWHERE (up to now I have no idea where). Autostart managing is also not working properly and so on and so on...

So:IF YOU HAVE THE CHOICE STICK TO XP!!! That even counts extremly more if you want to make music with it (imagine all those popping messages within some live act or similar).

For me, I will wreck the laptop down to it's bits and start all over with Windows XP (I still have it with my old laptop). There's absolutely no choice for me as I want to WORK with that laptop not WAIT all the time and click away pop-ups every 30 seconds.

Somebody else has similar experiences? Hope I helped anybody with this little statement.

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just stick xp on it  its the same story every time with windows i remember the same thing from 2000 to xp in some ways 2000 is the best version ever for me just some newer apps wont run on it

i definately wont be going vista ill stay with the old apps maybe go linux when i get time to fully sort it out

kris

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so far i've read nothing about vista that makes it seem necessary to have.  you can still get away with a 1ghz processor (as long as there's at least 512mb memory) and xp.  xp runs stable and it's a familiar system.

EQ mag actually gave vista a good review for music related tasks.  i wonder how much microsoft paid for it...

i may be forced to install vista anyway because i often do work fixing computer problems and i need to keep up on things.  i have an amd dual core 3800 and 2 gigs of memory, so i might just barely scrape by.  if that's the case, recording will be exclusively moved over to my laptop.  thank god for firewire.

good luck with the reformat, pay_c.  that laptop is gonna be screaming fast once you load xp :).

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it's a chicken and egg type thing

windows has turned into bloatware along with a lot of other MS programs (they are not the only culprits, Norton Antivirus is a great way to cripple a machine). When was the last time they added a new feature to Word that is actually useful? maybe 5 or 6 years ago, possibly 8, the new stuff does nothing but irritate like adding a date on to the end of a date I just typed.

But MS and the rest of 'em need to release new versions every year, and they tend to tack the bells and whistles on the top which makes everything bigger, use more ram, run slower as well as throw up bugs which then need patching.

Now when you are a company like MS and you are used to releasing "patches" of 600mb at a time (that's a new release not a patch!), you are also developing for machines at the top end with all the fancy new hardware, keeping in mind Vista will be around for years as these faster machines, fancy video cards penitrate the market. It also is the main way to sell the product, the wow factor.

It's also a lot easy and quicker to write this way than to re-write all the code in a super fast super slick way. Let's face it, if you want that sort of thing you'll probably be running Linux and some opensource apps.

Then of course the retailers - mmmm, let me see; they get to push Vista at a profit and then we get to sell ppl new machines either right there and then or when they realise Vista has made their old machine pretty much unusable. I can see why Vista makes lots of sense to them....

And for me - he's what I'll do. I'll hang onto XP till I am forced over by a killer app. By that time there will be lots of info on the net on how to remove all the bells and whistles, that you don't need for audio and lots of forum posts to search when things go wrong. When I build a new XP machine I always spend hours turning stuff off, like the 1 second fade between windows and tweaking the system. Vista will be no different, just unfamiliar and buggy especially in niche apps like music while we go through what is essentially a MS extended testing and debugging phase of development.

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I experienced the same thing when I once discovered that my super-slow notebook with XP was in fact a hell lot faster than my older w2k computer if I did retouches in Photoshop; but when working with the explorer it was much slower than my w2k desktop PC.

Then the discussions about Longhorn came around and all that stuff about DRM, TCPA / "trusted computing", software-activation for operating systems(!), os-updates need previous installed versions(how crappy is that!), restricted amounts of installs, white- and blacklist by microsoft, disabling of burning-/grabbing-software by copyprotection-mechanisms... and there were discussions going on about new copyrights in germany, and first plans about logging all communication actions (both are now law, said but true).

This is not about personal taste anymore. It has become a political decision!

I mean, how can anyone be so short-sighted to piss on one's digital rights and finance the richest man of the world, just to play another idiotic shooting game that requires DirectX10? And there are no alternatives?

I discovered there are more alternatives than you can count. I decided to go for a mac, 'cause I love it's simplicity (well I guess

apparently ;D). Apple has been one of the few companies not being a member of the TCPA Consortium. There are no OS activations and for most apple programs you don't even need to enter a serial number.

But there are enough other OSses around, Linux has made great progress; and I'm keeping an eye on Ubuntu. I don't believe in all that "I desperately need this or that application". In the *nix world there are alternatives for nearly any program.

I don't know anyone, nor have I ever heard about anyone who ever felt sorry about switching and turning one's back to windows. Never!  ;)

Regards,

Michael

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Totally agree with you both. I´ll also stick to XP as long as possible and in the meantime will try to go over to Mac and/or Linux. Linux indeed is very far in the meantime and working with it is really fast so that´s a god point (beside the COOOL feature to get all your "normal" open-source software needed free by directly downloading it). Mac´s are still a little to expensive for me, but let´s see in some years.

That point with bringing up more bells and more whistles - used by nobody - really annoys me like hell. A REAL revolution would be the step back and reprogram all the stuff for higher speed and efficiency. But that (I´m pretty sure) will keep some dream (you still remember the time when your computer actually *did* the stuff by clicking the mouse and not walking the hard drive for half an hour? When *the computer* waited for *the user* and not vice versa?). Just as an example: Still know DOS´s "md temp"? How much work was that for the PC? No nothing at all. Now if you want to do the same command in Windows the computer (depending on your RAM) runs the harddrive like there´s no tommorow...

:P :P :P

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AC,

good points, although I do have a problem with Apple on a few levels.

They are running a monopolist policy - look at what they did with Logic. They won't allow anyone else to run OSX (legally). Their advertising campaigns are misleading, using people like Jim Henson on their advertising to buy kudos and "warm fuzzy" appeal while blatently lying to people about their products.

Apple have massive problems with their laptops at the moment; hardware issues on the MB with RAM, USB problems and the oh-so famous overheating problem that they have release a patch for, won't tell anyone what the patch does and once it's run the laptop runs cooler and a lot slower - mmm, wonder what they did there! I'm guessing they won't apply the patch to new machines so they can legally still claim near max CPU rates...

The other kicker about Apple/OSx etc is that I can build a PC with the same spec as the Mac, for lots cheaper - stick OSX on it and it will run a lot faster! Once you remove all the copy protection firmware apple have chipped into their systems it runs much better....

and copy protection is still there on Macs - ever seen what happens to your protools drive if iLock thinks you are running cracked TDM??? OUCH!!  :o

ever run 2 copies of Photoshop with the same serial on a Network?

I'll run whatever gives me the most bang for my buck - I pay for quality not a brand name. I'll always choose PC (and I have a nice choice of manufacturers to choose from, so who ever is best price vs quality at the time is my choice) over Apple for this reason.

That said I have and still do own Macs - they have their uses - and no, I'm not using it for a door stop, before someone chimes in ;)

btw: anyone know a linux replacement for Cubase SX?

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ah no not the old apple versus windows debate

  i run osx i like it alot i think apple suck charge too much for there hardware and you cant go and buy the parts which is why my mid-box became windows cheap hardware easily available. im still looking for aversion of linux i really like so i can kick windows into touch (open source has got to be the future) it would have to be areally killer app for me to run vista

david  the daw linux users rave about is Ardour i havent used so dont really know but it looks good

kris

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so far i've read nothing about vista that makes it seem necessary to have.  you can still get away with a 1ghz processor (as long as there's at least 512mb memory) and xp.  xp runs stable and it's a familiar system.

1ghz and 512MB? that's way more than you need - we've got some machines here running it on a P2-400 with 256MB! Not very well, mind you...

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I think It would be a good solution to make OSX run on a normal PC

well, theoretically you can.

there are two ways for that:

1. a hacked install; some approaches to that should be still around, though I don't know if that's really a nice thing to do.

2. darwin is open source. it's the underlying *nix without the aqua-gui and w/o all the other nice (Core-)stuff; but there is also openStep that has most of the cocoa frameworks adapted. Probably a bit outdated...

3. *

but both approaches are only for the hackers, that like to dig deep... not really my cup of tea :)

it's my believe though, that macs are so stable because of the overviewable available hardware. probably that's why windows is so unstable. once you got one bad driver it might all become quirky :-\

Apple have massive problems with their laptops at the moment;

I made once the error to buy a product of one of the first available product lines ;) I wouldn't do it again. And remember that the Intels are out for just one year. The last machines I saw were all pretty stable and not really hotter than my ppc powerbook.

but anyway, kris is right, that should not become a mac vs. win debate. I wouldn't like it if all current 95% win users would become mac users, this surely wouldn't be the solution that's politically more correct...

btw: anyone know a linux replacement for Cubase SX?

yeah, Ardour is quite nice.

There's also Rosegarden for Midi stuff...

And there's been a topic recently here about audio production environments. There were quite some links to really interesting linux-music-distributions.

Cheers,

Michael

*Edit:

Just stubled over one more: http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net ;)

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your very right the reason mac os is so stable is because of the limited hardware options

i met a coder for mac one time , i asked him why they hadnt released a version for pc hardware he said that they had developed one but couldnt vouch for it with all the different hardware combinations so didnt release it

so im not shure weather any of the hacs would work although it would be preety cool to run mac osx on pc hardware

anyway back to fighting with xp to get it to do what i want oh well

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