Windows Mobile 7 - A Peek - MERGED

[boe]

Originally Posted by Sulten

Beyond 7.0, Microsoft is even hinting at a completely redesigned Windows Mobile 8.0, which will again redo the internals of the operating system to keep up with newer and more powerful mobile hardware.

That quote scares me - I hope they don't mean the same way that Vista does. There are still some people saying things like Vista runs fine on my home machine - not realizing it can be significantly faster with XP. I'm not saying well designed code can't use more powerful hardware to be even faster - it definitely can - unfortunately MS tends to make code that requires new hardware just to do what the old OS did at the same speed on old hardware.

[neodorian]

Originally Posted by boe

That quote scares me - I hope they don't mean the same way that Vista does. There are still some people saying things like Vista runs fine on my home machine - not realizing it can be significantly faster with XP. I'm not saying well designed code can't use more powerful hardware to be even faster - it definitely can - unfortunately MS tends to make code that requires new hardware just to do what the old OS did at the same speed on old hardware.

Well, the problem with Vista was that they didn't completely rewrite it for new hardware. Think of how much better OSX was than OS9. Complete rewrites run the risk of problems with backwards compatibility and when you have the vast majority of the business and home market under your belt, you can't risk people losing productivity because their old software or hardware doesn't work. You think there are issues with Vista now? Imagine a whole new OS written from the ground up. Apple's OS has the benefit of a very limited hardware base to write drivers for but Windows is installed on all kinds of configurations and the driver base has been building for years.

I think a proper rewrite from the ground up would be great if it established some standards that hardware vendors could use when designing their hardware. That way it might cut down on the driver issues and make for easier development. In a way, the mobile market is less fragmented with fewer common chipsets so this might be easier than on the desktop/server side. Also I would hope they learn their lesson and not let big hardware makers like Intel dictate what it has to run on. If not for Intel throwing its weight around, Vista may have properly demanded modern hardware and not stuck MS selling crappy stripped down versions to keep Intel selling weak chipsets.

[[sammich]]

I don't care what anyone says, but the RAM on this thing better be well over 512MB. Call me crazy.

But it makes sense: The drivers for this thing are going to be HUGE! Look at all the capabilities! They are monitoring the camera, movement, touches on the screen, gestures, cell signal, battery, scanning the network, transferring data etc...

Plus, with all these features, I think this is going to be the FIRST TRUE mobile computer. More people are going to use it for business purposes, and the programs aren't going to be the little compressed ones anymore. I think developers need to be able to take a brake from cutting back features to conserve memory.

Hopefully they will have an adjustable page-pool too!

[Aleki]

Originally Posted by boe

That quote scares me - I hope they don't mean the same way that Vista does. There are still some people saying things like Vista runs fine on my home machine - not realizing it can be significantly faster with XP. I'm not saying well designed code can't use more powerful hardware to be even faster - it definitely can - unfortunately MS tends to make code that requires new hardware just to do what the old OS did at the same speed on old hardware.

if we didnt move on, we'd still be complaining about how xp is slower than 98.
it only makes sense, that in order to move to the next tier, some sacrifices will be made.
I built my last years computer around the vista OS because I wanted dx10. the pc runs very fast, though i will admit, because the drivers havent entirely matured yet, there are some games that appear to clip more on occasion than if it were to run on xp. these games are typically older dx9 games (and unfortunately some new ones like NFS PS as well). other than that, the vista UI is much quicker than xp on the same system

[boe]

[QUOTE=Aleki;243532it only makes sense, that in order to move to the next tier, some sacrifices will be made.[/QUOTE]

Actually it doesn't make sense. Cars used to only go 50mph and consume 20 miles to the gallon. Should we ASSUme that to get 100mph you would have to get 10mpg?

NO - you can actually make things more efficient. A computer used to fill an entire warehouse and it wasn't as fast as calculator. Should we ASSUme that it would take two warehouses to make something as fast as a calculator?

By studying what others have accomplished we can make things better. We can improve efficiency - lightbulbs, windturbines, solar cells, batteries etc etc etc.

Those who don't study the past are doomed to be idiots.

I've worked in software development and have seen how some very simple code modifications improved efficiency and speed by 400% - no new hardware required- actually used less bandwidth as well.

[[sammich]]

Originally Posted by boe

Actually it doesn't make sense. Cars used to only go 50mph and consume 20 miles to the gallon. Should we ASSUme that to get 100mph you would have to get 10mpg?

NO - you can actually make things more efficient. A computer used to fill an entire warehouse and it wasn't as fast as calculator. Should we ASSUme that it would take two warehouses to make something as fast as a calculator?

By studying what others have accomplished we can make things better. We can improve efficiency - lightbulbs, windturbines, solar cells, batteries etc etc etc.

Those who don't study the past are doomed to be idiots.

I've worked in software development and have seen how some very simple code modifications improved efficiency and speed by 400% - no new hardware required- actually used less bandwidth as well.

Are you getting at : Assume makes an AS$ out of u and me?


I agree with you completely.

[Aleki]

Originally Posted by boe

Actually it doesn't make sense. Cars used to only go 50mph and consume 20 miles to the gallon. Should we ASSUme that to get 100mph you would have to get 10mpg?

NO - you can actually make things more efficient. A computer used to fill an entire warehouse and it wasn't as fast as calculator. Should we ASSUme that it would take two warehouses to make something as fast as a calculator?

By studying what others have accomplished we can make things better. We can improve efficiency - lightbulbs, windturbines, solar cells, batteries etc etc etc.

Those who don't study the past are doomed to be idiots.

I've worked in software development and have seen how some very simple code modifications improved efficiency and speed by 400% - no new hardware required- actually used less bandwidth as well.

I guess i chose my words too hastily. what I was reffering it to was dx9 performance in vista as compared to xp. from my understanding, vista is not optimized for dx9, due to a brand new kernel. as how dx7 didnt run as well on a xp machine in comparison to the older OS's

from what i know, vista is following the same trend xp went through back in the day. xp was a more stable OS to 98 (though not 2000) but its hardware requirements made it so a computer with 256MB ram would run it slower than a identical system with 98 or 2000. look at xp now. its gotten more attention over the years as newer pc's became more capable of meeting the OS's requirements.

Same thing is noticed with Vista. it runs pretty sh*tty on my friends computer with 1gb ram. his resolve was loading XP and his computer is perfectly happy with the games he runs. i'm currently running vista64 with 4gb ram and it runs a whole lot better than xp64 for me (i kept it for a month before i made my decision to switch back). less bugs, and surprizingly less issues with crashing programs/games.

I guess this is just a YMMV case depending on the hardware behind the OS