what are your thoughs on DX10 being Vista only

[Crowley16]

Am wondering if DX10 will eventually be introduced on XP due to the low uptake of vista...

essentially, I don't really want to convert to vista at the moment, but I do want to get a dx10 card, so if DX10 will be made available for xp, then I will wait a bit, but if not, then I'll have to try out vista...

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Procrastinate Now!

 

[StumblingForward]

DX10 is Vista only, it cant be "made to work for XP". Here is a long article about the DX9.0Ex that is what people are thinking is going to be the XP port for DX10. I would like it if it could but the way it is "built" it cant be changed to work for XP.

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein

 

[kmcferrin]

No DX10 for XP, that much is for sure. And there's no way Microsoft would back port it either, regardless of whether it could be done, because they want to push Vista. And while I know that in a lot of people's minds Vista is a bad move, MS thinks it's great, they're still pushing it, and according to announcements this past week they have sold 40 million copies of it.

I find myself saying this over and over again, Vista is the future. You may not like it, but it comes with an overwhelming majority of new PCs being sold. When the supply of Windows XP licenses dry up, it will be the only Microsoft OS being shipped with PCs. That alone means that it will eventually pass XP in it's installed base and be a commercial success.

Most businesses are slow to adopt Vista because from a management and support standpoint it is dramatically different from XP. But once businesses have had a year or so to get used to it, and once SP1 has been released it will be the new standard at businesses as well.

To be honest, Vista isn't as bad as people make it out ot be. There are only two major problems that I have with Vista:

1. System requirements are high. A system with 512 MB of RAM will run XP just fine, but Vista will be slow. That's not such a big deal since most systems are now being sold with 1GB or 2GB of RAM and dual core CPUs. As time goes by, this will be even less of an issue.

2. A lot of software still isn't compatible with Vista. Granted, most of this is related to system administration or system utilities, but it's still an issue. However, the longer Vista is on the market the less this will be an issue.

So really, any issues that might appear to make Vista look weak today will look like they'll be taken care of with a little more time in the market.

 

[StumblingForward]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has banned the installation of Vista on any of there computer systems, this is probably a temporary move but it doesn't look good to have an organization like NIST say it wont use your product. Dell has also made XP an option on all there computers again sighting user complaints about Vista. My wife and I run a computer retail and repair shop and we are not pushing Vista to any of our customers unless they specifically ask for it, and the only people that are even interested in it are the gamers, but most of them are waiting till its been out for a while before they get it. Seeing as they started a SP for it a week after it was out, it looks like it may have needed to be cooked a little longer before they put it on the table for people to take.
Ill stick with XP; at least I have had enough time with it to know where all the demons live.


Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein

 

[LawnBoy]

Vista is the future

Well I guess that depends on how you look at it... I think it's the greatest thing to ever happen to linux.

Linux is the future.

 

[kmcferrin]

Eh. Most companies and organizations that require a reliable infrastructure usually hold off on upgrading to the newly released operating systems until they have a chance to analyze it, test their applications on it, and get the security and support infrastructure in place for it. This is standard practice with most large businesses, especially when the new OS is known to break compatibility. Even if they wanted to deploy it immediately, it is very unlikely that most large companies would have the time or resources to devote to testing and migration simply because Microsoft launched a new OS.

For example, I did some contract work for a major insurance carrier here in the states building a test environment for their IT desktop infrastructure. Back in the 1998-1999 time frame they were transitioning their desktops from OS/2 to Windows NT4. Then I worked with them again in 2002 when they were evaluating Windows 2000 and Windows XP. They had a lengthy process to evaluate both platforms and test their applications for compatibility before they decided which one to adopt and how to go about it. Application compatibility testing (and re-testing) took almost 6 months. It was expected to take almost 3 years before all of their desktops would be replaced with the new OS.

I assure you, the move from NIST is nothing new. It's also funny that the article that you referenced actually points says "NIST.gov must be aware that their decision is likely to draw attention and be misconstrued." So it sounds like it hasn't actually been "banned", but that they're not allowing it to be deployed until they've tested it. No surprise there.

I wouldn't read too much into Dell's decision either, because when Windows XP was released you were still allowed to choose between XP and 2000 for awhile from most vendors. This is at least partially attributable to companies being reluctant to deploy untested technology.

Seeing as they started a SP for it a week after it was out, it looks like it may have needed to be cooked a little longer before they put it on the table for people to take.

This is pretty standard practice too because software development is a long process. A service pack can take 9 months to a year to develop and test properly (they go through Beta testing too), and invariably there are bugfixes added to the patch over the course of development. If they want to release a major patch within a year of OS release they pretty much have to start immediately.

Also, keep in mind that service packs are not solely bug fixes. A lot of times they implement new features/functionality or upgrades to existing functionality. A prime example would be Windows XP SP2 bring the improved security and firewall, or one of the Windows NT4 service packs that added support for larger disks. Considering that Vista had some features that were in earlier Betas but didn't make the release code, it's entirely possible that some of them could be included in service packs yet to come. And in that case they probably actually started working on it before Vista was released.

 

[acewarlock]

I didn't want to switch to Windows 3.1, but the program I wanted to use didn't work in DOS. It's not what you want, but what you have to settle for.

 

[kmcferrin]

Linux is the future.

I didn't articulate it quite right when I said that Vista was the future. What I should have said is that Vista is the future of Windows and mainstream computing. There will always be people who prefer something else.

But most people (even Linux advocates) know that there is a time and a place for everything. Linux has its benefits, and there are certain places where it makes sense. But I doubt that it will ever come close to replacing Windows in the mainstream computing world. The barrier to entry is just too high.

Not that I'm opposed to open source or anything, but most of the cases where I have deployed open source applications in a business setting it has always been running on top of Windows.

I didn't want to switch to Windows 3.1, but the program I wanted to use didn't work in DOS. It's not what you want, but what you have to settle for.

And that's why Vista is the future of Windows. Because eventually, it will be required for mainstream applications. Not to mention it will eventually be the only version of Windows available. Most businesses select the OS that runs the applications that they need. If they need need a specific application that serves their vertical market, and that application runs Windows (as is usually the case), they will run Windows. Once a large number of businesses are running Windows (and most are), it makes sense that most application vendors develop for Windows, which means that those businesses will continue to run Windows. It's a snowball effect.