[Beowulf] Sidebar: Vista Rant

[Geoff Galitz]

>
> This is where Vista is a major screw up.  Nobody cares about DRM
> compliance but the DRM police.  Nobody cares about multimedia systems,
> and since functioning multimedia now fits in $500 telephones people are
> understandably cynical about needing multicore multi GB systems to make
> it work.  What people DO care about, very much, is having a system that
> happens NOW, click to keyboard, at their actual UI.  Microsoft is in
> deep trouble...
>
>      rgb
>

I do have to interject on the "nobody cares about multimedia systems"
front.  I, for one, certainly do.  In fact I just spent this year's personal
system budget  (as provided by my current employer) on a multmedia
system.  We  do virtual environments  and our stuff is too heavy weight
to run on  smaller or embedded devices.  I went with a desktop system
as it gives me the ability to perform detailed testing and also the
flexibility
in hardware and software to experiment with under-the-hood designs.

Our users also mostly use multimedia systems or gaming oriented systems.

The system I just picked up (a Fujistu Siemens Scaleo P system)  came
with Vista.  It works fairly well for the most part, but when I started
adding
peripherals it exposed some of Vista's shortcomings.  The lack of device
drivers being the main issue.  Oddly, I considered the system to be quite
slow, but now it seems it very responsive.  I assume there are still a lot
mysterious under the hood processes going on... and the lack of
transparency is my biggest concern.  And that damn virtualization EULA
clause.  And... well...  I have some issues, but it works well enough.

-geoff