Why Windows Vista won't suck.

[Warrior]

"There's a lot of confusion about Windows Vista these days. Many online discussion forums have a great number of users who express no desire to upgrade to Vista. Sure, we've all seen the screenshots and maybe a video or two of Vista in action, but for many it only seems like new tricks for an old dog."

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931913,00.asp

[deadly7]

Newby beat you to it.

[Warrior]

Forget his, mine is better.

I think this brings up some good points even most I never knew about.
Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.
Of course we all knew about the rewritten network stack and how the IO system had been revamped but
damn things like realtime search, power options, network center, and usermode drivers are a sight for sore eyes.

[Ergot]

Much better and well written article than that other one. Looks like they actually spent time researching and know what they are talking about.

[Newby]

Forget his, mine is better.

lol.

[Warrior]

Forget his, mine is better.

lol.

. I didn't know it was on slashdot, I read mainly osnews and it always appears a little late. Maybe a merge or something is in order.

[iago]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

Anyway, I don't trust anything that Microsoft says.  Time and time again, they talk big and release crap.  So we'll see. 

[Sidoh]

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

As long as there's a way to set everything to a system defined default (one that the user can also change), I think it's a good idea.  Usually, applications that produce enough sound to matter (Winamp, games, etc) have application-level volume controls, so it doesn't really matter to me that much.  I can already control volume as much as I want to on XP.  It's still a pretty neat feature, though.

Anyway, I don't trust anything that Microsoft says.  Time and time again, they talk big and release crap.  So we'll see. 

Hehe, definitely.  I, for one, am looking forward to testing it, even though I do recognize the possibility of these claims being false.  I trust that they're based on fact to some extent, but I'm not going to accept them as hard facts until I try it for myself.

[Newby]

Forget his, mine is better.

lol.

. I didn't know it was on slashdot, I read mainly osnews and it always appears a little late. Maybe a merge or something is in order.

Did you miss my original topic? You should now. I removed it. Post in here.

[MyndFyre]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

[Sidoh]

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

I'll still disable those sounds, haha.  The flashing section on the application bar is notification enough for me.

[MyndFyre]

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

I'll still disable those sounds, haha.  The flashing section on the application bar is notification enough for me.

What if you're in fullscreen?  I hate the popup flashing bar too -- it bugs the hell out of me.  Give me just simple, quiet, nonintrusive sounds any day.

[Sidoh]

What if you're in fullscreen?  I hate the popup flashing bar too -- it bugs the hell out of me.  Give me just simple, quiet, nonintrusive sounds any day.

If I'm fullscreen, chances are I don't want to be bothered.  If I want to be able to tell that I'm recieiving IM's, I can throw the gaim window on my other monitor.  The flashing bar works great because it functions in the exact way I want a notification to work:

  1) It's only apparent/observable when I want it to be
  2) It's not loud and annoying
  3) It repeats itself in case I missed it (went AFK for 15 seconds or something like that)

This is definitely a subjective matter.  No purpose in arguing it.

[iago]

Yeah, in IM aps I like having no notification whatsoever.  I'll check for messages manually when I want to.  But that's totally subjective.

The scenario that would bother me is this.  It's nighttime, people are asleep, so I want my computer quiet.  I turn down my sound and everything is quiet.  It's daytime, I'm alone, I want to hear it from the other room, so I turn the volume up, and everything is loud. 

If the sound volume was relative to the master volume, then this might be handy.  Otherwise, it would be annoying re-adjusting the volume for every open program.  Although I don't generally count on Microsoft getting things right on their first try, can anybody confirm/deny that this is the way it works?

[Newby]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

100% agree. I can play a game with low sound and still have my music going at a high volume.

[iago]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

100% agree. I can play a game with low sound and still have my music going at a high volume.

I've always done that anyways, and it's never required special support from the OS. 

[Newby]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

100% agree. I can play a game with low sound and still have my music going at a high volume.

I've always done that anyways, and it's never required special support from the OS. 

I don't know how to lower (or never have tried) the sound/music level in Starcraft and such...

[deadly7]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

100% agree. I can play a game with low sound and still have my music going at a high volume.

Games give the option to change game sounds.  I have not seen a game made in the last 5 years that hasn't (EVEN SC fucking has that!)

[Newby]

I never really looked so sue me.

And it's nice for applications that don't offer that support.

[Sidoh]

And it's nice for applications that don't offer that support.

Exactly.  Like I said, if there's some control that can universally reset the values for each application, I think it's a wonderful idea.  Otherwise, it can rot in hell.

[deadly7]

I never really looked so sue me.

And it's nice for applications that don't offer that support.

Name three programs you'd use this feature with (assuming it's Windows and Linux usableE).

[Newby]

I never really looked so sue me.

And it's nice for applications that don't offer that support.

Name three programs you'd use this feature with (assuming it's Windows and Linux usableE).

1. Games that don't have volume support (i.e. can't lower music volume)
2. Music players that control global volume (xmms/winamp do this...)
3. Internet browsers (those stupid flash videos with noise...)

[Ergot]

1. Useless. You'd set the main volume for this.
2. AFAIK, Winamp doesn't affect the sliders in volume control, mine doesn't. xmms on the other hand yea. But that's Linux.
3. Possibly useful.

[Quik]

1. Useless. You'd set the main volume for this.

He wants to have one app loud and one quiet.

2. AFAIK, Winamp doesn't affect the sliders in volume control, mine doesn't. xmms on the other hand yea. But that's Linux.

It doesn't physically (or digitally) move the main slider up or down, but if you open, let's say, RealPlayer (assuming you have that crap) and turn volume all the way up, then close it, then play something in winamp, it will be loud. Now, open RealPlayer again, turn volume down, and close. Play winamp song, not so loud. Controls volume settings even when it's not on. Other programs do this global effect, but only when they are running. Keep in mind, none of this is changing the little slider from your tray (main vol control).

[Sidoh]

1. Useless. You'd set the main volume for this.

What Quik said.  You may want a large descrepancy between the volumes of the two subject applications.

2. AFAIK, Winamp doesn't affect the sliders in volume control, mine doesn't. xmms on the other hand yea. But that's Linux.

I don't know about what Quik said.  I've never tried playing with more than one media player to find this affect.  I know that changing the volume of the slider on Winamp doesn't affect the output volume from applications such as TeamSpeak, WoW, Ventrilo, etc.

3. Possibly useful.

Hehe, if it's easy to use without any sort of abstract/difficult-to-use interface, I think it's a great idea.  This, as aforementioned, assumes that all of the application's volume sliders can be controled by a central slider.

[Ergot]

1. Useless. You'd set the main volume for this.

What Quik said.  You may want a large descrepancy between the volumes of the two subject applications.

Other than music what else would you run?  Because expierences with the media players is that they do not affect each other. In fact, I have run WMP at almost mute, then play a song in Winamp at a different volume right after without moving the slider.

[Sidoh]

Other than music what else would you run?  Because expierences with the media players is that they do not affect each other. In fact, I have run WMP at almost mute, then play a song in Winamp at a different volume right after without moving the slider.

Games, voice chat and music.  Those are the primary three.

[Ergot]

Both of the two popular voice chat programs I know (Vent and TS) have their own controls for volume.
Game would be set by the master volume (as well as in game settings, most games do. Even the cheap ones you see on the bargain rack)
Music is set by it's own volume. I'll test it again later, but in my experiences it is seperate from the master volume. Edit: tested on my sister's laptop with iTunes and WMP. Neither changed the sliders in Volume Control, both played at their set volumes. (Play in WMP, set volume low, stop. Start playing in iTunes, (iTunes volume is max), Song is heard at max, stopped iTunes. Back to WMP, heard music at the low setting.)
Voice chat, again, is controlled by it's own volume control.

Furthermore, if you don't like getting blasted by the AIM sounds, turn them off. It's not necessary. Only a distraction to gaming as I see it.

[Sidoh]

Both of the two popular voice chat programs I know (Vent and TS) have their own controls for volume.

But it's very likey that the volume controls Vista will provide are going to be more versatile, adaptive and advanced.  What's wrong with incorporating something like this?  I think it's a great idea.

Game would be set by the master volume (as well as in game settings, most games do. Even the cheap ones you see on the bargain rack)

You mean they have their own volume controls?  Yeah, I agree.  However, it's still useful because it can now be controlled centrally.

Music is set by it's own volume. I'll test it again later, but in my experiences it is seperate from the master volume. Edit: tested on my sister's laptop with iTunes and WMP. Neither changed the sliders in Volume Control, both played at their set volumes. (Play in WMP, set volume low, stop. Start playing in iTunes, (iTunes volume is max), Song is heard at max, stopped iTunes. Back to WMP, heard music at the low setting.)

But again, it'll be nice that it's incorporated into the OS now.  Then you don't have to worry about the potentially buggy implementations of 3rd party applications.  Plus, it's centrally controlled.

Voice chat, again, is controlled by it's own volume control.

All of this is true, but I think it'll be nice to have a control that's incorporated by the OS.  The applications won't have to worry about documenting their terminology (for example, Ventrilo and TeamSpeak use opposite terminology for what word describes you talking into the microphone as opposed to your speakers making noise).  Instead, they can just make sure of the OS' implementation.

Furthermore, if you don't like getting blasted by the AIM sounds, turn them off. It's not necessary. Only a distraction to gaming as I see it.

I do turn them off.  I was the one that argued I liked the flashing application bar.

[Ergot]

Why don't we look at the other great things... like moving the drivers to the User Mode to avoid BSOD's and causing the whole OS to hang ;O? I think that is brilliant. Though they should have thought about it earlier p_o.

[Sidoh]

Why don't we look at the other great things... like moving the drivers to the User Mode to avoid BSOD's and causing the whole OS to hang ;O? I think that is brilliant. Though they should have thought about it earlier p_o.

Because we were looking at this!  I think it's a pretty neat feature.

But yes, that's an awesome thing too.  I'm looking forward to giving Vista a try.

[Warrior]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

Anyway, I don't trust anything that Microsoft says.  Time and time again, they talk big and release crap.  So we'll see. 

Appearantly. I think it's a useful feature that the OS has needed, other than them switching to 32Bit floating point operations in
the audio stack.

I don't know how you're doubting features backed by screenshots and mentioned in multiple reviews, not like they just coded it in their to lie to the user..I think you're just not looking at it from both sides, everyone else is.

His article while not being as technical as I hoped, got his point across. He stated features everyone wouldn't notice right away the "under the hood" features.

"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."

This is currently my favorite feature. It is insane and it's what they currently do with their UI (as I've explained before) which means less CPU load for more power. Everything is in 3D world, so things scale easily unlike in XP where if you changed a reso (Like I did a few days ago) everything goes whacky. I havn't tested the resolution feature yet but I have tested that you CAN scale iconsto rediculous sizes. Of course the UI isn't DX10 (Too bad) but that was so more people support it.

"There's some real meat to the new compositing and drawing engine; it's not all for visual fluff. For starters, you don't have to worry about that whole "moving a busy window blanks out part of the screen" thing."

That is part of Avalon (WPF) iirc, it's how the system displays hung Windows. They will no longer turn "All white" with the look that you can erase them when you move over, they simply freeze their rendering to that current frame. It seems to work quite well. I think a lot of work has been put into this not only making it work but making it an easy to use developer solution, most people only see the UI and overlook this.

I havn't tested the backup app yet but in most reviews it's been getting 5 stars so .

@Ergot: The problem with doing it earlier was the lack of hardware. Let's say when XP came out, hardware was JUST getting good. IT was just getting fast enough for us to move things  to usermode and suffer no performance loss. If we would have done this in Windows98 or even WindowsXP when it first came out, it would have decreased performance while increasing stability. Same reason Video stuff was always in Kernel mode.

[Sidoh]

I don't think he's doubting the feature.  I think he's doubting that the feature will work well.

[Warrior]

Well it has been tested by multiple users with thumbs up so far, if it would of sucked they would have said so. I personally have not tried this, next time I boot Vista I will.

[Joe]

Per application volume control is promising and the improved audio stack is a beauty.

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds really annoying?

I think it sounds really useful.  You may not use Windows enough to notice, but I generally turn sounds off in some IM apps because of the annoying sound volume.  If they're going to fix it so that I can just turn an app's sound volume down, that's WAY better.

The only sound-creating programs I run at once are either [Gaim+Wimamp] or [WoW+Winamp]. In either case, I set system volume, and then set Winamp to a comfortable volume.

[Newby]

Other than music what else would you run?  Because expierences with the media players is that they do not affect each other. In fact, I have run WMP at almost mute, then play a song in Winamp at a different volume right after without moving the slider.

Hate to break it to you, but Winamp controls one of the volume sliders in the sound panel. Not the main one, but one of them.

[Warrior]

What do you guys think about explorer restarting itself on a crash? It seems to do it almost immediately when it crashed for me, what if the same bug keep occuring? Will it be stuck in a loop of restarts?

[MyndFyre]

What do you guys think about explorer restarting itself on a crash? It seems to do it almost immediately when it crashed for me, what if the same bug keep occuring? Will it be stuck in a loop of restarts?

Usually it's still possible to stop this by end-tasking either explorer.exe or dwwin32.exe

The only sound-creating programs I run at once are either [Gaim+Wimamp] or [WoW+Winamp]. In either case, I set system volume, and then set Winamp to a comfortable volume.

Hrm let me think...

- Windows Media Player
- Trillian
- Star Wars Galaxies

But even so what if they're not concurrently?  I know Trillian's sound volume tends to be too high in general.  So what if I want to turn it down?

This kind of a feature is something I wouldn't expect Microsoft to put into Vista in anything short of a PowerToy -- something where you can reset global volume settings but still persist some things (that are "locked" volume).  Like I said, I know Trillian's sound is almost always too high -- so I lock it in at 35% normal volume relative to the system master volume.

I think that as discussed, the feature is highly effective, and has the potential to be great, although I doubt it will be great at release. 

Maybe I'll crack the beta though and release a PowerToy to make it great.

[iago]

What do you guys think about explorer restarting itself on a crash? It seems to do it almost immediately when it crashed for me, what if the same bug keep occuring? Will it be stuck in a loop of restarts?

It seems to me (from my Linux perspective) that there should be something running underneath Explorer (like a fail-safe shell or whatever, doesn't have to be Linuxy or even a shell) that would come up and allow simple diagnostics and stuff.  But that's jsut me. 

[Warrior]

I think the same approach is taken when nesting exceptions. They have a static counter to see how many times it's been restarted for the same reason, if it keeps restarting for the same reason in a short amount of time it should assume that the problem can't be fixed and then restart or something.

[MyndFyre]

What do you guys think about explorer restarting itself on a crash? It seems to do it almost immediately when it crashed for me, what if the same bug keep occuring? Will it be stuck in a loop of restarts?

It seems to me (from my Linux perspective) that there should be something running underneath Explorer (like a fail-safe shell or whatever, doesn't have to be Linuxy or even a shell) that would come up and allow simple diagnostics and stuff.  But that's jsut me. 

If something happens that causes the shell to crash, though, and only once, why would we need to have a textmode shell come up to do diagnostics?  Typically that stuff is recorded and reported anyway.

[iago]

What do you guys think about explorer restarting itself on a crash? It seems to do it almost immediately when it crashed for me, what if the same bug keep occuring? Will it be stuck in a loop of restarts?

It seems to me (from my Linux perspective) that there should be something running underneath Explorer (like a fail-safe shell or whatever, doesn't have to be Linuxy or even a shell) that would come up and allow simple diagnostics and stuff.  But that's jsut me. 

If something happens that causes the shell to crash, though, and only once, why would we need to have a textmode shell come up to do diagnostics?  Typically that stuff is recorded and reported anyway.

Well, I was thinking an ncurses-style shell interface.  If it crashed, that could be a kernel panic (bluescreen...whatever).  It would be simple enough that it probably wouldn't crash. 

But, who knows

[MyndFyre]

Well, I was thinking an ncurses-style shell interface.  If it crashed, that could be a kernel panic (bluescreen...whatever).  It would be simple enough that it probably wouldn't crash. 

But, who knows

If it's a kernel panic then I could see having a shell come up to do this.

War, I'm really hoping they're not claiming the 15-minute install is in right now.  It took about an hour+15 to install it.... at least, I think the setup is done now.

 

[Ergot]

Well, I was thinking an ncurses-style shell interface.  If it crashed, that could be a kernel panic (bluescreen...whatever).  It would be simple enough that it probably wouldn't crash. 

But, who knows

If it's a kernel panic then I could see having a shell come up to do this.

War, I'm really hoping they're not claiming the 15-minute install is in right now.  It took about an hour+15 to install it.... at least, I think the setup is done now.

 

Don't blame the OS, your computer isn't fast enough.

[iago]

Well, I was thinking an ncurses-style shell interface.  If it crashed, that could be a kernel panic (bluescreen...whatever).  It would be simple enough that it probably wouldn't crash. 

But, who knows

If it's a kernel panic then I could see having a shell come up to do this.

War, I'm really hoping they're not claiming the 15-minute install is in right now.  It took about an hour+15 to install it.... at least, I think the setup is done now.

 

Did you check the license to make sure you're allowed to share your speed?  Or is benchmarking Vista also illegal?

[Warrior]

Well, I was thinking an ncurses-style shell interface.  If it crashed, that could be a kernel panic (bluescreen...whatever).  It would be simple enough that it probably wouldn't crash. 

But, who knows

If it's a kernel panic then I could see having a shell come up to do this.

War, I'm really hoping they're not claiming the 15-minute install is in right now.  It took about an hour+15 to install it.... at least, I think the setup is done now.

 

No, according to them on some machines it should be 40-50 minutes (Per a review as well)
Speeds may vary from Machine to Machine. The installer has been staged but not revamped as they said yet.