Vista - The best operating system ever ! ! ! / General Chatting / Forums

Forums

4hv.org :: Forums :: General Chatting

« Previous topic | Next topic »

Vista - The best operating system ever ! ! !

previous 1 2 3

Move Thread

LAN_403

Steve Conner

Wed Nov 21 2007, 05:36PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Yes, it runs fine with "only" 512MB. :P

I recently upgraded my old Thinkpad 600X to XP. It has 192MB, and it boots fast (not much memory for MS's prefetch algorithms to fill with crap, I guess!) but as soon as you try to launch a few large apps, it goes into virtual memory and starts bogging down.

New Linux distros are probably not much better. Having said that, did you see the thread in Computer Science on the gOS computer? One of its selling points is that it has Skype and a web browser, I guess they reckoned that's what most people want...

And then there were the days when 16MB of memory cost $1k. That's the era PINE belongs to, and it shows.

Bjørn

Thu Nov 22 2007, 12:57AM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

1GB RAM is enough to boot Vista in 25 seconds without modifying the installation in any way. So where does the time disappear? A modern computer is too complex to pinpoint it without looking under the hood. Unless the hardware has a 10 year old performance it should be fixable.

When it comes to PINE it used 10% of my RAM the last time I used it, Windows mail uses 5% of my RAM today and runs a lot faster. So any mail program today is faster and uses less memory and I don't have to put up with a user interface from Bizarroworld. My computer is also a lot cheaper than the old one so there is not much to complain about on a performance scale, the total progress has been significant.

That does not mean I don't get the points about bloat and efficiency, I just find them rather pointless in a context where Linux or similar bloatmonsters are considered a measure of efficiency. It is rather like putting narrower tires on a tractor to get lower air resistance. Yes it makes a difference on paper but in reality it is a useless improvement, it will still be so inefficient that it makes no usable progress towards the ultimate goal of efficient general computing.

Edsger W. Dijkstra said this some years ago about the state of affairs and it is still just as valid:

(.PDF)

He has also said a lot of other interesting things:

Steve Conner

Thu Nov 22 2007, 12:23PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Well, what is efficient computing?! How do you define efficiency? The market defines it as overall value for money, and right now programmer man-hours are far more expensive than silicon chips and electricity.

Hence, we have computers that resemble hot-rodded tractors capable of towing every farm implement in the barn all at once, at highway speeds, so the driver doesn't have to think too hard about which one he needs today.

WaveRider

Thu Nov 22 2007, 02:36PM

Registered Member #29 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500

Let's just say I don't really give a rat's ring about 3-D screen scrolling and slow-fading icons, etc. To me, that's unnecessary bloat! If my machine can factor a matrix of order 1000000 in a few minutes or do a 2^20 point FFT in the time it takes me to press the <ENTER> button, that's what I want!

To me, most exciting advances in efficient computing are found in the embedded applications used in communications hardware. It must be efficient, small and reliable.....which is more than I can say for any version of Windoze, no matter how the marketing drones talk it up! Linux suffers from this syndrome too...with the exception of the "tiny" versions out there...often found in embedded apps (like the ones we use in our WiMAX radios)...

Steve Conner

Thu Nov 22 2007, 03:37PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Well, this is quite close to my own heart, since I do a lot of embedded programming in my job. I started out with assembler, but for the project I'm currently working on, I'm using a PXA270 running Windows CE6 with a 6.4" colour TFT, and coding it all in C and C++ on top of the Win32 API.

I did my bit in the war against bloat by refusing to use .NET and MFC

Bjørn

Thu Nov 22 2007, 03:38PM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

As Dijkstra pointed out the ultimate limits are not very clear and no one seems interested in finding out.

It clearly is not efficient as a whole that some programmers saves a few weeks/months/years of work (no matter how much they are paid) causing millions of people to waste electricity, storage space and time. So it does not matter how cheap the silicon is, the price is paid millions or billions of times over for popular programs. Fringe programs and programs I make myself for different experimental uses are a different, but they also have little impact on the general picture.

Making untrivial software quickly is not very efficient either because it always generates problems later that usually costs far more to put right than was saved in the first place. So there is little gain by not doing something properly. For example it would have cost far less to build Windows secure and bug free from the start than it costs to fix it later. That is a bit of a paradox until we factor in the market. Coming late to the market with a far better product does not work when the market is not static.

The race to make and to buy the latest and greatest is irrational because there is no real gain, only expenses. It is equivalent to borrowing money for running expenses, you get a head start but you will constantly be paying interests so in the long run you will be far worse off.

There is a clear reason for things being like they are, bloated, inefficient and unfinished software sells. It has nothing to do with Adobe or Electronic arts being idiots, it has to do with letting the market decide how to make as much money as possible.

WaveRider

Thu Nov 22 2007, 04:31PM

Registered Member #29 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500

Yes, the market seems to be the driving force behind the bloat....as well as unreliability. Software only has to be "reliable enough" so people will buy it. It is in many ways an optimisation of several competing factors, e.g. functionality, reliability, resource allocation (programmers). The objective function to maximise being of course: financial profit. Microsoft, in many ways have found one good solution of this optimisation problem. The system works just well enough for most people...and given that most people think they are the only game in town allows them to lower the standards without suffering many adverse reports to their shareholders...

We use VxWorks on ARM processor cores in the baseband controllers.. C Code compiled using Ubuntu or CygWin on XP machines....

previous 1 2 3

Moderator(s): Chris Russell, Noelle, Alex, Tesladownunder, Dave Marshall, Dave Billington, Bjørn, Steve Conner, Wolfram, Kizmo, Mads Barnkob