A Celebration Of Windows XP: 2001-2014
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@Snooder said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Snooder said:
Except, my laptop wasn't broken.
Yes. Yes it was.
This is like the opposite of the Linux thing, where Linux users put it on a laptop then go around crowing about how "everything works", then you ask, "what about sleep mode?" "Oh that doesn't work." "What about the volume key on the keyboard?" "Oh that sometimes fails." "What about external monitors?" "Kind of works!"
Except you have a computer which demonstrably had a hardware problem and are in complete denial of it. It's kind of infuriating really.
Again, the laptop was working fine. It didn't have a hardware problem. It was simply a cheap laptop with shitty integrated graphics that couldn't handle a heavy graphics load. Which is fine. It wasn't supposed to be a graphics powerhouse, and I was fine with it not working for things it was intended to do. What I wasn't so happy with it, is having Microsoft include "open a new window" and "tab between windows" as things that stress the graphics rendering power of the laptop. That's not on the hardware or the video drivers, that's on Microsoft for fucking up basic functionality by adding cruft.If you think that things like blitting, scaling, blur convolving and alpha compositing constitute 'a heavy graphics load', you are utterly ignorant of graphics programming. They are some of the most trivial operations that any kind of GPU can be called on to perform and not a fraction of the load of even the simplest 3d rendering. A hardware or driver bug is the only plausible explanation.
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@DaveK said:
A hardware or driver bug is the only plausible explanation.
On the contrary: a similarly plausible explanation is that his graphics sucked.
Or that transparency and scaleable live window-in-window effects now constitute the bar for writing crap on the internet.
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@oheso said:
@DaveK said:
A hardware or driver bug is the only plausible explanation.
On the contrary: a similarly plausible explanation is that his graphics sucked.
No, that is not plausible. Snooder described the laptop as 'moderately new'. It is not plausible that a 'moderately new' laptop would have a graphics subsystem from the '90s.
@oheso said:Or that transparency and scaleable live window-in-window effects now constitute the bar for writing crap on the internet.
The software stack that produces these effects starts at the DWM, which was written by MS, and descends through the non-MS video driver to the non-MS video hardware. If the flaw was in the MS part, it would crop up on many systems, not just Snooder's. So that too is not plausible.
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@oheso said:
On the contrary: a similarly plausible explanation is that his graphics sucked.
There's only two possible options here:
1) He's lying about the age of his laptop and its video hardware was, say, a 3DFX Voodoo 3 chip.
2) The maker of the laptop hired some cheap-ass Taiwan firm to create a chip that pretends to be an actual video card, but in fact software-renders everything instead then lies to the OS and says it doesn't.
There is no possible way that Aero could have *worse* performance on a computer, even a laptop, newer than 2002ish. It's impossible. Can't be done. The only possible explanations left are: 1) broken hardware (overheating possibly?), 2) broken drivers. Neither of which is Microsoft's fault.
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You and DaveK not getting enough Vitamin B12? Or something?
@blakeyrat said:
It's impossible. Can't be done.
OK, removing my tongue from my cheek for a rare moment, any evidence of this apart from Microsoft pronouncements?
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@blakeyrat said:
There is no possible way that Aero could have *worse* performance on a computer, even a laptop, newer than 2002ish. It's impossible. Can't be done. .
Of course it can be done. You just build a laptop with the cheapest, shittiest hardware you can get. And then blame Microsoft.
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@El_Heffe said:
@blakeyrat said:
There is no possible way that Aero could have worse performance on a computer, even a laptop, newer than 2002ish. It's impossible. Can't be done. .
Of course it can be done. You just build a laptop with the cheapest, shittiest hardware you can get. And then blame Microsoft."We outsourced laptop production to Ireland and the laptops we got back were just made of potatoes and whiskey! And they also drank the whiskey!"
"Alright, don't panic, we'll put out a technical advisory blaming M$FT. I mean, anyone buying a potato laptop is probably dumb enough to believe it."
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@oheso said:
You and DaveK not getting enough Vitamin B12? Or something?
@blakeyrat said:
It's impossible. Can't be done.
OK, removing my tongue from my cheek for a rare moment, any evidence of this apart from Microsoft pronouncements?
If the OS is offloading graphics rendering from software to a hardware chip, how would that make things slower in a way that's M$'s fault?
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@oheso said:
OK, removing my tongue from my cheek for a rare moment, any evidence of this apart from Microsoft pronouncements?
You could not buy a computer, laptop or no, when Aero came out that was: 1) capable of running Vista, 2) incapable of running Aero. That hardware did not exist.
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@blakeyrat said:
1) He's lying about the age of his laptop and its video hardware was, say, a 3DFX Voodoo 3 chip.
Or he had massively under-specced the RAM. If you're starting to page stuff out just trying to render the display, going to something with less graphical glitz might help a lot just by getting memory usage back down below the critical threshold.But that would require being amazingly cheap-ass and stupid. Which is why it's my #1 guess…
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@blakeyrat said:
@oheso said:
Depending on your definition of "capable of running Vista". I think you may have greatly underestimated how shitty many laptops are.OK, removing my tongue from my cheek for a rare moment, any evidence of this apart from Microsoft pronouncements?
You could not buy a computer, laptop or no, when Aero came out that was: 1) capable of running Vista, 2) incapable of running Aero. That hardware did not exist.
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@El_Heffe said:
@blakeyrat said:
@oheso said:
Depending on your definition of "capable of running Vista". I think you may have greatly underestimated how shitty many laptops are.OK, removing my tongue from my cheek for a rare moment, any evidence of this apart from Microsoft pronouncements?
You could not buy a computer, laptop or no, when Aero came out that was: 1) capable of running Vista, 2) incapable of running Aero. That hardware did not exist.
Well, the fact is, Aero is a thing that runs on Vista. So if your computer can't run Aero, it can't run Vista.
The first rule of making tautologies is rule 1 of tautology making.
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@blakeyrat said:
You could not buy a computer, laptop or no, when Aero came out that was: 1) capable of running Vista, 2) incapable of running Aero. That hardware did not exist.
Apart from not answering the question, this is false as I'm still maintaining several that are in that state.
None of them are *certified* to run Vista, but that's a different kettle of snooker balls.
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@morbiuswilters said:
If the OS is offloading graphics rendering from software to a hardware chip, how would that make things slower in a way that's M$'s fault?
I'm just curious about everyone's willingness to take this as gospel. (Not questioning that the OP -- whose name escapes me now that we've embarked on this academic exercise -- has a shitty laptop.) No one willing to question that statement in a way that doesn't just involve arm-waving and begging the question? Cycles involved in the CPU handing that stuff to the GPU, for example?
Then there's still the question of the time it takes the GPU to barf the stuff out onto the screen. Sure, the CPU finished its routine to create the window, but the user is still waiting for it to appear while the GPU ponders the transparency.
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@blakeyrat said:
There is no possible way that Aero could have worse performance on a computer, even a laptop, newer than 2002ish. It's impossible. Can't be done.
It is possible - if the computer had only 1GB RAM, and graphic card shared memory, running Aero could completely kill performance (also, Intel's early Aero-capable integrated graphics did a lot of work on CPU, because the GPU was simply not capable of doing it - that didn't work that well either).
@blakeyrat said:You could not buy a computer, laptop or no, when Aero came out that was: 1) capable of running Vista, 2) incapable of running Aero. That hardware did not exist.
Look up Intel 915 chipset some day.
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@oheso said:
Are you saying ender did this to you?@ender said:
Look up Intel 915 chipset some day.
That's the bastard right there ...
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@joe.edwards said:
Are you saying ender did this to you?
Repeatedly.
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@oheso said:
@joe.edwards said:
Are you saying ender did this to you?
Repeatedly.
As Eat Sleep Rave Repeat comes on in my music mix.
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@Zemm said:
As Eat Sleep Rave Repeat comes on in my music mix.
You disgusting excuse for a human being.
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@Zemm said:
As Eat Sleep Rave Repeat comes on in my music mix.
I'm on a good roll right now. Let's grab some glowsticks and Hi-C and watch the sun come up.
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@dhromed said:
@Zemm said:
As Eat Sleep Rave Repeat comes on in my music mix.
You disgusting excuse for a human being.
How very un-PLUR of you..
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what is plur
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Why are you awake, actually?
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A timeless activity!
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To clear up some points.
1) Yes, the laptop was cheap and shitty. I think I paid about $300 for it in 2008 and it was a refurbished model. IIRC it had either 1 or 2gigs of ram and wasn't exactly setting the world on fire CPU wise. Which was ok since I had a desktop already and the laptop was just to take notes on and browse the internet when i went on vacation.
2) It's entirely possible that there was some underlying hardware problem. This same laptop eventually died on me a couple years later when the cpu fan stopped working and it cooked itself. Very irritating since it happened in the middle of a final exam.
3) My point is not that it's Microsoft's fault the laptop was shitty. My point is that Aero was unnecessary, and did in fact make a passable (if shitty) laptop into a non-workable one until I turned it off. Laptop with Aero on = non-functional. Laptop with Aero off = functional. The only variable there is Aero.
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@Snooder said:
1) Yes, the laptop was cheap and shitty. I think I paid about $300 for it in 2008 and it was a refurbished model.
Doesn't matter. Any laptop built in 2002 could easily run Aero. Microsoft didn't even plan to release Vista/Aero until they had like 95% hardware support, and then they ended up delaying it by two years.
@Snooder said:
2) It's entirely possible that there was some underlying hardware problem.
Gasp! What a shocker! Why, nobody here even mentioned that possibility before!
@Snooder said:
3) My point is not that it's Microsoft's fault the laptop was shitty.
But you blame Microsoft for the problem. Why? You, in 2 sentences, say, "Microsoft isn't at fault. But it's their fault!" WTF man.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Snooder said:
3) My point is not that it's Microsoft's fault the laptop was shitty.
But you blame Microsoft for the problem. Why? You, in 2 sentences, say, "Microsoft isn't at fault. But it's their fault!" WTF man.
Yes, it's a real WTF when you lack reading comprehensive and persist in cutting off relevant contextual information.See, I didn't say that it's Microsoft's fault that my laptop was shitty. I said that it's Microsoft's fault that seemingly mundane activity which would normally work on a shitty laptop no longer works on a shitty laptop. You can decide for yourself whether you believe that Microsoft should maintain an OS that supports shitty laptops or not, but their choice not to do so is still THEIR CHOICE, and the resulting consequences of their decision to raise the system requirements is THEIR FAULT.
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@blakeyrat said:
Doesn't matter. Any laptop built in 2002 could easily run Aero.
Not really - Aero requires DirectX 9-capable card with 128MB of memory. While nvidia did have their 5xxx mobile GPUs out in 2003, they were limited to 64MB RAM, and the barely Vista-compatible drivers. ATI also released their DX9 mobile GPUs in 2003, but since these were all high-end GPUs, they did not make it into regular laptops for a while. And Intel's first Aero-capable mobile chipset wasn't released until 2006. Guess what you're most likely to find in a cheap laptop?
