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Vista loses Olympic raceXP gets gold, beats young rivalBy Nick Farrell: Thursday 16 August 2007, 08:56Click here to find out more!WHILE MICROSOFT'S Vista operating system is being touted by the company as the greatest thing since sliced bread, organisers of the 2008 Olympics are not so sure.PC company Lenovo, whch is supplying masses of computers to the Beijing Organising Committee does not think the operating system is stable enough and are using Vole's Windows XP instead.Yang Yuanqing, chairman of Lenovo, miffed the Vole during a briefing in Beijing earlier this month, when he said that the Olympic Games require mature, stable technologies and were not the place to try out something new.As a result, all the Olympic Games' vital PC-related tasks, including games management systems, the results systems, commentator information systems, and the staff and scheduling systems, will run on XP.Lenovo have also ruled out any wireless networking among the core systems in a bid to get stability.The ex-IBM firm, an official sponsor of the games, has delivered 12,000 desktop PCs and 2,000 printers to the organisers in Beijing, in addition to 800 laptops and 700 servers.A spokesman told the INQ yesterday that Vista would run in the Internet Lounges and in PCs provided for use by the athletes.But, "the Beijing Organizing Committee is using Windows XP for the Lenovo computing equipment that supports the infrastructure of the Games, such as accreditation, Games Management and scorekeeping," he said. µ
With that amount of PC's, dont you think that they just decided to cut software licence costs by going with XP rather than Vista? that would make alot of corporate saving sense?
Vista audio throttles network speedCircumstantial evidenceBy Egan Orion: Wednesday 22 August 2007, 11:07Click here to find out more!REPORTS have surfaced all over the worldwide wibble-net complaining about slow network performance in Microsoft Vista. Now a thread on a 2CPU forum associates slow network speeds under Vista with playing audio.Apparently playing music causes Vista to throttle network performance to a small fraction of speeds seen when audio is not being played. Network speed degradation seems to occur even when the audio is paused.Turning off Vista's automatic network "tuning" doesn't resolve the problem, users report.(The following commands toggle Vista's network auto tuning:Off -- "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabledOn -- "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=enabled)One forum poster made an observation that might be relevant:"Try turning off the SuperFetch service. My Vista box had horrible gigabit transfer speeds before I killed the service (5% or 50mbit). I think SuperFetch was unintelligently trying to cache the file it was transferring, causing the HD to bottleneck transfer speeds. With SuperFetch turned off, I'm getting 180-200mbit."But that doesn't work for everyone, so go figure.In this, Vista seems to be showing its legacy of "cooperative multitasking" from Windows 3.0 onward. Another mark against upgrading to Vista anytime soon. µ
After months of speculation, rumor, and silence from Microsoft, the company is finally talking publicly about Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Microsoft says that the first public beta of Windows Vista SP1 will be available in the next few weeks to TechNET and MSDN subscribers. The company confirmed that a smaller group of testers is already putting SP1 through its paces. As to when the general public can expect to try a beta of SP1, the company only says that it will offer a prerelease version sometime after this second wave of testing, once the company considers the code stable enough to be essentially a release candidate. Assuming the second beta in September goes well, we suspect that a public preview will happen in November or December. Microsoft has also published a White Paper on Vista SP1 that details many of its changes. I highly recommend reading through it. It indicates that SP1 will address administration and management features, security issues, real support for EFI, exFAT support, Direct3D 10.1, and the performance and compatibility issues recently released, among other things. If you pay close attention, however, you'll notice that the bulk of the planned updates were already addressed in the "performance" and "compatibility" packs that were released a few weeks ago. Saying that quality must come first, Microsoft Product Manager Nick White said that the final version of SP1 is currently slated to ship in the first quarter of 2008, but that this date is only a target. "We'll determine the exact release date of SP1 after we have reached that quality bar," he wrote on the Vista blog. Furthermore, since the Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 efforts are synchronized, the Windows Server 2008 team is also aiming for a release to manufacturing in the first quarter of next year. Let's hope this is the last delay for Windows Server 2k8. Service Pack doesn't want to be a celebMicrosoft is working hard to change perception about Service Packs, largely because the company feels they are overemphasized as critical OS updates. White points to Windows Update as the real venue for critical updates, and he noted that the performance, reliability and compatibility updates we told you about a few weeks ago have now been pushed out via Windows Update to Vista users. White is indeed correct: the service packs of 2007 are quite different than those of 2000, now that Windows Update is mature and well-integrated into Vista. That doesn't change the fact that Microsoft still issues Service Packs, however. And let's face it, there aren't many Vista users out there disinterested in when they can get their hands on SP1.
Eric Traut, one of Microsoft's chief operating system design engineers, gave a fascinating demo (WMV) recently at the University of Illinois, where he talked about where the Windows core is going and ended with a sneak peek at the kernel of the next version of Windows, known by the exciting codename of "Windows 7." The demo showed what Windows would look like if it was literally stripped down to the core, showing the kind of work that is going on to optimize the aging NT kernel. Traut runs a team of about 200 software engineers at Microsoft that is responsible for the core kernel scheduling, memory management, boot sequence, and virtualization technology such as Virtual PC and Virtual Server. The latter technologies are becoming more and more important as servers get more powerful and gain more and more CPU cores, and it was clear from the demonstration that Microsoft is placing significant effort into integrating virtual machine technology into everything that they do. The release of Virtual PC as a free download last year was just the beginning: Windows Server 2008 will ship with significant VM enhancements, and Windows 7 will only carry on from there. Windows 7Why "Windows 7"? The number is based on Microsoft's internal operating system numbers: the first version of Windows NT, 3.1, was given the same number as the "Classic" Windows when it was released in 1992. Since then there has been NT 4, Windows 2000 (NT 5), Windows XP (NT 5.1), and Windows Vista (NT 6). You can check these numbers by typing "ver" at a command prompt on any of these operating systems. Traut ran a stripped-down version of Windows 7 called "MinWin" that included only the core kernel: for the first time Windows NT has been seen running naked, without even a GUI to dress itself. It ran only a miniature web server that would display simple HTML pages, including some dynamically-generated pages that showed the task list and other properties of MinWin itself. Thirteen tasks were running, most of which would be familiar to anyone who has opened Task Manager: smss.exe, csrss.exe, and svchost.exe were all there, plus the mini web server httpsrv.exe. The OS ran under Virtual PC, and this allowed Traut to show the audience exactly how many resources it was consuming: about 25MB on disk (compare with 14GB for a full Vista install) and 40MB of RAM. The OS booted up in about 20 seconds inside Virtual PC. Still not quite as lightweight as, say, AmigaOS or QNX, but remarkably small for Windows. Traut admitted that he would "still like to see it get smaller." A virtual futureTraut, like most good engineers, is honest about the pros and cons of code that he works on. "I fully admit that there are some major problems in the Windows OS that are driving some of these [improvements in the core and virtual machine technology]" he said, in full self-deprecating mode. He reviewed some of the reasons one might want to run older operating systems in a VM, such as backwards compatibility and resource management. The idea, of course, has been around for a long time—Windows NT 3.1 ran older 16-bit programs in a VM called "Windows on Windows" or "WOW" for short. The technology has improved since then, however. Windows Server Virtualization, like VMWare ESX and Xen on Linux, will run in what is called "Hypervisor" mode, where a host OS is not needed. This greatly improves performance and can take full advantage of new on-chip VM hardware from companies like Intel. Parts of this technology will appear as "Viridian" as an add-on for Windows Server 2008. Traut doesn't believe virtual machines are a panacea, however; he said that sometimes they could be used as a "crutch" to solve a problem that could be better addressed by improving the core of the operating system itself. However, in server applications, VMs are clearly an idea whose time has come. Powerful servers that can run multiple OSes at once can blur the line between traditional PC hardware and big-iron mainframes and increase the power of an existing datacenter. Compatibility is another big advantage of VMs. Traut showed, just for fun, Windows versions 1.03, 2.11, "Classic" 3.1, and NT 4.0, running under Virtual PC. Few people need to run applications that are designed for these ancient operating environments, but the point was to demonstrate how VMs can solve even the trickiest of compatibility problems by simply running the entire OS that the application was written for. If you don't want to sit through the entire one-hour presentation, istartedsomething.com has a handy nine-minute excerpt with the MinWin demo.
Vista deludes itself into thinking driver upgrades are major changesWill shut you downBy Nick Farrell: Wednesday, 24 October 2007, 9:40 AMA FEATURE in Microsoft Vista means that something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.According to APC mag, minor upgrades to your desktop will result in your PC will going into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code.Hack, James Bannan noticed the flaw when he swapped over the graphics card on his Vista Ultimate box. A few days later he got a Windows Activation prompt and had to speak to a Microsoft customer service representative before he got all his functionality back and the feeling in his toes.Wondering why he got the shut down request, Bannon obtained some tools from Microsoft which listed all the hardware changes on that machine since activation. Vista thought his disk controller had changed, so the graphics card change was the final change which tripped deactivation.But Bannan had not changed his disk controller, all he had done was upgraded the Intel Matrix Storage Manager application. Vista reported this driver upgrade as a major hardware change event.It appears that Volish Vista designers had not worked out that if you change device drivers it does not necessarily mean you have changed your hardware. It could be, as in Bannan's case, you have updated or changed the drivers and not the hardware.This is quite common as some of the drivers which ship with Vista are out of date or not as good as what you can find on the manufacturer's web site.
Microsoft forces Desktop Search on puntersBusiness systems slowBy Nick Farrell: Thursday, 25 October 2007, 8:59 AMBUSINESSES and boggers are fuming after Microsoft's glorious updating system forced them to download its resource hogging Windows Desktop Search 3.01.The moment that Windows Desktop Search 3.01 is downloaded it sniffs through your hard-drive and indexes it at the speed of an asthmatic tortoise dragging an unwilling elephant to lunch.Admins throughout the land are seeing all their clients slowing to a crawl and file servers are unable to cope with the load.Window Server Update Services is widely seen as the culprit. Even if admins had configured system to "install updates" only for existing programs, the Update Services software decided they needed it.One bogger moaned that when he removed it, after he rebooted, it came back.This is the second time that Vole has been in the headlines for installing unwanted software without telling anyone.
Vista needs more memory than Windows for SupercomputersStrange but trueBy Egan Orion: Monday, 19 November 2007, 10:24 AMMICROSOFT VISTA requires more hardware resources than the Vole's Windows for Supercomputers.Officially called Windows HPC Server 2008, Microsoft's offering for high performance computing runs in as little as 512MB of system memory, though it supports up to 64GB.Only the Vole's relatively crippled, low-end Windows Vista Home Basic runs in just 512MB of RAM, according to Microsoft. It specifies that all other versions of Windows Vista have a minimum system memory requirement of 1GB.Further, the people who have actually used Vista say that 1GB of RAM isn't enough and claim that Vista's so bloated that it really needs at least 2GB. Indeed, some claim that it really takes 4GB of RAM to make Vista seem responsive. The high-end 64-bit versions of Vista support up to 128GB of RAM.What this points up is something we've all known for years, that is, that Microsoft isn't in business to benefit its customers but to fleece them. It's in cahoots with OEMs to march the computer buying public on an endless upgrade treadmill, upon which Windows drives demand for faster CPUs and more RAM, and - thanks to preload agreements - new PCs push new versions of Windows.Vista is a bloated resource hog, and slow. In contrast, this writer is scribbling this article, streaming internet radio, and playing online poker in a Java window - all in 256MB of RAM on an old 1.4GHz CPU that's only 25 per cent to 35 per cent busy... under Mandriva Linux 2007. µ
we have no choice in anycase, upgrade or die soon as many new apps are going to be vista only soon.
Vista Worries Cause Businesses to Consider Macs and LinuxBy Steven J. Vaughan-NicholsNovember 20, 2007A recent survey shows that 44 percent of businesses are considering Mac OS and Linux rather than switching to Vista. Be the first to comment on this articleKACE, a systems management appliance company, announced on Nov. 19 that its new survey revealed that 90 percent of the Windows users are concerned about migrating to Vista, and that 44 percent would consider deploying Macs or Linux-based systems to avoid Vista migration.While Microsoft claims that Vista deployments are increasing, analysts, such as Forrester, observe that business Vista adoption has been going extremely slowly and that Linux is becoming a serious contender for the enterprise desktop.KACE, which focuses on system management rather than having its own dog in the desktop operating system wars, sells system administration appliances that run on FreeBSD. Its appliances can be used to mange both desktops and servers running Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS.In response to concerns about unwanted complexity to their heterogeneous IT environments, 44 percent of respondents reported they would consider deployment of alternative operating systems, such as Macintosh and Linux, to avoid migrating to Vista. A mere 13 percent see their company moving all its desktops to Vista. Of those who consider using alternative operating systems, 89 percent said it would be beneficial to use a single systems management interface to manage all types of operating systems in their environments.In a follow-up story, in eWEEK Careers, Howard Graylin, a senior technical analyst in Ridgeland, Miss., echoed the concerns of many IT staffers when he said: "Personally, I'm dreading the amount of time it'll take to upgrade each machine from a hardware standpoint—adding memory or whatever—and from an operating system upgrade. It's just time consuming."
Windows XP SP3 boasts speed boost, testers claimGregg Keizer Click here to find out more!November 24, 2007 (Computerworld) Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the update scheduled to release next year, runs Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported Friday.Devil Mountain Software, which earlier in the week claimed Windows Vista SP1 was no faster than the original, repeated some of the same tests on the release candidate of Windows XP SP3, the service pack recently issued to about 15,000 testers."We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," said Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's chief technology officer, in a post to a company blog Friday.Devil Mountain ran its OfficeBench suite of performance benchmarks on a laptop equipped with Office 2007, Microsoft's latest application suite. The notebook -- the same unit used in the Vista/Vista SP1 tests earlier -- featured a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory. The results reported a 10% speed increase under XP SP3 when compared to SP2, the service pack released in 2004."Since SP3 was supposed to be mostly a bug-fix/patch consolidation release, the unexpected speed boost comes as a nice bonus," Barth said. "In fact, XP SP3 is shaping up to be a 'must-have' update for the majority of users who are still running Redmond's not-so-latest and greatest desktop OS."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.While Microsoft was not available for comment over the weekend about XP's performance, it defended Vista SP1 after Devil Mountain's first round of tests. "We appreciate the excitement to evaluate Windows Vista SP1 as soon as possible. However, the service pack is still in the development phase and will undergo several changes before being released," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.Microsoft has at times struggled to wean users from the six-year-old Windows XP and get them to migrate to Vista. During 2007, for example, it made several XP concessions, including adding five years to the support lifespan of the Home edition and extending OEM and retail sales of XP through June 2008, as it recognized that customers wanted to hold on to the older OS.Recently, Forrester Research said that XP remained Vista's biggest rival, and cited survey data that showed American and European businesses would delay Vista deployment, in part because of application incompatibility issues with the new OS. "That's causing a lot of XP shops to take a wait-and-see approach to Vista," said Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray two weeks ago.
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