Link care of Bloo:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Highlights:
“None of the AGP or PCI-E graphics cards that you can buy today support HDCP […] If you’ve just spent $1000 on a pair of Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards expecting to be able to playback HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies at 1920×1080 resolution in the future, you’ve just wasted your money […] If you just spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play 1920×1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you’ve just wasted your money”.
“For example PC voice communications rely on automatic echo
cancellation (AEC) in order to work. AEC requires feeding back a sample of
the audio mix into the echo cancellation subsystem, but with Vista’s content
protection this isn’t permitted any more because this might allow access to
premium content.”“The Microsoft specs say that only display devices with more than 520K
pixels will have their images degraded, but conveniently omit to mention
that this resolution, roughly 800 x 600, covers pretty much every output
device that will ever be used with Vista. The abolute minimum
requirement for Vista Basic are listed as 800 x 600 resolution”“Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support”
“Elimination of Unified Drivers”“Once a weakness is found in a particular driver or device, that driver will
have its signature revoked by Microsoft, which means that it will cease to
function.”“Since this is a rogue device, it can be revoked… along with hundreds of thousands or even millions of other consumer devices that use the same chip.”
“Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced
because it could be a sign of a hack attack, with the required reaction being
that “Windows Vista will initiate a full reset of the graphics subsystem, so
everything will restart”. The effect that these tilt bits will have on system
reliability should require no further explanation.”“In order to demonstrate their commitment to the cause, Microsoft
have recommended as part of their “robustness rules” that vendors license
third-party code obfuscation tools to provide virus-like stealth capabilities
for their device drivers in order to make it difficult to interfere with their
operations or reverse-engineer them. Vendors like Cloakware and Arxan have actually added “robustness solutions” web pages to their sites in anticipation of this lucrative market. This must be a nightmare for device vendors, for whom it’s already enough of a task getting fully functional drivers deployed without having to deal with adding stealth-virus-like technology on top of the basic driver functionality.”“Hardware
manufacturers will have to drink the kool-aid (and the reference to mass
suicide here is deliberate [Note N]) in order to work with Vista: “There is no
requirement to sign the [content-protection] license; but without a
certificate, no premium content will be passed to the driver”. Of course as a
device manufacturer you can choose to opt out, if you don’t mind your device
only ever being able to display low-quality, fuzzy, blurry video and audio
when premium content is present, while your competitors don’t have this
(artificially-created) problem.”
kfsone's pittance 
13 Comments
Is it true? or is it an Anti-MS guy with an agenda?
If Microsoft actually had this market monopoly power – it would be even more heavily regulated.
Microsoft can *try* this – but the EU would simply ban it. The U.S. would have Bill Gates and friends in for anti-trust, and consumers would simply go to the competitors. I remember when CompuServe dominated the market and thought it could control access to the internet. Anyone younger than 35 probably hasn’t heard of that name, but Mosaic/Netscape made them eat sh1t by selling “freedom” (and graphics).
This seems to me to be a worst case scenario spun out to the bitter end.
The article cites lots of sources, unlike my piecemeal quoting of it. It is, however, worst-case scenario analysis.
Just don’t forget ME.
Since Apple went x86 their sales went up 30%.
I build all my systems, but I’ve been thinking about getting a Mac. Mostly because I can dual boot, or triple boot with Linux in there too. I will not go to Vista until I have absolutely no choice.
Considering I could still be running win2k without much trouble it will be a very very long time before I endorse this crap.
My hope is that a company that has real innovation prevails. I’ve often made fun of Mac people, but it’s a much better option than the feces gates tries shoving down our throats.
I’m 34, Joker, and I remember CompuServe :). It just didn’t affect us much here in the EU.
My first connection ever was made with a 28.8 modem to a BBS here in my city, to which we submitted our needs to be downloaded during the night, and then connected to retrieve them.
I remember, back then, that the e-mail sigs shouldn’t have more than 1 line of text, not to collapse the net with unuseful bits.
Mine was 300 bauds, noob! or was 2400? Dont remember…
Yup – my first modem was a C=Net modem, either 300 or 1200/75.
I ran my first BBS on an Atari ST. Dang, I don’t even remember what software it was. My first connection was a 9600 baud from Sweden. Don’t ask me why Sweden.
I couldn’t make it fancy the way I liked and then I got an Amiga, and I started running a BBS-PC! BBS. First connection was at 14.4Kbps although I now had a fancy 19.2kbps modem. Had callers from around the world either for my BBS tools or to visit what was, apparently, a world famous “pub” SIG on my board :)
Eventually upgraded to a USR something fancy either 32 or 36kbps. I certainly used a 56.6kbps modem, but that could have been when I started using KA9Q to access the Internet in 1992. I’m fairly sure that my BBS ran 48.8 for a while, so it could be I had a V52 modem for it, but … bleah.
I even developed a little mail network of my own for BBS-PC! but as I was rolling it out I discovered FidoNet so I never really did much with it. I believe MetNet Triangle, in Hull, actually formed a fairly large network out of it (it was a star network).
And, my next computer is a Mac. I think I’ll probably regret that when it comes to upgrading the beastie. And I know I’m going to wind up running Windows XP on it so that I can play games – EQII isn’t out for Mac, is it – although they’ve got that thing, now, where you can run individual Windows apps in their own Window under MacOS without actually having to dual boot.
I started my computer days at 14 y.o. in 1984, with a Commodore Vic-20. The first program I did was a karate game. It left the computer with just 2 bytes free of memory. Oh, print free(), 3583 bytes free…
Later a C=64. In 86 or 87. I “stole” the text fonts from the game RAMBO and did a video titler for my shop weddings videos, among some intros for them. It was around 1988.
Around 1990 I got an Amiga at the shop, and started videotitling (and gaming!)
I got my first modem, I remember now, a 2400 one. It was the paid for translating into spanish Scenary Animator 3D for the Amiga.
I used to call BBSs in Spain from my father’s shop. He was amazed about ther big bills… until I discovered FidoNet: 2:343/98.21… amazing I still remember my fido address.
I had also a friend that did work on Telefonica, spanish phone company. He calls my computer from their office, and overseas BBS, and he connected both of us, so I did some long distance calls for free…
I remember a Saturday night… it took me about 5 hours to download Workbench 2.1… just 3 disk of 880 kb each… Used 2400, 5600, 14400, 33×00 and 56000 modems…
I have own Amiga 500, 1200, 4000+tocatta+vlabmotion, later a Cyberstorm 060, a PowerPC 603e in my A1200, Ateo ISA bus extension, The permedia 3D chip on the A1200…
My god, I spent SO much money on my old Amiga… it was much of a religion than just a computer…
I was very tired of the Amiga situation, so in 2000 (or was 2001?) I sold all my Amiga equipment. With the money I bought a top PC and even save some money!
My nick, AMpóstata, is a joint of AMiga and aPOSTATA, the spanish word for “religion renegade”.
I miss the old good days…
Yesterday I find this, and stays until 4:00 am looking for more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XM5mzIHGA0
I even bough last night this book:
http://www.commodorebook.com
KFS1, you’re talking about Parallels Desktop for Mac.
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/
You can save $10 buying it from Amazon.
If you have Mac questions, lemme know. I use Parallels. It’s a VM that runs right on top of the Intel CPUs in Macs now, so it’s native fast. Clearly, to run multiple OSes like that though you’ll need 1GB+ RAM. However, for games it’s best to use Boot Camp, which is the free dual boot feature that Apple provides. The machine boots up in a matter of seconds, it’s not a big issue. Parallels has killed off the whole ‘no software on Mac’ nonsense. You can use any Windows app and run it on OSX now natively via Parallels. Parallels even has a sweet ‘convergence’ mode that strips away the Windows layer, and just leaves the Windows app running inside the Mac OS as if it were a Mac app….with a Windows UI of course.
If you’re buying a Mac Pro tower, than you’re upgrade options are broad for everything except for video cards. Nvidia and ATI are very limited about providing after-market gaming cards on the Mac.
Hi-end 3D gaming is the Mac’s last ‘bridge too far’ to conquer. Mid-level gaming however has improved dramatically. EA is throwing a lot of its weight at the Mac market at that level. The big games, WoW, EVE, etc are all there. The Mac’s fast market growth is improving things a lot.
It is good to see Metnet Triangle BBS mentioned. I was the sysop and after BBS-PC!, used Starnet and Mebbsnet, authored by William Bowling in California. Metnet developed to be a ten line BBS with one ISDN line having two channels. Started on Amiga 500 then ended up on a very powerful Amiga 4000 060 CPU. I loved those days but was hard work keeping on top of it all , and it was basically a hobby/club just driven by enthusiasm. Fido address was 2:252/129. Amazing what an Amiga 4000 could do. Was always a struggle raising funds for the BBS as was VERY costly. Always stuck to the legal side of things and became UK support for Mebbsnet and the support bbs for future publishing Amiga magazines. Also tried MUD type games like Precious days etc. Oliver Smith in Grimsby was very impressive when I visited his house watching him program. Little did I know I would be a analyst programmer or so I was titled, but in reality did multi roles in later life, So much to tell but too little time. I now sell books and maps after leaving programming business after well over ten years. My website could be so so much better but just do not have the time.
Hehe, one and the same Oliver Smith :) Great to see you’re still doing things online :)
10 years later, still here. still selling maps and books. Former Metnet BBS sysop. :) Living in Caistor Lincolnshire.
Oliver – I was thinking I might try and ***TRY*** and emulate Metnet using Telnet access. Wondering if this is possible for nostalgia. Using the Amiga emulaters.. Do you know if mebbsnet software is available anywhere online? Fun to do…