MS recommended Vista hardware

I'm not quite sure why MS would recommend specific models, but...
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/07/vista_requirements/


...Vista asks for a system with a 3.0 GHz Intel or equivalent AMD processor and 1 GB of memory...

ATI officials may have liked the recommendation to firms who are demonstrating Vista at their booths to use a "high end ATI GPU," namely a Radeon 9800, x600, x700, x800 or x850 device. According to Microsoft, ATI is preferred to Nvidia at this time due to superior driver support."


Microsoft recommended the Acer Ferrari 3400, the Acer Ferrari 4000, the HP Pavillion zd8230, the IBM Thinkpad T43 and the Toshiba Tecra M4.


My recommendation is to only get Acer laptop if you like TN panels and very poor viewing angles that come along with that. If Acer changes the panels and gets new keyboard on their whole line then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. They may have some models that do not have these flaws though.

*starts watching nvidia's stock ticker closely*

Apple's latest Operating System runs on iMac computers from 1999... And it does it *well* with very little lag... Microsoft's latest OS won't run on computers from 2005 at all and will lag on stuff that hasn't even been released yet.

That is what happens when you give your developers high end machines to develop on, they get lazy and create very laggy bloat that slows everyone down.

Vista can hadly be described as bloated, in fact, a lot of the technology in it has gone in specifically to improve performance, and a lot more optimization work is still to come. Don't be fooled by the fancy graphics, a lot of that, if not all, will be accellerated on anything DX9 class. Times will always move forward, if you want tight coding, the Amiga's always a good bet!

MarkPerris wrote:

a lot of the technology in it has gone in specifically to improve performance

That is like saying you added a life jacket to a sunken ship and thus now is is less sunk than it was before....

Microsoft might be improved performance in some areas but evidently it didn't help and thus, as we have all seen, Vista is a slow monster...

MarkPerris wrote:

a lot more optimization work is still to come. 

Let us be optimistic and assume that they gain 10%, it won't be enough... Vista is roughly 50% slower than XP on the same hardware with no obvious improvements <in functionality>.

 

I've been using the December CTP on and off. While at times it is very slow some apps start a lot faster with an identical setup compared to 2003 (even if tuned for workstation use). I recall someone saying that Office 12 starts a lot faster on Vista and I would go and say this is true for Visual Studio 2005 as well (on my laptop).

Manip wrote:

Let us be optimistic and assume that they gain 10%, it won't be enough... Vista is roughly 50% slower than XP on the same hardware with no obvious improvements <in functionality>.

 

Well, i have to agree that i can't see any improvements in functionality over XP yet, or coming for that matter, outside of Windows Collaboration (which could run on XP anyway, if they wanted it to), but for me vista's really about 2 things: 1. Improving the quality of the experience (audio, video, printing, imaging), and 2: giving the platform foundation for the really useful stuff to come later.

As for speed, i can't comment on the present speed, not having access to the CTP's, but i honestly believe (and sincerely hope!) it will be faster than XP, in the long run. Time will tell, i guess.

I have played with the December bits. Its not slow, but yes. My x64 windows xp run faster. But would you expect a new big OS, that is alot better then the old one, even run faster? Well. It could be possible.

Vista is not slow. Theres quite some tools to speed it up. Superfetch, and ALOT of other cool stuff.

Oh please!! These are recommended system specs for a demo at a show! Of course they're going to recommend using the fastest system possible to show off Vista. These specs never should've been posted, because now people are gonna think they're official recommended system specs, and they're gonna be like, "omg vista is t3h slowness!!!".

And to all the Mac zealots...do you really think Apple didn't use their top of the line systems when showing off their latest OS?

And can a mac from 1999 run all the effects that OSX can run? There's compatability settings for a reason.

Manip wrote:

That is what happens when you give your developers high end machines to develop on, they get lazy and create very laggy bloat that slows everyone down.

Nothing wrong if you develop on a fast machine, as long as you test on several different setups.  That though, is quite a statement for a student to make - have you had a job in the industry yet?

BenZilla wrote:

And can a mac from 1999 run all the effects that OSX can run? There's compatability settings for a reason.

Yes you can... Every last effect.

From what I've read, the betas do have sanity checking code in them, so no surprise it is slower, because it's checking if it does its own work right all the time. That code will be gone in the RTM, maybe already in the RC phase.

Manip wrote:

BenZilla wrote:And can a mac from 1999 run all the effects that OSX can run? There's compatability settings for a reason.

Yes you can... Every last effect.

Yeah I have a 1999 iMac Blueberry...

I can't see any reason why it would be slower, aside maybe indexing metadata... what am I missing?

The email stated that "PCs that meet or exceed these specifications will provide the most responsive Windows Vista operating system demo experience."

Hasn't it always been the case for demos that you need top end hardware?

reinux wrote:

I can't see any reason why it would be slower, aside maybe indexing metadata... what am I missing?

The email stated that "PCs that meet or exceed these specifications will provide the most responsive Windows Vista operating system demo experience."

Hasn't it always been the case for demos that you need top end hardware?

Isn't that logical? the better the hardware, the better and faster will the OS run

Rpgfreak wrote:

Isn't that logical? the better the hardware, the better and faster will the OS run

I mean, demos tend to be made for the highest end hardware of the moment. Right now 3.2ghz with 1gb RAM is high end, so that's what they expect for the demos, no?

Unless they're not talking about the same sort of demos I'm thinking of.

There other peculiarities with that report.

First, the ATI cards recommended are not the highest you can get.  In fact, the X1xxx cards (X1800, X1600, X1300) are the latest and most high end cards.  I presume the Vista drivers aren't as good on those.

The second and odder one is that one of the machines recommended for use was the Tecra M4, which has an nVidia GeForce 6 card in it.