Microsoft Responds to 'Save XP' Petition 440
DaMassive writes "Computerworld Australia is running a story with a response from Microsoft to Infoworld's SAVE XP petition Web site, which has gathered over 75,000 signatures so far. Apparently Microsoft is aware of the petition, but says it is "listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs, that's what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us" — a somewhat strange response given that the vast majority of people signing the petition ARE Microsoft customers! The Save XP movement has attracted the attention of the software giant, despite its claims that Vista has sold more than 100 million copies and its adoption rate is in line with the company's expectations. "We're seeing positive indicators that we're already starting to move from the early adoption phase into the mainstream and that more and more businesses are beginning their planning and deployment of Windows Vista," the company said. Nevertheless vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and more recently NEC, all offer the opportunity to downgrade to XP Pro."
Re:what about small businesses! (Score:5, Informative)
Try again, grasshopper.
Re:what about small businesses! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:OH GOD (Score:3, Informative)
DX10 depends on the different video architecture in Vista to work correctly. Look up the Wikipedia article.
Re:what about small businesses! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Upgrading because we have to! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OH GOD (Score:3, Informative)
That petition is repugnant (Score:1, Informative)
Re:what about small businesses! (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting that ++Linux posts get modded well and --Linux posts don't, just by default. And I even run Linux. Preferred.
Anyway. Anything on 512mb and a CELERON 1.7ghz is going to be bad. You can run compiz with ALL the eyecandy on? I sincerely doubt you. I have an ATI Mobility x1400 running the 8.46 (I think it's .46, I forget now) drivers, dual-core Intel (albeit in a year and a half old), with 2gb of RAM. I ran Compiz back with 1gb of RAM. I'm running OpenSUSE 10.3. I couldn't run "all the eyecandy using Compiz." It was really slow and xgl ended up using 500mb of ram.
Unless "very quickly" refers to text editing or something like that, I'd seriously wonder.
At any rate, XP would at least work on it. I remember helping someone pick out a laptop, and there were laptops that had those similar specs and were "running" Vista. I told her that she should not get a laptop with less than 1gb of RAM and no celeron processor, or she wouldn't be able to really do anything well.
On that note, the *minimum* RAM amount for Vista is 512mb... but, if I remmeber correctly, even most games nowadays require at least 512mb, and most everyone has at least 1gb, it would seem. It's cheap enough. I got 2gb for my laptop for $40, and my desktop has 4gb. I don't think the tech requirements for Vista are actually that unrealistic.
(may as well say that if the operating system requires something better than a P2 processor it's too much of a hog... hehe)
*anticipates troll-ness*
Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
That's because Halo 2 doesn't actually need directx10. It has a 'is this vista check', and it might use a couple of minor new directx 10 direct3d calls (which can easily be captured and reimplemented in direct3d 9).
The real features of directX10 like Video memory virtualization and gpu multitasking (which allows Vista to have multiple direct3d accelerated applications (including the desktop) all running at the same time in (possibibly overlapping windows).
-That- is (amongst other reasons) why Vista has a new driver model, which in turns needs kernel support. -That- is why it hasn't been backported to XP. -That- is why its not likely to ever get backported to XP.
DirectX10 itself is a MAJOR milestone for windows, for the windows desktop, a step that brings it to parity with what linux and osx can do, in fact.
You aren't going to get a proper Compiz or Aqua class desktop for XP because XP simply can't do this stuff. Vista/DirectX10 can. But, this isn't really important 'for games' and games requiring directx10 is mostly marketing puff using minor features that can be easily redirected via a directx9 wrapper.
This is unfortunately because it undermines just how major directX10 really is, leaving gamers with the impression that its just a cheap tactic to sell Vista. (Which, to the extent of its use by current games; requiring directX10 IS a cheap tactic to sell vista.) But directX10 is quite a bit more than what these games are using. And this cheap tactic is masking that.
Re:what about small businesses! (Score:3, Informative)
I even had XP running on a 266MHz for about a year (personal File server)... which even impressed me, I thought that was only Linux territory... (these days)
However, I'd be hard pressed to call Vista "zippy" on 1GB @ 2GHz... closest system I have to that is 1.5GB @ 2.6GHz... and its still "putt-putt-ee"... I guess it depends on what you expect from your OS or Computer... however most of the "lag" in Vista seems mostly to be a cosmetic thing, not neccisarly even the actual speed of the interface, but the layout of things seems to make it appear slow, even when it isnt... im sure there is some technical (and also psychological) words for it that hardcore programmers use when designing the UI... but, I just call it "shitty"... (although i like the Taskbar and Start Menu)
Although, with KDE4 (or 4.2 or whatever) when it gets a little more 'Windows' friendly, might be a great alternative shell for Vista, admitedly I find that somewhat blasphemous, doesnt mean that will prevent me from trying it since its my favorite Shell/Window System for Linux...
Im currently 'Tri-Booting'... XP/Vista/Slackware...but at the moment Vista is just dead space till I swap it out for Server2008...
Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
That is not correct, maximum pc had talked with a Microsoft developer that said there is no technical reason directx10 cannot be used with WinXP. The real reason is that Microsoft wants to use it as a dividing point separating Vista from XP.
Re:Upgrading because we have to! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
Right, they'd just have to update the kernel, and require a bunch of manufacturers to release new drivers to support the new features. Another not-insignificant issue is the DRM stuff, which is part of directx10, and again needs kernel and driver support. Nobody wants to deal with the mess that would be. For all our MS and DRM bashing, given what the situation is it makes technical sense to use it as a dividing point, even if those technical hurdles could be overcome.
That said, there is nothing stopping MS from backporting just the new directx10 direct3d api for shaders etc back to XP and calling it directx9.2 or even really muddy the waters and call it "directx10 xp edition", and letting the games have feature parity on both platforms.
But as I've said, MS wanted to use DirectX to lure people to Vista. Although I've heard rumours that they might now release a direct9 update for XP to add the direct3d features and appease gamers.
Re:OH GOD (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Online petitions... (Score:3, Informative)
I was a computer salesman when the switch from ME to XP happened (most people I sold computers to had never used 2000), and even then people were tired of it. Now, more casual users own iPods, have seen friends with MacBooks, and may even have seen their geeky nephew's linux box, and they're wondering if switching to a different OS altogether is really any harder than switching to Vista. And when they ask me, I tell them it's not. Because that's my personal experience. The last windows OS I bought was XP Pro, and I bought it so I'd have something for Bootcamp to play with, when the time comes that my household sees the back of it's last Windows box. Not because Vista is really bad, but because Windows is bad. Comparing Vista to XP is like, to paraphrase jPod, comparing the taste of cat shit to the taste of dog shit. Do you really care which tastes worse?
The whole time I've been writing this, my wife, who was a Windows user exclusively until 3 years ago when she bought a Mac (as an accessory for her iPod), has been complaining bitterly about having to use an XP box in her new job. The experience for her is horrible, the computer crashes daily (it's brand new), settings options are non-intuitive, and the computer is slow and unresponsive compared to her 3 year old iMac (did I mention the PC was brand new? Like, last week new?). Now, tell me, given all this, why would anyone voluntarily upgrade to Vista? Why is it so surprising that businesses want the option to "downgrade" to XP? Better the shit you know, at least you know how bad it's going to taste.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Vista rocks - my 10 favorite Vista improvements (Score:5, Informative)
Now if I could get all my key bindings working and have my Vista on one facet of my cube, a VMware OS X on another, and 6 more for terminals and Linux programs I think I'd be happy.
Re:Windows 7? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
That's because Halo 2 doesn't actually need directx10. It has a 'is this vista check', and it might use a couple of minor new directx 10 direct3d calls (which can easily be captured and reimplemented in direct3d 9).
Correct. A lot of the rest, well, not so much. And I appologize in advance for tearing into you over this, but I do 3D graphics programming for a living and it just pisses me off to no end how MS's marketing statements have somehow morphed into technical truths when they are clearly not true at all.
In a nut shell, DX10's rendering features can be (and are, under OpenGL) implemented under the old driver model. Vista's shiny 3D desktop and ridiculous DRM (which are separate from Direct3D 10), however, cannot. Microsoft consistently choses to confuse the two, but they are distinct technologies that shouldn't probably don't rely on each other to any significant degree. Details follow.
The real features of directX10 like Video memory virtualization and gpu multitasking (which allows Vista to have multiple direct3d accelerated applications (including the desktop) all running at the same time in (possibibly overlapping windows).
This is all possible on XP with both OpenGL and Direct3D 9. Seriously, get a couple of 3D programs that run in windowed mode and drag them around your monitor. Overlap them. It works fine on XP. Managing the GPU resources is simply done inside the driver. All Vista's model does is move some functionality that used to be common to all drivers up into the kernel, because refactoring things this way allowed them to remove some of the overhead from most D3D API entry points - overhead that exists in D3D 9 (which is obviously not crippled or useless because of it).
The D3D10 feature set could be implemented in XP without rewriting the kernel. There might be more overhead when calling rendering functions, but it probably wouldn't be worse than calling D3D9 functions (and D3D9's API is a lot chattier than D3D10's). There is no D3D10 feature that requires the Vista kernel rewrite.
If you don't believe me then go put a GeForce 8 series card in a XP machine, install the latest driver, and then download GLEW [sourceforge.net]. Get it to dump out a list of available OpenGL extensions (visualinfo.exe in the bin directory, assuming you downloaded the Win32 binaries). Note these extensions in particular: GL_EXT_geometry_shader4, GL_EXT_texture_array, GL_NV_transform_feedback, as well as a few others I don't care to list. Those are all the OpenGL equivalents to the new D3D10 feature set. If NVIDIA can expose D3D10 generation features through OpenGL on an XP driver running on the old XP kernel, Microsoft can do the same thing through Direct3D 10. They simply choose not to.
The only thing the old driver model can't actually do is share graphics resources among multiple processes, something that pretty much no 3D graphics application would ever really do in the first place (because launching processes and getting them to talk to each other is really expensive on Windows), and something which is not required for useful D3D 10 support. Read on to find out why they stuck in a useless feature.
You aren't going to get a proper Compiz or Aqua class desktop for XP because XP simply can't do this stuff. Vista/DirectX10 can.
The shiny 3D desktop thing in Vista is the only thing that really requires the new driver model, as it is what actually makes use of the ability to share D3D resources among multiple processes (it basically shares any 3D app's render surface into its own texture set). And note that the shiny desktop doesn't even use D3D10. It just uses D3D9 plus the extensions to D3D9 that are only available under the new driver model - extensions which only serve to notify applications that their device will (almost) never be lost (mundane window/D3D device setup thing, has nothing to do with actually rendering) and expose th
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:OH GOD (Score:4, Informative)
BeOS (1991) - Yes
XP(2001) - No
Mac OSX (2002) - Yes
Compiz (2006) - Yes
Vista(2007) - Yes
MS Innovating
Note most game consoles (and game PC's) do not need to do this as they run full-screen.....So it's not a gaming feature...
Re:OH GOD (Score:3, Informative)
The proposed features which were dropped allowed full GPU partitioning, so Vista in a VM could have access to a virtualised GPU and the host version of Vista could manage compositing. The thing that makes this hard is the requirement that the guest GPU be able to save its state and restore it at a later date. Everyone except Microsoft is just doing this at a higher level in the software stack (e.g. store the OpenGL pipeline state and reinitialise the GPU to correspond to that state later), but Microsoft wanted to make device manufacturers do it in hardware.
Re:OH GOD (Score:4, Informative)