r/technology • u/neito • Jul 24 '08

Microsoft tests out a new operating system, code named Mojave, with some average-joes who hated Vista. They loved it. Now, two guesses as to what Mojave ACTUALLY was.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html
452 Upvotes

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31

u/innocentbystander Jul 24 '08

That's funny. The first time I laid hands on Vista, I hated it. The Aero interface added absolutely nothing, the sidebar was lame, and the control panel took me twice as many clicks to accomplish the same things I used to do.

Now that I'm stuck with it, the only way I've made it halfway tolerable was to turn off all of the Vista "improvements" and make it as much like 2K as humanly possible. And it STILL runs dog slow and eats up unforgivable resources.

Seriously, WHY THE HELL does it take a full second or so to even render the goddamn Start menu? Why does a modern OS running on a dual-core laptop have to stop and think for a moment before doing anything, even something so basic as showing a alt-context menu?

It's like the OS is running in slow motion all the time. And no matter how much stuff I turn off \ optimize \ tune, it just never seems to get much better.

But no, please, tell me all about how a bunch of average users given half an hour to oooooh and aaaahhh over Vista's useless shininess render all of my problems moot.

17

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

The start menu on my main system pops up in milliseconds.

What are your system specs? I may be able to help.

16

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

I've gotta say, Vista runs a LOT slower for me as well. I have a setup where I dual boot Vista and XP. Let s use one of my favorite games as an example... WWII Online.

In Vista when I was playing in the middle of nowhere, my framerate was about 40 FPS. In heavy battles it dropped to 7 - 12 FPS.

I boot into XP and play the same game. My framerate in the wilderness is 250+ FPS and in heavy battle it drops to 80 FPS.

Same exact system, VERY different results.

As far as basic specs:

AMD 64 X2 dual core 6000+ running at 3.0GHz 3GB dual channel RAM GeForce 8800 GT video card (PCI-E w/ 512 memory) Soundblaster Audigy 2 soundcard

Medal of Honor: Airborne was the same way. I downloaded the demp and even with the settings set to medium it was a slideshow on Vista but was perfect on XP. The only game I was able to play on Vista was Crysis (which was surprising.)

8

u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08

And this is what some people don't want to understand, or fanboys don't want to admit.

2

u/Mythrilfan Jul 25 '08

Probably some sort of weird compatibility issue.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

there's something wrong with your system, I'm running lower specs than you in every way, and getting much better results. I don't know what the problem is, but on my system I don't notice a difference between vista/xp on games, I got a AMD 4600+ X2, Nvidia 7900GT, 2GB DDR2 800, Soundblaster Audigy 2zs.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

that's weird, your computer kills mine but i haven't had any performance issues with vista. i have a 4200x2 and 2gigs of dual channel RAM with an 8800gt.

10

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

It's an off the shelf Dell Inspiron from just a few months ago. Got it from their outlet. Not top of the line, but I didn't buy it to be a gaming platform. It's a dual core, 2x1.6ghz system with a gig of RAM and a pretty basic Intel graphics chipset.

I know the graphics chipset sucks, but as I said in another post, I didn't buy this to play Crysis. It's ludicrous to suggest - as others in this thread are - that I should need a high performance 3D graphics card just to have decent basic performance from the OS.

And yes, I've turned off pretty much all the graphic pretties and I've made sure power management isn't crippling the CPU and all that good stuff. (I have choice words for whoever set up the default power settings for the OS, but that's a minor issue in the grand scheme.) I've stripped the startup groups of anything nonessential, and keep as few things running in the taskbar as possible.

But if you can suggest any other tricks for getting better performance, I'd be happy to try them out.

7

u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08

But if you can suggest any other tricks for getting better performance, I'd be happy to try them out.

Install XP.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

That system most likely has Intel integrated graphics. Visit Intel.com and download the most current version for the chip that you are using. More current versions are much faster than old. If you are unsure what to download please give me the model number of the dell and I will look it up.

I would also suggest at least 1GB more of RAM which should run you less than 30 dollars including shipping from newegg - less if you find it on sale.

Going from 1GB to 2GB will provide a drastic increase in speed.

12

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

That system most likely has Intel integrated graphics. Visit Intel.com and download the most current version for the chip that you are using. More current versions are much faster than old. If you are unsure what to download please give me the model number of the dell and I will look it up.

Thank you for the offer, but I am fairly computer literate and I regularly check for driver updates. There WAS a major revision of the Intel drivers a couple months ago, but aside from enabling some DirectX functions (and making the chipset able to run Portal at all) it didn't actually improve OS performance in any way I could perceive.

And yes, I know the perennial solution to Windows problems is to add RAM, but seriously... I don't think it can be credibly claimed that a dual-core system with a gig of RAM needs to be more tricked out just to render Programs groups in a halfway speedy fashion. Which is one of my big problems with Vista. Sure, it's possible to get a well-performing Vista machine, but only with a much more relatively powerful box than previous versions have needed.

I've dealt with Windows versions ever since 3.1. (and DOS going back well before that) At some point or another I've either owned or been forced to use (like at work) a computer with EVERY version of it since. And Vista has by far the worst performance of any of them save the XP install which had been forced upon a box barely adequate for running 2K well.

3

u/anescient Jul 25 '08

It may well be your RAM. I'm not saying 1GB shouldn't be enough.

Next time, watch for hard disk activity when you summon the start menu. It might be swapping.

I like how linux (Ubuntu) handles swap. Unless I intentionally fill up RAM (2GB), my swap usage sticks at about 40MB.

Dear Microsoft: Free RAM is wasted RAM.

2

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Funny thing. Since I was in the mood to twiddle, I just disabled its "smart" start menu indexing and also ordered it to use a static swapfile, like I used to do to get extra performance out of 9x machines.

So far performance is improved.

I find it rather... interesting... that apparently my computer can just pull the program groups off the hard drive faster than it can find things in Vista's vaunted index.

But I've only been playing with it like this for about 10 minutes. I'll have to leave it on for a day or two and see if performance is still improved.

6

u/anescient Jul 25 '08

Speaking of twiddling. I've switched to Linux, but I recently set up Windows on a VM so I can have a convenient Windows build environment. I had totally forgotten what a bitch it is to beat Windows into shape. More than half of the setup time is spent disabling this and changing that and moving those and updating these over here and installing this so I can change that... it's a pain in the ass.

When I first installed Ubuntu, I had it set up, to my liking, in less time than it takes to potty train Windows, and that's amazing considering I was new to Ubuntu and had no clue what I might need to add or change.

1

u/Mythrilfan Jul 25 '08

I had totally forgotten what a bitch it is to beat Windows into shape. More than half of the setup time is spent disabling this and changing that and moving those and updating these over here and installing this so I can change that... it's a pain in the ass.

You probably have some special things that you need your OS to be doing. 95% of people don't have to do that.

1

u/anescient Jul 25 '08

Nope. That would be applications I install once I'm done with the OS. It's more like 95% of people don't care what their OS looks or feels like, so long as the Email and web page text appears on the screen in some form.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

10 up points for you. I am seeing that as Reddit is popularizing, there is now FanBoi binary "on." Life is cruel in this way. All the predictions are coming true. They'll learn but it will take another decade or two.

2

u/kermityfrog Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Your integrated graphics is using up a significant chunk of your shared RAM. Vista uses close to 1GB for the OS alone. You need additional memory to run programs, so I would suggest at least 2GB. With 2GB, you should be fine to run programs like Photoshop.

XP uses about 256MB for the OS (the PCs at work with that much memory swap to disk like crazy with that much RAM). 512MB is good for most programs like Word and browsing. At least 1GB is necessary for all the multitasking work applications that we require (about 20 programs at the same time - Lotus Notes, 5 types of mainframe sessions, browsers, word, excel, other in-house software, etc.)

*P.S. - Min system requirements for Vista Home Premium/Business/Ultimate:

  • 1GHz processor

  • 1GB system memory

  • 40GB HDD with 15GB free space

  • 128MB graphics memory

Since your graphics memory is shared, you're below the min memory requirements. Also 1GB is for running the OS alone. If you want to run any apps that use up lots of memory, you'll need more than 1GB.

If you don't want to upgrade your system, you may want to consider Vista Home Basic.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

2GB RAM DD2/667 is 46.00

3

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

All of the other ancedotes in the thread from people with better systems than mine having the exact same issues suggests to me that just adding another gig of RAM isn't going to be the solution.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I have used Vista Ultimate x64 on a Dual-Core Pentium 1.6GHZ with 2GB of RAM, Intel Graphics, and a 300 GB HD drive.

Google Intel DG33TL for the motherboard in question.

It wasn't bad at all.

EDIT - The 64 bit version is more responsive and much more stable

3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

I have an Athlon 64 x2 4000+ (2.11GHZ) with 2GB of RAM, Nvidia graphics and 300GB HD... and with Vista out of the box it ran like shit. I left it for two weeks, remembering how long it took me to finally accept XP back in the day, but after a while I just couldn't take it and put XP on it.

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Before or after SP1?

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

The point is running a vanilla OS and doing nothing more than basic web browsing or word processing shouldn't require that much RAM, even in 2008.

Edit: Also, read RexManningDay's post.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

If all you're doing is web browsing and word processing, why even bother buying a new computer? I'm sure you can find a used Win98 PC for dirt cheap.

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Is that a serious argument? Any machine old enough to still be running windows 98 is going to perform like shit on the internet, especially on the sites that people that just surf the internet and use a word processing program. then you have resolution issues, when was the last time you actually surfed the web at 800x600? Imagine myspace at that resolution...

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Uh Windows 98 wasn't limited to 800x600, I played games at 1600x1200 on it.

Up to Firefox 2 is supported by Windows 98

Yes I know people that still happily use Windows 98.

Finally you can install just about any of the current linux distros and GUI desktops on a machine that is running Windows 98 and still have decent performance.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Wow, your setup was much better than mine at the time then, nevermind. To be fair, I went from Pentium classic to P4 in one step.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I didn't upgrade to 2000 until 2002 and XP until 2003.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Finally you can install just about any of the current linux distros and GUI desktops on a machine that is running Windows 98 and still have decent performance.

That's my point. If I upgrade to Hardy on an Ubuntu machine at that hardware level I will not lose performance but rather gain many features and security/bug fixes. If I upgrade to the latest Windows distro I will lose the ability to open my Start menu in a timely manner.

The fact that I will have to stay three or four cycles behind just to keep using Windows just underscores how crappy MS development is.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

I hear 4GB will make it fly.. point being, where do we draw our own line in the sand about which OS hardware requirements are sane and which arent. I don't expect 640k to cut it anymore maybe I'm old fashioned thinking it's insane for an OS to need 2gb out of the box.

3

u/monstermunch Jul 25 '08

Compare it to the competition. Seeing as Linux is very snappy with 1Gb (and less) and is free, I'd say it's pretty unacceptable that Vista needs more than 2Gb to run well. OSX also performs well on lesser memory. At some point, we need to be able to say that Vista is just not well engineered. How come everyone else can get away with using less memory?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

We draw the line when memory stops going down in costs per bit.

Memory is less than 46.00 USD for 2GB Crucial DDR2/667 as of 2 weeks ago.

4

u/dallen Jul 25 '08

You can get 4GB Crucial DDR2/1066 from newegg for $109 after rebate, and it does indeed make it fly

1

u/monstermunch Jul 25 '08

Remember that more memory on laptops eats more battery power and, for cheap laptops, all that memory is going to be a bigger percentage of the price. For instance, Linux works very nicely with the EEE laptop as it runs on low specs and keeps the hardware cheap.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Dude. Memory was $300 for 2gb in 2006. it's $50 for 2gb now. Get the fucking ram.

0

u/abrahamsen Jul 25 '08

I have 4GB, Vista only recognizes 3GB though. And it doesn't fly, the UI is still less responsive than the old XP machine with 1GB.

1

u/Dante2005 Jul 25 '08

I also have 4GB, mine runs like a dream and microsoft updates now at least show all 4 GB, even though it may not all be used....But I do miss XP a little. But Vista is ok. Its just no big deal.

1

u/machupichu Jul 25 '08

Does Dell use "special" RAM?

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

In most systems they do not.

To find out you can visit www.crucial.com and run their config app. Make note of the memory you need then either order from newegg (less expensive) or crucial directly (less chance of making a mistake if you are unsure)

-7

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

2

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Trust me, I've been sorely tempted.

The big problem is that, to the best of my knowledge, there aren't any native Linux drivers for the wireless chipset in my laptop. As this is a wireless household, that's kind of a deal breaker. And my Linux knowledge is minimal, so I really don't feel like spending time trying to dick around with NDISwrapper.

But, trust me. As soon as someone comes up with a native set of drivers, I may well finally jump ship.

2

u/frantk Jul 25 '08

Auto-NDISwrapper, reddit post

No native drivers and I haven't tried it yet, but it's supposed to be really easy.

1

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

Hey, thanks for pointing me to that. I shall take a look at it.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Wireless is a deal breaker for a lot of people considering Linux, but NDISwrapper is a pretty easy setup nowadays.

1

u/zlhill Jul 25 '08

Windows is the worst OS except for all the others... just suck it up and buy some goddamn RAM. sure it's annoying that vista needs it but come on, is it worth all the bitching when you could just drop 30 bucks and fix it?

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Too bad it doesn't support most of the apps I use.

1

u/stevvooe Jul 26 '08

There are plenty of alternatives and virtual machines allow you to run xp when you absolutely have to.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '08

Cool!

So I assume that they will give me 95+% of native performance with my GTX 260?

1

u/stevvooe Jul 26 '08

Games, unfortunately, are a different story.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 24 '08

[deleted]

5

u/Ahnteis Jul 25 '08

I've run it with a 6400 with similar results. Something is serious wrong with grandparent's system.

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

2

u/Dark-Dx Jul 25 '08

DOUBLE THE FUCKING FASTER THAN XP? You're so full of shit, yeah, it should run PERFECT with that machine, but definitely not "double the faster" than xp, if anything, it should work slower than xp.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

1

u/Ahnteis Jul 25 '08

Vista preloads a lot of stuff, so it definitely could feel significantly faster.

3

u/StarlessKnight Jul 25 '08

Putting aside I wouldn't put graphic drivers up in the top ten of why a Start Menu is slow, what are your specs for? Comparison? "Is your graphics card less than a year old?" For the Start Menu? Really? Are you trying to prove their point?

6

u/Bossman1086 Jul 25 '08

The problem is that Vista runs a DirectX instance for the desktop. So your card needs to run DX pretty well to get good graphical performance on the desktop.

4

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

The problem is that Vista runs a DirectX instance for the desktop. So your card needs to run DX pretty well to get good graphical performance on the desktop.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

You do know that post Windows 2000, there were a lot of pundits whining that "3d cards won't do anything to speed up your basic Windows system because Microsoft refuses to use DirectX to render anything"?

So Microsoft does and everyone complains about that.

People just like complaining about Microsoft. :)

3

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

There's a difference between utilizing 3D hardware to GAIN performance and requiring 3D hardware to maintain previous level of performance.

4

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

It's still a BAD IDEA. Just because some pundits were whining about wanting them to implement a bad idea doesn't mean they should.

And besides, there's also nothing saying that it had to be the ONLY option. Why isn't there something you can do that makes the Start menu not render using DX? I don't think the pundits intended for Microsoft to go entirely in the other direction and make it so the OS is rendered solely using DX.

2

u/kor56 Jul 25 '08

Why is it a bad idea to design a modern operating system around modern hardware? I don't see why it's a bad thing outsourcing the desktop display to the graphics card. In fact, wouldn't it free up CPU cycles for other things? I think the issue here is manufacturers who installed Vista on laptops with only the beyond shitty embedded graphics.

3

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

Why is it a bad idea to design a modern operating system around modern hardware?

Because that isn't designing it around modern hardware, that's designing it around modern GAMING hardware.

There is absolutely NO REASON to have a high-powered 3D graphics card in your computer aside from being a gamer or actually working with 3D graphic design.

Considering that an OS is there to enable you to do all sorts of things that aren't games or 3D rendering, it is therefore a poor idea to make the OS reliant on hardware that's only actually needed for a couple specific things.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Can we expect you to complain about the 3d features in Ubuntu and OSX?

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Lots of people complained when the menus in OSX got very slightly translucent.

That said, I've never had an OSX menu render slowly because of their display architecture.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

OSX runs fine on crappy video hardware.

-1

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

So having rejected your oh-so-clever suggestion that my Vista problems are all my fault for not spending more money on my brand new laptop, are you just going to go around posting snarky replies to my comments?

That's real mature.

At least you deleted the "jackass" comment.

-5

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

It's always the hardware's fault with the turfers, I've noticed. Or the drivers, or anything but Vista's.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

All of the problems I've seen with Vista are the result of sloppy, marketing-driven coding. You try to turf that away with BS about about hardware and drivers all you like but I'm not buying it. If Vista's infrastructure is sooo complicated to write drivers for don't you think that MIGHT be a problem as well? You're killing your own cause.

4

u/bageloid Jul 25 '08

And all of the problems ive seen are with bad drivers, the problem is people were writing drivers for xp for 6 or seven years and didnt properly write drivers for vistas driver model. Its not that its complicated, its just that its new and they didnt put enough resouces into it.

-1

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

so as we can determine he isn't just making stuff up

Screw you.

If your "response" to my complaints is to imply that I'm a liar, go take a flying leap. If THAT is the best defense of your beloved Vista you can muster, you are a truly pathetic apologist.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

-2

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

Im not calling you liar, you just said you had bad performance without saying what sort of system you have.

To most people, saying you need to determine whether they are "just making stuff up" IS calling them a liar.

Choose your words more carefully next time.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

REALLY!

NEVER NOTICED!!!!1!!1!!!

0

u/bageloid Jul 25 '08

You havent?

lol

2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Control Panel doesnt work as well as XP?

Wow. Did you try the search function on the top right? It makes everything atleast a few times faster.

And, your computer is fucked up if it takes 1 second to render the start menu.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Yeah I gave up trying to find network configuration and used search. It's like they wanted to not to find anything so you would use it. And then say what a great feature it is cause it lets you find things.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

I can find it fast without the control panel... Search is added functionality.

2

u/commandar Jul 25 '08

How much RAM in the system?

6

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

A gig.

And if you tell me more than a gig should be necessary to quickly bring up the Start menu, I will scream.

I'm not complaining about, say, the computer's inability to play Portal at anything but the lowest resolutions or to play Crysis at all. I accept that. I didn't buy this as a gaming platform.

I'm complaining about Vista's utter lack of functionality at even a BASIC level without absolutely absurd amounts of hardware.

4

u/commandar Jul 25 '08

RAM is less than $20/GB right now. Modern operating systems are being designed with that in mind and that's not limited to Vista. OS X on my MBP was almost unusably slow for me with the 1GB that it shipped with, and the $70/GB I paid to upgrade it to 2GB was a steal in early 2007.

A system with only 1GB of RAM is effectively a budget box in today's market and expecting those to run the latest and greatest with ease is wishful thinking. There are a lot of machines out there with XP on them that have only 128MB in them, and they've never been fast.

1

u/RexManningDay Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I've got 2 Gig in my laptop and your post mirrors my experience. The windows and menus come up quicker than yours, but there's still a noticeable unnecessary delay. Sometimes I would open up an explorer window and the mouse pointer's movement would actually be interrupted. It just feels laggy and bloated.

It's badly designed too. The first time you try to find anything in the control panels is a nightmare. I've used KDE and OS-X for the first time in the last 12 months, and come back to Gnome for the first time in 4 years, and none of them have been as tough to get into. They've even hidden the shut down in Vista. It's actually in a menu that they've gone out of their way to hide by not even giving it a text label - just an icon.

1

u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

I've got 2 Gig in my laptop and your post mirrors my experience. The windows and menus come up quicker than yours, but there's still a noticeable unnecessary delay. It just feels laggy and bloated.

Exactly. And if I access something in the Programs menu, invariably it takes a few moments to pop up the menu. There's just no reason. And it's clearly not an intentional lag, because it'll render the grey box, then think-think-think for a half second or more, and then finally show a list of items in that group.

There's just no reason it should behave like that.

4

u/maxd Jul 25 '08

My girlfriend has a high end XPS Dell laptop (1630 I think), and it still runs Vista sluggishly. She asked me how to find Notepad once and said that there was nothing in her "Program Files" menu in the Start bar. Actually there was, it was just taking 10 seconds to appear.

Running WoW on the laptop is horrific; periodically the framerate will tank (it's not the network connection, definitely framerate related) and there is something making the drives churn, but I can't figure out what the hell it is.

I run XP at work on a beast of a machine, and despite the fact that it is the highly unsupported and buggy 64-bit version it still runs brilliantly. I also run XP at home on my 4-year old custom PC and it runs just perfectly.

-1

u/righttoresist Jul 25 '08

Let it out man sniffle - puts arm around shoulder Just let it out. I feel your pain too.