Comments on: Don’t Worry, Vista Will Handle It

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:16:18 +0000

Kyle: I think the thing that irritates people about Vista compatibility issues is that we’re not necessarily talking about old Windows 3.1 programs having difficulties… we’re talking about programs that might only be a year old that ran fine on Windows XP SP2.

That said, MS is issuing compatibility updates on a regular basis. Not that I’ve noticed much of a performance boost, but presumably it’s happening behind the scenes.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:52:07 +0000

Generally in the GUI versions of things in windows (of all versions) give you much less options than the command line versions. Most of the options you are looking for, and possibly more, are available in the CLI version of the defrag. I’m not a big fan of the CLI defrag, however, because it doesn’t give you any progress information – it sort of just seems to hang for (potentially) hours. A good option for you is Resco PerfectDisk.

I’m not too sure why so many people are so angry about compatibility issues in vista. A LOT of the OS has changed, and if total backwards compatibility was available for everything, it would be horribly inefficiently coded. You wouldn’t, after all, expect a Windows 3.1 program to run on Windows XP would you? And you wouldn’t expect to fit a 66 Mustang Engine into a 07 model. The idea that software should be modernized seems to have been lost somewhere in recent times…

By: kendall

kendall — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:24:38 +0000

Brian made a good point, it goes far deeper than the desktop. I’ve spent a couple of years working on code for Hi-Def flat panels TV’s. Like most digital TV’s, the projects I worked on ran under Linux. If you click on my name you can get access to all of the open-source code that Sony is using in their TV’s and set-top boxes. But this code base, as large and complex as it is, is tiny compared to what you have in your cell phone. And I’m not talking about a BlackBerry or anything that advanced. Just a tiny little Samsung phone has a blazing processor, dozens of MB’s of code, and who knows how much RAM and flash ROM.

As far as learning and anticipating the human user, look at the automotive industry. For years now, auto transmissions have adjusted to the driver, delaying up-shifting for lead footed drivers while making smoother transitions for grandma. There is a huge future in software configuration management and advanced version control. This code base keeps evolving and growing and recombining in so many ways, we need a bunch more code just to keep track of it. Lately it seems my job is not so much writing new code as it is figuring out how to put together bits and pieces from six different places around the globe.

Anyway, I guess my point is that the world of embedded processing has mushroomed over the past decade, and that growth only seems to be accelerating.

By: Matthew Milam

Matthew Milam — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:21:47 +0000

Unforunately, I am not a fan of either computer — PCs require too many parts to work right and Macs are just too damn expensive and arrogant in the manner in which you can’t configure the system as extensively as you can with a PC.

That’s just me thou.

By: » Links for 08-03-2007 » Velcro City Tourist Board » Blog Archive

» Links for 08-03-2007 » Velcro City Tourist Board » Blog Archive — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:23:19 +0000

[...] – Don’t Worry, Vista Will Handle It “The ideal computer would be a completely invisible computer, one that could anticipate what [...]

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:38:39 +0000

Okay, okay… guess I should take back my statement about Macs being less configurable and whatnot. I knew that OS X was based on Unix, but I didn’t realize that a command line shell was so close at hand. I stand (or rather sit, on my ass in front of my computer, geek-style) corrected.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:56:58 +0000

I didn’t know Mac before OS X. But I can do this on my Mac

rm -rf /
or, really
sudo rm -rf /

And trash my drive so quickly and throughly it would take your breath away. I spit on your weenie registry hacks!

But seriously.

The era of humans trying to figure out how programs work is coming to a close. The era of programs trying to figure out how humans work is now underway.

I think you’re onto something here. It goes deeper than desktop computers – great chunks of the world are becoming automated and will adjust to our expectations. Except they won’t always work and there will always be guys that really _want_ to get into the guts and fix things.

By: tobias s buckell

tobias s buckell — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:20:27 +0000

Oddly enough the reason I switched to OS-X is more options on the Unix backend of Mac now. The old Mac is what your describe, but since I have access to a terminal in OS-X it’s like getting the nerd-dom fun of a linux if I want to without any of the daily worries about having to drop into that.

I occasionally actually do start my mac up and optimization using a 3rd party app, but the in the background defragging works surprisingly well and I’ve stopped doing it in favor of using a small app called Onyx that does a set of system tweaks and updates including a basic hdd optimization that seems to be all I need.

When I want to really fly geek, I boot up straight in BSD Unix using blackbox as my window manager