Robot Monkey Posted August 22, 2003 Report Share Posted August 22, 2003 You can find some screenshots of "Longhorn," the next windows version here: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_aero.asp -j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted August 22, 2003 Report Share Posted August 22, 2003 And people thought XP looked like a ripoff of OSX... I like it, tho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camp Posted August 23, 2003 Report Share Posted August 23, 2003 And people thought XP looked like a ripoff of OSX... Are you implying it looks like OSX? I don't see that at all. It looks more like WMP 9's interface to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Romier S Posted August 23, 2003 Report Share Posted August 23, 2003 Are you implying it looks like OSX? I don't see that at all. No he's implying that people spent a good portion of their time calling XP a ripoff of OSX and this newer OS will no doubt incite more of that. I do like the new hardware window quite a bit more. Each piece of harware has its own dedicated portion where you can get any and all info you need. The new audio video control panel is so so and Im looking forward to seeing how they integrate current graphics cards into that (ie AA, AF and Vsync settings). Though MS's whole idea has been to streamline gaming with Longhorn. We'll have to wait and see. The new Sidebar is gawdy as hell and I'm not exactly liking it as of now. Though it may grow on me after actual use. The new 20 minute install sounds good and again what I am more interested in is how the OS handled driver installs and updates (for hardware). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelley Posted August 24, 2003 Report Share Posted August 24, 2003 I think I'll still be sticking with OS X. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeyN Posted August 24, 2003 Report Share Posted August 24, 2003 I think ill be sticking with windows 3.1 :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelley Posted August 24, 2003 Report Share Posted August 24, 2003 What I find interesting is that ugly poor excuse of a UI is supposed to require 128MB of graphics RAM to work properly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rainmaykr Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 Heh. I've got no sympathy for people with 128MB of RAM given the price of it these days. If you have 128MB or less, you don't have a vote. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 Kelley's talking about VRAM. 128MB does seem a bit over the top as a requirement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted August 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 No kidding. I wonder if that's accurate. I wonder because wouldn't that shut out laptop users? -j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graeme Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 Ya, that seems completely excessive, even in two years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rustyjaw Posted August 25, 2003 Report Share Posted August 25, 2003 It's because of the 'new' windowing system, which (surprise) works like OS X's (called Quartz). Each Window resides as an object on it's own layer, and they are composited by the video card. More windows open=more VRAM used. Apple's implementation makes every window an openGL surface, onto which the window contents are textured. I assume MS will use Direct3D or something. This windowing method lets you do all kinds of things, such as the excessively cool and instantly useful "Expos?" in Panther: http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/exposetheater.html There's a good article over at Arstechnica about this kind of windowing system. It is specifically about Quartz, but talks generally about this next generation of display technology: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/macos-...os-x-gui-2.html And another about how Apple managed to use the GPU to hardware accelerate the Quartz compositing, something MS is probably working on: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx...osx-10.2-8.html EDIT: makes more sense now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelley Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 Yep EdR is correct. I called up our Microsoft rep(who I'm pretty tight with for some odd reason me being heavily Pro-Mac and not affraid to hide it) to ask about Longhorn and he confirmed with me that 128MB is the number that is still being tossed around the watercooler at the House of Gates. One feature that I find interesting is that Longhorn compliant games won't need to be installed. Personally MS will never have a true next-gen OS until they do like Apple and dump the old and start fresh, sure the growing pains hurt for a couple years, but look at how nice OS X is today and its bright future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 One feature that I find interesting is that Longhorn compliant games won't need to be installed. As in they'll just run off the media, like the consoles do? Very interesting. I'd not heard that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark E Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 One feature that I find interesting is that Longhorn compliant games won't need to be installed. Er, isn't that rather, uh, stupid? Or do games run faster off computer CD drives now than I remember? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merlot Posted August 26, 2003 Report Share Posted August 26, 2003 Personally MS will never have a true next-gen OS until they do like Apple and dump the old and start fresh If it ain't broke, don't fix it. NT technology that 2K and XP are built on is extremely stable. I've worked with enough PC's to see the HUGE leap in stability from 95/98/ME to 2K/XP. Apple didn't completely start fresh... they are using Unix technology, aren't they? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnE Posted August 27, 2003 Report Share Posted August 27, 2003 Originally posted by Pharmboy@Aug 26 2003, 08:36 AM One feature that I find interesting is that Longhorn compliant games won't need to be installed. Er, isn't that rather, uh, stupid? Or do games run faster off computer CD drives now than I remember? Eh? I don't like the sound of that! It's the same reason I always use no-cd cracks. Call me lazy, but I don't want to dig up the cd for one of the 20 games I usually have installed on my HD, every time I want to play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted August 27, 2003 Report Share Posted August 27, 2003 But it's perfectly okay for all the consoles you have to do that with? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnE Posted August 27, 2003 Report Share Posted August 27, 2003 Originally posted by Whooter@Aug 27 2003, 04:26 PM But it's perfectly okay for all the consoles you have to do that with? Yes! Because they're consoles and I don't have a choice. If given that choice I will always opt to not have to dick around with the disc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Monkey Posted August 27, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 27, 2003 I'm the same way, John. At least I sometimes have the option of not messing with CD's on my PC. And, because my main PC is a laptop, I like to be able to fire up Civ3 or whatever without wondering if I remembered to bring the disc. Will this streaming a game off a CD business in Longhorn be an option or at least an option for the publisher/developer? -j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whooter Posted August 27, 2003 Report Share Posted August 27, 2003 My guess is it'll be an option, in order to maintain compatibility with older versions of Windows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camp Posted August 28, 2003 Report Share Posted August 28, 2003 Hell, without the need to install games I certainly can loose some hard drive space. Odd, consoles get hard drives just as PCs stop using them for games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnE Posted August 28, 2003 Report Share Posted August 28, 2003 Originally posted by iCamp@Aug 27 2003, 09:42 PM Hell, without the need to install games I certainly can loose some hard drive space. Odd, consoles get hard drives just as PCs stop using them for games. Heh, I hadn't really looked at it that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogbert Posted August 28, 2003 Report Share Posted August 28, 2003 Hell, without the need to install games I certainly can loose some hard drive space. I don't know the specifics of Longhorn, but I'm going to take an educated guess that PC games are not going to stop using the harddrive. It's one of the big assets of PC games - they can whack all the files to the HD & keep 'em there. I suspect that the "install" option may go away & instead there's a nice standardised way for games to ask Longhorn for temporary or reserved space that the game can then use to cache/expand data or whatever, all without the user being prompted. When you next play the game, if the data cache still has the chunk of space "allocated" for this game, then the game is super speedy to load (hopefully!). Much like the Xbox HD is used to cache data... Does that sound reasonable? PC games are too complex these days that to refuse HD use to them would be a major step backwards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelley Posted August 28, 2003 Report Share Posted August 28, 2003 I think dogbert's right on the fact that they won't stop using HDs access for PC games. Another nice rumor that I can't get a solid answer on is the fact that MS is working on a "standard" PC controller for Longhorn. Sounds to me like they are taking what they learn from Xbox and putting back into Windows, which does make sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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