I just set Vista to a Win'98 style "Classic" interface and it seems on the surface to behave almost identically to WinXP set to similar settings.
Trimmed right back, Vista in it's Beta 2 form uses some 400mb of ram on it's own, so it's a memory hog.
Why? Because it's running a lot of complex background tasks, monitoring, reporting etc.
Do you need that? No, at least not until you are forced by compatibility issues.
Do I want Vista? Not as I reviewed it in it's Beta2 form.
Quite frankly, it's monitoring and reporting functions give me the creeps. I won't go online with it installed out of principle.
I also don't percieve any advantage is using Vista at this time. 400mb of ram to get the OS up and running? What the heck is it doing? My first guess is selling ram....
A lesson learnt from running FS9 is to streamline the OS as much as possible in order for maximum application performance, this isn't possible with the current version of Vista, (at least I haven't been able to achieve it and maintain stability).
Back to hardware, as mentioned above, Vista is not too concerned about your hardware, regardless of the hype you hear about. If you want to dedicate your hardware to running the most over-bloated, unnecessary and prying OS ever devised, by all means, spend up bigtime.
Do you need better hardware for Vista? It would help.
Ask yourself seriously if you want to have Microsoft constantly monitoring you and your computer and reporting your activities to their clients (whoever they may be) before you consider installing Vista just so you can say, "I have Vista".
What concerns me is that in these relatively "safe" times, people have become complacent about privacy, and pretty much accepted the whole "Big Brother is Watching You" thing with not enough thought to the abuse such technology is prone to. If the technology is abused or usurped by government or other powers, it will give those abusers unprecedented power over the PC using population and their associates. A veiled Pandora. A rose by any other name. Vista is a thorned beauty.
All the time Microsoft is trying to make us all feel safe, (I recieved yet another mail from them today headlining security issues), they give us all the ULTIMATE SPYWARE* as an operating system. It seems security breaches are only important when they are not under MS control.
* I say this simply because there is no option to disable it or practical method that I'm aware of. Attempting to disable these functions results in the failure or compromise of the OS.
Perhaps the US legislature will not allow changes to our privacy laws that protect us from such breaches of our inaliable rights, perhaps not. Perhaps privacy laws in your country will protect you from Vista including such monitoring software, perhaps not.
Please remember that I am commenting on the Vista Beta2 recent release, Vista is not yet available as a commercial product. The concerns I have may not be valid in the final release version of Vista, depending somewhat on our elected represenatives who's decisions will prevail regarding the legality of this software.
I agree with what you are saying... the issue is relative to the times
Back when the automobile was becoming a common item many complained about being required to have a license and register the vehicle with the government (local or otherwise). The exact same privacy issues were fought and argued. The fact of the matter is the automobile stoked big business, the largest being big oil companies.., road construction, tax revenues; you name it... and because of that and the fact that driving a car places one in a position to do harm to someone else (physical or otherwise), driving and owning a car was classified a privilege and not a right. The precedent has been set.
The use of the internet is a privilege, not a right, and therefore licensing and other monitoring is legal and will become the norm. Automobiles are already transmitting data and that practice will expand in the next 5-10 years to every car on the road.
I do not like it any more than you do but times are changing and so must I.
Our children
Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 2:41 pm
(7900GTX 512MB)