Vista Bashing = Cheap Traffic!?

It seems the web (and certainly the blogosphere) is full of posts damning Vista for various reasons and I do not believe all this harsh criticism is justified. It all came to a head when I read a particular blog entry tonight. I started writing a brief reply in order to express my feelings on the matter, but it turned into a semi-lengthy rant which I would like to reproduce in a somewhat tweaked / editing form here.

What worries me is that it is very fashionable to bash Vista. It feels like any self proclaimed Tech expert thinks it is almost their prerogative to write long anti-Vista articles based on and citing other anti-Vista articles – does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?!

For the record I should say I am a huge fan of Linux, I run more Linux boxes than Windows, but of those windows boxes, the majority are XP and only one is Vista. I am very happy with Vista as well as XP but it is about managing your expectations. It is completely unrealistic to assume Vista will run on hardware that is a couple of years old (or even some budget machines.)

Surprise surprise, it won’t, Vista has been plagued by hardware and software incompatibilities – what does this tell us? Simply that Microsoft was not lying when it said Vista is a major update to the Windows platform. Historically all major updates have had driver and software compatibility issues (anyone remember XP 5/6 years ago?!?) Drivers are the responsibility of the manufacturer NOT Microsoft, for years prior to release Microsoft were talking to hardware companies, asking them to update their drivers but most ignored them. Why!?? Very simply because they will sell more hardware if people have to go out and buy Vista certified equipment. It is not in their interest to revisit hardware they released 2 years ago – it does not make them any more money and the consumer be damned.

Saying that, there are a number of platforms / situations when Vista is clearly not suitable and for those I still run XP – it is more responsive on such hardware and has the added bonus of comfort factor (i.e. I have been using it for years and I am very familiar with it,) but lets not forget, this is old technology that has not really been worked on since 2005 (sp2.) SP3 is nothing more than a security roll up with a few extra Vista developed features added. The desktop rendering in XP (called GDI+) is based on a software stack that is several years old and incapable of hardware accelerated desktop compositing – the same thing Mac OSX and Linux have been capable of for years.

The problem is, noone seems to have a long enough memory to remember the Windows 2000 / 98 saga, or the Windows XP / 2000 saga that followed that…

There is nothing wrong with Vista*, similarly nothing wrong with XP*, nor is there nothing wrong with Linux*, and even with OSX* – it depends on what hardware you have and what you want to do with it.

* Of course it is not as black and white as this, all platforms have their inherent strengths and weaknesses.

I wish we would move beyond this fanboy like bashing, if there is merit to a discussion I am all for it, but I am getting fed up of reading the same FUD constantly. Most of it is simply fishing for cheap traffic.

/Rant

Vista SP1 – A reflection

It is interesting how perusing or glancing at the popular tech topic currently doing the rounds on wordpress can give an insight into the impact such announcements (or software/game/hardware/press releases etc) are having on the general public. Its all well and good reading about something (in this case Vista Service Pack 1) from recognised tech insiders such as Paul Thurrott, it is far more telling to read about the experiences everyone else is having.

Here are a selection of headlines from the last few days,

Vista wreaks havok on some PCs, users complain (anti Vista blog), My Nightmare trying to upgrade to SP1 (Insightful look into incompatible drivers), Vista SP1 update not showing up is for your own good (Reasons why SP1 may not be available yet for some people), SP1 Now available, Delayed, Delayed, Delayed, SP1 Day two (interesting positive feedback from a user), Hell has frozen over (overexcited user).

And guess what? Its not (entirely) the usual doom and gloom and has become almost ubiquitous when it comes to reports about Vista. Vista Service Pack 1 has come a long way since internal betas handed out to the Microsoft beta testers. These poor guys must have been feeling particularly abused this time round if the early write ups are anything to go by. With several restarts required to complete the process (and a few hours) these so-called tech elite reported back their thoughts on the process and as you can imagine, even the most staunchly pro-Microsoft of them has a few ‘choice’ comments to make.

But anyway, fast forward to now and you will see in your Windows Updates Vista Service Pack 1 waiting patiently for you to let it into your digital home. Software and hardware compatibility is good and the lengthy installation process has been slimmed down dramatically to a single reboot after completion. Inevitably it won’t go that way for everyone with some users reporting issues with certain drivers. To Microsoft’s credit, a fairly comprehensive list of drivers that have issues has been published and I have reproduced the list below.

Realtek AC’97

For x86-based computers: Alcxwdm.sys – version 6.0.1.6242 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Alcwdm64.sys – version 6.0.1.6242 or earlier
SigmaTel

For x86-based computers: Sthda.sys – version 5.10.5762.0 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Sthda64.sys – version 5.10.5762.0 or earlier
SigmaTel

For x86-based computers: Stwrt.sys – version 6.10.5511.0 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Stwrt64.sys – version 6.10.5511.0 or earlier
Creative Audigy

For x86-based and x64-based computers: Ctaud2k.sys – version 6.0.1.1242 or earlier
For x86-based computers: P17.sys – all versions (This was originally a Windows XP-based driver.)
Conexant HD Audio

For x86-based computers: Chdart.sys – version 4.32.0.0 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Chdart64.sys – version 4.32.0.0 or earlier
Display drivers

Intel Display

For x86-based computers: Igdkmd32.sys – versions between and including driver 7.14.10.1322 and 7.14.10.1403
For x64-based computers: Igdkmd64.sys – versions between and including driver 7.14.10.1322 and 7.14.10.1403

Unfortunately, I am the (not-so) proud owner of a Ac’97 soundcard in my primary laptop so it looks like I may have to fish around for drivers (AGAIN!!) to get my laptop to work properly with Redmond’s latest offering. The issues here are not Microsoft’s fault. Infact, as several tech insiders have noted, Microsoft was beating the drum about drivers to ODM/OEMs for months prior to Vista’s (and SP1’s) release but when the moment came to deliver, most manufacturers did not come to the party.

The reason is simply, it is not really cost effective. Take a computer you bought in the last few years (or Motherboard) and goto the manufacturer’s website and check the date of the ‘latest’ drivers (or BIOS.) Whilst these companies are fairly diligent during the product’s lifecycle, when they move onto something else, they stop putting out bugfixes or updates because it no longer makes commercial sense for them to pay their software engineers to do so. When Vista came out, many people had equipment (like me) that was designed for XP but could, with a fair amount of tweaking, run Vista very comfortably. The problem I (and many others) faced was a complete lack of native driver support for this hardware. I understand the problem, but I still think it is ridiculous. Microsoft did try to smooth this over by building in a compatibility layer into Vista to allow the loading of some XP drivers and while this helped a lot, there were performance penalties.

For now, I am not particularly fussed about SP1 so I will be sticking to vanilla Vista until either these driver issues are resolved (unlikely) or I get the time to find replacement drivers for my laptop.

Installing Vista on ‘legacy’ machines

I have a two year old laptop which came with Windows XP. XP unfortunately is getting a bit old especially given that noone at Microsoft has worked on the code since 2005 (aside from security fixes.) There is almost no information as to how to go about upgrading from XP to Vista so I decided to summaries some of the steps as well as a few tips and tricks I learnt along the way.

Fore-mostly, decide if it is practical to move to Vista on your hardware. There is no denying Vista has much steeper hardware requirements than XP and it should be noted that there are some machines (even ones which quote that they are ‘Vista Capable’) which will not work well with Vista.

This can be a difficult decision as the realistic requirements for Vista are difficult to quantify. Many people from Bloggers, forum lurkers to Microsoft Engineers quote a variety of minimum and recommended hardware requirements. I do not wish to add to this rampant opinion base, instead I am going to outline how to make your decision.

1) Does your system have a minimum of 708 (Yes 708 no 768) Mb of RAM AFTER deducting any shared graphics card RAM? Ideally to run Windows Vista comfortably you should have 1Gb but my laptop behaved well with 708Mb. It should be noted that if you can tweak the amount of RAM a shared graphics card uses, its worth setting it to as low an amount as possible (Normally done in the BIOS.) Vista requires between 32-64Mb of Graphics RAM so if yours is set to 128Mb and you are short on main system RAM, free it up. If you have enough RAM, continue onto the next point. If not, your adventure ends here

2) Does your system manufacturer supply official Vista drivers? If so, its a good chance your system will behave well with Vista and you can save yourself a lot of work, however if you can not download Vista drivers for your laptop – do not despair. Most manufacturers are very lazy about updating drivers in general but thankfully the vast majority of components are modular and used by other laptop manufacturers. It is likely that most of the drivers can be found from difference sources.
It varies on a case by case basis, but a lot of XP drivers / utilities can be used in Windows Vista however this should only be used in a last case situation. The reason for this is the fact that your mileage will vary. Most XP drivers will run in a type of compatibility/emulation mode which will reduce your system’s performance. Some drivers can cause far greater problems like not releasing resources in a reliable way leading to memory leaks, lockups and / or causing Vista to fail from standby/hibernation or failing to shutdown.

The first thing to do is to make a list of the hardware on your system e.g. Graphics card, Audio card, Wifi/Wired networking equipment, PCMCIA, Memory card reader etc. Once you have done this, Google is your friend. For example, I have listed my laptop (Amilo A1650) specs and what I did to make each part work.

CPU : Athlon 3400+, No driver required for Vista.

GFX : Ati x200m GPU, No driver required for Vista, but updated version available from ati.amd.com

Wireless : Broadcom 4318 , Did a google search for a laptop with this chip, downloaded the native Vista driver from the manufacturers website and it works well. Well actually it took two or three different attempts to find one which worked well.
LAN : Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC. Again can be found by the same method as above, although this is not strictly needed as Vista pre-installed a good driver for this.

PCMCIA : Texas Instruments PCI-xx21/xx11 CardBus Controller with UltraMedia – XP version causes laptop to fail to shutdown in some cases, driver installed by Vista Update.

Modem : SoftV90 Data Fax Modem with SmartCP – Driver installed automatically by Vista update.

Card Reader : Texas Instruments based – not supported by Vista – Still working on this one
Software (Launch Manager) : Installed XP version (using compatibility mode XP SP2) – works well

Make your own list and do some google searching / trawling. Be aware you may need to reinstall Windows Vista a few times before you find the winning driver combination – it took me almost eight to get it right. Just be careful and install drivers incrementally at first so you can roll back if you start to see unexpected behaviour and / or performance issues.

MinWin is nothing new, and the road to ‘7′

Tgdaily has a follow up on the leaked Windows 7 video I previously blogged about. It turns out, as I and others predicted, Windows 7 milestone 1 (which is what the video shows) is essentially a patch to Vista SP1. What is surprising is that Milestone 1 acts more like an upgrade installation than a standalone install like the Longhorn Milestones.

After jumping through hoops using the Vista Standard installation, the tester was presented with a very Vista-esque interface which consumed a roughly similar amount of RAM to ‘vanilla’ Vista. The reviewer noted that it was difficult to discern any difference between Vista’s Kernel and the leaner MinWin kernel we know Microsoft are experimenting with. Of course this is simply Milestone 1, a very early build which will be greatly worked on in the coming months.

I did a bit of digging into the MinWin kernel and found a fantastic article on Paul Thurrott’s supersite. Despite the recent interest in MinWin (no doubt fuelled by public perception of Vista,) it is not a technology that Microsoft has been testing recently. In fact, the idea of a compartmentalised kernel has existed in one form or another for many years. Back in 2003 Microsoft talked a lot about separating the key components of their upcoming operating system to allow for a ‘core’ system which could then be added to in a building block like fashion. People in the industry rejoiced assuming that this would allow for extensive componentisation as can be found in Linux, however in practice, Microsoft used this to create the 5/6 different versions of Vista and had the absolute say in what was included. Recent programs like vLite allow some flexibility however this does not take advantage of componentisation as nLite existed for Windows XP long before. Windows Server 2008 was the first product to really offer componentisation in the most accurate sense and is called Server Core.

Server Core is a command line tool that operates with no GUI (explorer) running (or even needing to be installed,) and allows for a machine to be customised to fit a specific role (or roles.) Such roles could be DHCP, File/print server, Virtualisation, IIS 7.0, Terminal Server, Domain Controller etc and it allows for the server to customise exactly what is installed and run. This in turn simplifies the update procedure as only components that are used (or needed for dependency reasons) are updated as and when appropriate.

“…Server Foundation (MinWin) was a core server OS component that would provide minimal server OS functionality and be used as the basic building block for job-specific server implementation…” (source)

Windows ‘Longhorn’ Server has been in development a number of years, and although Server Core is different in terms of its scope, from a semantic point of view, it is identical in concept to MinWin. Even before this, Windows 2000 (and XP and even NT 4.0) were built in a way so as to increase separation between user space code that had to be run at a kernel level (e.g. drivers) and native system code to improve stability and security. Although for different reasons, this is still a massive step away from the ‘everything in the kernel’ approach of 9x and for good reason.

Interestingly there appears to be a little conflict between Microsoft’s recent announcement saying they would wait at least three years before releasing a new operating system (which would put the release date at around 2010/11) and the documentation obtained along with M1 which suggests a latter quarter 2009 release as I previously predicted. Still, Microsoft have shown their deadlines are flexible of late so any speculation at such an early stage is premature.

Microsoft glares at the iPhone

Before the iPhone started gaining traction, Steve Balmer is on record as saying that there was no way for the iPhone to achieve the same market share as Windows CE. A few short months on and it appears Apple’s foray into the portable devices market has led them to a position of dominance in terms of market share over all of Windows CE products.

In response to this, Ars Technica has a great summary of the new version of Windows (CE 6.1) which is Microsoft’s attempt to redesign the interface. Whilst on first glance it is impossible to tell if it removes existing limitations / annoyances that have plagued Windows CE since its inception, what is plain is that the Vista-esque design looks simply awful. It might be due to smart phones becoming more mainstream, but the transition to simpler and less informative window-spaces (despite increasing screen size) is something that annoys me.

That is not to say that there have not been fundamental (and much needed) core level design changes / optimisations, however as the iPhone has proved, people look at the interface first and then get to the annoyances typically once they have bought the product.

Lets hope that Microsoft get their act together for their upcoming Windows CE 7.0.

Free (legal) Vista? .. how can I loose?

Microsoft have (quietly) started up a Feedback Program supported free version of Windows Vista Ultimate as well as other ‘popular’ software including Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Money Premium, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008, or Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008. In order to qualify, you must agree to either one or both of the following programs:

“The survey feedback program. When you join the survey feedback program, you’ll be invited to take a survey on a regular schedule. If the survey arrives at a time where you are busy, you skip that one and take the next one instead. You will not receive more than a survey every two weeks.

The automated feedback program. When you choose to participate, most of the work is done behind the scenes, with no additional effort, time requirement, or inconvenience to you. Occasionally, we might send you an invitation to participate in a survey or another feedback program to get additional information about your use of computers but, in general, you only hear from us if we make significant changes to our data collection method or if we want to offer another feedback program to you that you might be interested in.”

Source

I have not had a chance to go through the program to see if there are any limitations other than periodic usage reports / surveys from Microsoft however if you are interested in upgrading to any other these pieces of software, it might be worth considering as a ‘demo.’ This idea is not a new one, versions of Microsoft Office have had voluntary opt-in usage statistics since Office 2000 as well as MSN Messenger. I don’t know about you, but the prospect of my operating system sending back ‘anonymous’ usage reports to a third party does not fill me with confidence.

Of Service packs and continued disappointments…

The blog of exo.performance.network contains some fascinating pseudo-real world benchmarks of the release candidates of both Vista (SP1) and XP (SP3). The, now aging, Windows XP managed to outpace Vista in the benchmark by competing it in almost HALF the time!

The Microsoft Vista team were quick to pass judgement to the benchmark adding more fuel to the synthetic vs real world benchmarking argument calling the Exo team’s benchmark a “window-open, window-close” exercise. In an interesting counter, the team revealed exactly what their benchmark entailed:

a. Reformat all section headers and subheads in Word.
b. Generate multiple chart objects in Excel.
c. Generate complete multi-slide presentation in PowerPoint.
d. Multi-page scroll w/copy paste of chart objects into Word.
e. Slide sort/apply multiple templates in PowerPoint.
f. Multi-page scroll/print preview/print-to-file in Word.
g. Multi-chart print preview/print-to-file in Excel
h. Global search/replace in word (multiple).
i. Multi-slide preview/print-to-file in PowerPoint
j. Navigate simulated research web site in IE (multiple).

It seems to be a fair representation of ‘real world’ usage. The results are curiously at odds with one of Microsoft’s key ‘features’ of Vista, especially if the test is repeated a number of times to get a consistant result.

Windows SuperFetch helps improve PC responsiveness and helps make system performance more consistent. Windows SuperFetch tracks which applications you use most often and when you use them—and then it preloads those applications into memory to ensure quick access.

Source

It would be interesting to see these tests re-run with some of Microsoft’s new ‘features’ disabled. For example, services like shadow copy and indexing might be interfering with the process. Still, if nothing else, from the looks of things my XP systems are going to get a 10% boost (in some circumstances) with SP3 and that is something to celebrate.

Vista Piracy half that of XP (allegedly)

It is unlikely to be true given how easy Vista’s version of WGA is to get around (without being detected by MS) but also due to the lethargic adoption amongst power and intermediate users. It is hard to claim a victory over Vista piracy when demand for the product is so low.

Ever since the release of Vista, Microsoft has been plagued by a fairly hostile reaction from the press and the blogosphere to the sixth release of Microsoft’s flagship – Windows. Vista’s copy protection enjoyed more of a gleeful reaction reaction as it was actually (initially) easier to circumvent than XP . This way due to the ‘feature’ which allowed Vista to be installed without entering a product key. This meant later on when the ‘RTM Stop Clock’ hack came out, Microsoft could not ban an individual product key (like they did en mass with XP) as the installation would permanently believe it was in the initial activation grace period without a Product Activation Key.

Around the same time a ‘Brute Force’ crack was created. This was a new approach which tried to randomly generate keys and see if they activated. Potentially it would have created a big problem for Microsoft as people using this method would potentially be activating genuinely owned Product Keys. However it was revealed by the author to be a hoax, it did actually work as advertised, however the success rate was so statistically insignificant as to be worthless. Various local and alternative remote activation servers were also used to authenticate copies of Vista, however since any copy activated by this method would require reactivation within 180 days it was not as useful.

More recently a spate of OEM activation cracks have appeared. These seem to be the ‘big daddy’ of Vista activation techniques since they employ the ability of OEMs to ship pre-activated products.This method seems to emply manufacturer based digital certificates which can be installed on any corresponding laptop from the manufacturer and used to activate Vista offline.
The point I am trying to make with this post is that there have been and still are a variety of techniques used to activate Windows in an almost transparent fashion. With Windows XP, the main way for activating (or get around activating) Windows would be to install the so called Corporate versions which came with a XP key pre-embedded and pre-activated. This made it fairly easy for Microsoft to detect as a small number of keys were used by such a high proportion of individuals. With Vista, the copy protection systems have become far more technical and so to have the manners in which they are circumvented, the question of whether Microsoft can even detect the majority of these pirated installations needs to be asked.

As an interesting aside, Microsoft have announced they will be removing their ‘feature’ which allows them to badger non authentic (or non activated) copies of Vista and even disable said systems. An interesting side effect is it means that, after SP1, Vista would become (essentially) freeware. Someone wishing to pirate Vista would be able to run it indefinately without being either nagged or having their system disabled. Is Microsoft that desperate to increase market share that it is handing Vista out on a plate?

Of course I should chalk onto the end of this post that I neither support nor encourage piracy, I am citing references for academic completeness.

MiniWin – A Windows Kernel in 4Mb

Whilst most of the details of the upcoming ‘Windows 7′ (or Blackcomb / Vienna depending on which codename MS are currently using) are still shrouded in Mystery. Microsoft recently revealed they intend to power Windows 7 with a brand new minimalistic core. At present Microsoft support a wide range of kernels across their products and it must be resource consuming maintaining all these codebases. After all, its not just desktop kernels but Mobile and PPC based systems as well:

‘Longhorn Based’ – Server 2008, Vista

‘Whistler Based’ – Server 2003, Windows XP, XP embedded, XP Media Center 2003/4/5, Tablet PC, XP Fundamentals, Windows Home Server

‘NT 5 / Asteroid Based’ – Windows 2000 Sever / Professional

‘Talisker Based’ – PPC OS, Smartphone OS

Magneto Based’ – Windows Mobile 5

‘Crossbow / Yamazaki Based’ – Windows Mobile 6

So the idea is to consolidate all supported architectures into one makes perfect sense in terms of longer term support. Of course, in order to be fit for purpose, the MiniKernel needs to be so flexible as to be used for embedded mobile applications as well as desktop AND enterprise grade server applications. The idea of a streamlined, optimised kernel is a welcome departing from Vista’s Bloat, I just hope Microsoft do not embed DRM into this mini kernel and bloat it unnecessarily.

The new kernel is purportedly to be 4Mb in size and uses only 100 files. Of course this precludes any GUI, however when run in a virtual machine with only 40Mb of RAM, the kernel (running a basic http server) used just 33 MB of the allocated RAM and booted in 20 seconds. This is a project fairly early in its life, and short-term will only make things worse (by adding yet another code-base) however it will be interesting to see what other optimisations can be made. Of course this kernel does not include all the parts needed for a fully fledged operations system like a graphical hardware layer and proper driver loading, however the implementation of a networking stack is promising. It shows what can be done when not implementing a broken IPv6 system that almost no-one presently uses..

It is one thing to show a prototype in an idealised virtual machine (ahem ReactOS :p) and quite another to provide an infrastructure that allows heterogeneous hardware support, however I am very interested in this new approach and like many others shall be watching this closely.

As a brief aside, I just want to say that my dig at ReactOS was precisely that, a playful dig. The project is one I have been following since 0.2.x and the work the guys are doing over there is extremely impressive, implementing an NT based F/OSS clone is alot of work (it too Microsoft ~15 years to get there after all!)