Projected 'Average' Longhorn System Is A Whopper 1539
greg_barton writes "At first I thought this was a joke, but this article from Microsoft Watch confirms it: 'Microsoft is expected to recommend that the 'average' Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.'"
Really? Because all this time I thought that.... (Score:4, Funny)
We got to the moon on less computing power than a Commodore 64 and Longhorn needs 2 Gigs o RAM. Amazing.
Repeat after me: HE NEVER SAID THAT (Score:4, Informative)
Someone just did this joke a couple of articles ago. False memes that never die just make people look ignorant.
Re:Repeat after me: HE NEVER SAID THAT (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Repeat after me: HE NEVER SAID THAT (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem is it's not his responsibility to deny he said it; it's your (or whoever's accusing him's) responsibility to prove he did. Anybody can just accuse anybody else of saying anything; doesn't mean they did. Show me the proof. And the fact that a bunch of Slashdotters think he said it is not proof, so don't pass it off as such.
Nobody has ever come up with an original cite for this alleged quote, in all the times it's gone around the net. See here [urbanlegends.com] for Gates' own response, including his own call for a citation that he knows doesn't exist (and if it did, he'd finally be able to disprove this silly quote once and for all by digging up the original article cited and showing the world that the quote is not in it).
As Gates himself admits, he's said plenty of real stupid and dumb things, so I don't see why he'd choose to deny this particular quote and none of the others if he's lying about it.
Re:Repeat after me: HE NEVER SAID THAT (Score:4, Funny)
Yes he did.
"False memes that never die just make people look ignorant."
Quoting Wired is the sign of ignorance.
Re:Repeat after me: HE NEVER SAID THAT (Score:5, Funny)
"640k ought to be enough for anyone" -- Bill Gates
There, feel better now?
He wasn't talking about memory! (Score:5, Funny)
He wasn't talking about memory, he was talking about dollars earned per minute. And he didn't mean anyone, he meant himself.
Re:Repeat after me: HE NEVER SAID THAT (Score:5, Funny)
Other favorite feedback from this column: A woman (a Wal-Mart shopper, no doubt) emailed in outrage that I had used the word "blow job" in a public forum. "You are disgusting," she messaged. "How dare you use a word like 'blow-job' in your column, you fucking moron?"
Wow. I mean.. just... Wow.
JonKatz (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when has that man ever been bringer of exacting knowledge?
Re:doesn't matter whether he said it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:5, Funny)
640K won't be enough for Blaster2008 (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, of course, so that the viruses can run faster, corrupt a greater amount of data and spread more efficiently.
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:5, Informative)
Must be the windows version underlying Mozilla.
It works fine on a 4 year old gateway pII-600 laptop maxed out at 288MB. As I surf Slashdot, I am taking a break while doing compiling a report in SunOffice7, pulling from Excell and Word files on one virtual desktop. Two separate instances of Mozilla with a total of 10 tabs are open on another to confirm data. Evolution and a tabbed terminal session running ssh and wget take up another Virtual desktop, and I leave one open for KPatience. Gkrellm is showing 129 processes and 90% idle cpu. Memory is sitting at 60%.
This is normal use with Mepis, your milage may vary.
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't even have a built in operating system.
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, to be fair, emacs doesn't have a text editor either.
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft didn't tie IE to the "kernel" (Score:5, Informative)
Good question. Microsoft didn't tie IE to their kernel. They tied it to the Windows shell.
I love the progression of memes around here. IE startes out integrated into the shell, and over time becomes integrated into the actual Windows kernel itself! Cute.
Meanwhile, KDE does the same damn thing.
Thats for IIS, not IE. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm currently a moderator, but no-one has clarified the BS on this thread. Moderators, please moderate accordingly.
-Jon
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:5, Funny)
The first one that comes to my mind is "Eight to Twelve Years at Hard Labor" but I'm perhaps a little too quick to rule out capital measures.
Re:Not Trolling, jes askin' Why All this Power? (Score:5, Insightful)
Autonomic Computing
It's been the policy of some Operating Systems (FreeBSD and OS X, for example) for a while to use 100% of your RAM, on the basis that if it's not in use then it's wasted. The operating systems will speculatively cache anything that look potentially useful on the disk, and will over-allocate RAM to existing processes (at least in the case of OS X. Not sure about FreeBSD) so that malloc calls will return quickly.
Autonomic computing takes this even further, and says that the CPU should be in 100% use at all times. If it's not in use by applications then it should be indexing files, and predicting things the user might want to do in the future.
And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
ROFL! Such optimism. Next you'll be telling me that Duke Nukem Forever just went into public beta...
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
*sigh*
3D Realms will NEVER be capable of releasing Duke Nukem Forever with technology/gameplay capable of justifying the development cycle (which began 26 years ago next week). By extension, 3D Realms will probably never release Duke Nukem Forever.
But the jokes will continue indefinitely! Therefore, 3D Realms should release a Tetris clone called Duke Nukem Forever. That way it's released, it can't be compared to today's FPSs, and that lame joke can't be used anymore.
Duke Nukem Forever as a Tetris game... that would rock.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably won't be uncommon for that much RAM to be in a machine by 2008, but 1 Terabyte disk space seems a little rediculous. And longhorn is suppose to by release like early 2006 isn't it?
I'm not convinced that this article is for real.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that ridiculous.
On the hard drive side, 250GB drives and even 300+GB are very easy to find in any computer store. I've also heard of 1TB external hard drives. It would be pretty simple to set up a system with more than 1TB of storage.
On the RAM side, most motherboards these days support 3-4GB of RAM. Mine right now supports 4GB; I run 1GB in it for now, and will be buying a second GB fairly soon.
And on the processor side, I hear of CPUs being overclocked past 4GHz and higher all the time.
So, even though these are the specs for the "average" computer, it's possible to have it today. And bottom line, if it can be done today, then there is no reason to think it wouldn't be average in 2.5-3.0 years.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Interesting)
But to me, 'average' computer specs implies that I can have all of this for $2000 or less, including a decent monitor. When that happens for these specs I'll stop laughing. Oh it's inevitable sure, but for now it's rediculous.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Interesting)
You definitely seem to be abnormal with your 1.25 GB of RAM; most people I think still have 128MB - 512 MB. I'm doing just fine with 512.
Even with Windows XP, most people have no use for more than 40 GB of disk space, if that. The biggest thing driving disk space demand right now is people wanting to store all their music as MP3s, or downloading a lot of movies online. I only do the music part (with my own CDs), and my 80 GB is still far from full. People who don't do music and movies (such as office workers) have no use for large hard drives. I really don't see how Longhorn could use so much disk space either, unless they're loading it down with useless video clips for some reason. Even MS couldn't write code that bloated, even with the hidden flight simulators.
Intel is already having problems with selling their processors because users are finally figuring out that you don't need 3 GHz to read email and surf the web. Intel's even sponsored video gaming competitions in Vietnam in an attempt to drive demand for faster processors.
All in all, while some home users (mainly gamers) will want equipment with these kinds of performance specs, businesses aren't going to like the idea of having to upgrade so much hardware just because of an operating system upgrade.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but there will be demand when Microsoft tells the hardware manufacturers that the only way they will be allowed to maintain the OEM agreement is by selling machines exclusively with Longhorn installed...
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Most office computer users are bean-counters, secretaries, powerpoint-using middle managers, etc. These people do NOT need 3D graphics, 4G of RAM, or 3 GHz CPUs. What's more, their companies are not going to give them this hardware just because MS's latest OS recommends it. Intel and MS are already having severe problems with their quarterly results because businesses are now extending their computer upgrade cycles from the customary 3 years to 5 years or more, despite Wintel's desperate cries of how much "productivity" they're losing by not equipping secretaries with 3 GHz processors so they can run Word faster. Businesses, which drive a huge portion of computer sales (probably the largest portion), have finally wised up to the fact that they don't need to change computers so often, and unless Intel/MS make some changes to their business models which until now have depended on frequent upgrades (expanding into China is one tactic, though it's not working so well for MS because of piracy), they're going to be hurting.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, of course there's always going to be applications to take advantage of the highest-performance computing technology available. We aren't seeing ever-more-powerful Beowulf clusters and compute farms popping up for no reason. The scientific community can always use more cycles for better simulations, and the Hollywood people can always use them for better FX (of course, neither of these groups use Windows either). Certain engineering jobs require fast CPUs too for simulations, and others require advanced 3D graphics for modelling.
But none of these people are home users confined to a $2000 budget for a computer (or better yet, sub-$1k).
Gamers who can't stand anything less than 100fps also "need" high performance machines. However, just because some small groups of people with specialized needs or wants exist doesn't mean there's going to be a huge market for giant hard drives and 6 GHz CPUs. Are so many Joe Sixpacks going to rush to BestBuy just so they can get one of these super-fast machines so they can edit their home videos faster? I really doubt it.
The upgrade cycle is slowing, and most people who want computers have them now. I think this is going to cause the drive for ever-increasing specs to slow.
Lastly, why would an OS need all this power? The OS isn't supposed to gobble up all the machine's resources, because then you can't run these power-hungry apps.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:4, Interesting)
Clock speed goodness has slowed down lately. About the only thing that's still going nuts is hard drive space, or so it seeems to me.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Interesting)
6 GHz --> 0.17 ns per cycle. Light travels 5 cm (about two inches) in 0.17 ns, and information cannot travel faster than light. This means that even at the speed of light (electrical signals in typical electronics propogate at ~0.8 c, IIRC) it will take almost the entire clock cycle to get information across the chip, never mind whatever time it takes the transistors to respond.
In the meantime, those nursing dreams of 100 GHz chips had better look beyond nanotech to picotech-- atom-sized transistors.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Funny)
I'm running my light at 3.4 x 10^8 m/s.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
For those requirements, this machine is perfectly adequate. Sure, my Photoshop could get stuff done faster. Sure, my frame rates in my games could be higher. But fuck, for most everything I do anymore, it's perfectly acceptable.
When this machine won't keep up with the games I want to play, or the programs I need to work with, then I'll pony up for a new one.
Most folks I work with/for are still on Pentium II or III machines, with 256MB of RAM being "a TON of memory, dude!"
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Interesting)
This is actually a very common technique in the commercial software world, advocated at least as early as 95 by Alan Cooper in The Essentials of User Interface Design: look at your project schedule, try to project what kind of hardware will be common by the time you ship, and plan for it. It's not rocket science, just common sense. And as others have pointed out, the specs they are targeting should be standard by 2006, let alone by 2008 when the beta program will end.
BTW, as an official Longhorn beta tester, I can confirm that this story is not a hoax: I was given these specs over a year ago at some of the early beta launch meetings, and while they've bumped the RAM up from 1 GB to 2, nothing else has changed.
BTW2, at WinHEC this week the graphics vendors are complaining that Longhorn won't be using enough of the vast amounts of GPU power they will be providing by 2006...
The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see anything wrong with these specs. Next year well be in the 4 GHz range and my system today has 2 @ $150 gig memory which isn't a bunch either, Gigabit Ethernet is on ~2/3ds of the mommaboards today, Moore's law will take care of tripling the video processor over the next few years, AMD is kicking butt with their 64 bit chip so Intel will get it's 64bit ready for the masses, if you're not running 802.11g then great you can upgrade to wireless SuperG @108Mbps. When long horn comes out in ~2006 than I imagine this will be the average system. MS is making quite good estimates on the intended consumer. But then you read that a dual processor machine is on the horizon makes me wonder if LongHorn isn't targeted for desktops.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Naked Rayburn
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, that would help AMD a heck of a whole lot more than Intel, because AMD has a MUCH more scalable arch than Intel. (AMD licenced alpha for athlons (32-bit) (dedicated northbridge connection per processor) and copied them for the Opteron (on-chip memory controller, and very fast chip interconnects)) Intel by contrast has a shared memory bandwidth for all it's chips (assume that both Opteron and Itanium have the same base memory bandwidth, for a single chip call it 6.4GB/sec, Assuming it's in the Opteron's own memory (each can have it's own memory) on a dual processor board, each Opteron would have 6.4GB/sec to it's memory, and slighly slower access to the other processor's. Itanium on the other hand shares it's memory bandwidth so each processor has 3.2GB/sec. Scale this up to 4 processors and each Opteron has 6.4GB/sec bandwidth while the Itaniums have 1.6GB/sec bandwidth. Thus why people either cluster Itaniums (with usually a max of 2 processors per node) or have very custom chipsets that emulate what the Opteron does (SGI, and an HP chipset))
Think of it as on chip SMP which is not some virtualization construct as Hyperthreading is.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Naked Rayburn
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
CPU clock speed growth seems to be slowing (Score:4, Interesting)
1995: 133 Mhz
1998: 400 Mhz (300% faster)
2000: 1500 Mhz (333% faster)
2002: 2800 Mhz (90% faster)
2004: 3400 Mhz (20% faster)
If the present trend that I've observed continues, however, we won't see 6Ghz in 2006.
However, CPU clock speed is only one factor as far as system performance goes, hence Intel's recent announcment about moving away from marketing Pentiums based on clock speed. So maybe we'll see a P5 "7500+" rated CPU...
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, look at graphics cards. Triple the video power, and you can expect to double the heat output -- if the process shrink to 90nm reduces the power output. If, instead, they run into the problem Intel did, the heat output will increase five-fold. There's enough headroom on GPU cooling that you can still air-cool, but these really will be the "vacuum cleaners" that recent nVidia cards were accused of being.
GigE and terabyte storage are reasonable expectations.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Interesting)
yes, hardware will improve, there will be faster CPUs, GPUs, faster and cheaper memory
Also, if this spec turns out true, there will be a lot of noise from all the people who bought the last MS license plan - and it won't be cheering, either!
The only good news is MS will lose a lot of corporate/gov customers with this spec. Maybe Longhorn is not such a threat to opensource as previously thought?
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
No, there's a very good reason. If your PC is made obsolete, you'll have to buy a new one, which just happens to have MS Janus(tm) DRM [slashdot.org] built in.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Funny)
DRM Overhead (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DRM Overhead (Score:5, Funny)
"Have it YOUR way" [burgerking.com] indeed.
Soko
Damn... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn... (Score:5, Funny)
I hear the Ace of Spades uses 16x anti-aliasing, bump mapping and has 64 million polygon count....
Tech demo at recent WinHEC (Score:5, Interesting)
XP on equivalent hardware barely sputtered out four of the videos. Longhorn is definitely a media OS.
I'm looking forward to this new 3D infrastructure display technology.
news flash: (Score:5, Funny)
on a side note, i can't wait to get one of those.
Do you think... (Score:5, Funny)
not confirmed (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the article it's not a confirmation at all. Microsoft has released no official statments about hardware requirements, these values are just estimates from developers, who may or may not have a clue.
Of course if it is accurate, then wow.
Yup, this just more Timothy FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is no better than Simone:
Moore better not die... (Score:5, Funny)
If So, Microsoft Is Screwing Itself (Score:5, Insightful)
If these specs are correct, Microsoft is making a major tactical mistake. The computer market is driven by early adopters, but the bread-and-butter is still in the business market. The average business still has P3s running around, or even older. Even with the average upgrade cycle, but 2006 what's cutting edge now will be the average. Even with Moore's law Longhorn will require far more resources than the average business machine.
If Microsoft ships with those specs as a baseline, 2/3rds of their business customers will say now. If Microsoft demands they switch or lose support, they'll end up switching to Linux (which by then will have made significant inroads as a business desktop OS).
I can't imagine this story being true. As much as I dislike Microsoft, they're not that foolish to release an OS that most businesses can't afford to buy. Even XP can run (albeit slowly) on a two or three year old machine. If Longhorn can't run on today's machines it needs to be streamlined until it does.
Free internet (Score:5, Funny)
lifecycle (Score:5, Interesting)
This is probably about right: just remember that even though Longhorn may arrive in 2005/2006, it is likely to have an expected product lifetime of (say) 5-10 years (think Windows NT/2000/XP). This means that the average is planted somewhere midway into the envelope, say 2-3 years. I'm guessing that by 2008, these technology characteristics are properly not too far off base.
I'm sure someone could sit down and do the numbers for us by extrapolating on CPU and hard drive rates and moore's law as it has occurred over the past couple of years.
I mean, design is all about tradeoffs: we don't design in assembler any more because the playing field has moved on. We don't design UI's from scratch, we use UI 'builders'. In the same manner, we don't design for todays technology when we expect our design to work with tomorrows.
If Linux didn't design for MP and scalability now, then it would be hosed by the time MP became "default" for the desktop (well, in fact, with HT, it already is!). Yet, designing for MP now causes some performance and related loss even though the technology is not here.
Who am I trying to lecture Engineering and Economics 101 to the
This is to process MSPS (Score:5, Funny)
If one graphs Microsoft's patch releases over time, it is clear that the time between patches approaches zero. No one likes to patch a aysstem, just to see the next day a new patch or twelve have been released over night!
So the MSPS will stream patches to all servers in a continuous feed. Of course, to install these patches takes bandwidth (1 GB Either), to download, both CPU power (dual 4GHz) and ram (2 GB) to install and a lot of room (1 TB to be exact) to store them all.
+1 Sarcastic
Re:This is to process MSPS (Score:5, Funny)
17:18:45 < james/Gaim> to re-initialize after patches
17:18:47 < gumby> rofl - can I post that to
17:18:54 < james/Gaim> be my guest
Spare a thought for the testers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad I don't have that job.
* No, I don't have inside information, just experience at the software development cycle. For anything this complicated, the early development versions run too slowly.
News update... (Score:5, Funny)
The fatal flaw in this reasoning (Score:5, Interesting)
If Microsoft really thinks that this will be an average system in two years then I doubt we will ever actually see Longhorn. Microsoft will be finished by then.
The vast majority of people today are more than happy with their computer systems as they are, and a significant number of people have too much machine for what they're doing. For many years into the future you will be seeing people with P3 and P4 machines still doing then what they do now.
There's a reason why processor sales are slipping for Intel, and it has little to do with AMD: no one's upgrading because the last upgrade they did made no real improvement. How much faster can you get a program to start? How much faster can you do what you already do (excluding those who are in scientific or graphics fields).
Hardware speed and power has accelerated so quickly up until now because software development could keep up with it. Now that proprietary software has stagnated (the last two software packages released by Microsoft, Corel, Macromedia and Adobe are exactly the same with one or two completely useless features thrown in and a new splash screen and icons) there is no reason to increase the capabilities of the hardware. Nothing you can do to a word processor will require more processing power than a current "average" machine offers. Same with web browsers and email clients. Even games -- game development has slowed to a crawl because it takes so long to make them now. Then there's the fact that game graphics can't get that much more realistic (and really, they don't need to be -- the Doom 3 demo already makes my stomach turn).
The described system will not be anywhere near "average" for the "average" computer user in two years. Bookmark this post and flame me in 2006 if I'm wrong.
-JemWindows size? (Score:5, Informative)
Win95 approx 100MB - 150MB (4x increase)
Win 98 approx 450MB (4x increase)
Win XP approx 2.5GB (5x increase)
Longhorn? Around 12GB???
Well, seems to be the trend.
Re:Windows size? (Score:5, Informative)
According to microsoft.com (KB 304297) the requirements I've found are:
Win95: 50MB
Win98SE: 195MB
WinME: 320MB
WinNT Workstation: 110MB
Win2K Workstation: 650MB
WinXP Pro: 1.5GB
Clearly there is an upward trend but your 4-500% increase is bullshit.
Two points (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the second point: does anyone remember all the big flap over the story that Windows 98 was going to require (gasp) 200MB of hard drive space? Who could forget... "200MB for an OS! That's ridiculous", etc. Of course, everyone forgets that at around the same time, Linux had similar HD requirements. And when XP was set to be released, bitching and moaning about the expected 1GB install (or thereabouts), when modern Linux distros installed to roughly the same size. Time marches on, and OS requirements will climb because modern OS's will be expected to do more and more hardware-taxing things. The minimum recommended specs for a modern version of Redhat would look downright bloated to just about any computer user of 3 or 4 years ago, so keep that in mind. Windows will require beefier hardware, and so will Linux. This sort of behavior is not limited strictly to Windows.
Nothing to see here, just more geek hypocrisy...
Looks like... (Score:5, Funny)
That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac on the other hand... (Score:5, Funny)
Mac OS will still be more technically advanced than Longhorn.
The new apple PCs will only run at 3ghz or so, but will continue to completely school anything from Intel/Microsoft.
The OS will still comfortably run on an 800mhz G4
Steve jobs will manage to create a pointing device with no buttons at all. Mac users will claim this to be a revolutionary feature.
What are they skomin' out there in Redmond? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know we can expect hardware performance to improve substantially in the next three years, but COME ON! what are they trying to achieve here? What problems do I have with my computer that this solution is going to fix?
Ten years ago (pre-win95), if you asked me what my 5 major computing problems were, I'd have said:
1. Memory management - need a flat model with real 32 bit support
2. Standardized driver and hardware support, especially for printers.
3. Long File Names.
4. Standardized install/uninstall support.
5. Performance - hardware needs to be faster.
Well, a year or two years later, we've got all of them.
So, what are my top five today?
1. Spam
2. Viruses and Spyware
3. Every software vendor on the planet wants me to send them money every year even though I'm happy with what I've got. (See: license keys and forced registration/activiation.)
4. Tech IP (Patents).
5. Vendor lock-in.
ONE... **ONE** of those (#2) is a problem software can fix. and FOUR of them are *CAUSED* *INTENTIONALLY* by Microsoft and companies just like them.
I am not the only one who's soured on MS just because I'm tired of putting up with the crap. The corp world is moving, too.
I also think MS is in more trouble than they let on. They feel their grip on the monopoly rope slipping and rather than letting go and trusting that they can compete in an open world, they are forcing themselves to be the only player in a smaller and smaller box.
BTW, Knoppix 3.5(?) came out today. It now supports my NForce2 audio and net card correctly in the default configuration, and it makes NO demands of me beyond making me look at pictures of penguins.
undisclosed specs (Score:5, Funny)
- a USB microwave installed
- a deflector shield
- 2 plasma coils
- a fusion reactor a power supply
- seatbelts
- BIO-DRM-authentication
and so on
At first I thought .... (Score:5, Funny)
Then I remembered that the dafault is for the OS to handle the pagefile size.
The real reason to require lots of hardware. (Score:5, Insightful)
Longhorn: Everything to Everyone (Score:5, Funny)
Longhorn will be your media server (replacing the cable box, VCR, Tivo, and DVD player), play games via your television (replacing game consoles), interface with any networkable appliance in your home (refrigerator, heating and cooling system, alarm system) and provide a centralized control panel...
That high-end PC will sit in a closet and be accessed via 5.8ghz wi-fi through a set-top box attached to your HD capable TV, thin client portables, and touch screens on your "Longhorn Enabled" appliances.
Your Longhorn PC will be on the net and everything connected to it will be accessible (i.e. check your refrigerator inventory via a personalized web-based panel so you can prep a grocery list to pick up on the way home). Eventually, you'll walk into your house on a 48 degree (farenheit) winter day, and your home will be a sweltering 95 degrees (farenheit) inside, courtesy of the W64.HVACdemon virus, written by some pointy-headed 15 year old in Holland.
That's Bill's ultimate goal: to squeeze Microsoft "technology" into every nook and cranny of your life until everything you do has some Microsoft code enabling it or making it inaccessible unless you pay Bill. And that's why such huge specs are needed.
-- Greg
In response to MS's claim (Score:5, Funny)
What I want. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I go nuts and decide to open every program on my machine, or listen to my whole mp3 collection at the same time, while lens flaring every photo I've ever taken, I don't want to wait. Ever.
I may be using extreme examples, but the OS should be instant. I'm still amazed at what BeOS can do on 233 pentium. Why can't today's Windows do that? Why won't tomorrow's? Why does it take 20 minutes to copy a 14 meg file on my OS X machine.
Instant. Now. I want it now, and I want it yesterday. Specs be dammed.
Windows will always boot slow (Score:5, Funny)
There's an early scene where the crew is coming out of hibernation and a computer screen is slowly scrolling text. One of the partygores said, "One hundred years from now and they still haven't done anything about how slow Windows boots up?"
Someone piped up, "Of course they've done something - they're shipping a hibernation unit with each copy!"
Not affordable for businesses (Score:5, Interesting)
a) XP is expensive, even by volume licensing an organization with 1000+ machines is a costly thing to licence
b) Most of our machines won't run XP. They won't run win2k very well
c) Upgrading/replacing all our machines to run a new OS is more expensive than the OS. Moreover, with the MS track record, by the time it was done there would be a new OS.
Cue in Longhorn, I think this will be even moreso. It's not just the cost of the OS businesses can't afford, it's the hardware required to run the damn thing... not to mention the dependability/security issues. If not for our linux servers offering protection from the outside world, we'd be sasser'ed nicely too if we ran a lot of winXP machines.
"Forced" Hardware upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)
What amazes me most is (Score:5, Informative)
A common new computer when XP came out was about a 1.4GHz If I recall correctly, but the system requirements are 400MHz...
Just some food for thought.
The beginning of the end? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody has 3 or 4 machines already and a game box. We simply don't need a 6 ghz processor. We certainly don't need another bloated M$ product to surf the web. We (I believe) will soundly reject this upcoming drm and new word/excel format. This cycle needs to stop, and will.
These companies make this stuff because that's what they do. The ultimate proof will be when the consumers actually buy this stuff or not. There have been many "great ideas" that the unwashed masses have already rejected. Anybody remember "PUSH"?
Microsoft also backtracked this year on their intention to end support for win98. Guess they checked and found that 28% of the web was still using win98... probably with no intention to upgrade. Our dollars will decide where the computer industry goes. There is no new Internet to drive sales so I can't really see it getting stronger. BTW, here in Canada, an AMD 2400+ with most goodies is about $475 American.
AFAIK (Score:5, Informative)
That's why these projections seem so incredibly high. And I'd say they aren't that high either. I'll be surprised as hell if 4GHz processors and faster graphic accelerators don't come out next year.
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the cost of the hardware came down too much, you might notice that you are paying a huge chunk of the price to Microsoft. Keep the cost of the hardware high and Microsoft's cut gets lost in the static.
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, the average home user is probably close to a 500 mHz Celeron. The average new XP machine might within shouting distance of a 3.0 GHz P4, sure.
Thus Microsoft's estimate of the average Longhorn machine sounds plausible.
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a very skewed concept of "average", good sir. Too much time on Slashdot. That might be the average system being SOLD today, as in right this second, but that's far from the average system in peoples' homes. "Average" users don't buy a new system every year, and 3.0 GHz wasn't the average when they bought systems 2, 3, 4 years ago.
Nor is there an application today that the "average user" requires that needs 3.0 GHz. The "average user" may be playing with digital photos more, but they don't require maximum Photoshop performance. Slicing their picture cropping time from 4 seconds to 2 seconds isn't worth hundreds or even a couple thousand dollars to Joe Average In Less Than Optimum Economical Times.
Re:Beowulf Cluster? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How does Microsoft Intend to Survive ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple. DRM in BIOSes at the hardware level. Attacks on Linux via SCO etc at the OS level. FUD, loathing, and lock-in at the applications level. Patents, DRM, EULAs and DMCA at the legal level.
Remember the hidden APIs in Windows 3.x? They'll be at it again. Even better, Microsoft could put in "Trusted Computing safeguards" so they can Trust that only Microsoft's applications suite, IDE, etc will run. Bypass these safeguards, and it's charges under the DMCA and 20 years in max security prison as an evil godless communist hippie software pirate terrorist hacker for you, buddy!
Oh, and meanwhile they'll sue you for breaking the clause buried in the Longhorn EULA where you agree to only install Microsoft applications. Good luck in fighting off their army of rabid jackals with law degrees.
> People, Businesses, Universities, and others will not be able to afford to upgrade their systems to use Longhorn.
Can they afford not to? Since Office Longhorn will (because of Trusted Computing again) only run on Windows Longhorn, and will have incompatible file formats with any previous version, and after a certain date they'll only ship Longhorn, once you buy one new machine, you have to replace them all. (They've done it before, remember?) Intel, AMD, NVidia, and ATi, among others, will love them for forcing the installation of the latest CPUs and graphics cards even in the office. Intel and AMD, in particular, will be ecstatic to add the "features" to their CPUs that will help Microsoft to do all this.
Over the last few years, it's seemed Microsoft has this plan: Make consumers believe that lock-ups and crashes are normal consequences of owning a computer and not a result of poor OS design. Make them believe that viruses and other malware are normal consequences of surfing the internet and not a result of poor browser design. Make them believe that you really do need a 2 GHz chip to run the OS and a word processor (plus a top of the line graphics card for that paperclip). Make them believe that the only thing that can replace Windows, Office or Microsoft anything else is the next version, that nothing else is an "enterprise ready solution". In short, take credit for everything good that happens, and shift blame for everything bad onto something else.
And we here on
Maybe that's the clearest sign that Micros~1 has won.
Microsoft Windows Longhorn. Projected Release Date: 1984.
Re:Oh shit, oh shit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it's nice to drag the bottom end along to a higher standard... but the thing you overlook is that, many times, even the top end doesn't need that standard.
In my shop, I've got 50 odd machines, and 43 of them are toasters. The users use exactly 3 applications - internal email (no internet); a custom app that lets them answer the phone and transcribe info from a caller; and a custom app that lets them manage the results of that call. And, oh yeah... 3 of that 43 will occasionally make a spreadsheet, consisting entirely of static cells.
That's it. That's all they do, and that's all they WILL do. We don't want added complexity - literally, people can die if our stuff screws up. And quite frankly, a 486 is overkill for this.
Instead, I'm being force-fed a piece of crap that's so complex, noone can manage it. The first 12 hours of box's life will be me, uninstalling AOL, MSN, OE, Media Player, and all the other crap that is nothing more than an exploit vector if I'm lucky. How I spent my past week? $35k for a rack mounted box, no keyboard or video... and it has Solitare on it. It has IE on it. It has a cute little wizard that'll help me setup MSN as my dialup ISP. This, in a quad-homed box that'll have 3 fractional DS3s on it. Yep, the inclusion of NetMeeting on this thing really made my day, and thank god OE keeps getting reinstalled every time I patch.
So... no, sir... the potential "new development" argument doesn't fly. It is rarely appropriate, and it is pretty much responsible for the bulk of the MS exploits running around today. Unknown, unneeded, and therefore unmanaged features that are not needed by that specific install. Look at the exploits running around, look at who keeps "catching" them and why... it's all caused by these "new developments" being force-fed in an environment where these developments are *not* appropriate, and in fact not needed. I had to patch against a MIDI file exploit, on a rack mounted box with no sound card. Huh??!! Then consider that I had to patch my neighbor's box against Sasser... a box that has only a single NIC connected to a cable modem. No file sharing, etc, is needed by that user... and the user doesn't want it. Yet, we still have to manage it, even though it has no business existing in that install. You'll find that the bulk of the Sasser victims are a similar case, and this case is caused by unwanted, unknown, and therefore unmanaged features.
Consider how irrelevent most firewalls would be if this were NOT the case.