More Evidence That XP is Vista's Main Competitor

Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista."

the ever elusive desktop

will 2008 be the year of vista on the desktop? stay tuned to find out!

Re:the ever elusive desktop

The only possible reason I can see for users/corporations upgrading to Vista is if vendors start releasing packages that are dependant apon features that XP does not include. For instance, if/when hardware manufacturers and game publishers only release DX10-compatible versions, or if Installshield upgrades their packages to require you to suffer the annoyance of UAC before confirming that you are certain you know that you want to install whatever software... companies still use them instead of MSI's right?

Re:the ever elusive desktop

> ... game publishers only release DX10-compatible versions ...

By that time the Wine (www.winehq.org) team will have released DX10 libraries that use opengl and thus can run on Win XP or older (and of course Linux!).

Re:the ever elusive desktop

WWN isn't updated because nobody does it, but the development progressed considerably since then and I would say DX9 is in very good shape now. DX10 headers and stubs was a google SoC project, which unfortunately didn't go very well, but alas, the effort is there. In some cases wine is faster than windows, especially now that you read how slow vista is I think wine has some advantages.

Re:the ever elusive desktop

You still can't pick an arbitrary DX9 app and have a reasonable expectation that it will work on Wine. Some games like Civ 4 have received a lot of attention and run quite well. Others, like AOE III (which has a gold rating) will install and run, but have graphical issues that will make it unplayable. Still others, like FarCry just seg fault.

Re:the ever elusive desktop

By that time the Wine (www.winehq.org) team will have released DX10 libraries that use opengl and thus can run on Win XP or older (and of course Linux!).

When game publishers start shipping WINE libraries instead of DirectX updaters with their Windows games, I will be more wonderfully amused than I previously thought possible.

Tungsten Graphics' Gallium3D

Tungsten Graphics (the people who get paid to develop OSS drivers for Intel's GPUs)
are creating a new technology called Gallium3D.

Basically it's a middle layer that rests between Mesa3D (openGL API) and DRI/DRM (low level drivers) and whose job is to export basic building block available on most modern hardware (shaders, etc.) in a standart way.

The thing is Gallium3D isn't restrict to Mesa3D for the API. A lot of people are speculating about the possibility offered by a potential WineD3D running natively on Gallium. (Instead of being an D3D -> OpenGL translation layer).

TGI's powerpoint presentation in fact contained an illustration where Gallium3D was used between a thin DirectX layer and low level drivers on Windows.
(Maybe, Intel could pay TGI so they also make DirectX/Windows drivers for their GPUs)

In the end such kind of technology could bring :
- Working DirectX10 on Windows XP (similar to Alky/FallingLeaf but using a thin DX10 Layer on Gallium3D backend).
- Working DirectX on Linux and ReactOS (either expanding a potential Intel i9xx D3D driver, or building a better WineD3D for Gallium3.
- Easier OpenGL 3 (which differs a lot from OGL1 and 2 - Instead of needing Mesa to be able to understand 2 radically different APIs, OGL3 could be handled by just having another API Layer running on Gallium backend)
- A nicer and simplier framework to get a 3D stack through OSS for any small player (Non-mainstream hardware maker, open hardware project or opensource team creating drivers for unsupported hardware). Up until now there was only MESA that did offer OpenGL 1/2 API, and required a lot of duplicate work inside the various hardware-specific libraries.

So, to go back to the discussion, Opensource projects (including contribution from Wine) starting to play an important role in game deployment : this is something that may become a reality sooner that we may think.

(And it's not that game developers are deeply against OSS : OpenAL, OGG/Vorbis and similar have already poped up un commercial projects from Id, Epic, etc.)

Re:the ever elusive desktop

DirectX10 cannot run on XP. XP cannot multitask the GPU for example. Period. There is no possibility of creating a wrapper that uses opengl to make that happen.

At best, all you'll be able to do is write wrappers for fluff like shader model 4. And that's what it is FLUFF. The real features of directx10 are virtual video memory, gpu multitasking, and so on. This simply cannot be backported to XP using opengl wrappers.

Right now, most directx10 compatible games ARE directx9 games that are extended to use some of the directx10 rendering fluff, so its relatively easy to just stub around all the gpu multitasking, and just implement wrappers for the new sharder stuff. And then we see idiotic frenzies because 'omg! directx game X has been hacked to run on xp'

But the reality is that only the fluff part of directx10 can be wrapped like this, and it just so happens that the fluff part is the only part the new direct9/direct10 'hybrid' games are using.

But if they start releasing REAL directx10-only games that make use of gpu multitasking etc those stubs will have to do *something*, and XP just can't do it, the kernel doesn't support it. So either its going to run like a DOG as they write some kludge to thunk around the kernel limitation or its not going to run at all.

To use a car analagy, directx10 is like a 90's Porsche, and direct9 is one from the 80's. Sure with enough welding and grafting you could put the new body on the old chassis, and then you could release photos showing that the new xenon headlights work, along with the heated side mirrors, electric sunroof -- and you can even start it and drive it around... and it runs nearly as fast as the 80's 911 always did, which you'd expect given that's what the engine is, and the extra weight you've added.

But if you look closer you'll find out that the AWD and ABS is missing, the automatic ride height adjustment is gone, and the number 6 on your transmission knob doesn't actually do anything

Re:the ever elusive desktop

I was under the impression that OpenGL wasn't platform dependent, so if 2.0/3.0 will be released it won't be able to use the same GPU features on WinXP and Vista?

OpenGL is not platform dependant, but that is NOT the issue.

In another post you wrote:

DX10 and OpenGL are nothing than just APIs to the GPU! You can emulate both ways, IIRC MS first tried to emulate OGL using DX in the early Vista days. OGL 2.0/3.0 will have DX10-like features. Maybe some even are possible to emulate in OGL 1.5.

OpenGL and DirectX10 Direct3D as 'scene description languages' work like that. You can even implement OpenGL3 entirely in software and emit the frames to a laser printer. And each frame will look perfect.

That's not the issue, and never has been. DirectX10 is a hell of a lot more than just the Direct3D scene description APIs.

The issue is that directX10, in ADDITION to its 'scene description language' is ALSO a PLATFORM. It specifies that the hardware actually be able to do certain things. Its true you can get away with emulating those features but you'll take a performance hit, and possibly a stability hit if there are timing constraints tied into those features. (Not to mention you lose the right to use the directx10 logos).

Another part of the directx 10 platform requires the operating system to support certain features that Vista supports, but XP does not. XP cannot do virtual video memory or gpu multitasking. Period.

Imagine if DirectX required pre-emptive multitasking support. (not hard to do, it actually DOES)

How would you backport that to Windows 3.1? Which only supports cooperative multitasking. There is no real way of doing that short of upgrading the 3.1 kernel to support pre-emptive multitasking, at which point you might as well just give them the NT3 kernel, and NT3 drivers...

And that's where we are now. To give XP virtual video memory and gpu multitasking, we'd pretty much have to upgrade the xp kernel to vista...and require vista drivers.

Don't confusing DirectX10 with OpenGL. There is a part of DirectX that is interchangable with OpenGL and its an important part. But there is a big part of DirectX that is NOT.

Re:the ever elusive desktop

To be honest, I don't understand the hate for UAC. Ubuntu asks me for my password before installing software or even updates, or doing a lot of other tasks like editing system files. How is this any different?

Re:the ever elusive desktop

I realize that I can disable the UAC, but that is supposed to be one of the big selling points of Vista; it now has "enhanced" security etc... It seems that disabling the UAC defeats one of the major reasons for having Vista in the first place. I was trying to give the OS a fair shake and disabling the features that are supposed to be selling points is not really doing that. I mean, I could also enable the administrator account and just log in that way too with (mostly) the same effect.

I have tried aftermarket sound drivers for the soundblaster live! -- they work excellently until I reboot and Vista restores the pos MS driver. This is besides the point that drivers are available for this card for every other OS I use (with the possible exception of Solaris). Just because Creative decided to EOL support for the card doesn't make it not work and I refuse to spend $50+ to "fix something that ain't broke".

I guess my point is that I see no reason to use an OS that spends more time getting in my way than just letting me do what I use my computer for. That being said I will stick with XP (for the very few times I use Windows) for the time being. It is very rare that I need to boot into Windows for anything and I spend 95% of my time on Linux of one flavor or another (currently Gentoo, Kubuntu Gutsy, Slackware 12.0 and CentOS 5.0 w/rpmforge repo). The remainder of my computer time is spent pretty much evenly between OpenSolaris NV86, XP and FreeBSD.

Re:the ever elusive desktop

And this really doesn't increase security any if you shower users with 'are you sure' prompts because they become conditioned to just keep clicking 'yes'.

To the point that they click 'yes' when the rootkit comes around. Now if it had some sort of 'rootkit installation detection' and came up with the prompt 'It looks like what you're installing is a rootkit, are you sure you want to install this?', users might actually click no and give their computer person a headsup.

The main annoyance of this nature right now is access - every time I open up a database it has to warn me to be careful and that this database could contain harmful functions - Yet I built that database ON MY OWN MACHINE. It has no scripts that a default office install doesn't put in there. It's just a collection of a few tables and reports. Yet it warns me and makes me click another button - of course I'm going to keep opening stuff up! It asks every time!

Re:the ever elusive desktop

Just to know: most of the Windows applications you would use (especially corporate applications) would run just fine on an Windows 2000 Workstation.
      Vista-only applications are a long way in the future

Re:the ever elusive desktop

You are assuming that this is based on logic. After talking to a bunch of the decision makes at my unviersity during a conference last week, you will soon discover that little of this is based on logic, or experience of computer systems of any kind. One lady actually preferred Vista because of the improved eye-candy on her laptop...yes, these are the people making decisions the world over.

Re:the ever elusive desktop

Home users will have little choice but to migrate as and when they buy thier next new PC, buisness users will be slower but some manufacturers are already putting out machines that are very difficult to find XP drivers for.

vista will replace XP just as XP replaced 2K, it will just take a bit of time.

Re:the ever elusive desktop

If you understand the difference between hardware and an operating system, you have a choice. The vast majority of the population does not understand this difference. They are hopelessly mated in their minds.

Re:the ever elusive desktop

The Best Buy crowd will get pushed to Vista, it's true. But it hasn't been a week since I ordered a new desktop for myself from Dell, and I bought it with XP Pro installed. (And XP Home was an option.)

It's hardly impossible to buy a home PC with XP on it these days.

Not a monopoly!

Microsoft now has proof that consumers have choice!

Games

I think games might be the key for Microsoft to increase Vista uptake.

Vista is the only operating system that supports DirectX10 at the moment. if it stays that way and games start making use of DirectX10 features then games will have no choice but to use Vista.

There is also the small matter of "Vista only" games such as Halo 2 and the eagerly awaited Alan Wake from Remedy, the makers of Max Payne. that too will be a "Vista only" title.

Re:Games

Microsoft will give up and port DX10 to XP, or someone else will do it first.

Someone else.

You can download a preview here [blogspot.com]

Slight problem

Halo 2 AIN'T a vista only game. It has been hacked and works just as well on XP. That isn't really suprising, it is an ancient game that ran on a P3, what the hell would it need DX10 for?

Other games like the recent system cruncher, Crysis, also can be tweaked to run with "disabled, DX10 only" settings on XP.

It seems more and more that a lot of the DX10 games just ain't there, some day there may be, but so far they are not.

MS could afford to force Halo 2 to Vista only, how many game developers can afford to be Vista only? MS better be handing over a huge sum of money to make a game just for Vista.

The problem is that a LOT of hardcore gamers are people who build their own machines, and are also the ones who need the top end Vista version, so they are faced with a very expensive purchase and for what? So that all their games run slower and take more memory?

It will be intresting to see what happens, I personally have little doubt that MS will survive this easily, but their mighty fortress has shown a tiny crack.

IF linux does indeed get DX10 support as some have claimed in the past via Wine like projects, then MS might be in real trouble.

That is a HUGE if, but in theory it is possible, already companies like Blizzard have to deal with the fact that a portion of their players are on linux and that they have to accept this.

It will be intresting to see how the Vista only titles sell in the near future. MS titles don't count, MS can afford to loose money, regular developers can't.

Re:Slight problem

IF linux does indeed get DX10 support as some have claimed in the past via Wine like projects, then MS might be in real trouble.

It was a summer of code project [google.com].

You can download the code from here [google.com]. No idea if the DX10 API has made it into the main wine releases yet.

Re:Games

Vista is the only operating system that supports DirectX10 at the moment. if it stays that way and games start making use of DirectX10 features then games will have no choice but to use Vista.

Game developers/publishers don't care about vista and DX10. They care about selling games to the largest target market. If the customer base doesn't move then game developers won't make titles exclusive to Vista, especially when code for XP runs fine on Vista.

There is also the small matter of "Vista only" games such as Halo 2 and the eagerly awaited Alan Wake from Remedy, the makers of Max Payne. that too will be a "Vista only" title.

Are you seriously suggesting people are going to purchase an OS that is over $400 just to play a 3 year old xbox game?! I could buy Halo 2 and an Xbox cheaper!

As for any other Vista only titles coming out, check how well they are selling. Shadowrun was Vista only and it sold so badly they had to close the game studio!

Re:Games

Vista is the only operating system that supports DirectX10 at the moment

Kind of a meaningless statement really. To say Vista is the only OS that supports it is to imply that other OS's are somehow less able, but DirectX is a microsoft only tool, written just for windows, which is the only OS family that needs it in the first place. Linux and the others don't need it.

Anyway, the only reason XP doesn't support it is because Microsoft decided to prevent people still using XP when directX10 takes hold.

For the pedants, yes there is Wine/Cedega, but that's an emulator.

Re:Games

For the pedants, yes there is Wine/Cedega, but that's an emulator.

Wine stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator".

Re:Games

emulators emulate hardware
examples are vmware, virtualbox, et al

Wine is a compatibility layer
meaning it just redirects win32 API calls to the equivalent linux API calls

AFIAK (never really looked into the source of wine, or I'm guessing a bit here), but

void direct3D_DoSomething(args)
{ /* directX code */
}

becomes

void direct3D_DoSomething(args)
{ /* minor rejigging to make it work with equivalent OpenGL API call */
openGL_DoSomething(args);
}

Re:Games

Making a game DX10 only is a death sentence.
The only ones in existence are ones made by MS or ones who MS has paid a hefty amount to..

Dear MS ...

... for your next operating system, please use Windows XP as a benchmark and starting point. Create a product that beats Windows XP in relevant categories (note that "amount of eyecandy" doesn't count - usability, speed, resource usage and security do). I'm sure you will have no problem selling that.

So?

So they are having dificulties converting users from XP to Vista? And they are laughing all the way to the bank.

OTOH, people and enterprises are slowly but sure upgrading to vista. The university where I work just took the step and upgraded 25 computer labs (30 computers each) from XP to Vista. Our departments are now slowly migrating as well. There is no rush... Why do we need to rush if XP was working great for us? If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

But now every new computer we buy, we get it with Vista. Seeing the users that have Vista just make the rest of us realize that Vista is not the horror that somepeople seem to be. Knowledge is the best medicine, so people see "oh, it works well", "oh, UAC was not THAT bad, it barely comes up when you work and don't install things"..,so slowly, more and more people are willing to upgrade. This is our case, and i think this is happening everywhere.

there's still time to

integrate Microsoft Bob into SP3. problem solved.

boredom is Vista's main competitor

(yawn)

If you already have a PC, you'll run XP (or in my case W2K SP4) 'cos it just works. If you buy a new PC, you'll run Vista.

That's basically it. A few people will have bought a Vista upgrade - maybe they're ahppy with it, maybe not. If not, they'll either live with it or revert. It's not to do with competition, it's to do with a saturated market.

The only story here is: people sometimes buy new PCs.

Until there is a killer app that only runs on Vista, I can't see why most people whould make the change.

Re:boredom is Vista's main competitor

If you buy a new PC, you'll run Vista.

No thanks. If I buy a new PC, it'll run Windows XP

obligatory Linux snippet in the end of the article

FTA

But Gray said he was convinced Microsoft will win out in the end, if only because it has virtually no competitor worth the name in the enterprise market. "Linux and Mac have 1% or 2%, and in some cases, such as Europe and the largest corporations, they don't even register," he said. "Microsoft owns this space, and I don't see that changing."

He couldn't resist taking a jab could he?

Of course the enterprise market isn't moving to Linux they're ass slow to move to ANYTHING. These companies are so huge that it takes years to change the way they work.

What I want to know is the made up (because you know what stats are like) figures of Linux growth in the Small to Medium businesses since they make up a larger majority of businesses then a couple of giant mega corps..

The question is consideration

Are people considering Linux/Mac desktops/servers and adding them to the environment. Windows 2000 Active Directory made it hard to add the non-MS LDAP/Kerberos machines to the network, Windows 2003 has made it harder, though Win2003R3 has apparently helped. This certainly helps lock in, but assuming Redhat/Novell decides to make it trivial to add a machine in time by creating a Win32 Program to add things to AD, and Win2003R2 added the SFU Schema Extensions by default, and all of a sudden, adding Linux services can help, a lot.

One of the things I loved with OS X Server was that their Kerberos/LDAP integrated solution worked great, and adding non-Apple Unix systems was pretty easy... authenticate against LDAP, accept Kerberos, and just Add Principal (host, HTTP, whatever) and export a Keytab. It helped that Apple used MIT Kerberos which is the best documented solution.

The thing is, if the computer market is growing at say, 8% a year, Microsoft needs to be grabbing a larger share of computer wallet to hit double-digit growth. If Linux/Apple grab extra growth, say 4% of the market each, Microsoft will see either a decline in revenues or need to increase fees, which will force people to look elsewhere.

Win2K/Win2K3 made things much tougher for small businesses compared to NT4, Active Directory is MUCH harder to setup and use than a simple NT 3.51/NT4 Single Domain, but the well priced SBS solution provided a reason to keep them in the market. However, if someone with an Enterprise Play like Redhat/Novell made an effort to make it EASY to install a Redhat Server with LDAP/Kerberos authentication for both the server AND the webserver and whatever else, you start seeing it easy to migrate Web Apps to the Unix land.

Microsoft's marketshare doesn't have to plummet for them to hurt. If they consistently lose 1.5% a year to Apple/Linux, that makes it really hard to grow Revenues and requires them to cut costs to keep up profit growth. That alone limits their ability to just walk into markets and destroy them. When Microsoft "cut off the oxygen" for Netscape with a free browser to stop the Netscape Server package from becoming a threat, they could easily eat the costs of the browser because their newly established desktop/Office Suite monopolies were furnishing massive profits.

If Microsoft managers start obsessing over hitting the numbers, and budget constraints become an important part of the Microsoft bonus structure, then you don't see Internet Explorer projects... You don't see $10-$20 million dollar blackholes on the budget to maintain monopolies.

The loss of Bill Gates also hurts, not because he is an irreplaceable manager, but because he alone had the clout to do strange things. When Apple fired "professional management" and brought Steve Jobs "back," he had the clout to do whatever he wanted. He pushed projects out the door, canceled others, etc., and could be a one man show with control of the business. Founders have MUCH MORE political capital than professional CEOs.

If Gates said, "we must destroy Netscape, regardless of costs" (or Java, or any other technology that he found a threat), he could turn the company on a dime as Founder/major Shareholder.

If Ballmer says, "to hell with profitability, we must destroy Sony PS3/Nintendo Wii, I don't care what we lose in the process," I don't think that he can do it. The heads of the gaming and lifestyle division will go ballistic that they won't make their numbers and get a bonus, and will find people on the Board to back them and get hep. If Gates said that it was a priority, it was a priority, and he could probably change the entire management incentive structure to make it happen. He could create budgets out of thin air for what he called a priority.

Any loss in marketshare for MS is a disaster financially because it destroys profit growth, and the current management lacks the complete control of the company necessary to move the way it moved under Gates.

Realistically . . .

does anyone see Bill and Company significantly improving Vista before they stop supporting XP?

Microsoft Support Lifecycle [microsoft.com]

Was it like this when XP came out?

No one I know wants to upgrade from XP to Vista; the only person I know that had Vista hated it and downgraded to XP. Now, I remember when XP came out lots of people loved it immediately because it was more stable than 98 -- apparently, not that many had 2000. I got 2000 myself soon after and didn't upgrade to XP until SP 2 came out. Many /.ers have said that XP was none too great until SP2. I wasn't on /. back in those days and I don't know how XP was regarded on the "nerd sites" back then. So, was it like this with XP before SP 2?

Re:Was it like this when XP came out?

There was one big difference between XP then and Vista now. Most XP users upgraded from Win9X. Win9X was total crap on stability. If you went a day without a reboot, you were doing well.

XP is pretty stable, and SP2 isn't a total disaster on security. With Vista, you have all of the growing pains that XP went through with few reasons to "upgrade".

Something really telling...

I too work at a college. And we will be resisting Vista until the performance is better. What is funny is how the students are continually downgrading to XP. (they will find a way) And with gaming consoles students are less likely to switch to Vista. Macs have made a surge with our students but so has Linux. (which I'm happier about) Oh and before I forget. We also offer free computer support to the students. With all the machines we touch, we have yet see a Vista machine perform better than an XP machine, even brand new out of the box.

I wish they'd get their act together...

I've been sitting on Vista since it nearly came out on my home PC. The primary reason was because of my job repairing computers. I knew that users would get machines with Vista pre-installed. I've wanted to switch back to XP and just live with that but I managed to talk myself out of it not because Vista is better, it's because most everyone that goes to the store will buy a Vista machine.

If the manufacturer of drivers are the problem then those people need to get their acts together. Either way I'm tired of having an OS that is suposed to be newer and better then XP but is anything but up to sub-par to XP. Get the damn thing fixed, jeeze people pay enough for that thing.

One last thing, take the dang confusion out of the 7-9 different flavors. Have two like XP and don't relabel everything just cause it's NEW. I still have a hard time finding Add/Remove Programs.

alternative systems are the main competitor

XP and Vista finish last in terms of stability and security. Eye candy, they are the front runners. Depending on the demographic, the competition will differ. Microsoft found out that people are sick of adopting garbage, that's why Vista will not fly unless it gets forced down the consumer's throat - which it will. For now however, I disagree that XP and Vista are competing on any kind of playing field other than Microsoft's own turf. The alternatives (linux, macintosh, bsd) are becoming more available and more widely adopted.

It's not really that Vista is...

XP main competitor. I think its quite obvious that the computer/IT market has changed dramatically over the past 10~15 years.

Let's classify the different markets into 2 categories, Business & Home.

In the business market:
It's just more expensive for a business to upgrade all the computers at the same time for no real reason at all other than "it's the new thing out there". About 10 years ago it was simpler, in the sense that most businesses were starting to enter the DotCom age and therefore, IT resources weren't as many as we have today. IT infrastructure was more simple than the IT Infrastructure we are managing. 10 Years ago, yes, we had some specific applications that we had to take into consideration before even considering a massive upgrade. Nowadays, everybody within ANY company, big or small have everything running in a computer, *everything* and to make things worse, every applications for most departments are different. We am trying to say is that is not as easy to adopt Windows Vista, as it was to adopt Windows 2000 over NT4 or even XP/2003 over Windows 2000. We tried to look at the posibility of upgrading to Vista and we have only a few computers running Windows Vista Business Edition, mainly reserved to Execs and other people. Most of our current software set is not compatible with Windows Vista and that's what's holding us back. It's not that we don't like Vista, is just not the right option at the moment if we want to keep our jobs :-)

Now the Home market:
Again, a very very different market than what it used to be 15~10 years ago. This market specifically tends to be the ones who either adopt very fast or adopt very slow. I remember people upgrading to Windows XP years before it was released. For whatever reasons, hardware limitations, budget limitations, or simply personal taste. The home market is the type of market that when it get used to something they don't want to change it. Maybe because for the use they give to their computer, maybe it just plain works for them and getting into the hassle of learning a new system, a system you can't predict like your old system because you don't know a lot of it, will really have influence into a buyers mind. Then we get the budget limitations, well, getting Vista MEANS getting a NEW computer. But, why should they feel the urge of spending money in times like now that what we have to do is save and spend wisely, our economy is not good we can't be spending like we used to do. I mean, they won't really get anything more than what they have except for cute graphics, all they want is a web browser, and email client and an office suite, oh and an IM'ing.

I mean, really... think about it, is it Microsoft or is it something else holding people from upgrading? I don't think Vista is as bad as people put it, out of 10 people who uses Vista, 7 say its good and that they like it (and use it everyday). 1 Didn't try to get along with it much and found everything very different and didn't like it and 2 used it at the local CompUSA/BestBuy store and didn't like it (and other people who did this very same thing told em it sucked). I mean, I don't know ;)

Not to karma whore, but

Posted this the other day, and it's at least as applicable to this thread. I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company [wikipedia.org], and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior. To expound just a bit so it's not pure copy pasta, GE seems to be more conservative under Jeff Immelt than it was under Jack Welch - not necessarily a bad thing, just a difference in leadership style. The only software that they update to the newest and greatest on a regular basis is SAV. I would be incredibly surprised to see Vista rolled out on a site- or business-unit- wide basis, let alone across the entire company. More likely is that the W2K computers are migrated to XP over the next 12-18 months.

Misguided and trolling

That report is so misguided. Yes, Vista _IS_ slower, but think about all you get for it! You get free popups, chunks of your data archived at MS for NO added cost or CPU time other than the base Vista install, and the assurances that your software is genuine. With XP, you probably would have trouble sleeping at night not knowing for SURE if your software is genuine, or that your config and IP data wasn't safe in the hands of security conscious redmondians.

So Vista _DOES_ run slower, but the security and peace of mind is well worth it. Were it not for the added speed, you might be a victim of software WMD or something, they are out there you know. Boo.

            -Charlie

Microsoft vs Microsoft

Microsoft competing with itself?

Someone quick invent a boomerang chair for these situations

Vista Business/Enterprise offers a lot

Its just going to take time to implement, integrate & upgrade everything to support it. You would have to be kidding yourselves to think MS just made up vista without regard for its core customers. The business version includes encryption, AD, GPO, security, performance, reliability that business users demand and to think Vista isn't an upgrade over XP or 2k in these regards is simply foolish. Auditing, Reporting, Authorization, Policy Management and Manageability have all increased 10 fold if not 100 fold over xp "out of the box" - THAT is what Corporate America wanted - and got! Lord knows They will have to implement the hardware to support it as they would with any other demanding project but that isn't a fault of MS or windows. There isn't an out of the box linux distro within ear shot of a Vista Business & Windows 2008 in end user support & management - everything would be left to 3rd party systems, agent based management and user trust.

Amen

Actually, it's the whole business/enterprise functionality that most slashdotters either don't know about or conveniently choose to overlook.

Active Directory + Group Policy Management (server and client side) is the most single integrated solution from client to server that exists. There may other systems that reproduce similar functionality (like samba for instance), but nothing exists as an integrated top-to-bottom solution like Windows AD.

The only other system that came close (and some would argue was better) is Novell Netware, but that doesn't really exist any more.

In the fullness of time

Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 -- and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year ...

So there's still time to cripple^H^H^H^H^H^H^H market-adjust SP3.

what about memory?

XP is nice and all, but it only has support for 3GB of memory.

There's always XP64, but last time I checked driver support was pretty sketchy.

I run Vista for this reason alone. Any performance decrease relative to XP is more than made up for by the fact that I'm not running out of memory and swapping.

SP3 is 10% faster? How much faster than DOS?

Not to troll, but it's not always a mistake when a company issues a new operating system that is slower than the others. Unless their benchmark is rediculously unoptimized, it's difficult to increase functionality AND speed. The issue that I keep on hearing (since I haven't tried it yet) is that Microsoft created a slower operating system with less functionality. Time will tell if this is true or not. Oh wait, it's been out for a year already and we're still hearing the same complaints....

Curious Tests Indeed

Office Benchmarks? WTF? So slashdotters, if you're a hardened copy+paster, XP SP3 appears to be the way forward for you.

Any chance of a real benchmark? Say gaming performance, disk performance, memory utilisation......I dunno, anything more useful than how many word documents I can spell-check simultaneously.

Microsoft can fix this easly

These tests were done on RC version of the service pack. All Microsoft have to do now is change/add code that will make the performance suck again and release it in the final SP3 for XP.

vista needs a lot of work for me to switch back

I was using vista on my laptop, an athlon 64 dual core with 2GB ram. All I used it for was playing WoW when I'd go to my gf's house, and after several rounds of BSOD's with no solution in sight, I did a little searching and found that I could in fact install XP on there by using a quadro driver for the onboard nvidia graphics. (the vendor did not list any XP compatible drivers, but apparently it has the same motherboard in it as another model). Now, I no longer have to run WoW at 1024x768 but can run at 1280x800 widescreen, with all the mods I want and it flows effortlessly where before it would chop and lag horribly. Vista is pretty, yeah, but I need my laptop to do more than sit there like a prom queen ;-) When I hear of them fixing the performance, I might consider switching it back.

Triple boot, Vista, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD

Yes I'm a BSD person and I don't mind Vista at all, excepting how expensive it was. It runs fine on my Sony ViAO laptop, but this is a new laptop so it was probably designed for Vista in mind. The only problem I ever had with Vista was some blue screens caused by the USB subsystem, but MS has fixed that and all is well now. I have to admit though that I turn off all the eye candy and crap and it ends up looking llke Win2K. Maybe I have turned off all the bugs as well.

XP SP3 more than twice as fast

From TFA:

According to the Office performance benchmarks, Windows XP SP3 is also considerably faster than Vista SP1. "None of this bodes well for Vista, which is now more than two times slower than the most current builds of its older sibling," said Barth.

You can see the results in a hard-to-read graph at exo-blog.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]. XP SP3 completed the benchmark in under 40 seconds while Vista is over 80 seconds.

XP Service Pack 3 is not done...

...until it is slower than Vista SP1!

XP for me...

I ran Vista on a core duo 2.4Ghz with 2GB of ram and a whopper of a video card... it seemed fast enough, but file management performance was abysmal.

Do I really need a progress bar when I move one 20kb file to the trash?

Do I really need HD DRM to do my job at work? Oh, don't worry - the network file transfer performance will improve if you just pause your iTunes music playback.

I nuked the install and installed XP last night (many of my apps I use for work are Windows only...) and haven't looked back since. The performance increase is nothing less than amazing.

Spoilled

Vista: "Hey XP, I want your seat!"
XP: "No way dude! I got here first! I had all that work getting those W2k users highly dependent on me. It's mine now."
Vista: "Come on, I look better. You're doomed now anyway. Just make it easier."
XP: "Get stuffed."

Compare 2000 to XP or NT to 2000

From a "look and feel" perspective I found Windows 2000 zippier than XP and NT faster than 2000.

Why? Mainly because there was less going on behind the scenes. Also the memory footprint was lower which helped a lot when the machine didn't have enough memory to avoid swapping.

Windows Server 2003 did it right: Most services are turned off by default. Until you start turning things on things are pretty zippy. Then again, a server's UI zippiness isn't usually paramount.

This was always true...

Windows 2000 was the biggest competition to XP, but in that case XP had advantages and disadvantages compared to 2000, but the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, especially after the service packs. In the case of Vista, at least with my experience, there is absolutely no advantage over XP, the the disadvantages are huge. I admit the new security features will help the non-technical users, but the last time I got a virus was in 1989, so I don't need the added security (and the huge hassles it incurred).

Since "zero" will never outweigh "too many" I see no reason to ever use Vista until such time as drivers are no longer available, at which point I will use Linux full time. I don't use Linux on my laptop because of too many hardware issues, but it runs on my desktops and I totally love Ubuntu. The true successors to XP will be Linux and OSX, and I couldn't think of a more deserving prize for Microsoft. All the bloat and stupidity that always plagued Office has finally spilled over into the OS, and there is now no current MS product I would willingly use.

To convince business users to switch to Vista

It would just take a few simple things. Vista needs to be as fast as XP, can't have any DRM junk, can't have all the annoying popups you have to click a thousand times, and shouldn't cost any more than XP. Even better, it needs to have an "XP Compatibility mode" that actually works with old software. Since none of this will happen, I'm waiting for Windows 7.

Games aren't enough for the average user

Let's face it, the majority of the consumer Windows market is just not about high-end gaming rigs, able to play the latest games with all graphic options maxed out. They like to browse web pages, chat with friends, send email, utilize office productivity apps, and mess around with their photo/home video collections. For these purposes, just about ANY operating system in current use is adequate. The differences comes down to security, stability, and usability.

For my part, I make a point of keeping an Ubuntu machine going in my house at all times. Friends who come over and want to use a computer to check something while we are waiting for the football game to come on or the pizza to arrive invariably comment on the OS, which leads to questions, which leads to me usually offering them a burned copy of a LiveCD to take home with them. I don't spew a lot of technical jargon at these folks, nor do I assume a fan-boy posture (given the other machines in my house are Apple). I simply "make the sale" to them and answer their questions clearly, responding to their complaints regarding Vista and even XP, at times.

This effort has resulted in about 30% of my friends moving to Ubuntu, with the remainder being split almost evenly between Apple computers and Windows-based rigs. Those who remain on the fence usually sit there because of the singular issue of gaming. Quite frankly, I can think of NO reason for an average consumer to even need to pay for an OS aside from being able to play games.

XP SP3 looks like the sweet spot

Most of my Windows OSs are run under VMs now, not in primary desktop, dev box or server roles.

I still like XP though. I run it under VMWare Fusion on my main desktop Mac (and sometimes under Boot Camp) and it works brilliantly. Fusion's 'unity' mode really is the best of both worlds.

I have only one native Windows Box - an elderly ThinkPad running XP, but it still provides most of what I need on the road.

The point is, I don't see me buying into Vista, ever.

XP is a good OS, and has reached a level of maturity that SP3 will complete. I can't think of anything more I want from a Windows-based OS. XP SP3 will probably be my last Windows OS, and will help me get the most from the investment I've made in Windows software over the years.

As for the future - well, Windows it ain't (short of some ground-breaking development). For me, it looks like Mac OS on the desktop and Linux on the (small) server, with a venerable but stable version of Windows XP in a VM partition.

I think Vista may well be the undoing of Microsoft. It's a turkey. Okay, Apple's Leopard is a turkey also, but that's a temporary thing, whereas Vista represents a huge commitment for MS and seems MS misread the tolerance/gullibility or their market.

Why should MS care?

People are paying MS either way, so why should MS care which way people go?

Why so much interest in Vista?

Vista seems like a typical new Windows version here. Adoption rates are typical for a new version of Windows and are moving ahead exactly as Microsoft planned, as indicated by their recent record revenues. Vista uses substantially more hardware resources than previous versions of Windows but that has also been true for every preceeding verion of Windows and is likely to be true for future versions. Did it mean anything to say that Windows 3.0 runs a lot slower than Windows 2.0 on an 80286-based computer? No doubt that a lot of people at the time said that Windows 2.0 did everything they needed. I haven't used Vista but people who do seem to generally really like it, especially the desktop 3d windows and transparent windows and stuff. Yeah, it's just eye-candy but if people like it they're going to keep on with it. Bottom line is that Vista is the future and XP will reach end-of-life in a couple of years and I don't see the slightest thing in the article that will change that.

is this the captain obvious forum?

Seriously, Vista has a higher required system spec, it has more security. Any time your doing more, whether more GUI, more levels of process security etc. there will be a performance hit. It is very very rare this won't be the case with a simple app, when you add all the complexity of an OS you are vertially garranteed it will be the case.

And yet Fox Business News and WSJ say

And yet, both the Fox Business News analysts (on the only good Fox News show that is on at 1 am PST) just last night said that, in fact, Apple marketshare is projected to grow as many consumers and business choose both Apple MacOS and Linux systems.

This was also reported in the Wall Street Journal (print edition) over the long weekend as well.

So, we can conclude:

1. People (and business) do not like Win Vista - and if forced to buy Windows, are specifically staying at or "downgrading" to the more efficient WinXP.

2. People (and business) have started giving up on MSFT OS - and are switching to alternatives like MacOS and Linux - in increasing numbers.

3. People want computers that work, not computers that make life difficult.

Hmm

All my family who has gotten vista has not had a single complaint about it. MY fatehr just got a new laptop with vista on it and likes it very much. In january I tranistioned their desktop to vista and havent heard one complaint since. I think its really the fanboys of each os complaining. You will disagree with me but even at work I havent heard one complaint about vista. Go ahead flame me if you want but i am going by my experience.

What? You forget Mac OS-X .

Is this article a joke? What rock does the author live under? To say that Windows XP is Vistas main competitor is completely ludicrous considering that it is obvious that Mac OS-X takes that award. Just walk into any coffee shop and tell me what OS is the most popular on a laptop...

Just like in a supermarket

Microsoft can afford to maintain XP and Vista, give users a choice. Particularly someone with an older XP system could decide to get a Mac instead of a new Vista capable PC -- but if an XP upgrade is coming they might stick with their existing system. Same reason companies try to give customers as many different products on the shelf -- to crowd out competitors.

In other news...

In other news, Microsoft is also having difficulty convincing its customers to chew off their own hands.

- RG>

How to avoid Vista in business

I'm a Unix sysadmin. I got a new work laptop today, still on XP. I asked the IT guys if we were in any danger of Vista. They said "XP is supported for years yet!" And we all exhaled.

We have worked out that if we are ever threatened with Vista, we promptly (a) pump up the Gutmann [auckland.ac.nz] (b) write a whole pile of in-house apps for ourselves that only work on XP. The latter already worked wonderfully for us in making an instant business case for staying on Firefox — make sure your in-house web apps are written for Firefox and SeaMonkey, and specifically break in IE. (This is easy: just write to standards).

So: to stay off Vista, stock up on in-house apps that don't work on it. Then you have the business case you need.

Bad news for XP owners

While this may be great news for XP owners

I would have thought that this is bad news for the owners of XP (i.e., M$) but good news for the licensees of XP.

Re:Bad news for XP owners

It is actually debatable whether people who buy software own it or are licensing it. Sure, the EULA states that you don't own it, but whether that is binding with respect to that statement hasn't really been well-tested. Traditionally the way copyright has been handled in the courts was to treat a sale as a sale - you own it, but you can't copy it. When one person hands money to somebody else in exchange for a box, the normal way of handling it is like any other sale.

Now, if you're talking about complex multi-million-dollar licensing deals or anything at a corporate level the law would probably change views. However, when you're dealing with consumer products the courts usually apply consumer-oriented law. In the same way the recourse available when company A sells a highrise to company B is different than what might be available when somebody buys a single family home to live in (the law protects consumers more than it does corporations, since the latter is expected to perform more due-diligence).

Basically, the only reason that software vendors haven't gotten clobbered in courts regarding the sale-vs-license issue is because they don't push their luck - they generally don't try to restrict consumers from doing stuff that a sale would normally permit them from doing. If a major software vendor tries to greatly restrict what users can do with the software that they've paid for they could end up facing a class action lawsuit regardless of what the EULA clearly states.

Think of it like buying a house. I put a clause in the agreement of sale stating that I'm not responsible in any way for anything that happens to the next owners regardless of my knowledge / ability to prevent / etc. We both sign it. Two weeks after you move in a kid gets killed by a faulty wiring problem. It can be proven that I knew about the defect and didn't disclose it. If I reach a settlement with the new owner then the clause in the agreement of sale will escape court scrutiny, but if I try to point to the clause and get out of it then there is a good chance that a court will void that clause. There are a number of circumstances that would make a court lean either way, but in general you can't use an agreement to limit liability for serious safety issues unless there is clearly informed consent and some kind of consideration.

And I'm not a lawyer - so don't just take me at my word. The bottom line is that just because you put something on paper doesn't make it stick.

Mod parent "Troll"

For the "Apple charges for service packs" bullshit.

Lemme clue you in, sparky:

10.4, 10.5- Major versions (Paid upgrades)
10.4.1, 10.4.2...10.4.10, 10.4.11, 10.5.1- Service packs (Free downloads)

Re:Business Model problem?

How is this Apple bigot being insightful? He just claimed that apple charges for service packs. What douchebag calls Apple's bugfix releases a service pack? The kind that thinks that MAJOR operating system upgrades are also service packs.

Look, to each his own. If you prefer the Windows way, go for it, it's your choice and your freedom, but leave the brain dead asshatery at home.

Where's your wow now?

I'm not a Vista candidate, being a Linux/Solaris server admin and Mac OS X/Ubuntu laptop/desktop user, but I knew that Vista had failed when I received an advertisement for XP-loaded laptops in the Back to School promotion by CompUSA this past summer [robotterror.com].

That Vista still is not surpassing XP in sales, benchmarks and buzz nearly (?) a year out from RTM of Vista is stunning.

Yet, I hear people wish they could still use Windows NT 3.51, Windows 2000 and may settle for XP.

How Now Failed WOW [robotterror.com]!

Re:What should I do

A truly delicate matter. No fear though, there is a simple solution.

Install Linux and tell your parents it cost $100 -- considering their prodigy, they'll definitely buy it.