[lbo-talk] Vista

Chuck chuck at mutualaid.org
Wed Jan 31 19:13:02 PST 2007


Doug Henwood wrote:
> A question for the geeks out there. In a review of Vista <http://
> www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17992/page2/>, Erika Jonietz writes:
>
>> My efforts to get Media Center working highlighted two big problems
>> with Vista. First, it's a memory hog. The hundreds of new features
>> jammed into it have made it a prime example of software bloat,
>> perhaps the quintessence of programmer Niklaus Wirth's law that
>> software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster (for more on
>> the problems with software design that lead to bloat, see "Anything
>> You Can Do, I Can Do Meta"). Although my computer meets the minimum
>> requirements of a "Vista Premium Ready PC," with one gigabyte of RAM,
>> I could run only a few simple programs, such as a Web browser and
>> word processor, without running out of memory. I couldn't even watch
>> a movie: Windows Media Player could read the contents of the DVD, but
>> there wasn't enough memory to actually play it. In short, you need a
>> hell of a computer just to run this OS.
>
>
> Is this really true? I've got 768 megs of RAM running Mac OS 10.4.8,
> and I've got Mail, Safari, the Dictionary, Firefox, Word, Excel,
> TextEdit, Xtorrent, iTune, SoundStudio, Photoshop, Illustrator,
> InDesign, Preview, and the ActivityMonitor running. Plus all sorts of
> stuff behind the scenes. Sometimes it takes 15 or 20 secs to swap the
> virtual memory, but I could certainly watch a DVD too. How can there be
> such different performance?

My main workstation is a Pentium 2 Gateway manufactured in 1998. I'm running Windows 2000. I don't know how much memory this machine currently has, but I put some extra memory into the tower a few years ago. I also have a Toshiba laptop manufactured last year which never has any serious performance issues.

The dinosaur that I'm using has overlived its useful life as an everyday workstation. When I get some cash, the plan is to go over to Micro Center and get some cheap desktop to replace the 1998 Gateway. I'll probably turn the dinosaur into a Linux server.

One thing I've noticed using the dinosaur is that new software hogs up more resources. I used to be able to run a web browser, Dreamweaver and Photoshop at the same time. These days I'm lucky if Firefox and Thunderbird will play nice with the system for an entire day without me having to restart programs. Firefox is a great program, but it still handles memory poorly.

The problem is that programmers and developers get used to computers which are incredibly fat when it comes to memory and speed. There is little incentive to develop lean and mean programs. Okay, maybe wireless devices have spawned a greater, profitable interest in lean programming.

Bill Gates was pretty insufferable on the Daily Show the other night. I had to switch channels to a Star Trek re-run.

Fuck that bastard.

Chuck



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