James Beck wrote:
> In article <4858b51b$0$14995$8...@news.wineasy.se>, 
> d...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com says...
>> MC wrote:
>>> Warning against unsigned drivers is a good thing.  It's amazing how
>>> much flak Microsoft takes for doing things right.
>>>
>>> "Thou shalt bash Vista" seems to be one of the commandments for geek
>>> wannabees, along with "Thou shalt rant against top-posting."
>>>
>>> (Want to bet this will bring out an anti-top-posting rant?)
>> You didn't top-post - you failed to quote properly :-)
>>
>> Warning against unsigned drivers is a good thing - disabling unsigned 
>> drivers is a bad thing.  There's a difference.
>>
>> Signed drivers also introduce a false sense of security in users.  When 
>> a driver is signed, it means you can be fairly sure that company X made 
>> the driver - it gives absolutely no guarantees that it will work, and 
>> that it won't trash your machine!
>>
>> If you are a small company, the time and cost involved in getting 
>> drivers signed is just not realistic.  So forcing driver signing in 
>> Vista 64 is another one of the thoughtless "kill the little guy" moves. 
>>   I suppose Vista 64 is not that popular yet, but more demanding users 
>> are going to see that with Vista taking so much memory itself, 4 GB 
>> doesn't stretch that far any more, and using a 64-bit system has its 
>> appeals.
>>
> More like 3GB.  If you install 4GB of memory, there is little more than 
> 3GB available in the address space after the reserved space for memory 
> mapped devices and other goodies, and the most apps are given a 2GB 
> memory/virtual memory chunk.  If you try to turn on the 3GB switch in 
> XP, odds are you will trash your video driver.  
> 

A section of the memory map (768MB in total, I believe) is reserved for 
the PCI space and other peripherals.  So you get 3.25 GB max RAM on 
32-bit windows.

> I wanted to build an 8GB system with XP Pro64 or Vista Ultimate 64 bit, 
> but after all the crap I keep reading, I'm not sure it is worth the 
> trouble to make the switch.  
> 

I've got 64-bit XP on this machine at home - more out of curiosity than 
need.  It works for most things, but there are definite compatibility 
problems.  16-bit programs don't work at all (I've a few of them left), 
and 32-bit programs that work at a lower level than usual have problems. 
  For example, Virtual Box needs a 64-bit binary rather than a 32-bit 
binary - it works, but it will not have nearly as much testing as the 
32-bit version.  And netdrive (a webdav client for windows, since the 
native windows version is so badly broken) won't install.  There's no 
64-bit version since it is abandonware.

All in all, I can't recommend 64-bit XP for general use - and I expect 
the same applies for Vista 64-bit.

On 2008-06-18, MC <for.address.look@ href="http://www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc>" target=_blank rel="nofollow">www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc>; wrote:
> Warning against unsigned drivers is a good thing.  It's amazing how much flak Microsoft takes for doing things
right. 
>
> "Thou shalt bash Vista" seems to be one of the commandments for geek wannabees, along with "Thou
shalt rant against top-posting."

But what about "Thou shall rant against posts that are not wrapped
to under 78 columns"?  In a standards compliant newsreader your
post above is two long lines.

-- 
Andrew Smallshaw
a...@sdf.lonestar.org

David Brown wrote:
> ....
>
> Warning against unsigned drivers is a good thing - disabling unsigned
> drivers is a bad thing.  There's a difference.
>

A pretty huge difference, I might add. That Vista thing (which I have
never had and hope to never have anywhere near me) just takes the
next step of what MS have been consistently doing since day
one - limiting computer usefulness for the general public as much
as possible in a publically acceptable manner.
It remains to be seen if they will succeed at pushing through all
the new limitations they bring with vista, I suspect they will.
They just know what they are doing, the moment they feel something
will not be accepted they retract it for a future date and move on.

But succeeding among the general public is one thing - all they
give them is an improved TV-set which is all 99+% of the people
are after anyway - whereas succeeding among users like readers
of this group is another, their TV-sets seem to have become just
useless (again, I am saying this by just watching from the sideline,
I do not need any MS or intel etc. to do my development work, I
am quite fine with my DPS based toolchain).
There may be some things to happen next few years because of
MS trying to reach a bit too far this time, though - we'll see.

Didi

------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff               Transgalactic Instruments

http://www.tgi-sci.com
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/sets/72157600228621276/

Original message: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.arch.embedded/msg/4594141abde6fbaf?dmode=source

David Brown <d...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> writes:

>   I suppose Vista 64 is not that popular yet, but more demanding users 
> are going to see that with Vista taking so much memory itself, 4 GB 
> doesn't stretch that far any more, and using a 64-bit system has its 
> appeals.

Interesting.  It wasn't that many years ago that the hardware
capability and capacity to run Vista was considered a supercomputer.
Yesterday's supercomputer wouldn't even be able to start Vista,
much less do anything useful with it.

I ran a machine for many years with a 50 Mbyte hard drive and
got along nicely.  I increased the size when I could no longer
get replacements that small but only went to about 100 Mbytes.
Today, you need two orders of magnitude more disk space just
to hold the OS!

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EventHelix.com wrote:
> Vista is OK performance wise but it is incompatible with older
> programs like Visual C++ 6.0.
> 
> You do need at least 2 GB of RAM for decent performance.
> 

I disagree; I've been running Vista for the past 5 months on 1GB of RAM
and it's only when I do audio or image editing that it starts to run
short. For embedded work, all my compilers run smooth and I find it to be
vastly more stable than XP.

I have, however, heard that some embedded tools do not work with vista
(driver incompatibilities). Luckily I only use Microchip and JTAG tools
which are well supported.
- --
Brendan Gillatt | GPG Key: 0xBF6A0D94
brendan {a} brendangillatt (dot) co (dot) uk
http://www.brendangillatt.co.uk
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Alex Colvin wrote:
>>> Which begs the question: What were they thinking up there in Redmond?
> 
>> They were thinking that they want to protect their DRM model. Add
>> anything not approved by the gods and your system starts to do funky
>> things whenever multimedia is used.
> 
> They were thinking that with solid DRM they could get the RIAA and MPAA to
> sign on, and deliver a killer media box. That's a much bigger market than
> hardware hackers, and it could pay on each transaction, instead of for
> each license.
> 
> Besides, the rest of us will update eventually, when the drivers
> stabilize.
> 

Don't count on me upgrading anytime soon ...

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

In article <3a090679-c2a6-46b3-8d27-
2...@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>, Didi says...
> David Brown wrote:
> > ....
> >
> > Warning against unsigned drivers is a good thing - disabling unsigned
> > drivers is a bad thing.  There's a difference.
> >
> 
> A pretty huge difference, I might add. That Vista thing (which I have
> never had and hope to never have anywhere near me) just takes the
> next step of what MS have been consistently doing since day
> one - limiting computer usefulness for the general public as much
> as possible in a publically acceptable manner.

They do seem intent on increasing the viability of MAC OS and Linux 
don't they.

Robert
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:53:29 -0700 (PDT), rickman <g...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I have been looking to buy a new computer for a bit and I had just
>about decided on a Windows XP based system from Dell.  Today I called
>them and found that not only are they not going to sell XP machines
>after tomorrow, but the orders are flooding in!  It seems pretty crazy
>to me that if XP is still that popular, they would stop selling it.
>Is this something mandated by MicroSoft?
>
>So the question is, is Vista ready for prime time?  I have heard
>nothing but bad about it and I know that a lot of software vendors
>have yet to support it... at least the last time I looked.  Are the
>rumors true of Vista being a PITA or just plain incompatible?  Is it
>time to switch to Linux?
>
>What experiences have people had with Vista?
>
>Rick


OK, many myths in this thread. Vista is fine so long as you dont have
software that directly addresses hardware. It will run fine on 1gb of
memory. There is no performance loss, in fact there are increases in
certain areas. It does index everything which can slow down file
operations occasionaly, but this can be disabled. I have been using
Vista since it was released and I am yet to have any problems. I did
upgrade my memory at one stage, but this was only so I could run
several instances of virtual pc, as you would also have to do with xp

If you are an engineer and you want to fiddle with everything and run
outdated software, then Vista is a no go. If you want something that
works out of the box on a new pc then vista is fantastic. IF you want
to install vista on old hardware, then I would probably give it a
miss.

Op Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:40:42 +0200 schreef The Real Andy  
<t...@nospam.com>:
> On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:53:29 -0700 (PDT), rickman <g...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I have been looking to buy a new computer for a bit and I had just
>> about decided on a Windows XP based system from Dell.  Today I called
>> them and found that not only are they not going to sell XP machines
>> after tomorrow, but the orders are flooding in!  It seems pretty crazy
>> to me that if XP is still that popular, they would stop selling it.
>> Is this something mandated by MicroSoft?
>>
>> So the question is, is Vista ready for prime time?  I have heard
>> nothing but bad about it and I know that a lot of software vendors
>> have yet to support it... at least the last time I looked.  Are the
>> rumors true of Vista being a PITA or just plain incompatible?  Is it
>> time to switch to Linux?
>>
>> What experiences have people had with Vista?
>
>
> OK, many myths in this thread. Vista is fine so long as you dont have
> software that directly addresses hardware.

Like device drivers, that have to be signed by MS?

> It will run fine on 1gb of
> memory. There is no performance loss, in fact there are increases in
> certain areas. It does index everything which can slow down file
> operations occasionaly, but this can be disabled. I have been using
> Vista since it was released and I am yet to have any problems. I did
> upgrade my memory at one stage, but this was only so I could run
> several instances of virtual pc, as you would also have to do with xp
>
> If you are an engineer and you want to fiddle with everything and run
> outdated software, then Vista is a no go. If you want something that
> works out of the box on a new pc then vista is fantastic. IF you want
> to install vista on old hardware, then I would probably give it a
> miss.

If you need more expensive and power-hungry hardware to be able to perform  
mostly the same tasks, then I cannot possibly consider it an "upgrade".   
And if you really need eye-candy to prevent you from becoming depressed,  
then there are IMHO better ways to spend your money.

So how can you say that Vista is fine?



-- 
Gemaakt met Opera's revolutionaire e-mailprogramma:  
http://www.opera.com/mail/

On Jun 18, 12:02=A0pm, Alex Colvin <al...@TheWorld.com> wrote:

> They were thinking that with solid DRM they could get the RIAA and MPAA t=
o
> sign on, and deliver a killer media box. That's a much bigger market than

And what exactly have movies and MP3s got to do with a workday [for
most people with a day job]? If they put it all in Media Center
Edition, no problem! They're making a set-top box and that's fine.
Putting it in all OS variants - instant unviability.