What's so "Ultimate" about it? Part Two
Jan. 29th, 2007 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walbourn"Should I bother to upgrade to Windows Vista?"
So let's first assume the question is not slashdot-worthy anti-Microsoft "Linux rox" or "Macs rule" posturing, then the answer is "Yes, eventually". If you don't use Windows today, then I don't make any argument here that you should move from your favorite alternative to use Windows Vista. The reality is that millions of people do use Windows every single day. For those people, Windows Vista has a lot to offer.
Windows Vista is a disruptive release. Windows XP was released in 2002, and a lot has happened in the intervening 5 years. The Internet has become a wild and dangerous place, but also an essential utility for PCs. Consumer-level video cards have become immensely powerful. CPUs are well into a radical shift to 64-bit native and multicore. Some new things have already shipped in Windows XP updates, such as the security and IPV6 work in Windows XP SP 2 or the x64 support in Windows Server 2003 SP 1, but a lot of technology is seeing the light of day for the first time in Windows Vista.
A complete list of changes is well beyond my ability to detail, but just in my area of interest there is a lot going on. There's plenty of marketing focus and buzz around the obvious stuff: the new desktop, desktop search, parental controls, game explorer, IE7, etc. What's not so easy to explain is all the work that happened throughout the OS itself. Some examples:
As to whether or not you should go out and buy Windows Vista immediately, it really depends on what you are looking for. It makes sense to get it with a new computer purchase, but as for upgrading your computer that's a decision that depends a lot on what you do. Developers should definitely check it out sooner than later. Gamers will probably want to get it when a Direct3D 10 title comes out they want to play, but it will take a while before all the video drivers get as good as the existing Windows XP ones.
Even if you don't buy it now, you'll probably want to get it eventually. There will definitely be some early-adopter pain to get through, although thankfully a lot of that pain was already experienced by beta testers over the past year so hopefully the rest of the world won't have to.
The main point here is that this really is a big deal on the order of the switch from 16-bit Windows 3.1 to 32-bit Windows 95, it just may not be all that obvious for another year or two...
So let's first assume the question is not slashdot-worthy anti-Microsoft "Linux rox" or "Macs rule" posturing, then the answer is "Yes, eventually". If you don't use Windows today, then I don't make any argument here that you should move from your favorite alternative to use Windows Vista. The reality is that millions of people do use Windows every single day. For those people, Windows Vista has a lot to offer.
Windows Vista is a disruptive release. Windows XP was released in 2002, and a lot has happened in the intervening 5 years. The Internet has become a wild and dangerous place, but also an essential utility for PCs. Consumer-level video cards have become immensely powerful. CPUs are well into a radical shift to 64-bit native and multicore. Some new things have already shipped in Windows XP updates, such as the security and IPV6 work in Windows XP SP 2 or the x64 support in Windows Server 2003 SP 1, but a lot of technology is seeing the light of day for the first time in Windows Vista.
A complete list of changes is well beyond my ability to detail, but just in my area of interest there is a lot going on. There's plenty of marketing focus and buzz around the obvious stuff: the new desktop, desktop search, parental controls, game explorer, IE7, etc. What's not so easy to explain is all the work that happened throughout the OS itself. Some examples:
- Video: Since Windows 3.1, graphics on the desktop has been driven by a 2D graphics API called "GDI". While Direct3D has been around since the mid-90s, the API has been a 'bolted on addition' to Windows that the OS really didn't understand. Windows Vista has an entirely new driver model written from the ground up, making Direct3D the central graphics technology. The new driver model is the basis of an entirely new version 10 of Direct3D for a new generation of video cards. The new driver model makes the video card's GPU another OS-managed resource like the CPU, allowing it to be shared and used in entirely new ways.
- Audio: The audio driver stack has been rewritten to reduce latency overhead and make surround sound multichannel support universal.
- Network: Windows Vista supports IPv4 and IPV6 fully as a dual stack, with major improvements in bandwidth utilization for high-traffic and 1 GB+ connections.
- Kernel: Scheduling improvements for multicore CPUs, clock cycle accurate timing, and multimedia real-time scheduling facilities.
As to whether or not you should go out and buy Windows Vista immediately, it really depends on what you are looking for. It makes sense to get it with a new computer purchase, but as for upgrading your computer that's a decision that depends a lot on what you do. Developers should definitely check it out sooner than later. Gamers will probably want to get it when a Direct3D 10 title comes out they want to play, but it will take a while before all the video drivers get as good as the existing Windows XP ones.
Even if you don't buy it now, you'll probably want to get it eventually. There will definitely be some early-adopter pain to get through, although thankfully a lot of that pain was already experienced by beta testers over the past year so hopefully the rest of the world won't have to.
The main point here is that this really is a big deal on the order of the switch from 16-bit Windows 3.1 to 32-bit Windows 95, it just may not be all that obvious for another year or two...
