[lbo-talk] Vista

[Chuck]

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