Considering just how many
copies of
Windows Vista that Microsoft has moved, it's not too surprising that a few (potentially rightful) whiners are calling the new operating system out for glaring issues. Not too long after users were complaining over
sluggish file movements and
bogus ads, it seems that the Aero Glass interface is the latest target of concern. Reportedly, the battery life of laptops is being diminished by having the eye candy cranked up, all while Microsoft claims that the OS touts "improved power management capabilities." Of course, Core Duo users
cried this same river when trading more horsepower for minutes, but engineers from HP and Lenovo have actually concocted their own power settings after finding the canned options unsuitable. Still, it seems to make perfect sense that flipping on a glitzy interface that obviously requires more juice to run correctly would negatively impact the battery life, but until we start strapping potent
fuel cells into our portable machines, this
unfortunate trend is likely to continue.
posted May 4th 2007 5:45PM
"Back in the late 90s, everyone used Real Player." no one did, real has always sucked.
"You can't install Quicktime anymore unless you download bullshit iTunes" bullshit
"1,349,388 Mac fans switched back over to Windows" - completely made up.
etc.
Mostly, though, you're right - the page is primarily "idiotic" and only secondarily wrong/lies.
I used to use Real player- he's right, it was quite popular back in the 90's, but then started including silly annoying things like the "message center".
The quicktime comment is incorrect - though the default option on the download page is indeed "quicktime with itunes". He is correct the other way round though, in that you can't get iTunes without quicktime. This annoys me - I need iTunes for my iPod, but I can't stand quicktime.
As for that last number, if you go back to the page now you'll see it has changed - it's a hit counter!
So essentially you've found one minor error (quicktime is available without itunes) on a page you said was full of "bullshit/outright lies".
As for "idiotic", I disagree. He tends to make a pretty good/mildly amusing argument.
How do you think this useless Arero(premium $$$ version only), feature can archived these 3D effect??? With more and more energy, you paying the bill at the end of the month and your contribution to global warming greater.
You people don't get it.
Aero offloads the windowing operations from the CPU to the GPU and adds the glass effect for fun. The only thing it's "adding" to the processing is the Glass, and Glass turns off WITHOUT Aero turning off when you REALLY want to conserve power, but at less than 20,000 shader operations per window, it's REALLY negligible should the drivers be doing their jobs properly.
Emulating surface/texture operations on the CPU takes more time thus more power to process. Notice the framerate when you move windows is much better with Aero than without even on a laptop with shared memory. It's using roughly the same size transistors and on a smaller chip; if it's taking less time to process, why do you expect it to take more power?
Lastly, real evidence (http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page11.html) shows that there's only a 0.6% increase in power consumption from XP to Vista WITH stress to Aero's primary features: window management and Flip3D.
How people can still deny this is totally beyond me. It should be DEAD OBVIOUS that people are just looking for more things to accuse Microsoft of for the sake of gossip.
It's disgusting how much this blame Microsoft sentiment is affecting people's problem solving skills. If your video card's sucking up more juice than it should be, bad drivers should be the first thing that comes to mind.
Never mind what about all the alerts and warnings Vista continually spews out.
Like women ignoring a low oil pressure light most computer users are clueless and will ignore.
Some improvment in opeartins system security features.
Since the dawn of microsoft windows - windows 3.0 / 3.1 all most users used their powerfull computers for were for " solitaire"
www.vintagecomputermanuals.com
I do agree about the fact that most of these people aren't accounting for their aging batteries. My laptop's battery only lasts long enough to move the outlet that its pluged into!XD