Total Members Voted: 50
i think dx10 is gonna be a considerable bane to the forces that want to have more games on linux.This lack of backward compatibility with dx 9 cards is really nastyyes they pushing progress in a way, but its also blatantly obvious its merely to make sure that drm and hdcp thingy get strong footholds in next gen
DX10 will use much faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs), and won't incorporate older versions of DirectX, as is done today. DirectX 9 will be supported side-by-side, through DirectX 9.L (basically, that's DX9 for the Vista driver model). So right there, without using any new features, DX10 should be more efficient and faster.The DX10 graphics API will usher in unified vertex and pixel shaders, and introduce the concept of "geometry shaders" that can act on not just single vertices, but whole triangles and their adjacent vertices. Developers will be able to stream out data from the GPU and reuse it without needing the CPU to do a single thing, so a lot of the CPU load seen in current graphics drivers and games should be reduced. DX10 should allow for more flexible and granular graphics memory access, and in general allow GPUs to be far more flexible and powerful than before.Perhaps one of the best features of DX10 is the removal of capability bits, or "cap bits." Today, graphics cards don't have to support everything in DirectX 9 to be a "DX9 graphics card." There are lots of optional features, and the drivers have to report to the OS exactly what it can and can't do with a set of cap bits. This has been a huge headache for developers, as different cards all support different features, or perform the same operations in different ways. In DX10, either you meet the spec or you don't—no more supporting only these or those texture formats, and this or that shader model but only with this level of precision.Graphics cards will have to produce results within a very small margin of error to be considered DX10 compliant, so developers shouldn't have to worry about the same operation producing different visuals on different cards. As far as developers are concerned, they should finally be able to simply write to the API and know that any DX10 compliant card will produce the correct result. Naturally, there will still be differences in performance between different graphics cards to consider.DirectX 9 should, when the drivers are well optimized, run faster under the Vista driver model than Windows XP. But DX10 will do more to reduce CPU utilization, increase graphics card power and flexibility, and enforce hardware standards that should make life a lot easier on developers. Upon release, there will probably be some Windows XP games that will have enhanced DX10 modes when run under Vista (like Crysis and Flight Simulator X), and maybe even a few "gotta have it" Vista-only games that require DX10. Microsoft has already announced Halo 2, but others should follow (and hopefully, they won't be ports of two year old Xbox games).
Pricing for full retail versions of the software will be Windows Vista Ultimate, $399; Windows Vista Business, $299; Windows Vista Home Premium, $239; and Windows Vista Home Basic, $199.Upgrades from Windows XP are priced at Windows Vista Ultimate, $259; Windows Vista Business, $199; Windows Vista Home Premium, $159; and Windows Vista Home Basic, $99.
If they do the same thing as XP where you could just insert your previous install CD for the upgrade, I will just get a Home Premium upgrade. Side note ... Just installed Kubuntu 6.06 this morning before going to work, dual-booting with XP. KDE is sweet.
Note that the requirement for clean installs does not mean that the user is required to purchase a full version of the operating system. XP Pro, XP Pro x64 and Windows 2000 users will still be able to purchase the "upgrade edition" of any version of Vista. They just won't be able to upgrade with their existing files and settings in place.Users of Windows versions prior to 2000 will not be eligible for the upgrade version of Vista and must both purchase a full version and do a clean install.
Latvians laugh at Vista Fowl play as Vole gets the birdBy Nick Farrell: Friday 08 September 2006, 07:38 MICROSOFT MARKETERS are having a hell of a job establishing the super soaraway operating system in the pecking order in Latvia.Apparently, whenever they ring up peddling Vista, Latvians burst out laughing because the name means "chicken" or "frumpy woman" in the local lingo.The poor sales person rings up and talks about 101 things you can do with a chicken and they think he or she is flogging a cookbook. Of course if they think he or she is talking about a frumpy woman then they are likely to think they are getting an obscene phone call.Microsoft Latvia is trying to get around the problem by playing up Vista's positive aspects and the more poetic, international definition of the name. A spokesVole said that when Latvians learn of the technical opportunities the system offers, they will pay more attention to its advantages, not its name.She said that Vole had managed to achieve product recognition without any ad campaigns. With a name like "Chicken" we are not surprised, however we would have thought that a frumpy woman competing with the likes of Apple’s pastal spring collection would have proven a bit of a nightmare.Fortunately for Vole only 1.3 million people speak Latvian and that is not enough to play chicken with Microsoft’s global domination for the operating system.
Microsoft Vista is still a mess More RC1 ramblingsBy Dean Pullen: Monday 11 September 2006, 07:00WE'VE HAD THE pleasure of using Vista since its very early builds. The first release candidate is now upon us, and was made available to download by TechBeta and Technology Adoption Program program subscribers last week. MSDN and TechNet subscribers should now also be able to grab the near-complete RC1 release, build number 5600. One INQUIRER columnist has already given us his positive and then negative spin on RC1, and further testing from this hack has uncovered further problems.Throughout the testing of the past releases, it was strikingly evident how incomplete Vista's code was. Various incomplete features, missing graphics, place-holder text messages, and a plethora of bugs, left many feeling very underwhelmed, and increasingly worried by the next operating system from Microsoft.A release candidate should consist of all features that will appear in the finished product, in an almost final state, with simple bug fixing and last-minute problem finding being the main concerns of the testers and developers. A beta 2 'pre-RC1' build, numbered 5536, of Vista was only recently made available for download just before RC1, and was considered surprisingly stable and bug-free compared to previous betas. RC1, then, should easily cope under scrutiny from the INQUIRER.InstallationThe install didn't go well. The test system had a Nvidia based RAID setup over two SATA disks which had been running XP perfectly for some time. Vista refused to see the RAID, even with beta Vista-specific drivers from Nvidia. Booting Vista from within XP allowed setup to see the hard-disks, but after the preliminary setup routines, and a reboot, Vista failed to again see the drives. Searching Nvidia forums gave an answer - load the Vista specific drivers in an XP-based Vista setup even when it recognizes the RAID. The install then worked. Its surprising one of the most utilised RAID supporting motherboardchipsets from one of the biggest suppliers of chipsets are still having problems with their Vista drivers at this very late stage.Previous critical examination of Microsoft's new beloved font types in our Office 2007 articles seems to have fallen on deaf ears - the installation font looked awful, with random spacing occurring between letters much like that in the Office beta's. It looks amateurish at best.Further hardware problems came from the very popular Creative Audigy card that was utilised in the test system. Vista failed to recognize the card, so a quick look on Creative's site uncovered Vista specific drivers. A quick install and reboot, ensured a consistent BSOD on boot. Resorting back to the last known good configuration sorted this, and an install of the older XP drivers seemed to work without any further problems. Again it's surprising and very disturbing that a driver for such a popular sound device is still at a very poor stage in development.RebootingSome drivers were previously copied onto a USB memory stick for quick installation once Vista was up and running. Vista automatically recognized the USB memory stick, as you'd expect, but copying a file to the desktop failed (the copy dialog wouldn't complete) and a 0 byte file then remained on the desktop which wasn't removable until a reboot.Installing Windows Live Messenger worked fine. For some reason the build on Microsoft's website was old and the program instantly asked if the newer version should be installed. A quick download later, and the installation hung and couldn't be closed without a reboot.During setup you're asked to name your PC. On examining the test PC's name in the networking properties, it was obvious this had at some point been discarded - a further renaming was required, which then required a full reboot. Installing Nvidia Nforce drivers for the system's motherboard required a reboot - and on restarting Vista, another reboot was required to finish the installation. So much for rebooting Windows less.MediaMedia center is now built in to Windows, as opposed to shipping as a separate OS offering. It's had various GUI changes, but some of the older GUI still exists - surely this should all be complete now, considering this is a release candidate? Media player failed to bring up the 'first time setup' procedure on the first attempt to try to play a video file and only audio could be heard with no video, until media player was restarted and the aforementioned procedure finally kicked into gear.PerformanceThe test PC contained an Athlon64 3200+ on a Nvidia Nforce 4 chipset based motherboard with 1gb RAM and a Geforce 7600GT - hardly awe inspiring, but a decent entry/mid level PC, which runs XP and most modern games very happily. Vista start up takes around 15-20 seconds longer than the old install of XP on this machine, and takes around 10 seconds more to unload for a reboot. The OS in general appears sluggish compared to XP and resource hungry - the memory footprint on a fresh boot of Vista takes around 500-550mb without any other tasks running, and the CPU never seems to run idle. The old program-loaded XP install took around 300mb.InterfaceThe partially-transparent windows look nice, but I'd prefer opaque boarders if it meant the performance of XP. The 3D presentation of windows when flipping between programs isn't particularly useful and isn't even the alt-tab default - a thumbnail preview of the window appears, much like the Windows XP powertoy add-on.Where's the run command gone in the start menu? This is highly annoying, and you often find yourself trying to quickly run a command window but having to resort to the search function. The start menu no longer expands into an observable tree like it has for the last 11 years, instead each level of the tree appears in the main start menu pop up, which is particularly unnavigable and unintuitive. Each folder within the explorer view seems to have its own choice of folder viewing - one folder will show you thumbnail folder previews, another will show you a simple list, with little consistency throughout the contents of your hard-drive.The level-up button that appeared in explorer has also disappeared. It's now much more of a pain to transverse any folder tree. As Paul Thurrott points out too, back buttons now tend (its highly inconsistent) to appear in the top left hand corner of a window, whilst next buttons still appear in the bottom right - a fairly counter-intuitive design decision.The icons that appear in the bottom right task tray and the quick launch icons are basic, unintuitive and could've been originally shipped with Windows 3.1.User Account Control (UAC) is ridiculously annoying. It pops up far to frequently when trying to configure your system and states administrator access is required, even when you're an administrative user - clicking continue is all that is required to bypass it, but the sluggish performance of Vista means the pop up and dark screen effect makes the process take longer than needed.ConclusionVista's still a mess. It's meant to be at release candidate stage, yet vendor's are struggling to provide sufficient driver support, features are still missing or not yet complete, and its performance compared to XP is still poor. Nowadays hardware is cheap, and it would be sufficiently acceptable to upgrade in anticipation of a wonderfully revolutionary OS. Unfortunately Vista provides little to no benefit for end users compared to that of the previous version of Windows, released five years ago in 2001. There are no upgrades or features to the OS that are sufficiently compelling to make upgrading a necessity, some which were earlier promised, allowed for sufficient reason for an upgrade to be considered, but these have been removed one by one over the course of Vista's prolonged patchy road of development, and now Vista appears little more than an ill-performing version of XP with a glorified interface. µ
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