Roughly half of today’s PCs won’t be able to take advantage of the ‘Aero Glass’ compositor found within Microsoft’s upcoming Vista software, due at the end of this year. The estimate was one of the conclusions cited in a report released late Thursday by Jon Peddie Research. The fault, Peddie reported, was that the low-cost integrated graphics controllers customers have chosen process the 2D windows of Windows XP and Windows 2000 just fine, but lack the bells and whistles necessary to process the Windows Desktop Compositing Engine used in Vista. About 63 percent of the 203 million PCs sold used an integrated graphics controller, JPR reported.
I have a GeForce 6200 which I’m guessing will be able to do the 3D stuff, but unless it speeds up the GUI, I’ll probably turn back on the Win32 classic theme
I love the classic theme anyway. I’ve been using it for more than 10 years, and have never tired of it. To me, it’s better than anything else I’ve seen, including the ‘beautiful’ OSX. I’m probably the only person in the world who feels this way, but so be it 
Naw. I like classic on my servers.
Jim
Naw. I like classic on my servers.
😕
I like 80×25 console with a blinking cursor on my servers
Having GUI running on server is just a waste of resources, nothing else. If I remember properly, next Windows server should be able to run in console mode only too.
Couldn’t really call it “Windows” Server than could you??
Couldn’t really call it “Windows” Server than could you??
Windows as in name of OS, it is not my fault MS named it so
Yes, it could be. Never seen DOS software which had ASCII windows?
I second that on the classic desktop. I’ve been switching every PC I’m allowed to over to classic whenever I get the chance.
…the default XP interface & new start menu make me feel like I’m using one of those ‘made for kids’ bulky pokemon mice, with a mickeymouse keyboard, on my Luna desktop…blah. ;-p
i only use windows @ work now thow, (gnome-nix + cxoffice/cedega) > win32 ;-p
I have a GeForce 6200 which I’m guessing will be able to do the 3D stuff, but unless it speeds up the GUI, I’ll probably turn back on the Win32 classic theme
I love the classic theme anyway. I’ve been using it for more than 10 years, and have never tired of it. To me, it’s better than anything else I’ve seen, including the ‘beautiful’ OSX. I’m probably the only person in the world who feels this way, but so be it 
Join the club, until SUN cleaned up their GNOME distribution, I stuck with CDE – sure, it may have been ugly in some respects but its performance and teh snappy was a nice change to the slowness.
I’m now using JDS on Solaris 10 (01/06) and I’ve had occasions where I have had a peak at what KDE has to offer, and I have to admit, the eye candy maybe ok for a few days, but after a while it becomes quite frankly, sickening.
Its kinda like chocolate, I love the stuff, but at the same time, I have it rarely as I know that not only does my waist line expand with regular consumption, the taste just becomes dull – samne goes for guis, I don’t mind a few extra bits of bling here and there, but when it is full on, all the time, thats when it becomes nausiating.
First, low end systems will be still be able to run vista, just not use ‘Aero Glass’ to its full potential. Like WorknMan I think I prefer the 2D Windows 2000 look anyway.
Second, as a gamer I am kind of glad the OS is going to force people to get higher end graphics cards. More people buying higher end cards means cheaper prices for me and more games taking advantage of them.
Third, One in Two PC’s in use today are friggin slow. Vista still is not out yet, but its release will mark a new generation of PC’s.
No it’s not, it’s going to force people to buy consoles and ditch pc’s for gaming. which many are doing now. It just isn’t worth it anymore.
BTW, I like playing older games and pretty much stay away from newer ones. And I don’t own a single console.
“Second, as a gamer I am kind of glad the OS is going to force people to get higher end graphics cards. More people buying higher end cards means cheaper prices for me and more games taking advantage of them.
Third, One in Two PC’s in use today are friggin slow. Vista still is not out yet, but its release will mark a new generation of PC’s.”
Your second and third points have fatal flaws in them. The flaw with the second point is that gamers will always want high end graphics cards. Vista will do nothing to change that. ATI and nVidia will simply make faster high end cards and you will still be stuck paying a fortune for them.
On the second point, all that will happen is that most users will not buy the upgrade and as long as their system still works fine with XP they won’t be looking for new HW. My daughter still suns my old P-III 733 and it is fast enough to suit her needs.
Just my 2 cents worth.
‘Second, as a gamer I am kind of glad the OS is going to force people to get higher end graphics cards. More people buying higher end cards means cheaper prices for me […]’
You forgot to add:
`Booooooohahahahhahahahhahahahahhaha’
Isn’t the idea of the real 3d hardware accelerated desktop to make it quicker, not slower?
Or is the Vista one just the compositor, not a complete 3d accelerated desktop like the XGL* stuff and Quartz 2D Extreme?
Yes, that’s the idea — but it’s a little hard to 3D accelerate a desktop when your video card can’t do the 3D acceleration, isn’t it? 😉 In cases like that, Vista drops down to a non-Aero Glass interface, since doing it on the CPU would be painful.
Not particularly. It’s actual purpose is to enable you to do things that you couldn’t without dedicated hardware: Compositing, fancier widgets, better scaleability, whizbang effects.
Windows GUI was already about as quick as you can get… They’ve just moved a bit of it off the CPU (depending on what you’re doing) and added in tons of useful and useless effects.
And pulled it out of kernel space.
I’m just wondering if the new GUI will be only about eye-candy or actually some features that some of us get used to in some Linux WM’s like shading, sticking, stacking, multiple desktops… I have to use Windows at work and I miss them.
Well as far as I know, some features that a lot of people consider “just eye candy” are actually pretty good for usability. The alt-tab window previews are a good example of eyecandy bringing usability.
However quite a lot (not all) of what I’ve seen of Vista seems to be a lot more eye candy for the pure sake of eye candy… it seems deadly confusing to use, but I guess we’ll see when it’s released.
true, there are some aspects of eye-candy (like the alt-tab preview) that can be usefull.
thing is that you dont realy need the full firepower of a 3D card to power it. what you need is a 2D card with buildt in hardware scaling and maybe alphablending (so that the cpu isnt overloaded having to take a snapshot of each window and scale it down to fit the alt-tab window). this however you cant find as 3D cards have this allready buildt in an more.
im guessing the real reason that some older cards cant run “aero glass” is not so much that it do not have the horsepower, but that MS is using their latest directx tools. and only the latest cards support those
therefor its a chicken and egg thing.
but there is one thing i would realy love, and that is for MS to make is flatt out simple to use alternative desktops. as it is right now you have to mod a entry in the registry to have a alternative desktop. on most linux distros you get a menu if your using graphical login…
Edited 2006-02-11 07:28
Most alternative shells should come with installers that set themselves as the shell for you, and I would assume any decent shell would also include an option to revert to Explorer.
maybe so, but begin able to just log out and log back in again is much more user friendly in my view..
Trollstoi: I’m just wondering if the new GUI will be only about eye-candy or actually some features that some of us get used to in some Linux WM’s like shading, sticking, stacking, multiple desktops… I have to use Windows at work and I miss them.
At least some of these things have been available for Windows for quite awhile. (Since at least Windows 3.0) However, you do have to either pay for or download a free add-on to get it. I say at least some, because I’m not familiar with all the different add-ons. But for example, you can get a multiple desktops add-on for free from Microsoft. The URL is: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys….
That’s rather limited, but there are others like Object Desktop from Stardock. http://www.stardock.com/products/objectbar/information.asp
While the default setup of Windows is rather crippled, you can find just about anything for it if you know where to look.
Aero Glass, a specialized subset of the “Aero” Vista interface, requires a DirectX 9.0c-capable graphics card, which only “performance”-class graphics add-on cards (such as the Nvidia GeForce FX 5900) can process.
This, from the article, is of course nonsense. My Ati Radeon 9000 128MB DDR-RAM runs Aero Glass just fine, as I proved here via a video.
Yeah, the article really isn’t clear on the requirements. As far as I know, Aero Glass will work on non-DX 9.0c graphics cards, you just won’t get some of the minor effects that Shader Model 3.0 brings.
There was a huge controversy about Shader Model 3.0 vs. 2.0b, since 2.0b can do nearly all of the effects that 3.0 can do. I won’t get into it, but the short story is that you’re not really missing out on anything if your card can only do 2.0b — at least not yet.
Will it run on integrated chipsets? Because they make up around half of all desktop PC’s
.
Will it run on integrated chipsets? Because they make up around half of all desktop PC’s
.
Vista itself will run on PCs with integrated chipsets. Glass will run on integrated chipsets that support DX9 and Shader Model 2.0. This includes most NVIDIA and ATI chipsets as well as newer versions of the Intel 945/950 (check for the exact model — it’s mainly the ones that support PCI-E).
Yea, but most people don’t have those. They’re on older Intel chipsets and whatever VIA typically integrates.
Every gamer will easily be able to run glass.
Every power user too, probably.
Even a lot of laptop owners, who bought a nice laptop.
But Aunt Tillie probably didn’t consider that, and couldn’t justify the extra $200 for a decent PC.
I suppose it’s not Microsoft who’s to blame, but the increasingly cheap OEM’s
. I imagine Vista will, and already probably has, bring about a bit of a change to where the industry considers 3d hardware to be a standard thing.
Maybe gaming 3d hardware will drop in price because of it
.
It’s meant for the next generation of PCs. So, it really doesn’t matter whether it runs on legacy machines…
Yes, but not for people which are buying now high rated hardware based PCs…
And MacOS-X Tiger (the MacOS-X MS is copying from A to Z) can run on G4 computer (starting at 500 or 600 Mhz + 512 Mb of ram) without any problem…
That’s because Apple has been shipping good 3d hardware on every PC since the original iMac.
The processor and RAM have little to do with it since Mac OS 10.2.
I bet Vista will run great on a bottom end PIII (500-600MHz) with 512MB of RAM and a GeForce 4ti. Well, most people wouldn’t consider what it’ll do great, but most people don’t consider OS X’s performance on a 500MHz G4 great either.
I’m a recreational gamer and general PC enthusiast, and Microsoft’s push for better graphics makes me jump for joy. Windows has always been held back by the need to be backward compatible with decade-old systems, and while being able to update your old hardware with a new OS is nice, it can also hinder progress on the OS front. Mac OS has some cool features that are made possible by their included ATI graphics chips, and I’m glad to see the Microsoft is drawing the line and pushing for more powerful graphics performance. It’s stupid that so many computers purchased nowadays feature 3.2 GHz CPUs, 1 GB of RAM, and 250 GB hard drive, and crappy integrated graphics. Anyone with a decent, current-generation GPU should have no worries about Vista compatability or performance.
…buying Vista for 300euros or buying xBox360/Ps3/revolution for 300-400 euros what would You choose?
I would certanly go with console if I needed graphics…
… Vista has been so scaled down from original specs that I can’t find reasons to buy it anymore, and I see no productivity gain in 3D Windows which is all thats been left. And please 3d Alt+tab replacement is useful for what??
5-7 years in development and what do we get? DirecX interface.
Only clueless and rich people will actually pay for Vista, others will use the torrent, like they should. Besides, I don’t expect it to be that expensive.
Only clueless and rich people will actually pay for Vista…
So, you’re not going to buy a new computer, hard disk or motherboard at any time after the release of Vista? Or are you only going to buy hardware from those who offer OS-less PCs?
By the way, stealing it doesn’t make it cheaper. It’s one of the things that made MS force manufacturers to add the cost or part of the cost of the current OS to their PCs and major subsystems thus hiding the true cost from the clueless. Some manufacturers complained but some were able to see that it allowed them to increase their enfeebled margins.
Hm.. a post advocating piracy and insulting people is modded up? Great.
I find it offensive that you seem to encourage piracy in this forum.
As OS enthusiasts we should respect the licence of the the softwareproduct (proprietary or opensource).
If you don´t wan´t to pay – don´t use the software.
Edited 2006-02-11 19:54
Vista has been so scaled down from original specs that I can’t find reasons to buy it anymore, and I see no productivity gain in 3D Windows which is all thats been left. And please 3d Alt+tab replacement is useful for what??
Once again, this isn’t true. The original specs for Vista were built around Avalon, Indigo, WinFS, and core OS services referred to as Fundamentals. All of these are still shipping with Vista except WinFS, which is currently in beta, and will ship later in the Vista timeframe. There is also MSH, which may also not be included in the RTM package, but the beta is and the RTM will be available for downlooad as well as included in several other products.
You are right, but the problem is that most of the people even do not remember which features were “stripped” from Vista, but now it is in fasion to tell that MS is evil and others are angels. By the way, if WinFS were included in Vista, it would not change much for end-user at least for year or two, because end-user has nothing to do with WinFS; and until lazy programmers would start to use WinFS APIs … A lot of companies, selling their overpriced products, cannot program correctly software to run in restricted user account even 6 years after Windows 2000 was released. So who’s fault is it? Of course, of MS… So if WinFS is released 6 months after Vista release, an end-user has nothing to worry. For programmers, it is available, use and learn as much as you wish…
Now MSH, god damn it, perhaps it won’t be in the final version of Vista… Now, I would like to ask a majority of end-users, how often do you run command shell?
– most people thinks that command shell is the same DOS. And now, if you are sysadmin or programmer or any other smart a.. you have no problems to download it, run it and do anything you wish.
For people who saw some effects in SUSE 10 beta, people come down, all these effects can be designed for Windows, because Avalon is engine which can render 3D effects, everything depends what are you going to program.
What MS did not do really, they did not rewrite Windows core using manageable code as they promised. But if they even succeeded to do it would change nothing on the user-liking and marketing side.
I do not want to write here how many features are not in Windows and they should be (and shame on MS for this, but this is not the topic), but at least end-user did not lose anything they just getting the final product latter than expected.
And finally, why are people so crazy about Vista requirement? MS did not push you buy OS every year, but after 5 years of the last one, so do you people realy think that the OS including any kind of improvement should not require better hardware?
What MS did not do really, they did not rewrite Windows core using manageable code as they promised. But if they even succeeded to do it would change nothing on the user-liking and marketing side.
If by core, you mean kernel and kernel mode services, MS never promised to rewrite this in managed code. This is and has always been a myth. MS promised and delivered WinFX which is managed code.
The only thing that’s been “scaled down” is the pushback of WinFS (which will still be in beta when Vista is released). There has been nothing else dropped.
Am I the one who doesn’t get the need for such huge hardware requirements? Windows 95, 98 and 2000 could easily run on a pentium processor with 128MB of RAM and nowadays you need a stupidly large disk space, huge ammounts of RAM, processor and GPU power and that for the OS alone. What improvements were made to the OS that justify the huge hardware requirements? Eye candy on the desktop environment? I don’t get it.
Am I the one who doesn’t get the need for such huge hardware requirements? Windows 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 could easily run on a 80286 processor with 1MB of RAM and nowadays you need a stupidly large disk space, huge ammounts of RAM, processor and GPU power and that for the OS alone. What improvements were made to the OS that justify the huge hardware requirements? Eye candy on the desktop environment? I don’t get it.
…and 486s were common when Win 95 was released. Ever try to put Win 95 on a 486? If you are only going to release an OS every 3 to 5 years, it doesn’t make sense to make the OS of tomorrow conform to the hardware of today.
I agree with your point, however Windows 95 works just fine on the 486 if you have sufficient memory installed.
I installed Win95 on a 386 actually… It was a bit slow and since it only had a 60MB hard drive, I had to delete helpfiles and stuff upon installation to use it but.. It worked.. But your point is a good one…
I’ve done that : Cyrix 486 + 16 Mb of ram, and it works.
So you can close your little mouth
))))
In 1995, I had a Collosus PC, which was an IBM manufactured PC, but not badged IBM. It had an IBM BL2 25/50 MHz processor (you could switch the speed in the BIOS) and 8MB RAM. I ran Windows 95 quite happily on it. It ran better with 16MB RAM.
My mother in law still had that PC last time I spoke to her, and it is still running Win 95 with 96MB RAM and a 500MB harddrive. It’s oainful to use now by modern expectations, but in 1995 it was absolutely fine!
I was working for two years on a 486 with 8 MB RAM which run Windows 95 and Word 97. It wasn’t a speed king, but I delivered my projects on time.
…and 486s were common when Win 95 was released. Ever try to put Win 95 on a 486? If you are only going to release an OS every 3 to 5 years, it doesn’t make sense to make the OS of tomorrow conform to the hardware of today.
Things were different then. Very few people had purchased personal computers, and the main market for Windows 95 were the people who were, all of a sudden, buying new pentium computers which came with the OS.
Now a large majority of those who can afford computers, already own one. How many of these will want to upgrade/get a new one in order to run an OS?
Not to mention:
Computers had just gotten a lot cheaper when 95 was released (which will likely happen with graphics hardware with Vista, IMO). I remember my parents paid around $2,500 for our 486, and I think under $1000 for the Pentium 75.
Also, that 486 ran Win95 impeccably. But then again, it was a DX-2 with, IIRC, 16MB of RAM. And the Pentium came with 3.1.
I don’t really understand why this is annoying some people..for two reasons.
1. We’re finally moving to a 3d interface which at the very least creates a foundation for future generations of windows. It’s a big change and some sacrifices have to be made. Today’s computers have huge harddrives and super fast cpu’s with crappy integrated graphics. What if all cars had very smooth and efficient engines, wonderful exterior designs but the interior was all plastic including the seats. My point is it’s about time vendors start selling balanced systems.
2. 90% of the population isn’t going to have Vista by this christmas. It will take time to be adopted by the majority and by this time next year it should be incredibly cheap to upgrade to a graphics card that can run aero. If you aren’t even willing to upgrade at that time that probably means that you don’t even care about graphics anyways.
What are you on about ?
Today’s computers have huge harddrives and super fast cpu’s with crappy integrated graphics
So what ? the majority of PC’s sold, are sold to be used by business. Business has no use whatsoever for 3D interfaces and snappy graphics. Buying a PC from a vendor who only supplies PCs with top of the range graphics cards is going to make business purchasers look elsewhere.
90% of the population isn’t going to have Vista by this christmas
90% of the population will NEVER be using Vista.
It is true that in the future, the vast majority of PC users will be running Vista, there is no change of Vista ever getting anywhere near that figure.
The same thing has happened with XP. It is 6 years old, but there are still millions of business users around the world who will not move over from Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is stable/fast enough for them, and XP has had a very bad press about malware.
NO. The only people who want 3D interfaces on Windows seem to be gamers who have no idea what goes on in the business world.
“90% of the population will NEVER be using Vista.”
Any evidence to back this up? I mean the last time I had the opportunity to check OS data on google zeitgeist, Windows XP was responsible for over 50% of all hits, and thats just in 4 years.
NO. The only people who want 3D interfaces on Windows seem to be gamers who have no idea what goes on in the business world.
A bit off-topic, but I don’t think you should come such generalized conclusions. Being a gamer has nothing to do with business sense….
So what ? the majority of PC’s sold, are sold to be used by business. Business has no use whatsoever for 3D interfaces and snappy graphics. Buying a PC from a vendor who only supplies PCs with top of the range graphics cards is going to make business purchasers look elsewhere.
Right. And so businesses can choose to not upgrade to Vista -or- choose to buy an edition that comes with Aero disabled or even disable it themselves, and still use the integrated graphics card and everything else.
NO. The only people who want 3D interfaces on Windows seem to be gamers who have no idea what goes on in the business world.
Home users will benefit from it too. Watching video will be a much smoother experience. UI should be more responsive and less of the annoying “flashing” artifects by poorly programmed apps. These are subtle things, but will be appreciated.
Raver31, The real reason just about all the computers at retail stores like BestBuy have integrated graphics is not because BestBuy sells most of its computer to businesses. It’s because pc vendors are cost cutting. My point was that vendors need to sell balanced systems to consumers.
Wow I can’t believe you took that 90% figure to heart. It was just a number to make a point about how it will take time for Vista to be adopted, meaning graphics card prices will decrease. In that whole paragraph that is all you got out of it? The “90%”?
No the only people who want 3D interfaces are not gamers. Look at the direction linux is going in. They are trying to incorporate 3d effects into the GUI. For one example go look at a video demoing Novell Desktop Linux 10. So are you saying linux users are gamers who have no idea what goes on in the business world? Interesting..
Edited 2006-02-11 18:05
Am I the only one that sees an operating system as a means to access applications/games that will require the most use of my hardware and not for it to take a lot of resources that in the end could really be used for the software’s sake? I really find it ridiculous to run an operating system as though it were a high end video game but maybe I’m the only one.
All modern operating systems eat up a lot of memory. It’s simply a byproduct of putting in features to try and please the widest range of people without going *completely* overboard.
Realistically OS’s have been decreasing in their amount of processor and memory usage by percentage as their features have grown very slowly and the hardware has grown much quicker.
And WPF will actually increase system RAM available. Because it will be moving:
1.) The main drawing buffer into VRAM
2.) Each applications drawn self into VRAM
And it will free up CPU cycles because:
1.) It will move application drawing onto the GPU
2.) It will move final compositing onto the GPU (Currently there’s really no compositing, just a little bit of work to figure out what the minimal amount of drawing is for the current state of windows)
Yes, Vista is going to be doing way more graphics. However, it’s using a processor which almost no applications take advantage of. And for a few reasons:
1.) It’s not something you’re guaranteed to have on every machine.
2.) It’s rarely needed to get the job you want to do done.
If you think WPF is a bad idea you should have been in line complaining about every Windows API, because each application could use that “extra” memory to write its own API’s!
The main question, to me, is will they let us shut most of the effects off but keep glass running. It’d be annoying if it were all or nothing (sort of like how you can’t get those nice Win2k winborders with a nice luna app theme in XP without editing dll’s).
Realistically, even though this stuff is cheap on the gpu it still has a cost. A cost that laptop users will probably feel if they can’t shut some stuff off.
I think WPF is a great idea
And you can still run glass without the shader effects.. people have done it.
Yes but application require more VRAM for open more application windows in same time.
> And WPF will actually increase system RAM available. Because it will be moving:
> 1.) The main drawing buffer into VRAM
> 2.) Each applications drawn self into VRAM
Yep, and so you’ll want to have a 128MB card
.
I asked a DWM project manager what Vista does when you run out of VRAM. He said it tells you you’re out and tells you to shut it off otherwise it’ll be really slow. I actually doubt many people with decent (128MB) cards are going to run into this problem often.
Say an average window is 800×600 pixels. At 32bits per pixel (24bit color, plus alpha) that’s 800*600*4/(1024*1024) = 1.875MB. So, with a 128MB card you’ve got around 50 of those windows. They might be using a few more bits per pixel, but anyway I doubt you’ll find yourself limited to fewer than 40 windows on a decent card, and we’re talking about large windows too.
They could also implement a swap out to main RAM for the case of too many windows. Or, they could simply not store the buffer of the last seen windows, then draw it again if needed (both of these would incur more time if it’s needed for a compositing, but I think they could be done quickly enough that the user wouldn’t notice).
They could also compress old window buffers (they may be doing this, I have no idea). I imagine the buffers would usually compress easily to 75% of their original space.
You guys do realize Apple has been doing this for years and have you heard people (with enough system RAM) complain about how many windows they can have at once?
They could also implement a swap out to main RAM for the case of too many windows. Or, they could simply not store the buffer of the last seen windows, then draw it again if needed (both of these would incur more time if it’s needed for a compositing, but I think they could be done quickly enough that the user wouldn’t notice).
Vista has virtual memory system and a scheduler for graphics. A graphics resource can exist exclusively either in GPU memory, system memory, or on disk, and depending on the GPU capability and driver model, can be swapped in and out of each store or used directly from the respective stores. I can’t speak to the methods they use for window buffers (haven’t checked).
Edited 2006-02-13 10:46
Not exactly, in mandriva 2005, kde/gnome takes up little more than 100 megs of ram, and I’m using half a gig. that and it won’t require me to dedicate system resources that i’d rather use for other things, like games.
The new chips comming from Intel are now way near to 3.2 ghz I mean the Intel Core Duo chip, Merom etc. Would Vista be utilizing the BIOS or would it have moved to using EFI, it would save me money if I could run both Windows and Mac OS X on the same computer (iMac). Sorry if something like this has been posted before, I tried to read all the posts.
> All modern operating systems eat up a lot of memory. It’s simply a byproduct
> of putting in features to try and please the widest range of people without
> going *completely* overboard.
I’m not sure I see the value in a 3D interface (overlapping windows and scroll bars seem to be overwhelming to a disturbingly large percentage of the PC-using population), but I *do* hope MS has the wisdom to make that (and many other things) optional elements during the OS installation.
I’m sure most of the folks at my current place of employment will have very little use for it. All I want is a place to run Word, Visio, a few terminal emulators, and a web browser.
Browser: Links (0.99; OS/2 1 i386; 80×33)
I have yet to see an article telling me WHY a UI upgrade from the Win2k desktop I currently use (on XP) is significantly useful. “Cool” is not enough for me to change anything.
I will try it out thanks to my MSDN Universal subscription, but I doubt I will use it as a main desktop. I need to be able to play WoW and run Office. Anything else is just fluff.
Actually, yes, there’s an excellent article trying to explain it to X11 developers. It has a nice little section about why depending on 2d hardware for drawing is getting more and more idiotic, naive, and silly:
http://www.freedesktop.org/~jonsmirl/graphics.html
See that tiny spot on this picture labelled “2D engine?” Nothing is happening to that, and it’s getting noticeably slower at doing the things it was designed to do than the 3d hardware is for the same things. This guy theorizes it will simply begin to dissappear from cards after a while:
http://dri.freedesktop.org/%7Ejonsmirl/architecture.gif
Also, if they’re using 3d for the desktop I imagine they’ll be able to tab you out of a 3d game faster than they can now
.