From Tom’s Hardware: “At WinHEC details are emerging of the graphics infrastructure for Longhorn, Microsoft’s next generation Windows. The graphics interface at the driver level is going to be all DirectX 9.0, and the door is being left wide open for moving the Windows UI completely 3D. Microsoft has already started to tax the GPU on the PC with all its plans for “media rich experiences,” as company execs like to call anything loud and colorful, but Longhorn is going to be a field day for the graphics industry. As one Microsoft developer told us, there’s going to be no let up on the GPU with Longhorn.”
Windows Longhorn – Next Gen Windows Goes 3D
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
My question would be, will the navigation be in 3D or will it just use hardware 3D acceleration to render the graphics? If it’s the latter, then it would probably be good, but I have yet to see a good 3D navigation implementation, and I doubt that MS would manage to make one.
hmm. anyone got PicassoGL?
Microsoft’s 2D implementation was always weak …. and they’re ready to add another dimension?
What they are trying to do is to unify the 3D drivers for use in an accelerated 2D driver. It has nothing to do with 3D navigations and 3D stuff to render the graphics. The just want to get rid of the VGA crap (which had overlay on top of it, and then D3D/GL run on top of it) and have a unified display and driver model. Nothing fancy for the user, just for driver developers. The user and rest of the devs won’t see much of a difference, probably the only thing they may see is faster alpha blending or transparency tricks.
As for PicassoGL, it did nothing more than what I descriibe on the above paragraph and what Longhorn tries to do. Nothing to do with 3D navigations and Star Trek interfaces. Do not believe the rumors.
Is this just more bloat? Or is it going to speed up the visual interface? Blah. I can’t wait for OBOS. I’m not saying it shouldn’t change, but the current crop of decent OS desktops (OSX, XP, BeOS) seem to work well from a user point of view.
I think MS should concentrate on optimizing their code and giving people the power of their PC back. But that won’t ever happen, now will it?
Zmai.
No, Microsoft will never give back the power of the PC to the people. They are power hungry, they want it all to themselves and they won’t be happy until everyone does things their way.
I’m actually eager to see what this will do to the overall experience in using the Windows UI. I’m still using Windows 98 at work, and occasionally some windows won’t erase themselves properly, leaving behind graphical artifacts and reminants of the original window contents. I have used Win 2000 at home and don’t see it as often though.
know why? wintel! ms uses more cpu, intel creates faster chip, ms forces upgrade(stops supporting older version), must by new intel chip, and so on and so on.
this is old news
I remember reading a gui study a while back about 3D interfaces and it mentioned something about it being a lot easier for the user to “lose” things in a 3D desktop space.
> No, Microsoft will never
> give back the power of
> the PC to the people.
What kind of power? Electric power, power to surf, use excell, or what?
Those of you who keep thinking in terms of “PC power” should get a job doing tech support. That should teach you a thing or two about computer users.
Except you are a plumber, you won’t care for “plumbing power”. You just want the water to flow when you turn the tap.
Same with computers, and that’s the way it should be.
I know more than a thing or two about users. Real users. Like the moms and grandmothers and kids that call all day where I supported Kensington products. You know what they asked me repeatedly?
“Why is it that I bought this new computer, which is more than 100% faster than my last one, and I also have the newest Windows, but it seems like it is just as slow as, or slower than, my last computer?!?!”
Don’t take general computer users’ needs and impressions lightly. They aren’t as stupid and useless as they are made out to be. It’s the computers that are stupid and useless. Computers are supposed to be tools. Yet, the only way they actually work as tools is if you have help from a geek or tech-head (or you are one yourself) to maintain them and wrangle them. Even a good OS is only half the solution.
Computers, and the computer industry, are one of the least consumer-friendly businesses in the world. As the consumers are being force-fed this BS-story that it’s all their own fault when things go wrong, it simply stays that way.
Computers suck. We have the endless search for more profit to blame for this. Not the users. The only crime the users are guilty of is believing that they are the problem and not demanding quality.
I disagree with you linux_baby.
There are 34 computers in my extended family that I built over the last year or so.
Number 1 complaint:
How come my computer feels so slow?
And these are on fairly speedy hardware.
I think this is why OBOS exites me so much. Power AND usablity. I drool to imagine a product like Maya running on a BeOS-like system. Because it would be hella fast (assuming we can ever get hardwareGL working).
And, frankly, Linux doesn’t cut it. Apparantly the Linux movement has fallen prey to excessive MHz.
I want efficiency. I’ll buy more hardware to have even more power, but I get upset that I don’t have that power because something as basic as the OS is wasting huge amounts of my computer resources.
Just my opinion, anyway.
Zmai.
>How come my computer feels so slow?
Maybe your computers _are_ slow?
I mean, I am under Gentoo Linux this very moment. I have compiled the whole damn thing by hand, using the freaking gcc optimizations march=i686 -03 on ALL compilations, and it still feels freaking *clunky* under X with the ultra lightweight BlackBox window manager.
Windows XP on the same hardware (dual celeron 533), feels and behaves 5 times faster. Win9x line were slower (when it comes to multithreading, throughput and preemptiveness that is), but XP has come of age (when is run with 256 MB of RAM and a PC faster than 400 Mhz). Anyone who says that XP is slow, he is lieing. He still uses Win9x, has never used XP and just bashes M$ just for the kicks of it.
Eugenia,
I do agree with you about the Win 9X line, but these folks are all on XP, with processing power in the PIII +500MHz range. So your argument isn’t born out by *my* observations.
I think there is serious room for faster operating systems. The OS shouldn’t (IMO) be using much of the horsepower the hardware provides. The applications should be the ones enjoying the speed.
Don’t you think there’s room for a stable, usable, efficient operating system? Isn’t that one of the reasons you loved BeOS so much?
Zmai.
Stop for a second and think about this. Microsoft is developing a strategy to make 3D acceleration ubiquitous on the desktop. Whether you’re using Word or playing the newest game, you’ll be relying on your 3D card to do the processing. In its simplest implementation, it simply takes a load off the CPU and puts it on the GPU.
2D surfaces become textures. Now even “simple” 2D apps and games can take advantage of the GPU’s processing power. Advanced features such as shading, lighting, fog, etc. can then be easily added… without slowing down the CPU. This opens up the door to a true 3 dimensional operating environment.
Bash Microsoft (I might join in on other occasions), but in this particular case, I think Microsoft has it right. OBOS has proposed a similar idea over the long term… but Microsoft has the power to MAKE it happen (i.e. force hardware vendors to supply solutions).
I’m running a pretty old pc (celeron 400 256 megs ram) and my pc feels plenty fast in 2k, and 98se and it did in be 5.03pe. Linux is the only os that makes my pc feel slow (I’m sure it was gnome and kde bloat, but I haven’t tried xfce or icewm yet, I’m still waiting to here how well icepack plays with windows before I jepordize my windows installs).
Why should ms make an operating system that runs super fast on 4 year old hardware (mines 3 years old and I can still rn xp at a very usable rate when I tried it out)? The people spending $100 on an upgrade for xp home are going to have fairly new hardware (I have an evaluation edition of pro) and are going to run it plenty fast. Nobody (even obos) are making oses which run lighting fast, look great and incorporate new features (seal meets the first 2 from what I’ve heard) on pentium 2 300.
Lastly Zmai you mention pentium III 500+ range like it was bleeding edge, it hasn’t been for 3 years. Chips now go over 2 ghz. As long as people’s mouse cursor moves responsively and they don’t have to wait for folders to open (open a folder, immediately all the stuff inside is viewable) they don’t think their pc is slow. So ms could make it faster, but your average user wouldn’t notice (average user only does 2 or 3 things at once, even my pc doesn’t choke until I’m doing at least 5 and one of them is burning a cd), so why bother?
“And, frankly, Linux doesn’t cut it. Apparantly the Linux movement has fallen prey to excessive MHz.”
Huh? I agree that projects like KDE and Gnome require a lot of power, but I am running Debian on an old 300Mhz machine using the fluxbox window manager and everything runs great.
I’m not referring to you at all now, I just wanted to verbalize an observation. I think its funny how so many people in the world whine that Linux is not ready for the desktop because of this that and the other, however, when a company like KDE comes along and gives the whiners what they want, they begin crying that Linux is bloated and slow. Duh!
Come on people, you can’t have it both ways.
“I mean, I am under Gentoo Linux this very moment. I have compiled the whole damn thing by hand, using the freaking gcc optimizations march=i686 -03 on ALL compilations, and it still feels freaking *clunky* under X with the ultra lightweight BlackBox window manager.”
You did something horribly wrong then. I am running Gentoo at home and it is the fastest OS I have used period. I have several applications that run on both Linux and Windows (Visual SlickEdit being one of them) and they run much better on my Gentoo machine than my Windows machine despite the Gentoo machine’s power only being half what the Windows XP machine is.
“Windows XP on the same hardware (dual celeron 533), feels and behaves 5 times faster.”
I have a 1.4Ghz machine and XP runs like a dead pig. I especially like when I close a window and have to wait for XP to repaint all my icons and taskbar again. There’s no excuse for this when my machine has a 1.4Ghz CPU with 1GB of RAM and a 64MB video card.
“…but XP has come of age (when is run with 256 MB of RAM and a PC faster than 400 Mhz).”
I disagree for the reasons mentioned above. However, the nice things that XP offers that Windows never delivered, or not very well anyway, is multi-lingual support among various users on the same machine, better support for ATA100 drives on ATA100 enabled hardware, better stability when compared to other versions of Windows (except 2000), better game support than 2000, just to name a few.
“Anyone who says that XP is slow, he is lieing. He still uses Win9x, has never used XP and just bashes M$ just for the kicks of it.”
No, I run XP all the time at home and use it quite a bit at work too (although I’m sending this from Windows 2000). XP is a better gaming platform that Windows 2000 is, but Windows 2000 is much more responsive and neither comes close to the performance of my FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Linux machines.
I’m glad at least some people think highly of XP. I think it is okay, but nothing to write home about.
> Anyone who says that XP is slow,
> he is lieing.
> He still uses Win9x, has never
> used XP and just bashes M$
> just for the kicks of it.
Another possibility is that her experiences are just different from yours. I use XP at work and at home. At work, its a Pentium 700. At home, its an AMD 350. I upgraded to XP becos, Win2000 was just slow speed-wise.
Well, on both systems, I find XP to be slow, even if it is still faster than Win2000. On a Pentium 850 Dell Laptop, I find that XP and RedHat run on just about the same speed. The new Redhat beta you announced last time actually runs faster when using KDE 3, which is why I always opt for Redhat when using my laptop.
> he is lieing.
> He still uses Win9x,
Hello?, and did you ever use Win9x on your machine? Win9x is definitely faster that Win2000 and Up. Makes sense too, for the same reasons why Win 3.1 is faster than Win9x, and dos faster than Win 3.1. Except for the stability issues, I would be quite glad to use Win9x on modern hardware. Just for the speed you get.
Someone said we can’t have it both ways (i.e. responsiveness and a “modern” looking os), well we can and do its called windows. 2k and xp both ran circles around caldera, mandrake, dragon and suse on my machine. I’m thinking xfce and icewm will be as fast as any windows version I’ve tried, but every single screen shot I’ve seen of them reminds me of windows 3.1. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to try them. As for your pc BakaSmack, you must’ve bought a pc put together by chimps, because if xp runs fine on my pos but it runs slow on your system (which is almost 4 times faster) then its not the oses fault.
Forget the Window dressing (pun intended). Work on making Windows faster, now that you made it pretty stable.
Oh yeah, and please get rid of the need to install programs, make Windows Mac or Unix like, allow uses to just cut and paste programs onto the hard drive. It is soooo much easier. You only need the program as is, no a special install version.
In fact, get rid of that registry.
Looks a bit rough to me, but it is experimental:
http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/index.htm
The registry is one of the main reasons I prefer windows. I don’t like you fact you can have multiple copies of a program installed. Besides not all programs for windows require an install, so why take the time to remove it when its not mandatory that programmers use it?
Anyone who says that XP is slow, he is lieing. He still uses Win9x, has never used XP and just bashes M$ just for the kicks of it.
You’re completely off base here, Eugenia, not to mention downright rude. Which is quite a shame since you’ve always struck me as a level headed person.
Windows XP is slow on my computer. It’s a dual processor Pentium III system with 640 megs of RAM. I have a Radeon, WinTV card, SB Live, 3com network card, and an adaptec SCSI card. Absolutely nothing odd or unusual. So why does it take 3 – 4 minutes for XP to start? As compared to having a workable linux system (in X) in half that time Applications which previously were quite stable under Win98SE now seem to randomly die (Kazaa,Photoshop, even IE). Anytime an app seems to die, I generally have to wait another 30 seconds before the system becomes responsive again.
Please don’t tell me to reinstall. I’ve had reinstall twice now due to massive problems with drivers. Each time, the system has been just as unstable and slow.
Adam
Again a milestone which someone invents (again: Be) & which Microsoft brings out to market.
That sucks sooo much.
Boot time doesn’t really matter to most people. If it did my brother’s old pentium 150 laptop would win (30 second boot up, 10 seconds shutdown), it is running win 98 btw. Fast boot times are great, but who really cares? My 2k install takes a while to get up, but it runs smooth as silk so I don’t care if it takes 80 seconds to boot instead of 45.
Adam, XP loads in 20 secs on my PC. And it is fast. Sorry, but that’s how behaves here and I have slower PC and less RAM than you do, plus I have a simple IDE, no SCSI.
You _really_ seem to have IRQ conflicts, or SCSI problems. I can’t find another reason why it should be so slow on your PC.
Here, it just flies.
Boot time matters a lot when the system is unstable enough that I have to reboot frequently 🙂
Adam
Eugenia,
No IRQ conflicts and no SCSI problems… I’ve checked. Nothing shows up in the Events logging, and the device manager shows no conflicts.
So, do you still insist that I’m a liar?
I hate to break it to you but, at least on my machine here and at work, Linux is considerably faster and stabler than XP.
Adam
BTW, I think the problem with your machine is your SCSI. I also have a dual machine with 3com and sblive, but I have IDE. Probably you were unlucky and you hit a bug. In fact, my husband was telling me last night that XP has a driver bug with some adaptec chipsets. I would recomment to install XP on the same machine on an IDE and see if it fixes all these problems for you.
Personally, in the 3-4 weeks I am using XP on this machine, I have not seen a single crash out of nowhere. NOT ONE. I only crashed it the FIRST day I installed it, but it was my fault. I was trying to read off the CD-R my husband gave me and I crashed it because the CD-R… was dead. I rebooted to beos to check it out and BeOS also threw out a general OS error. I removed the drive, and since then I haven’t seen a single crash. EVER.
Eugenia,
Though I have the Adaptec in the machine, XP is installed on the IDE.
Feel lucky that you haven’t had any crashes. XP crashes all the time on me.
Adam
I am still using WinXP Release Candidate 2 (build 2526) on a 475 MHz, 128MB machine and it is reasonably fast, except a bit slow when I have a lot of apps running while I’m playing MP3’s in the background.
It has been about 5-6 months now and I have never had to reboot even once due to an OS problem (but I do have problems with electrical power brownouts where I live and I don’t have a UPS yet, which forces the occasional reboot every few weeks – not good for my hardware, I know). All of my peripherals and software runs great and virtually never crashes except for really oddball situations, which doesn’t concern me at all.
This older PC is very usable and extremely stable under XP and I do a lot of work with it, including development. I’m not even going to bother adding more RAM. I can’t figure out how Unix people manage to make 2000/XP bluescreen every thirty seconds…I guess the OS can tell who they are and just doesn’t like them.
“100% Availability Program for ftServer [with Windows 2000]
Stratus Technologies is the world’s most trusted provider of products and services that guarantee virtually uninterrupted processing for applications that must not fail. Now Stratus brings world-class business technology to its new ftServer product line – a family of Microsoft® Windows® 2000-based servers. Because the ftServer technology integrates hardware fault tolerance, software availability, and service, you get the highest possible uptime without the additional cost of special configuration, administration, scripting, or programming.
While other vendors talk about assuring availability, at Stratus we design every one of our products and services for continuous computing. As part of our commitment to provide the highest levels of uptime we include our 100% Availability Program with every ftServer covered under a Business Critical ftServiceSM Program agreement. The ftServer 100% Availability Program applies to the ftServer hardware and software, and to the kernel of the Windows 2000 operating system.
Contact your local Stratus service representative for detailed information about the 100% Availability Program.”
http://www.stratus.com/support/ftserver/100grnt.htm
“About Stratus The World’s Most Reliable Server Technologies
Stratus Technologies is the world’s most trusted provider of computer products, services, and technologies that guarantee continuously available processing for applications that must not fail. We are the servers of global business, of the Fortune 1000, and the worlds major industries. Stratus’ builds the ultimate reliability into its servers and service. We have more than 700 customers worldwide in markets that demand non-stop computing such as financial services, retail, travel, public safety, healthcare, manufacturing and electronic commerce market.”
http://www.stratus.com/company/
Oh please, this idea has gone around for a long time. And exactly how long do you think that MS has been working on implementing such a thing? They don’t just say “Ok, we are going to do this” at a conference as soon as someone comes up with the idea.
Some people think that Be pioneered all these ideas, and they certainly did not.
I do like the 3D interface, the idea isn’t original, but it does look like Microsoft is doing actual R&D on the concept.
There really hasn’t been a big leap in computer interfaces since the GUI – it has just been refined since that time.
CPUGuy,
Sure, this idea has been around for a very long time, and it has been used at application level before (blender is an example). But to my knowledge PicassoGL is the first implementation of the idea into a mature desktop OS. It’s a shame that they never got to release it.
Be Inc wasn’t as innovative as a lot of people claim they were. But what they did IMO, was to combine a lot of proved and some new concepts into one nice well done implemetation. That has to count for something.
On the other hand, people think that MS is a very innovative company, when they in fact are not. They mostly take old proven concepts, rename them and call them their innovations. It’s just pathetic. But since most people will first see these concepts in microsoft products they will think that MS invented it.
<quote>
WI think its funny how so many people in the world whine that Linux is not ready for the desktop because of this that and the other, however, when a company like KDE comes along and gives the whiners what they want, they begin crying that Linux is bloated and slow. Duh!
Come on people, you can’t have it both ways.
</quote>
It can it was possible, it was called BeOS 😉
“Someone said we can’t have it both ways (i.e. responsiveness and a “modern” looking os), well we can and do its called windows.”
You are exactly the sort of rube I was talking about.
My point is that all the pretty teletubbies themes, all the you-won’t-cut-yourself-on-these rounded corners and all the shading and other graphic beautifications are very costly and eat up the power of your machine. If you think it doesn’t, you are living in ignorant bliss.
Sure, they may run satisfactorily to you, but there are faster alternatives avaliable. Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc. are all faster than Windows and run much better. If you like blinking lights and pretty colors and that’s what you want from your computer, fine. I want my computer to do work. Looks is irrelevant.
“2k and xp both ran circles around caldera, mandrake, dragon and suse on my machine.”
Doing what exactly? I hate Mandrake and I’ve never used SuSE really, but I use Caldera all the time and Caldera runs circles around Windows on the same machine running the same applications. KDE is bloated because it is aimed to please the people who like things to flash, rotate, and entertain them while they surf the web, but install WindowMaker on Caldera and watch Windows shrink on the horizon as it tries pathetically to keep up.
“I’m thinking xfce and icewm will be as fast as any windows version I’ve tried, but every single screen shot I’ve seen of them reminds me of windows 3.1.”
So is that how you are judging the speed of these Linux distros, by looking at screenshots?
“…you must’ve bought a pc put together by chimps, because if xp runs fine on my pos but it runs slow on your system (which is almost 4 times faster) then its not the oses fault.”
Actually I built my own machine you butt picking monkey. The parts are all top of the line. I think your perception is the problem. To you XP runs fine because you have no basis of comparison (other than looking at screenshots).
I am basing my opinion on my 5 machines at home and the 700 machines I use everyday at work. XP on some, 2000 on some, Linux on some and *BSD on some. I think that is a pretty good basis for having the opinions I do.
“The graphics interface at the driver level is going to be all DirectX 9.0”
Will there be any support for OpenGL ?
Let’s mention a couple of things really quickly here…Keep the chimps, butt-picking monkey and the rest of your rants to yourself…no need to be elitist or angry….Get a grip…We’re all users who need help and some need enlightenment. Enough said..
Additionally, I’ve ran Suse, Mandrake, Redhat,BeOS, WinXP at one point or another and I must say that the users’ needs are the determining factor of which OS is going to catch them. Do you need office apps or the latest 3D games? Do you just need to chat online or use icq? Linux does all of this with its’ own flavors of these apps and remains stable the doing so. This talk of raw computer power? (laugh) People are gauging this by how fast their apps’ start-up? How about how many times you reach for the reset button? How about how many times you spend more money to keep chasing this neverending hardware trail just to keep up?
For the vast majority of folks out there, their respective Windows OS is fine for them. We need to give those folks our extra copies of Linux(or BSD, or whatever) and get their feet wet. What’s a terminal? A tar? rpm -ivh? What do these mean? School them in the basics and they’ll love it. Those of us who really use the hell out of our systems love and appreciate our varying distros of Linux. We were all newbies once.
My 8.1 Mandrake and WinXp dual boot system runs killer. My Gnome sessions beat the hell out of my XP desktop. Enough said. When I turn on the power button I just let it boot into Linux and go about my business. The only reason XP is hanging around is so that I can re-stock my game catalog for Linux ports and away it’ll go…bye Windows. I’m tired of Windows automatically uploading my “HARD DRIVE” browsing habits….tired of the same old same old.
Sorry for so much typing but when folks start getting ridiculous in the message boards I just have to get a lick in by saying “relax..help each other out”….
Unix, Linux, MacOS, BSD, all the way baby.
Dave
I agree that we should be helping each other. If someone has a really cool program that they think a lot of people would benefit from, by all means share. Same with operating systems.
However, that doesn’t always seem to happen. Most people are OS zealots and want to bring converts into the fold by brute force and if possible, bloodshed.
In BakaSmack’s defence, I think his/her points in the first few points were good ones and Eugenia’s statement about XP deserved a retort.
I am sending this from an XP machine and I also have a Linux machine I run as a web server for development purposes. The Linux machine is an inferior machine when it comes to hardware, but does outperform the XP machine.
I think the origin of this thread was a statement that Windows was bloated and required ever better hardware to run in the same mediocre way. I would have to through my testimony onto that steaming pile and attest to the truth of the statement.
“It can it was possible, it was called BeOS ;-)”
I would have to disagree. I was a registered developer with BeOS and worked with it for about a year. It was a very nice system. As solid as they come. However, the GUI did not include all the modern bells and whistles that the post you responded to mentioned.
I would venture that if BeOS did have those things, it would be as bloated and slow as other environments that sport these graphic baubles and trinkets.
“but I use Caldera all the time and Caldera runs circles around Windows on the same machine running the same applications.”
Caldera ran so slow when I first booted it up I couldn’t get kde’s version of the start menu to pop up. After about 2 minutes I decided if I could get that to show up I’d log off and delete the partiton. After about 3 more minutes of trying (waiting a full 10 seconds after clicking on it for it to pop out) I said the hell with this and hit the reset switch. Then when I deleted the partition from windows using partition magic and rebooted (to make sure lilo was still there, since it was left over from a mandrake install) not only was lilo gone, but somehow 2 of my 3 windows partitions were tost too (all on the same primary partition as the linux logical partition). That was 3.1, 2.4 ran ok (well as fast as mandrake which hung opening folders with more then 12 icons in them). I would’ve gladly tried another windows manager in caldera (the only reason I’m looking to try icepack is because I read you can use xfce or icewm as default, and I’ve heard they’re fast as hell), but since I couldn’t even get to the kde menu to try and configure it with something other then kde (it made kde the default on install) I figured f caldera. As for pretty effects and rounded corners, I use 2k with none of the cpu wasting fading crap enabled. My point was even though they’re turned on by default windows as still more usuable then any of the linux distros I’ve tried so far (granted they’re nebie distros, but I’m a linux newbie I don’t want to have to call my friend who uses linux exclusively to help me do every little thing). Lastly name calling is rather childish (maybe you thought I knew you built your own pc, even though I had no clue) and I’ve personally tried running mac (mostly os 9, some x), beos (no driver available for my nic card so I only played with it for a week or so), and the following linux distros; mandrake (8.1), Caldera (2.4 and 3.1), dragon (can’t remember, its been a while), peanut (couldn’t even get that bugger to work), slackware (bigslack 7.something) and armed (or it might’ve been armored, its been a while since i tried that one so I can’t remember for sure). All of them were tried on this very machine and none of them worked as fast as win 2k, 98se or xp (except for be, it was very very fast, but since I couldn’t get online and downloading apps in windows to use in be seemed silly to me, I uninstalled it). I’m not saying they couldn’t have, but since I’m a newbie (and all of them, except slackware, claimed to be good for newbies) I don’t know how to tweak them to make them even usuable. btw if you use 700 machines at work how do you get any work done? In an 8 hour work day thats less then 42 seconds spent on each machine. I do agree with you on one thing though, all the stupid bells and whistles added to guis (fading, minimized apps being pulled into the corner or whatever) is not neccessary, that why i have them all turned off, and its also why I went back to 2k (its basically xp, without some of the extra fisher price stuff).
lol, I just have to love it when someone says people that feel their PCs are running XP fine are in ignorant bliss. I’m running XP Pro on a P3-1GHz, running an IRC client, Outlook (not OE), this IE window, WMP playing a ~7500 song playlist, and a couple of Explorer windows, and I’m running at 5-10% CPU utilization. When I stop playback on WMP it drops to 1%. I can open quite a few more apps and not see much change there, the most intense thing my CPU is doing most of the time is decoding MP3 files, even if I’m doing it in the background while I play a 3D shooter. Would I mind if things were a little less CPU-intensive? Of course not. Would I notice? Not likely.
Let’s face it, CPU utilization is no longer the most important factor in whether or not your computer appears responsive. The important thing with normal applications is RAM, and when you start playing games it becomes RAM + video card. By moving the interface of the OS over to the realm of 3d, whether it’s a 2D environment rendered by Direct3D or a fully 3D environment rendered by Direct3D, you’re taking load off of the CPU, not putting more on it.
rain: I think you need to look up the work innovation and look up the word invention, they are two separate words that do NOT mean the same thing.