On Windows, i press the "Show desktop" icon on my computer, and every Window is hidden. Very handy, and without the annoying zoom/move animation Expose shows (looks cool, but I'm using the computer, not presenting a nice slide show with effects).
Windows slide to the edges of the screen and are still partially visible to demonstrate to inexperienced users that they are being moved temporarily, not closed or otherwise rendered permanently inacessible. Such animations provide smooth transitions between states and objects whose relationships might otherwise be unclear. However, it'd be nice to be able to shut some of those animations off with a .plist setting for users who don't want them.
Quote:
On OSX, the desktop is shown when you open an application. on Windows, the application opens a grey canvas. This helps the user focus on what is open at the time. [...] Because of this, Windows doesn't need the Expose function that "dims the desktop but not the active application".
I'm not sure what you mean... I'd think Windows' "group similar taskbar items" functionality would be the analogue to Exposé's "Application Windows" mode, since a lot of Windows applications do not use MDI.
Quote:
If you maximize the Windows, it *is* Maximized! (not the "maximize" on OSX which works differently on each application, talking about inconsistency!)
This is true. In my world, the Zoom control should consistently resize the window to fit the content. It should not make the window full screen unless a standardised modifier key is pressed, and it should not toggle between states, as there is no clear indication as to which state will be toggled. However, in my world, I am a goddess.
Sounds to me like your windows machine is in bad need of some maintenance. We use hideously slow Dells at work (P4 2.0ghz 256mb RAM, with integrate graphics using part of the RAM), and opening any application doesn't take what I'd call "ages." Certainly not to the point of needing some sort of notification that the app is opening. It should just open, and quickly.
I think the point you can make is that windows machines do need help, especially from the ignorant. If you don't know what you're doing (like those that think that any "free app" no matter how useless is worth having installed), you can end up with a very hosed install. While windows is horribly insecure, it is also much more attacked.
While windows is horribly insecure, it is also much more attacked.
Contrary to popular belief, a relatively recent experiment showed that OS X machines connected permanently to the internet, receive more or less the same amount of attacks per hour as Windows machines. And if we take into account how much fewer OS X machines are in use, compared to Windows ones, this experiment shows indirectly that the attacks targeting OS X machines are, comparatively, much more massive than we think.
My 750 MHz Duron PC running Windows 2000 bogs down in the same manner under load, and so does my friend's new Dimension 3000 with Windows XP. We both have 256 MB of RAM. The year-old Pentium 4 computers I use at school, running Windows XP, perform much better under load. They have 512 MB of RAM. This suggests to me that there's nothing specifically wrong with Windows XP, and that a lack of available RAM is the cause.
512 mb is pretty much needed for high proformance in XPSP2, but for the love of god, 256 is certinly useable, just go to Black Viper's Website, turn off bullshit in 2000/xp/xpsp2 and live happy till you can drop another 256 chip in there.
Jesus, is this another biased "I love Mac Windows Sucks" post? I use both platforms, but I hate this kind of posts.
Expose is handy, but it lacks a few things.
On Windows, i press the "Show desktop" icon on my computer, and every Window is hidden. Very handy, and without the annoying zoom/move animation Expose shows (looks cool, but I'm using the computer, not presenting a nice slide show with effects).
This is not another biased I hate Windows threads. This was a diary, so to speak, of my probelms with Windows after using OS X almost exclusively. Yes 256MB RAM is far too small, but OS X with 256MB is better. The show desktop coomnad is great but there's no shortcut and because it's not an app you can't make one. Also you can't then see them all.
I was just commenting on the features of OS X that make it great. They fact that firefox, iTunes, Internet Explorer take an age to open is a problem because the blue box in the task bar doesn;t appear until it's open. You don;t know if it's opening or not. The dock tells you something is opening.
512 mb is pretty much needed for high proformance in XPSP2, but for the love of god, 256 is certinly useable, just go to Black Viper's Website, turn off bullshit in 2000/xp/xpsp2 and live happy till you can drop another 256 chip in there.
For the love of God, I've already turned off that bullshit. But it might be useful for MacCrazy to do so if more RAM isn't in the cards.
you mentioned you did the blackviper stuff a long time ago, the thing with windows is that it gets worse with age. After a while installing and uninstalling programs takes its toll on your registery which starts to spend a lot of time trying to load things that arent there. If your computer hasnt been reinstalled in over a year and you suspect performance is really sucking, go ahead and reinstall.
You also specifically mentioned that you have no spyware, but you havnt yet rebuked whether you have any viruses, worms, or trojans. If you dont have any virus scanner handy, try doing a "netstat" from the command line when you are connected to the internet but dont have anything open. If you see internet connections any dont know why they are there, you might be having an issue with worms. Of course, this is not 100%, some windows rootkits can hide network streams and need other more specialised utilities to be detected, but in my experience... most of the more common worms out there can be noticed like this.
Give it a shot ! Windows doesnt have to suck more than it already does...
heh, I ran WinXP on an Athlon 900mhz with only 128mb of RAM. It ran well enough until I could upgrade to 256mb. I used to even play games on that configuration. I don't know where all this talk about 512mb+ for windows came from. Unless you're playing the newest cpu-intensive games, 256mb will get you by just fine. It's not like anyone should expect that much out of a 256mb system to begin with. If you use photoshop everyday, you should be smart enough to know that you need well more than 256mb. Even 512mb won't do if you're using big apps.
I don't know where all this talk about 512mb+ for windows came from.
I don't think anyone's talking about Windows in general. There may be a problem with viruses/spyware/other junk on MacCrazy's PC, and that would be an obvious cause of bad performance, and well worth checking out first. If not, I don't think there's anything wrong with XP that would cause it to run so slowly, besides swapping excessively under the tasks that MacCrazy demands of it, hence the talk about extra RAM.
Oh, and of course, even if he has viruses/spyware/junk on his PC, it will all run much better with a RAM upgrade.
My 750 MHz Duron PC running Windows 2000 bogs down in the same manner under load, and so does my friend's new Dimension 3000 with Windows XP. We both have 256 MB of RAM. The year-old Pentium 4 computers I use at school, running Windows XP, perform much better under load. They have 512 MB of RAM. This suggests to me that there's nothing specifically wrong with Windows XP, and that a lack of available RAM is the cause.
I agree, lack of sufficient RAM is most likely the cause..256 is NOT enough for XP, I use Dells running XP at college and they are quite snappy when opening apps etc..I believe they have 512 of ram on them, and are like 2 ghz or so in speed.
OSX is great but I wish Apple would give us the option to turn off the eye candy GUI and make it more snappy like OS9, Id be happy with a plain looking GUI if would make the GUI experience faster
From what I understand is that OSX GUI is made of actual pics and the old OS9 was all just code based. That is why it was snappier.
Contrary to popular belief, a relatively recent experiment showed that OS X machines connected permanently to the internet, receive more or less the same amount of attacks per hour as Windows machines. And if we take into account how much fewer OS X machines are in use, compared to Windows ones, this experiment shows indirectly that the attacks targeting OS X machines are, comparatively, much more massive than we think.
I don't think that's what the article says at all. It simply states that remote machines tried to connect to the boxes on specific ports. There is no way for a random passerby to know what OS you're running without scanning you first, so I'm not sure what your point is. My Linux gateway is constantly hit with Windows/IIS exploit attempts. Does that mean that Linux is more attacked than Windows?
You did seem to gloss over the fact that the Mac suffered not a jot from the 'attacks', whereas the XP machines that weren't firewalled were hosed.
I'd love to add 256MB RAM but I can't because the computer is my dad's. Also for that reason I can't re-install until I can back it up. Having no USB 2.0 or FireWire makes this difficult as my equipment is only FireWire. I have norton up-to-date on the computer and there are no viruses - this is the corporate edition if that makes a difference. I think the slow-down in this XP machine is Palm be3ing an arse cos it wasn';t installed problems. But on other XP machines I've used I've noticed a dodgy performance.
And it was as recently as a couple of weeks ago that I stopped using the best performance option - I switched to best appearance in order to get the sidebar. I will change back and see if it's noticably faster. I'll post some basic bench marks as well! Comparing an iMac G3 600MHz with 768MB RAM and the Dell Dimension 8200 2.25GHz Pentium 4 with 64MB nVidia and 256MB RAM.
The following proves there is little difference in speed. BUT my perceptions are that OS X is faster. That is because of feedback.
startup time - PC 49.6, Mac 42.3
log-in time - PC 1.07, Mac 7.7
iTunes - 10.3, 3.0
Firefox - 10.4, 11.4
IE - 4.9, 5.1
Photoshop 6.0 - 19.5 (PC only)
Photoshop CS (try-out on PC so doesn't include time taken for try out dialogue)
24.8 (PC), 22.6 (Mac)
ThunderBird - 9.8, 10.1
MS Word (2000 on PC 2004 on Mac - which is noticably slower than Office v.X)
5.3 (PC), 12.0 (Mac)
QT Player - 4.6, 1.7
This shows that there is not lot in it. IE should be faster on the PC and QT should be faster on the Mac. This mac has just had a re-install so it's a bit unfair. Also PC has too few RAM. I'll buy a FireWire card for the PC. Thenb backup the data onto DVDs and reinstall windows and the apps and retest. This time, against my PowerBook.
BTW - Where is there a backup utility built into Windows? Also does Windows support DVD drives natively (I have a LaCIe FW DVD-RW drive)
A friggen dog wagging it's tail while searching for infected files should be enough reason for anybody to never use Windows! Old Yeller has to be put down, BLAM!
There is no way for a random passerby to know what OS you're running without scanning you first, so I'm not sure what your point is.
My point is the number of attacks per hour that they registered during the experiment, is more or less the same for the XP SP1 and OS X machines, and much lower for the others. This leads me to believe that the attacks targeted certain platforms, mostly XP SP1 (known for its vulnerability) and OS X (the most(?) popular desktop system after Windows). Otherwise, we should see the same number of attacks per hour on the other boxes too.
Quote:
You did seem to gloss over the fact that the Mac suffered not a jot from the 'attacks', whereas the XP machines that weren't firewalled were hosed.
Not at all. Since they don't say if the firewall was enabled or not in the OS X machine, one could assume that they used the default out-of-the-box settings for OS X, that is all services disabled and firewall off. Even so, it is not surprising that the OS X box has not been breached with these attacks.
It is true that the article is not detailed enough on the experiment conditions, so that's all I can draw from it.
Comments
I had 512 which was fast! And now I have 1024 which is...really fast!
On Windows, i press the "Show desktop" icon on my computer, and every Window is hidden. Very handy, and without the annoying zoom/move animation Expose shows (looks cool, but I'm using the computer, not presenting a nice slide show with effects).
Windows slide to the edges of the screen and are still partially visible to demonstrate to inexperienced users that they are being moved temporarily, not closed or otherwise rendered permanently inacessible. Such animations provide smooth transitions between states and objects whose relationships might otherwise be unclear. However, it'd be nice to be able to shut some of those animations off with a .plist setting for users who don't want them.
On OSX, the desktop is shown when you open an application. on Windows, the application opens a grey canvas. This helps the user focus on what is open at the time. [...] Because of this, Windows doesn't need the Expose function that "dims the desktop but not the active application".
I'm not sure what you mean... I'd think Windows' "group similar taskbar items" functionality would be the analogue to Exposé's "Application Windows" mode, since a lot of Windows applications do not use MDI.
If you maximize the Windows, it *is* Maximized! (not the "maximize" on OSX which works differently on each application, talking about inconsistency!)
This is true. In my world, the Zoom control should consistently resize the window to fit the content. It should not make the window full screen unless a standardised modifier key is pressed, and it should not toggle between states, as there is no clear indication as to which state will be toggled. However, in my world, I am a goddess.
I think the point you can make is that windows machines do need help, especially from the ignorant. If you don't know what you're doing (like those that think that any "free app" no matter how useless is worth having installed), you can end up with a very hosed install. While windows is horribly insecure, it is also much more attacked.
Originally posted by Wingnut
While windows is horribly insecure, it is also much more attacked.
Contrary to popular belief, a relatively recent experiment showed that OS X machines connected permanently to the internet, receive more or less the same amount of attacks per hour as Windows machines. And if we take into account how much fewer OS X machines are in use, compared to Windows ones, this experiment shows indirectly that the attacks targeting OS X machines are, comparatively, much more massive than we think.
Originally posted by Mac The Fork
My 750 MHz Duron PC running Windows 2000 bogs down in the same manner under load, and so does my friend's new Dimension 3000 with Windows XP. We both have 256 MB of RAM. The year-old Pentium 4 computers I use at school, running Windows XP, perform much better under load. They have 512 MB of RAM. This suggests to me that there's nothing specifically wrong with Windows XP, and that a lack of available RAM is the cause.
512 mb is pretty much needed for high proformance in XPSP2, but for the love of god, 256 is certinly useable, just go to Black Viper's Website, turn off bullshit in 2000/xp/xpsp2 and live happy till you can drop another 256 chip in there.
Originally posted by dacloo
Jesus, is this another biased "I love Mac Windows Sucks" post? I use both platforms, but I hate this kind of posts.
Expose is handy, but it lacks a few things.
On Windows, i press the "Show desktop" icon on my computer, and every Window is hidden. Very handy, and without the annoying zoom/move animation Expose shows (looks cool, but I'm using the computer, not presenting a nice slide show with effects).
This is not another biased I hate Windows threads. This was a diary, so to speak, of my probelms with Windows after using OS X almost exclusively. Yes 256MB RAM is far too small, but OS X with 256MB is better. The show desktop coomnad is great but there's no shortcut and because it's not an app you can't make one. Also you can't then see them all.
I was just commenting on the features of OS X that make it great. They fact that firefox, iTunes, Internet Explorer take an age to open is a problem because the blue box in the task bar doesn;t appear until it's open. You don;t know if it's opening or not. The dock tells you something is opening.
Originally posted by a_greer
512 mb is pretty much needed for high proformance in XPSP2, but for the love of god, 256 is certinly useable, just go to Black Viper's Website, turn off bullshit in 2000/xp/xpsp2 and live happy till you can drop another 256 chip in there.
For the love of God, I've already turned off that bullshit. But it might be useful for MacCrazy to do so if more RAM isn't in the cards.
Originally posted by Mac The Fork
For the love of God, I've already turned off that bullshit. But it might be useful for MacCrazy to do so if more RAM isn't in the cards.
I've turned it off in the past and noticed no difference in apps opening.
you mentioned you did the blackviper stuff a long time ago, the thing with windows is that it gets worse with age. After a while installing and uninstalling programs takes its toll on your registery which starts to spend a lot of time trying to load things that arent there. If your computer hasnt been reinstalled in over a year and you suspect performance is really sucking, go ahead and reinstall.
You also specifically mentioned that you have no spyware, but you havnt yet rebuked whether you have any viruses, worms, or trojans. If you dont have any virus scanner handy, try doing a "netstat" from the command line when you are connected to the internet but dont have anything open. If you see internet connections any dont know why they are there, you might be having an issue with worms. Of course, this is not 100%, some windows rootkits can hide network streams and need other more specialised utilities to be detected, but in my experience... most of the more common worms out there can be noticed like this.
Give it a shot !
I don't know where all this talk about 512mb+ for windows came from.
I don't think anyone's talking about Windows in general. There may be a problem with viruses/spyware/other junk on MacCrazy's PC, and that would be an obvious cause of bad performance, and well worth checking out first. If not, I don't think there's anything wrong with XP that would cause it to run so slowly, besides swapping excessively under the tasks that MacCrazy demands of it, hence the talk about extra RAM.
Oh, and of course, even if he has viruses/spyware/junk on his PC, it will all run much better with a RAM upgrade.
Expose without animations would be useless.
Maybe not useless, but the animations serve the purpose of linking the full size windows to the thumbnails.
Originally posted by Mac The Fork
My 750 MHz Duron PC running Windows 2000 bogs down in the same manner under load, and so does my friend's new Dimension 3000 with Windows XP. We both have 256 MB of RAM. The year-old Pentium 4 computers I use at school, running Windows XP, perform much better under load. They have 512 MB of RAM. This suggests to me that there's nothing specifically wrong with Windows XP, and that a lack of available RAM is the cause.
I agree, lack of sufficient RAM is most likely the cause..256 is NOT enough for XP, I use Dells running XP at college and they are quite snappy when opening apps etc..I believe they have 512 of ram on them, and are like 2 ghz or so in speed.
OSX is great but I wish Apple would give us the option to turn off the eye candy GUI and make it more snappy like OS9, Id be happy with a plain looking GUI if would make the GUI experience faster
From what I understand is that OSX GUI is made of actual pics and the old OS9 was all just code based. That is why it was snappier.
Contrary to popular belief, a relatively recent experiment showed that OS X machines connected permanently to the internet, receive more or less the same amount of attacks per hour as Windows machines. And if we take into account how much fewer OS X machines are in use, compared to Windows ones, this experiment shows indirectly that the attacks targeting OS X machines are, comparatively, much more massive than we think.
I don't think that's what the article says at all. It simply states that remote machines tried to connect to the boxes on specific ports. There is no way for a random passerby to know what OS you're running without scanning you first, so I'm not sure what your point is. My Linux gateway is constantly hit with Windows/IIS exploit attempts. Does that mean that Linux is more attacked than Windows?
You did seem to gloss over the fact that the Mac suffered not a jot from the 'attacks', whereas the XP machines that weren't firewalled were hosed.
I'd love to add 256MB RAM but I can't because the computer is my dad's. Also for that reason I can't re-install until I can back it up. Having no USB 2.0 or FireWire makes this difficult as my equipment is only FireWire. I have norton up-to-date on the computer and there are no viruses - this is the corporate edition if that makes a difference. I think the slow-down in this XP machine is Palm be3ing an arse cos it wasn';t installed problems. But on other XP machines I've used I've noticed a dodgy performance.
And it was as recently as a couple of weeks ago that I stopped using the best performance option - I switched to best appearance in order to get the sidebar. I will change back and see if it's noticably faster. I'll post some basic bench marks as well! Comparing an iMac G3 600MHz with 768MB RAM and the Dell Dimension 8200 2.25GHz Pentium 4 with 64MB nVidia and 256MB RAM.
startup time - PC 49.6, Mac 42.3
log-in time - PC 1.07, Mac 7.7
iTunes - 10.3, 3.0
Firefox - 10.4, 11.4
IE - 4.9, 5.1
Photoshop 6.0 - 19.5 (PC only)
Photoshop CS (try-out on PC so doesn't include time taken for try out dialogue)
24.8 (PC), 22.6 (Mac)
ThunderBird - 9.8, 10.1
MS Word (2000 on PC 2004 on Mac - which is noticably slower than Office v.X)
5.3 (PC), 12.0 (Mac)
QT Player - 4.6, 1.7
This shows that there is not lot in it. IE should be faster on the PC and QT should be faster on the Mac. This mac has just had a re-install so it's a bit unfair. Also PC has too few RAM. I'll buy a FireWire card for the PC. Thenb backup the data onto DVDs and reinstall windows and the apps and retest. This time, against my PowerBook.
BTW - Where is there a backup utility built into Windows? Also does Windows support DVD drives natively (I have a LaCIe FW DVD-RW drive)
Originally posted by Squozen
There is no way for a random passerby to know what OS you're running without scanning you first, so I'm not sure what your point is.
My point is the number of attacks per hour that they registered during the experiment, is more or less the same for the XP SP1 and OS X machines, and much lower for the others. This leads me to believe that the attacks targeted certain platforms, mostly XP SP1 (known for its vulnerability) and OS X (the most(?) popular desktop system after Windows). Otherwise, we should see the same number of attacks per hour on the other boxes too.
You did seem to gloss over the fact that the Mac suffered not a jot from the 'attacks', whereas the XP machines that weren't firewalled were hosed.
Not at all. Since they don't say if the firewall was enabled or not in the OS X machine, one could assume that they used the default out-of-the-box settings for OS X, that is all services disabled and firewall off. Even so, it is not surprising that the OS X box has not been breached with these attacks.
It is true that the article is not detailed enough on the experiment conditions, so that's all I can draw from it.