Windows Vista may lower battery life

[K. Eng]

CNET article

I'm not surprised. All those fancy visual effects require more CPU (and now GPU) processing cycles. Right now most GPUs probably don't do much when just running the Windows desktop, because there are no 3D objects to accelerate or compute effects on. With Vista, the GPU will be doing a lot more work even when the user isn't playing games.

[GomJabbar]

Headline from posted article: Vista beta sucks up battery juice

Can anyone say: 12-cell

Beyond the battery life question, there is also the matter of the heat generated by the graphics chips and other components, which work full throttle even doing basic tasks.

Better come up with some noise cancelling technology for that baby!

I think I'll stick with XP for awhile.

[K. Eng]

Here's some more bad news: If you thought XP was bloatware, Vista is much much worse. Ars Technica did a preview of Vista Beta 2, and they report:

Ars Installation of Vista

So what about disk space? After the initial installation I was surprised to see that Vista was indeed utilizing 16 GB of space and 700MB of RAM. Doing some minor snooping I saw that 4.5GB of the used disc space stemmed from the hibernate file and the pagefile. A fairly pristine x64 install takes up 14GB of drive space, with 12GB of that in the Windows directories.

Emphasis added.

I should caution though that some of the disk space and RAM usage is probably for debugging stuff that will not be in the final release. Nevertheless, I find the resource usage mildly disturbing.

[draco2527]

Here's some more bad news: If you thought XP was bloatware, Vista is much much worse. Ars Technica did a preview of Vista Beta 2, and they report:

Ars Installation of Vista

So what about disk space? After the initial installation I was surprised to see that Vista was indeed utilizing 16 GB of space and 700MB of RAM. Doing some minor snooping I saw that 4.5GB of the used disc space stemmed from the hibernate file and the pagefile. A fairly pristine x64 install takes up 14GB of drive space, with 12GB of that in the Windows directories.

Emphasis added.

I should caution though that some of the disk space and RAM usage is probably for debugging stuff that will not be in the final release. Nevertheless, I find the resource usage mildly disturbing.

Did he detail in what mode he was running it? Also, there could be a lot of code running for "bugs". I am sure it will be massive, but I can not comprehend 16GB for an OS!! Time will tell, but also remember that most computers are becoming INSANE powerhouses with TONS of storage, laptops are gaining ground on the power arena but are still lacking on the storage capacity (when compared to a desktop).

[christopher_wolf]

Here's some more bad news: If you thought XP was bloatware, Vista is much much worse. Ars Technica did a preview of Vista Beta 2, and they report:

Ars Installation of Vista
Emphasis added.

I should caution though that some of the disk space and RAM usage is probably for debugging stuff that will not be in the final release. Nevertheless, I find the resource usage mildly disturbing.

Did he detail in what mode he was running it? Also, there could be a lot of code running for "bugs". I am sure it will be massive, but I can not comprehend 16GB for an OS!! Time will tell, but also remember that most computers are becoming INSANE powerhouses with TONS of storage, laptops are gaining ground on the power arena but are still lacking on the storage capacity (when compared to a desktop).

Yeah, but bloat is growing even faster; most software developers think that, even though their task is moderately important, they can take as much of your system resources and then think of optimization later. Optimization here being inclusive so as to cover the "Cute features" as well.

[draco2527]

Did he detail in what mode he was running it? Also, there could be a lot of code running for "bugs". I am sure it will be massive, but I can not comprehend 16GB for an OS!! Time will tell, but also remember that most computers are becoming INSANE powerhouses with TONS of storage, laptops are gaining ground on the power arena but are still lacking on the storage capacity (when compared to a desktop).

Yeah, but bloat is growing even faster; most software developers think that, even though their task is moderately important, they can take as much of your system resources and then think of optimization later. Optimization here being inclusive so as to cover the "Cute features" as well.

I do not blame the programmers 100%, but I do blame them for not trying to push "standards" so some of the code could be "cleaner" thus helping to reduce "bugs" more then size!

When XP came out, everyone was shocked about how much space it took, nowadays no one seems to remember those days!! Back then you had a 20GB hd, by the time you installed XP and office apps you were using 5GB! I would consider the norm on a laptop today 60GB, so 3 fold increase in size (give or take a 1GB)!

[christopher_wolf]

The 60GB norm has been around for awhile, nothing too new; in fact, WD and the rest going to start shifting more towards the 80GB/100GB/120GB HDD production over the 40GB/60GB/80GB majority production now. Sure, the new stuff is going to take up new space, but there is a limit to what it should have access to. After all, You can't add the performance of Part 1 + Part 2 + Part 3 to get the Total Performance if Part 3 depends, doesn't even have to be non-linear, on Part 1. Say Part 3 is a new OS, but that depends on Part 1, say the HDD; in such a case, they share performance via a simple relationship that cannot be considered as simply additive.Because you buy a 7200RPM HDD to get a "Performance Boost" doesn't always mean you are going to see it, simply because you "see" it through the software itself. If you get an advanced OS running on an older system, you will needlessly impede yourself, much like too much bloat on a young system. I can start Word 6.0 on my 701c and Word 2000 on my T43 and write the same paper at the same speed on both; different hardware and software made to come to the same result at the same time regardless of age or implementation.

XP eventually didn't seem to be bloated because it is being installed on a generation of machines that are at least one up from the first generation it was released on. That is the same reason I run Word 2000 instead of Word 2005; the big difference being that Word 2000 can pop up in about 1 second on my 2005 T43 while Word *2005* takes much longer for no real reason. Performance isn't just a matter of pushing the hardware and pushing the software as far as they can go, it is about the correct mix of both that will create a more efficient system that can be applied to the job set at hand. I find that my T43 runs better with Office 2000 and XP Pro than it does with Vista and Office 2005. This wasn't the case when my 701c was shipped, the hardware and software were proportional to each other...now it has gotten worse and can be measured in units of lagged time to a system of given efficiency.

[Aroc]

Having the OrgChart module in PowerPoint 2000 run as a 16-bit program (like it did in Office 97) is totally unacceptable in this day and age. Our users reported stability problems with it under heavy use. Later versions of MS Access and Jet 4.0 are much improved in terms of speed and heavy usage in even a small office environment. (And this isn't important to you) but Office XP and Office 2003 play so much nicer on multi-user Citrix and Terminal Servers.

I understand your concerns about the increased memory footprint. The later versions have been a good value for us and our business.