Another "Vista" reason to donkey punch micrsoft!

[d_saum]

Haha, this is great!!! Apparently half of all current PC's won't be able to run Vista!!!

"While integrated graphics seem to handle Windows XP and 2000 just fine, they won't be able to handle Vista's 3D 'Aero Glass' compositor, which will prevent roughly half of all PCs from running Microsoft's new OS. Performance class cards that can handle DirectX 9.0c are up for the challenge." From the article: "After years of delays and several feature revisions, one of Vista's main selling points is the Aero Glass interface. However, as Peddie notes, users already have the ability to start constructing a PC that should be Vista-ready before the OS even ships. Microsoft also said this week that it would reserve its Halo 2 videogame for Vista."


Haha... well, my current pc runs XP fine... well as "fine" as XP can be run, and I wasnt planning on upgrading to Vista for a LONG time anyway so, no biggie to me. Thats gonna suck for all those guys who wanted to play Halo 2 though!

Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy being a Mac user???

 

[MisterMe]

The original article was published by ExtremeTech.com.

 

[Phat_Pat]

hahaha

im sorry just the title of this thread is hilarious

 

[mkrishnan]

Wow, I'd never heard of a donkey punch before. That sounds really mean!

As for the Vista thing... well, maybe Windows PC manufacturers will finally stop using poor integrated video chipsets.

 

[dotdotdot]

The article's title was wrong - Vista will run on almost every PC.

The only thing is, many people have Integrated graphics or 32 MB Video Cards, which will not enable Vista to run it's glass effects.

It's comparable to Tiger and Dashboard - Mac minis can't have the cool effect in Dashboard as their graphics card is inadequate for the process.

 

[d_saum]

The article's title was wrong - Vista will run on almost every PC.

You have a link to back that up? Because I've read a ton that say it wont.

 

[IJ Reilly]

It's comparable to Tiger and Dashboard - Mac minis can't have the cool effect in Dashboard as their graphics card is inadequate for the process.

Not really, by my reading at least. A couple of OSX effects don't work on older video cards, which is no big deal. What's being said here is that a significant feature of the new Vista UI won't appear on many older PCs.

 

[mkrishnan]

You have a link to back that up? Because I've read a ton that say it wont.

Heh, maybe he meant to say, "Almost every PC user should run from Vista."

Mmmm, my memory is that Windows is very iffy on this front. I had a computer with Win 98 and could not upgrade it, at least initially, to XP. I think the biggest barrier is just drivers for the fifty thousand hardware vendors the PC manufacturers use. I could probably drop XP/SP2 onto this computer, now, five years later, without any trouble. But.... Hopefully this'll be less of an issue, and at least some XP users will be able to run Vista, perhaps with Aero disabled.

 

[greatdevourer]

Trust me, it's a lot less than a mere 50% that are locked out. Very few of the desktop PCs sold today will run Vista - iirc, it requires a beefy graphics card and either 64-bit or dual-core (I think - I last checked the sys-reqs a while ago)

 

[ldburroughs]

The aero feature will not be an issue for anyone. Like most of Apple's unnecessary eye candy, it will have no impact on the end user. It's the equivalent of the ripple effect my ibook won't do on its dashboard ... insignificant! I can remember when Tiger came out last year and people wanted to know if their old systems would run it. For the most part they all found a way around the dvd issue and the core features were not compromised at all. I didn't cry when my Mac Classic II was left behind. It happens ... and thank God it does!

As much as Apple updates its operating system you'd think most of you would understand this but I must say I'm surprised to read many of these posts. It's been over half a decade since Microsoft introduced a significant update to XP so I would be surprised if it didn't leave some ancient systems in the cold. Why would I expect my 386sx to run Vista ... or XP for that matter? Nothing like a 20Mhz processor with a 80mb harddrive. You can visit Microsoft's website directly for clarrification if you really want to "hear it from the horse's mouth." Most computers purchased within recent years will run the core features just fine. Some of the Windows eye candy won't render but the system will run just fine without it. The user won't even realize it.

 

[ldburroughs]

my memory is that Windows is very iffy on this front. I had a computer with Win 98 and could not upgrade it, at least initially, to XP. I think the biggest barrier is just drivers for the fifty thousand hardware vendors the PC manufacturers use. I could probably drop XP/SP2 onto this computer, now, five years later, without any trouble.

Mac users don't have this issue because you can't put Tiger on a non-Apple computer. It seems to be a strange monopoly people are willing to deal with.

 

[mkrishnan]

The aero feature will not be an issue for anyone. Like most of Apple's unnecessary eye candy, it will have no impact on the end user. It's the equivalent of the ripple effect my ibook won't do on its dashboard ... insignificant!

Not that I'm being wishy-washy, but I think it's somewhere in between the way you're putting it and the take that the computers will not run Vista. My understanding was that the whole interface will go back to the Win2k style interface, if you can't use Aero. That's slightly more dramatic than not having a ripple effect. My non-CI iBook and my CI iMac are almost indistinguishable in terms of the UI look and feel. Only very small things like the ripple effect are different. My understanding is that, with Vista, the UI will look a *lot* different on Aero computers.

 

[VanNess]

Not really, by my reading at least. A couple of OSX effects don't work on older video cards, which is no big deal. What's being said here is that a significant feature of the new Vista UI won't appear on many older PCs.

Yep, the "aero" effects in Vista are the equivalent (i.e., rip-off) of OS X's quartz extreme, which will supposedly run on a Mac with at least a "whopping" 16mb video card, even one as old as ATI's Rage 128. Quartz extreme delivers, among other things, window transparency ("glass" in MS parlance), 3d textures (window shadows), the rotating cube and other effects, expose, dashboard, and all of the other little bells and whistles that make up the OS X aqua interface. Macs that are quartz extreme compatible have been in service now for many years.

The ripple effect in dashboard is provided by a brand-new technology in Tiger: core graphics (which sits alongside it's equally new in Tiger cousin: core video). I have a gut feeling that Apple used core graphics to render the dashboard ripple primarily to show off Tiger's new tech, as basic ripple effects (and other open gl-based effects) seen in applications such as iPhoto have always been handled with loving care by quartz extreme. Core graphics consists primarily of fairly sophisticated photoshop-like effects and filters that are built into the OS itself and, in many instances (but not all), require a core graphics capable video card to render the effect. But the key is the implementation of core graphics and video, in that it exists as another specialized, high performance graphics layer in the OS itself, making it available to any software developer who may want to integrate it into their applications without having to generate such sophisticated effects and filters (for either graphics or video) with their own custom code. As far as I can tell, Vista, even with it's present graphics card appetite, has nothing like this at all, not even close. Just quartz extreme knock-offs.

So even with today's Tiger, the Mac has the graphics muscle sitting under the hood to blow MS's yet-to-be-released Vista out of the water, and that's just looking narrowly at the graphics capabilities of each.

 

[VanNess]

The aero feature will not be an issue for anyone. Like most of Apple's unnecessary eye candy, it will have no impact on the end user. It's the equivalent of the ripple effect my ibook won't do on its dashboard ... insignificant!

But Microsoft has made no secret of the fact that it intends to launch an unprecedented marketing fluff campaign for the release of Vista. I wonder how much of that marketing campaign will be devoted to that new "feature" of Vista: the Windows 2000 UI!

 

[Project]

While im not the biggest Microsoft advocate by any means, theres a lot of wrongs being talked about in the thread.

The reality is that the it falls somewhere between both extremes. To get the full aero 'experience' you do need a decent graphics card, but it certainly doesnt make you go back to Win2000 like interface if you dont. There is something called Aero Basic or similar, that is basically like an updated XP... Vista without the superfluous effects... it does look a bit hideous and half baked though.

ALso, most users of Windows dont buy the upgrade... they get their Windows with a new PC. I suspect most vendors will ship their PCs with a graphics card capable of pulling off full Aero to varying degrees of smoothness depending on how much you spend.

 

[mkrishnan]

The reality is that the it falls somewhere between both extremes. To get the full aero 'experience' you do need a decent graphics card, but it certainly doesnt make you go back to Win2000 like interface if you dont. There is something called Aero Basic or similar, that is basically like an updated XP... Vista without the superfluous effects... it does look a bit hideous and half baked though.

Okay, this seems to be correct. I'm not trying to be an MS basher, per se. I just have not read every single article on Vista. That's just what I'd heard, that it was the Classic Windows appearance, but it appears to be wrong. Here is a thumbnail I found of the Aero Basic interface. It doesn't seem so so bad. Click to go to the page with high-res images.....



I do hope, though, that when MacOS enables res-independent UI, it does not require a reboot!

 

[steve_hill4]

I read a while back that some features require anything up to 256-512MB of VRAM. That's just silly.

If more people have to go out and buy a new computer for this, perhaps I can persuade more people to switch and get it over with.

Edit: It's been a while since I visted the supersite for a laugh at Vista. Forgot how much of a rip off of iPhoto Windows Photo Gallery looks.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Yep, the "aero" effects in Vista are the equivalent (i.e., rip-off) of OS X's quartz extreme, which will supposedly run on a Mac with at least a "whopping" 16mb video card, even one as old as ATI's Rage 128. Quartz extreme delivers, among other things, window transparency ("glass" in MS parlance), 3d textures (window shadows), the rotating cube and other effects, expose, dashboard, and all of the other little bells and whistles that make up the OS X aqua interface. Macs that are quartz extreme compatible have been in service now for many years.

I think you're mixing up Quartz and Quartz Extreme. The former is the screen display method for all of OSX. It is/was supported by virtually any graphics card. OTOH, Extreme, which essentially accelerated the performance of Quartz, is not supported by the likes of a RagePro 128. You need something better, though not very much.

 

[timswim78]

Trust me, it's a lot less than a mere 50% that are locked out. Very few of the desktop PCs sold today will run Vista - iirc, it requires a beefy graphics card and either 64-bit or dual-core (I think - I last checked the sys-reqs a while ago)

Vista will not require a dual-core or 64 bit processor, it will run on a single-core, 32 bit processor. I can tell you this because I have installed it on a single-core 32 bit processor.

Some of the visual features will require a decent GPU to run. This is no different from the visual features of Tiger, which will not run on some GPU's.

I don't know when or where you last "checked" the system requirements for Vista, but you need to recheck your sources. Also, I don't know why I should "trust you" on this, if you don't even have the correct information about the supported CPU's.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Some of the visual features will require a decent GPU to run. This is no different from the visual features of Tiger, which will not run on some GPU's.

It sounds quite different. Only a couple of relatively minor visual features of Tiger won't display on older graphics cards. How much of Vista's UI will be missing on PCs that don't support the 3-D compositor?

 

[Seasought]

Now I'm not so sure I think Vista will look decent. In fact, I feel I may have entirely reversed my former stance on the matter.

 

[timswim78]

It sounds quite different. Only a couple of relatively minor visual features of Tiger won't display on older graphics cards. How much of Vista's UI will be missing on PCs that don't support the 3-D compositor?

When I get the Beta installed, I'll plug in an older video card and try to figure out what is missing and post the results.

From what I understand, any video card that supports DirectX 9.0c will support Aero. These cards are a pretty inexpensive upgrade.