[X4U] XP <> Vista benchmarks

[Stroller]

On 1 Feb 2007, at 20:11, Michael Winter wrote:
> On Feb 1, 2007, at 1:36 PM, nk wrote:
>
>> OK...well, the short version of what the thread is about is that  
>> vista is a steaming pile.
>>
>> sorry, folks, but I got NO tolerance when the most powerful  
>> company in the universe can even make their own product better.
>
> As I've often said in defense of the Mac, when it comes to the  
> tradeoff between making the software run fast, and making the  
> software faster to use, always choose faster to use. IOW most of  
> the time the slowest component of the system is the person sitting  
> in the chair. Spending CPU cycles to make a better interface to  
> speed up the user is a good tradeoff.

Indeed. nk must have read a different article to the one I did, as  
the one I saw opened with "we are sure that mainstream users will  
appreciate the improved usability of Windows Vista, and the average  
office/multimedia user will likely never notice the lack of OpenGL."

I work with Windows every day and I choose to use Mac at home. I  
think that very clearly indicates which platform I prefer, but a  
"steaming pile" seems to me to be quite an unfair assessment of any  
modern operating system. Someone at a party last weekend remarked  
that "you have to understand they're all crap [Linux, Windows, Mac  
OS] but that some are less crap than others and then you have a place  
to start from" but I think that's pretty unfair, too.

Personally, if I sit down at a fresh install of Windows XP and a  
fresh install of OS X I find little to choose between them - Windows  
DOES have failings compared to Mac OS, but OS X isn't without its  
weaknesses, either. Windows' chief shortcomings are related to the  
drivers of the zillions of different hardware components available  
for it and to the amount of crapware that the average user installs -  
if you discount these (and that pretty much is possible in the real  
world) then XP doesn't do so badly.

I love Expose and I think that Time Machine - apart from its  
nauseating visuals - looks wonderful, but the Linux-based Beagle  
looks like it cocks its leg at Spotlight. I don't believe that Vista  
is so new & "innovative" as Microsoft might claim, but I love the way  
it can use a USB flash drive as swap (and that it's clever enough to  
reject flash drives that aren't fast enough to improve performance,  
and only swap things to the flash drive that are suitable for that,  
swapping to h/d when a hard-disk's read/write/access speeds would be  
more appropriate).

Fair enough, describe your car as a "steaming pile" when it has  
broken down on you that day - I don't like Microsoft's business  
practices, either, and I do object to the way that our schools tie  
themselves into expensive licensing fees for a platform that offers  
them no real benefits, but I read "NO tolerance" and those words just  
seem angry to me, too much so to take the comments at face value or  
find them helpful to a constructive conversation.

Stroller.