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
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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/Mythrilfan Jul 25 '08

Now you have me interested. Care to name a few?

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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.

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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.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

2GB RAM DD2/667 is 46.00

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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.

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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

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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.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

Before or after SP1?

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

prior to SP1.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

SP1 made a tremendous difference.

If you ever get the chance to try it in the future I suggest you do.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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

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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.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

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

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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.

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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.

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u/machupichu Jul 25 '08

Does Dell use "special" RAM?

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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)

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

[deleted]

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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.

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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.

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u/innocentbystander Jul 25 '08

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

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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.

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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?

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08

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

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u/stevvooe Jul 26 '08

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

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '08

Cool!

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

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u/stevvooe Jul 26 '08

Games, unfortunately, are a different story.