OT: Dead on arrival

[Fairlight]

Only Kenneth Brody would say something like:
> Quoting Richard Kreiss (Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:33:12 -0500):
> 
> > FYI
> >
> > One of my client's sub-let office space to an outside person.  On
> > suggestions from his "friends" he purchased a new Dell computer with
> > Vista.  Well after a week of it constantly locking up and Dell Tech
> > support unable to figure out why, he sent it back.  He is using his
> > old machine with Win 2000.
> >
> > Bad machine or OS Problem, I don't know.
> 
> Did it come with an nVidia video chipset?
> 
>     http://www.google.com/search?q=vista+class+action+video
> 
>     http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/03/0110248

That suit is frivolous.  Hell, then I should start one against ATI.  They
claim to support Windows 2000, but you can't get (and haven't been able to
get) a new driver for it for over a year, more like a year and a half.

ATI's rationale?  Windows 2000 is dead, Microsoft was retiring it, and (I
quote), "Windows 2000 wasn't designed for playing games."  Yup, that's why
it fully supports DirectX 9.0c and all but a couple of the newest games
still support Windows 2000.  This was all brought forward by suggestions
one try the "newer" drivers for ATI cards when "The Elder Scrolls IV:
Oblivion" was released last January or so.  The drivers for Win2K were
already halted at 6.2 and XP had 6.5 at the time.

I talked to ATI and got the above line.  They refused to even reply when I
pointed them at the notice directly on M$'s web site that said flat-out
that it was -not- being dropped or unsupported, and support for the OS
would continue until 2010.

ATI isn't supporting 2000, and given that tactic, I have no reason to
believe they'll support XP for its full lifespan, either.  NVidia, OTOH,
has drivers current for both, and is at least making a concerted effort.
That they're not finalised for Vista may have something to do with the
numerous delays and redesigns that were part of its dev cycle, not to
mention their approval program.  It'll get fixed, I have no doubt.  NVidia
is at least responsive to its customers, contrary to the whining contingent
now that has no clue how good they have it.

I'd buy NVidia over ATI now any day.  ATI pulled an Adaptec Maneuver on me,
and will now receive the full benefit of their shortsightedness.

As for upgrading to Vista right now...  Why?  There'd have to be one
hell of a compelling reason for me to upgrade to it from XP, even on my
Vista-ready notebook.  Why waste CPU and RAM resources that could go to the
apps when the OS offers nothing compelling enough for me that I should make
my software suffer with less resources?  Nothing I've seen about it to date
says, "Compelling."  Most features say, "Bloat."  And from what I read, the
new fancy UI they slapped on the front (that I'd probably want to rip
straight off and go to native mode--if it's even available, anyone know if
it can be de-chromed like 2K and XP can?) is one of the most
resource-intensive features--and a primary reason to get the higher end
versions, as it's only included with them.

For my money, the hardware firepower is there to support applications, not
the OS upon which they run.  And to be honest, I had the same issue with
linux kernel 2.4 based systems, as they ran slower on the same exact system
than 2.2 based systems, with no tangible gain for my purposes.

And it's even worse for gamers, as those are some of -the- most resource
intensive applications in the commercial sector.  You don't want to feed
the OS, you want to feed the app for optimal performance.  

This OS release also comes at a time when we don't currently have a next
generation of more powerful CPU's coming out (not that I've heard of), but
we're on the same hardware...it just -has- to be near top of the line to
get decent performance, so it's shaving the margin for apps even thinner
because there's nothing really reasonably priced with which to replace it.
And I think much of the bloat would outweigh or at best possibly break even
with any 64-bit or dual-core optimisations.

>From my perspective, Vista is a bad bet until more powerful systems come
around in a new cycle--especially when M$ plans to sell XP in parallel for
a year yet.  It seems counterproductive to even think about it unless one
absolutely needs some new feature they added.

mark->
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