Windows Xp vs Vista -- on Toms Hardware.

John,

No OpenGL in Vista,,, classic case of the NIH (not invented here) syndrom

Well,, no OpenGL, no Catia, no UG, no Pro-E, or any of the big time stuff. I doubt very much that these "professional" applications will be reconfigured to use a massively inferior product like Direct-X.

Since Solidworks has their nose so far up microsofts butt, they may do it, but there's no way they'll ever even approach the performance of OpenGL.

Mark

"John Layne"

The big question is, has Microsoft come up with some proprietary graphics standard that does away with opengl? That is what I am thinking. It really would fit their MO to a tee. I don't think SW or any other CAD vendor is so dumb as to say they will be Vista ready without having something like this in place.

This article says different:

ps. why isn't my link active?

Zander,

Most of that stuff was written 6 months ago.

If it's in there, WTF good does it do if it doesn't work. Have you even looked at the Viewperf graphs on Tom's hardware ???

Mark

And if the performance & drivers were NOT enough of a disincentive, then look at a first review of the issue of ONEROUS EULAs:

Bo

On Jan 31, 12:05 pm, "John Layne"

My rough reading of the article with respect to the MS EULA gives me concern, and this applies to Win XP also:

1=2E The terms of the EULA seem to change, each time you download a new copy of the EULA, so which version are you bound to be operating under?

2=2E Each time you download an 'upgrade' or 'update' you agreee that the earlier EULA no longer applies and you automatically accept the new EULA (that are almost impossible to decipher), and which may occur as an 'automatic update'.

3=2E I quote directly from "Vista has the right in the licence to automatically disable the computer based on Microsoft's belief of licence validity (=A75 c) or opinion of installed software (=A76). Service availability guarantees, especially in safety-critical industries, might be broken if your client knowingly deploys software that a third party can disable at any time. Experience with Windows XP shows that validly licensed computers are often mistakenly flagged as invalid; the difference is that Vista shuts down."

4=2E &: "The Vista licence restricts what software a user may be run when Vista is running under a virtual machine, e.g. media viewing or disk encryption"

5=2E &: "The Vista licence requires particular kinds of information disclosure that may contradict existing contracts. Contracts in some sectors commonly prohibit activity that tends to release identifying details... The Vista licence may trigger problems in such contracts, because every Vista computer is tracked"

6=2E As I read the article is seems likely that the information that MS automatically collects/ tracks, may wind up being released to other companies, even though they should not do so. IANAL.

7=2E Tracking: "The key factor is not so much the specifics of any individual data transfer but the cumulative effect of access to all this data being concentrated over time in one company. " a. "Every time a computer touches a server on the Internet it transfers other information besides the explicitly intended data." b. "The Licence prescribes hundreds of contacts per year with Microsoft-controlled serve" c. "Some of the contacts listed in (2) above are very specific in nature: only triggered by a particular activity" d. "Thus a PC can be tracked by Microsoft through its lifetime without explicit permission or illegality on behalf of Microsoft. In the case of a laptop, the travels of its user are also tracked."

Bo's Note: If you think that a commercial or private or government lawsuit could not retrieve all of this Microsoft data at some date to show that " 'User Bo' was using certain software on January 1, 200x, when he said he was on vacation, thereby showing Bo was lying when he claimed to be at work.", or your divorce winds up with your 'soon-to- be-ex' getting records of your laptop movement around the world to introduce evidence into court.

It is the unintended consequenses of this heavy tracking and data transfer to 3rd parties and potential for MS to disable or remove software it doesn't like from your computer, because it thinks you are attempting to decrypt or encrypt something it doesn't think you should be doing, that bother me.

If all these reasons are not enough to cause you to be concerned, then I suggest you have never fought a lawsuit before.

I could go on, but Microsoft has laid down the law, and it is that you are a child and it is going to track & treat you like a felon on parole with an ankle bracelet, and god forbid you are detected possibly doing something 'bad'.

Bo

Is this onerous form of EULA 'noose' from Microsoft enough reason to make any of the various NIXs worthy of another look, when the eventual decision to move to a new computer or OS is made?

I think so. I will offer an option which I know works to stop all the corporate BS with Microsoft's 'older' OS Win XP.

1. MacOS X can now run and do all of my internet work
2. Boot Camp lets you run Win XP and never allow Win XP to "see" the internet, on the same computer that has Mac OSX (Where Win XP runs native on its own partition, not as a "Virtual Machine".

This keep XP from ever transferring information or getting corrupted from the Internet, and beneficially, keeps ALL THE MALWARE off your computer.

Bo

Microsoft has definately gone too far with vista, unfortunately all new computers being sold now are coming preloaded on unsuspecting consumers - so ultimately it will penetrate the market.

For me, for the first time since win3.1 I will not upgrade with microsoft anymore. I will use xp only for solidworks and hopefully solidworks will realize that their deep association is the ms platform is becoming a growing liability.

Zander

I note that it does not take a Mac to keep Win XP pro "offline". It just takes 2 Win XP computers, where the mission critical PC is kept off the Internet.

Given that inexpensive, & often older, castoff PCs can do the web work, it often costs a user minimal if any dollars to actually separate web work from a dedicated PC that you want to run with max uptime.

Bo

Zander, you noted, "For me, for the first time since win3.1 I will not upgrade with microsoft anymore. I will use xp only for solidworks and hopefully solidworks will realize that their deep association is the ms platform is becoming a growing liability."

One thing which was brought up by another SolidWorks user recently, was that he has set his isolated Win XP Pro & SolidWorks on a machine that is specifically not connected to the Internet and is using only SP1, which he noted as being faster than SP2, though I haven't verified that.

Bo

So how about a little filter box between your VISTA machine and the network that catches packets headed to MSoft and sends them to the bit bucket?

I saw this on the eMastercam forum.

"Vista is a steaming pile of ......

Windows Vista ships without an actively developed help system.

Microsoft gutted 32-Bit WinHelp from Vista but INCLUDED 16-Bit WinHelp. Figure that one out.

This now means all RoboHelp generated WinHelp files ( and all WinHelp files for that matter) are no longer supported on Vista. Since WinHelp includes API System calls, it's doubtful Microsoft will add legacy support in a service pack..

HTMLHelp is supposed to be the preferred Vista-compatible solution for context help. However, development on HTML Help stopped quite a long time ago; it's in maintenance (critical updates only).

HTMLHelp popups are barely usable (unlike Winhelp popups they cannot be printed, and they don't even position themselves to avoid being hidden under the task bar!). The only solution to this is to change the PopUp topics to Hyperlinks that are displayed in the default window.

So, there you have it, Windows Vista ships without an actively developed help system! ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!

This confirms to me that Visual Studio Professional with an MSDN subscription has outlived its usefulness."

I think it is also going to take filtering INCOMING COMMANDs stuff from Microsoft that says "block Microsoft kill commands" because TOP is not reporting lately...

This is a bit over the top. I just want my machines to humm along without the B.S.

I recall an old sysadmin 15 years ago who had a Unix box which hadn't been shut down for 2+ years.

Bo

There are more thumbscrews in Vista putting pressure on the user than I really care to think about anymore.

I wonder what brave SolidWorks user is going to probe into the SolidWorks senior management about the subject of adding another platform for SolidWorks to run on.

It is time to escape the steaming pile.

Bo

In the past I admined Sun boxes. 2+ years without a reboot was very common. The only time they got booted was for a kernel update. This wasn't a concious decision as much as there never being any need to reboot.

Better yet, have you gone past the graphs and tried some of the stuff yourself?

I've got Solidworks on my Vista system and I sure haven't seen an %89 decrease in performance. I think its being reasonable to gather that others are not having the same drastic drops as there are others on this board that are running Vista with Solidworks as well. I could be wrong, maybe there is that large of a drop and it's just that everyone here is staying quiet about it.

My problem stems from knowing I'm not down to a 10th of the performance with Solidworks; are the results Tom is showing accurate to the other programs there? Is there really that much of a drop in ProE or UGS? Or is in part due to using the ATI graphics chip in Vista with the new Catalyst drivers for XP and the older release drivers for Vista. Why did Tom not use the 7.1 driver for both XP and Vista instead of using it only for XP? OpenGL performace was one of the major listed improvements for the Catalyst 7.1 driver over the 8.13 RTM driver in Vista.

In the end taking a card that is not very good at OpenGL, with drivers that are near terrible for OpenGL and then to shovel all the blame on MS makes for a shitty review IMO.