SuperSite Blog

So...is this Live Mesh? If not, where does Mesh fit in?  

geogray

Based on other things that have been said, the new Windows Live Sync product will use the Live Mesh technology as its core.

So why the duplication between Live Mesh and Live Sync?

"The Windows Live Sync (formerly FolderShare) team, arch enemies of the Live Skydrive team and distant cousins of Clan Live Mesh"

Once again clear as mud.  I am sure Bill and Jerry will clear it all up in their next TV spot.   But Sharky has his choices.

cuts to jingle...........Moooooooohaaaaaave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Once again clear as mud.  I am sure Bill and Jerry will clear it all up in their next TV spot.   But Sharky has his choices."

What? Just because I think having more than one version of Windows is good doesn't mean I agree with everything Microsoft does. There's hardly anyone who thinks Microsoft's Live suite isn't confusing. They're trying to clean it up, though.

If you were trying to be snarky there, you were successful. As usual, though, you were wrong.

Thanks, Mike.  I was wondering about that.  One of the problems that Microsoft has created by sticking 'Live' in front of everything is confusion.  I love most of the Live products, but there seems to lots of confusion that they have created.  I'm also glad to see some pull back in the product line.

Snarky, Sharky its all good, just pushing your button.  Your always good for at least one reply.  I just found it funny that the first and 3rd poster was confused, about the Microsoft offerings.  This Deja Vu from last week or should I say SSDD.

Of course MSN Mikey came to the rescue on his white Microsoft horse.  Or um picked up his Microsoft WebTV wireless keyboard, logged into MSN Premium, via his own special version of MSN browser using IE 8 beta 2 that only former employees get access too, and hooked up geogray with the good word..."all will be right in the land of Microshaft young lad have no fears" :)

Ahhh good times........Moooooooooooohaaaaaaaaaveeeeeeeeee!!!!

lindy, I think you're confused here. Everything that you mentioned happens in the land of Jobs. By the way, the fruity ad's over. You can wipe away that drool and go back to your Book of Jobs. After all, if you don't, how will you come up with tales about Windows users?

By the way, aren't you going to comment as robertsjoe today?

"There's hardly anyone who thinks Microsoft's Live suite isn't confusing."

It's Microsoft's overall branding that's a mess. They have decent products, but their marketing is a mishmash of disparate product lines, confusing branding, and lack of corporate identity. There are brands (Windows), sub-brands (Microsoft Windows Live, Microsoft Windows Office, Microsoft Windows Mobile), and sub-sub brands (Windows Live Hotmail, or my personal favorite, Windows Live for Windows Mobile, which combines two sub-brands into a new sub-sub brand).

(I'm not making this up: http://tinyurl.com/5k33oj)

You're talking about a company that doesn't even have a unifying logo under its name. "Windows" is not the company. "Microsoft" is.

They're getting better, but they have a very long way to go. The casual user is confused, and there's no wonder. A little clarification would help immensely.

But if you sign in at Live home [http://home.live.com/], you are signed in to everything. Most everything is linked to Live Home, but I just bookmark Mesh and I'm already signed in and ready to use. And it's free. Mesh works well with Leopard too. An iPhone Live app would be awesome. It would probably not be allowed since it competes with MobileMe. Bummer.

MSPBS - SBS = Microsoft Product Brand Specialist - Small Business Specialist

MSPBS - MBS = Microsoft Product Brand Specialist - Medium Business Specialist (Formerly EBSBNE Essential Business Specialist But NOT Enterprise)

MSPBS - EBS = Microsoft Product Brand Specialist - Enterprise Business Sepcialist

MSPBS - Master = U DA MAN

5 day courses, and 1 test per level or all 3 tests to be a Master.  Certification is valid for 6 months, then you must update the cert.

Well Lindy, at least I now know why you IT guys charge so much:)

Our head of IT quit to start his own company, took one of the 4 others with him too. We now use his company and got him to hire the other two, although the network guy was about to quit as he did not like doing hardware support since network was not needed full time, and I guess replacing printers was below him. As a result, we get better service/coverage as no one is on vacation, since we hired a company, but we pay 30 to 50% more. It would have been very difficult if not impossible to replace the head IT since our PACS system and RIS and billing are a bit difficult to understand, let alone get them all working together.

Lets do give them some credit.  

When I go to hotmail and the login screen comes up, it now only mentions 1 and that is your Live ID.  It used have all this test about Passport, MSN and Hotmail ID info.

Seriously if they could get it all cleaned up they have some nice offerings.  The new hotmail works and looks the same in IE, FF3 and Safari.

If they could squash down Live Sync/Folder Share, Sky drive and Live Mesh storage into 1 place in the cloud where you can store stuff it would be great.

Finally give us free IMAP!!!!!!  Hello I only use gmail and mobile me because of IMAP and syncing of all offerings.

I hate to say this and I dont want to come off as an Apple lovin freak but Mobile Me has the right group of products, its just costs money and has been sluggish.

Whomever comes up with IMAP, Calendar, contacts and storage in the cloud, all able to sync to all the most popular desktop/mobile devices wins.

Right now if Microsoft gave me Mobile Me applications (IMAP Mail, iCal, contacts, storage, photos, web page hosting) and Microsoft Live Spaces, all syncing to whatever I use, at Gmail type interface speed, and at Gmail prices I would switch to Vista and run them all:)

"They're getting better, but they have a very long way to go. The casual user is confused, and there's no wonder. A little clarification would help immensely."

That, I would agree with. The branding's a mess. I don't understand the need to put a "Windows" in front of everything. Someone needs to really clean things up. Removing some of the applications from Windows 7 was a good start.

"I hate to say this and I dont want to come off as an Apple lovin freak..."

You probably need to try harder in that case... a lot harder. Giving up your "robertsjoe" identity might be a start?

Lol Sharky that was good one.  Mr Robertsjoe is truly a Apple luvin freak in the highest order.  It cant get worse than that.

If this FolderShare runs on Mesh platform, then what are we supposed to do with Mesh?

This is all so confusing. Someone at Microsoft needs to clear this up.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but Mike Galos please PLEASE never say Microsoft does not like to upset its partners again....That might not have been your EXACT quote, but you did say something like that recently....

Here’s what HP consumer PC executive Richard Walker wrote in an e-mail to former Microsoft co-presidents Jim Allchin and Kevin Johnson on February 1, 2006:

   “The decision you have made and communicated has taken away an investment we made consciously for competitive advantage knowing that some players would choose not to make the same level of investment as we did in supporting your program requirements.

   “I can’t be more clear than to say <b>you not only let us down by reneging on your commitment to stand behind the WDDM requirement, you have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money in the process.</b>”

Any high jacking to prove Mike wrong is always welcome:):):):):)  High Jack on!!!

But hey MS went out of their way to help Intel, by lowering the hardware requirements for "Vista Ready" so Intel could certify those i915 chipsets as Vista Ready......or so the law suit says, or is it those pesky internal emails from MS???:)  MS should have not put so much effort into that journal feature in Exchange, especially when it has bitten them more than once.

panache

I can see why you'd like to hijack a thread where the biggest controversy is which of Microsoft solutions works best when Apple's answer is Mobile Me...

I never said that Microsoft never has had to do anything that ever made a partner unhappy. After all, I'm not an idiot.

So, aside from that, did you have a point?

Didn't think so.

Now, back to the actual topic.

Lindy

Nice to see you've changed your icon to the logo that Apple liked so much that they ripped it off for Mobile Me.

Oh, and Lindy, in case you've forgotten:

community.winsupersite.com/.../separated-at-birth.aspx

"Microsoft Windows Office"

Sorry, but it's never been called that.

Also, they don't always put "Microsoft" in front of everything.

"MS went out of their way to help Intel, by lowering the hardware requirements for "Vista Ready" so Intel could certify those i915 chipsets as Vista Ready"

By including drivers that emulated the built-in standard VGA ones?  I've run Windows Vista on an SiS 662FX chipset (with "Mirage 1" graphics), and the standard VGA gives it all the same functionality as SiS's own driver.  It doesn't support Aero with either one.  It runs Vista Home Basic just fine.  Standard video playback is acceptable on it (just not HD video).  And someone can buy a computer with it for less than $200, and still have the most recent, most stable, most secure Windows version on it.

@mike:

At least Windows Me was better than MobileMe$$.

@panache - How dare you try to put words in mikegalos' mouth. He is the only one that is allowed to do that without judgment. The things that mikegalos says and does not say are known only to him...and are easily changed to meet any need upon mikegalos' wishes. You shall now be cast into the pit and branded as an outcast in mikegalos' eyes. Shame be thrust unto your house and the houses of those that you care about.

--tayme

tayme

You're right. I'm the only one that should be putting words in MY mouth.

Just like it's OK to quote what you say but it'd be over the line to ask about that time you said, "OS X will have more marketshare than Windows in 2008". ("That might not have been your EXACT quote, but you did say something like that recently....")

Oh, wait, you don't think its fair to make up things you didn't say and attribute them to you?

Odd.

I dont know the details of the lawsuit but I would guess some consumers, or greedy lawyers wanted their Aero and thought they were going to get it with that sticker on their i915 powered notebooks.  Not worth a lawsuit IMHO, but many are not.

Turning off Aero on any Vista box is a speed boost right there.  Some goes for that crap in OS X as well.

Comparing MobileMe and Windows Me makes a lot of sense???  I guess they are both lines of code.  Lets compare Hotmail with Photoshop, does Hotmail come in a 64bit version for Vista 64?  If so does the 64bit version give you better performance?????

The difference being that I have never said anything similar to "OS X will have more marketshare than Windows in 2008" or as you lied when you said that I stated the following last week, "if one company lies then they all lie and we should assume that anything we're being told is a lie." You seem to love to put words in others' mouths...then act insulted when they do the same. Predictable.

Again, I get the feeling that your arrogance would lead you to respond to the statement “The sky is blue”

with

“Well, the atmospheric conditions that combine in a prism of light block out certain spectra of light so that the net effect on your optical nerve is actually that which is not blocked out by the other colors, therefore, the sky isn’t actually blue, but a combination of light refraction that enters your iris as blue.  However, along the International Date Line, in Typhoon season, keeping in mind that storms in the Pacific are Typhoons while those in the Atlantic are Hurricanes, light refraction through the eye of the storm will appear blue while the walls are gray, therefore, the sky is not always blue.”

--tayme

Actually, Lindy, having Aero on with a system that has a good GPU is faster than turning Aero off since compositing and other desktop rendering stuff is offloaded to the generally underutilized GPU.

“Well, the atmospheric conditions that combine in a prism of light block out certain spectra of light so that the net effect on your optical nerve is actually that which is not blocked out by the other colors, therefore, the sky isn’t actually blue, but a combination of light refraction that enters your iris as blue.  However, along the International Date Line, in Typhoon season, keeping in mind that storms in the Pacific are Typhoons while those in the Atlantic are Hurricanes, light refraction through the eye of the storm will appear blue while the walls are gray, therefore, the sky is not always blue.”

You forgot to add, "when I worked with the Microsoft Nasa division" :)

Nice to see the Apple FanKids (being gender neutral) still go back to personal attacks when they've got nothing to actually contribute.

See, there are things in this world that are predictable.

@mikegalos - Who are the Apple FanKids that you speak of? I hope you are not including me in that group. Just because I think that you are arrogant does not make me a fan of any OS. Also, can you point me to the personal attacks in this thread? I haven't seen any, unless you count something like the following as a personal attack:

"So, aside from that, did you have a point?

Didn't think so.

Now, back to the actual topic."

--tayme

"Actually, Lindy, having Aero on with a system that has a good GPU is faster than turning Aero off since compositing and other desktop rendering stuff is offloaded to the generally underutilized GPU."

Prove it.  Link me to benchmarks.  Short of that I call BS.  Oh and dont link an benchmark with a desktop PC running Quad SLI/$1000 worth of gamer video cards.  Average notebook/desktop that can run Aero.

When I run Vista in "Windows Standard" mode, not Vista basic, or Vista Aero, it flies like XP from a visual snappiness perspective.

"Actually, Lindy, having Aero on with a system that has a good GPU is faster than turning Aero off since compositing and other desktop rendering stuff is offloaded to the generally underutilized GPU."

That's what I've read too. I turned Aero off and saw no performance difference with routine stuff that uses little GPU and saw no difference. So I turned Aero back on....in my $400 Vista laptop:)

So some games should have better performance with Aero on I guess.

I would consider this a this statement a major contribution to a discussion of Windows Live:

"Nice to see you've changed your icon to the logo that Apple liked so much that they ripped it off for Mobile Me."

And, it is nowhere near a personal attack, either.

Come on mikegalos...enough of your double standards here. Everything that you are pointing fingers about is exactly what you have been doing. Like I said, predictable.

--tayme

"Once again clear as mud.  I am sure Bill and Jerry will clear it all up in their next TV spot.   But Sharky has his choices."

"Of course MSN Mikey came to the rescue on his white Microsoft horse.  Or um picked up his Microsoft WebTV wireless keyboard, logged into MSN Premium, via his own special version of MSN browser using IE 8 beta 2 that only former employees get access too, and hooked up geogray with the good word..."all will be right in the land of Microshaft young lad have no fears" :)"

I'm sure these statements from lindy contributed to the discussion. To be fair, until that, the discussion was pretty much on topic.

Aero can use a GPU to render the desktop, unlike prior version of Windows.  So if you have a fast enough 3D GPU, usually a card that works well with games, Aero will be just as fast minus the animations.

On lower end video cards that have integrated GPU's, like your notebook, Aero is going to tax that video card more.  By switching to "Windows standard" it turns off the 3D desktop features, and the animations, and taxes that video card less.  So it will use less power, it will produce less heat, which will require your fans to turn on less.

Aero has nothing to do with 3D games like Gears of War or Call of Duty on a PC.  Maybe some Luxor or something like that might benefit but your traditional 3D game has nothing to do with Aero.

Yeah on topic....the topic is MS product line confusion.  Anyone that does not acknowledge that or tries to defend that, is total MS fangirl.

There are 4-5 non biased posts about the confusion, post 1 and 3 are examples.

My "clear as mud" comment is to drive home the point.  Just like those Bill and Jerry TV spots were clear as mud.

Anything I say towards Mike, is just BS to stir him up.  I want to make him post here 50 times before the end of the day.  I will be out of here shortly as my day at a computer is almost over.

Thanks for the explanation. I'll stick to medicine and comedy for now on.

Doc

Lindy

Since you've said both in a period of 15 minutes,

Turning Aero off makes Vista fly so you should turn Aero off on anything less than a "desktop PC running Quad SLI/$1000 worth of gamer video cards"

or

With a modern GPU that can work well with games then having Aero on is just as fast as turning it so you may as well leave Aero on.

DRWAM

It isn't that Aero will improve your gaming experience, it's that the same cards and drivers that make for a good experience with games are also used by Aero.

Basically, before Aero, even if you had a graphics card with the power of a small supercomputer, the desktop treated it as a basic video card. What Vista added with Aero (and some other technologies) was the ability for the desktop to take advantage of the GPU on the video card that was otherwise sitting idle when you weren't playing games.

Picking what you what you want again Mike?  Your like a woman, you let emotion control you.  You goal is to try to "win" in this blog not see logic.

Here is a simple question for you.  DRWAM's $400 notebook does it have...

"Average notebook/desktop that can run Aero."

or

"a fast enough 3D GPU, usually a card that works well with games"

Both my quotes.  Since 95+ % of notebooks have Intergrated graphics chips from Intel or ATI most of the time, I am going to go out on a limb and say his $400 Acer notebook has X3100 Intel GPU at best, hardly a 3D GPU in any form.  Aero will tax an X3100 more than Windows Standard period.  In fact I bet he would get better battery life with out Aero.

Any gaming video card that can play Call of Duty 4, game of the year on the PC last year, can run Aero just fine.  The typical Windows notebook (business or consumer) or business desktop which probably make up 90% of all PC's sold cant run Call of Duty 4 very well.  Today most can run Aero fine, just slower than Windows Standard.

Lindy

You were the one "calling BS" and saying that with less than QuadSLI you should turn off Aero to speed up your system.

I guess when it's time for Microsoft bashing there's one rule and when it's time to give advice that has to match reality, there's another.

mikegalos is even putting words in other people's mouth  today  over on the IE thread from yesterday. At least you are consistent, mikegalos!

--tayme

"Yeah on topic....the topic is MS product line confusion.  Anyone that does not acknowledge that or tries to defend that, is total MS fangirl."

Lindy says: Tomorrow's topic is "Microsoft sucks". Anyone that doesn't agree is an MS fangirl.

The topic is, after all, what lindy and robertsjoe say it is.

tayme,

Switching to a personal attack when actual facts come up. Seems I'm not the only consistent one.

No Mike I said SHOW US PROOF to your comment.

"Actually, Lindy, having Aero on with a system that has a good GPU is faster than turning Aero off since compositing and other desktop rendering stuff is offloaded to the generally underutilized GPU."

But you cant, so your statement is BS.  

My request is that you dont show us a benchmark of a better than average 3D gaming card running Aero faster than a x3100 notebook running Windows standard, because that is a given.

I am still waiting for the proof and I guess I will have to wait until some other day as I am out of here gents.

Actually, aero being faster isn't an opinion, ig an engineering fact.

Say you've got a computer being heavily loaded, rendering video, for example, or streaming several channels of low latency audio.

Without aero, the CPUU has to also handle displaying the GUI. Naturally, when the CPU is stressed, then finding time to render the GUI is harder, and so you get a choppy display, poor performance, tearing etc.

On the other hand, if your GPU can handle aero (most do, to be honest, I mean the tech specs are DX9 support, that's not exactly geforce 8 levels of performance - even most laptop cards can do this) then the drawing and rendering of the GUI is done by the GPU, which is likely not doing much, which means that a system under full load will show no slowdown in it's GUI.

This is not a new thing, I believe apple's quartz does a similar thing. The technicalities differ, but I think the end goal is the same.

lol, Lindy's thrown his toys out of the pram again!

gorath

Exactly right.

Although even a GeForce 8 series that you list as high performance is way, way slower than the Quad SLI that Lindy seems to think is a requirement!

BTW: Speaking of nVidia (who make the GeForce series and the SLI interconnect), they've just shipped a new driver.

The stupid driver doesn't install on my system - says I need Vista. I'm running Vista Ultimate on that computer. Idiots!

@mikegalos - Again, where is the presonal attack? I can post a link to what I was talking about if you'd like.

I have said this before...you are a smart  guy...but not everybody agrees with you and if they don't you seem to take issue...whether it is fact of opinion that they disagree with. You seem to have trouble differentiating what many of us disagree with you on. For me, I do not disagree with the facts that you post. Most of the time, they are spot on. It is when you espouse your opinion as the only correct one, while putting false words in my mouth. Like you have said to me in the past...you need to retract and apologize for those lies or, and you haven't said this...quitcherbitchin when others do the same to you.

--tayme

Gorath and Mike you are both wrong and Lindy is "more" correct.

The CPU never handles Windows Desktop display video.  The only time a CPU will process video is with software rendering, like in Virtual PC where you have a virtual video card.  A CPU will decode some video, like in DVD or BR playback when a hardware decoder is not present, but that is decoding not final rendering of video display.

Whether you use aero or not, the GPU does all of the video rendering.  It just does it in DX9 mode when not using Aero.  In Aero mode it will use the higher end 3D functions of the GPU in DX10 mode.

It's a simple fact that aero taxes your video subsystem more than non aero.  The question is how much more?  That depends on your Video card GPU and the drivers.  I would not run aero on a notebook with anything less than a NVIDIA 8300, 8400, 9300, 9400 GPU.  It's been proven that it will eat more battery, however only a small amount usually and it really depends on things like drivers and BIOS.

If you have a desktop PC that can play games good, perhaps a mid range $150 Video card then turning off aero wont speed up your video experience, because the video card is powerful enough drive aero as fast as non-aero.  Also with a desktop PC you don't have to worry about batter life.  Turning off animation while still using aero will make things quicker.

Have you ever seen dream scene, or whatever that Ultimate extra is called run on a notebook with a integrated gpu?  Man that is ugly the fans will kick on in just a matter of seconds and it will kill your battery fast.

windowsteamblog.com/.../aero-and-battery-life.aspx

blogs.microsoft.co.il/.../Vista-drain-a-battery_2100_-and-Vista-Battery-Saver-is-very-useful.aspx

There are plenty more if you want them.

bettieblu

You seem to be confusing playback of video files with display of the desktop.

We're discussing use of the GPU in OS rendering which was done by the CPU prior to Vista and is still doe by the CPU on systems that don't have a GPU that meets the requirements of Aero.

Mike you are totally clueless.

Windows desktop rending in Windows XP is done with a GPU, NOT THE CPU.  With XP is all 2D, but it still uses the GPU which is just your video card.  GPU is marketing name that ATI or NVIDIA came up with.  Its your video card, you know you install video drivers in XP/Vista so the OS will use the video card.

In Vista, Aero uses 3D functions of your GPU/Video card provided your GPU/Video card can do DX9 with Pixel Shadder 2.0.

I ONLY mentioned video playback because morons like you think it has something to do with the Video card and get confused.  Video decoding, like DVD or BR decoding requires decoding and that can be a software video decoder or a hardware video decoder.  Usually a video decoder will be put on a video card, its a separate chip, like ATI video card that has the TV tuner on them aka ATI All-in-Wonder.  Or sometimes the the video card company, like NVIDIA, will write a application that will use the GPU to do the decoding, aka NVIDIA pure video but will only work with their GPU's.

Man you are such a tool.

Unless you have very specific codecs, the GPU doesn't do any decoding of video.  Nvidia used to have "purevideo", which is a seperate, paid for codec, that allowed certain video formats to be decoded on their Geforce cards, and ATi had a similar solution.

However, since the introduction of the Geforce 8600GT, I believe video decoding (of certain kinds of streams) on GPUs has become a standard feature on all newer series cards.

But still, this has nothing to do with aero, and you can use these specific GPU-accelerated video decoders with or without aero.

Bettieblu, I really am at pain to say this, but you have misunderstood some aspects quite dramatically.

XP's display subsystem was software driven. However, you are partially correct in that "some" windowsing features could be accelerated by hardware calls. For example, Matrox cards, as well as Ati's FireGL series, or Nvidia's Quadro series traditionally supplied very streamlined drivers for windowing, resulting in lower system resource usage than non-workstation cards.

This is the same system that Vista uses when Aero is turned off.

In this mode, however, even though the GPU helps, it is still a cpu-based process by and large.

With aero, the vast majority of window drawing is done by the GPU, and very little by the CPU, resulting, ass ha been stated, in a system that can still draw a higly responsive desktop even when the CPU is massively consumed by other processes.

Oh, and having a TV tuner on board, doesn;t necessarily mean that a card has video decoding hardware. Many of the cheaper tv cards use software emulation for those purposes

bettiblu

I actually was trying to give you a graceful way out of your totaly bogus statements by letting you claim you thought we were talking about things like video decoding but you just kept on going with a reply of calling me clueless. Oh, well, so much for my being nice to the arrogantly ignorant.

Gorath you are much closer to the truth now.  ATI uses a separate decoding chip.  It was the Theater 500 or whatever that was used by some cable company set top boxes at one time.  Now is looks like its called the

# ATI Avivo™ HD Video and Display Platform

   * Dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats "

ati.amd.com/.../specs.html

Video card vendors like NVIDIA have started to include video playback through their GPU in the video drivers.  However it only works with their GPU and for high end or new stuff like BR you still need their Purevideo.  If you buy their flagship video card it will come with it, otherwise you purchase it.

I have a friend that built his own Vista Home Media Center, and used it to playback BR video.  At first he had some low end video card and his CPU would rail almost 80+% when watching a BR movie.  He later upgraded to a ATI card that had HDMI out, that carried the sound as well and dropped the CPU down to below 20%.

None of this has anything to do with with desktop video with or with out Aero.  Windows Desktop video NEVER users the CPU, Aero or no Aero, provided you have even the most basic of video drivers installed.

I didn't understand bettiblu to say that a TV tuner card has decoding hardware...I believe that he was making a comparison...saying that having a seperate video decoder onboard is much like having a tuner chip onboard a video card...but, thats just the way that I read it...

--tayme

Ok lets take out video as in video streams, DVD, BR, Quicktime anything that requires decoding/codec.

Lets talk Desktop video only.  the icons, menu bars, applications like Word etc.

With Windows XP the VIDEO CARD renders this in 2D and the CPU has nothing to to do with it.

With Vista if you select Aero, the VIDEO CARD renders this using 3D functions, like version 2.0 pixel shaders to give you things like the glass features and the CPU is not used.

"XP's display subsystem was software driven."  For the 2D desktop that is FLAT OUT WRONG.  

If you are talking about streaming video like a quicktime video, DVD, BR then yes with out a hardware decoder/codec then XP will use the CPU totally.

Coming back to the third topic of discussion (I think), do these emails that were leaked have any bearing on the actual lawsuit? I think the allegation here is that although Microsoft did make it clear that Vista Capable PCs wouldn't be able to run Aero, they also advertised Aero as one of the pillars of Vista. The question is, is Vista Home Basic really Vista? (At least, that's what I got from it.) Regarding the emails, it's scary when internal emails are made public.

actually bettie, you're still wrong about desktop rendering.

But you know what? who cares? There's more important things.

en.wikipedia.org/.../Graphics_processing_unit

Read 1990 and on, learn a few things.

"In 1991, S3 Graphics introduced the first single-chip 2D accelerator"

"by 1995, all major PC graphics chip makers had added 2D acceleration support to their chips. By this time, fixed-function Windows accelerators had surpassed expensive general-purpose graphics coprocessors in Windows performance, and these coprocessors faded away from the PC market."

I would say by the time XP shipped in 2001, any PC that could run XP has a 2D acceleration rendering the desktop in a GPU and not touching the CPU at all for desktop rendering.

bettieblue

Since you like Wikipedia as a source, you should look at their article on DWM en.wikipedia.org/.../Desktop_Window_Manager

"Oh, well, so much for my being nice to the arrogantly ignorant."

That is FRAKING funny coming from you.  When you get done reading my last link would you like one or two slices of humble pie?

In fact if read the Integrated graphics section of the link it would seem Lindy knew way more than you Mr. Microsoft.

"Computers with integrated graphics account for 90% of all PC shipments[5]. These solutions are cheaper to implement than dedicated graphics solutions, but are less capable. Historically, integrated solutions were often considered unfit to play 3D games or run graphically intensive programs such as Adobe Flash[citation needed]. (Examples of such IGPs would be offerings from SiS and VIA circa 2004.)[6] However, today's integrated solutions such as the Intel's GMA X3000 ( Intel G965 chipset), AMD's Radeon HD 3200 (AMD 780G chipset) and NVIDIA's GeForce 8200 (NVIDIA nForce 730a) are more than capable of handling 2D graphics from Adobe Flash or low stress 3D graphics[7]. However, the aforementioned GPUs still struggle with high-end video games. Modern desktop motherboards often include an integrated graphics solution and have expansion slots available to add a dedicated graphics card later."

Wow, and that has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Yes. There are integrated graphics chips on lots of motherboards. That's your big discovery? Nobody disagreed with that.

Your link proves even more that Windows XP never used software rendering.

XP used GDI/Direct X and video card drivers to move that.  Vista uses DWM and to get that to work with your video card you will need WDDM video driver.

In both cases they use the video card.

So why did you link it?

Lindy's response to you in this thread.

"Since 95+ % of notebooks have Intergrated graphics chips from Intel or ATI most of the time, I am going to go out on a limb and say his $400 Acer notebook has X3100 Intel GPU at best, hardly a 3D GPU in any form.  Aero will tax an X3100 more than Windows Standard period.  In fact I bet he would get better battery life with out Aero."

I guess Lindy was wrong by 5%, according to the Wiki link.  The point is he schooled you.  Integrated graphics run on most PC's.  Aero vs non Aero on those machines would probably show a performance difference, as they struggle with 3D rendering.

Tool of the year goes Mike Galos.

FYI. My $400 laptop  has integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M. I have been surfing the web and playing webkinz Flash games on line and don't see any difference with Aero off or on. The Windows experience indexes did not change. At first I thought that the graphics did not look as good without Aero,but I don't think that I can tell the difference.

I also read somewhere that turning Aero off could decrease performance in some cases. I don't remember the source butu what the heck do I know anyway. I would bet that my crude test is not valid anyway. Interesting discussion. Sorta mind boggling in fact due to the disagreement.

More OT. Mike, would you believe that those 99 cent spiral CFL in 13, 20 and 26w are still on sale!!!! The isolated display is a row away from the light section which is selling them for much, much more, including the same GE brand, but different model. Go figure. Well, since you can see above the sheet rock, my wife won't let me replace the recessed lights throughout the first floor.

DRWAM

On the More OT: But still not over here. (I checked last week)

@DRWAM Windows Aero and Windows Basic look the same in terms of the shape, the rounding of the corners the buttons etc.  You don't get glass, thumbnail preview, 3D flip and stuff like that.  That 4500M is pretty new and slightly better than the x3100 from Intel, you got a heck of a deal on that notebook.  Did it come with wireless N?

Windows Standard or Classic take you back to Window 2000, much less going on there for sure.  Windows Standard I think is the Windows server 2003 default, Classic is Windows 2000.

Bettie it has Wireless B-G-N, It is back up to $500 after falling to $400 a second time. Black Friday is around the corner.

www.bestbuy.com/.../olspage.jsp

Mike, I put two outside in the garage lights and one died in 3 days. I guess they are not meant for outside.

I sincerely try to keep all this stuff straight. Why can't they be consistent with a product name? I'm a MCSE 2003 and getting ready to upgrade to MCSE 2008. That should show that I'm committed to their products but constantly confusing people will not get them ahead of the competition... it is really like they aren't able to communicate within the company and everyone has the next great idea.. (idea=new product name for something they are already doing).

Beaker the irony, I am in the same boat, and our MCSE is now called a MCITP with 2008.  Why they changed it?

they change it because they don't think what they currently have is good enough.. but, it is good.. enough.. they are the leader.. they need to stop worrying about the competition because the competition isn't really competition..

"No Mike I said SHOW US PROOF to your comment."

You will find it hard to get Mike to show proof to his comments. They are just let out like machine gun fire, without ever looking back or backing them up.

Like when he said Microsoft don't lie in ads. They did.

Like when he said that there's more VB code than any other in the world. Had nothing to back that up. I still would find it extremelly hard to believe. C would be king in that arena.

Yeah, proof, who needs it. Right, Mike? ;)

And the perfect match for Vista and speed freaks is 'AMD gets Phenom II to 6.3 GHz'. This will handle Windows Live Sync migration pretty quickly.

www.theinquirer.net/.../amd-gets-phenom-ii-ghz

Bettie, the very few cards that fully support the 2D window accelerator functions will run XP at full resolution, with full colour depth even with no drivers installed. However, these cards are rare.

some FireGL, Quadros, and (IIRC, all) Matrox cards can do this.

However, it's not the case with general consumer cards, where running them with "standard VGA" drivers gives terrible performance, because they don't support the function calls.

So, yeah, XP could support hardware acceleration of certain functions, but this isn't quite the same as having a hardware compositied and rendered gui.

"Bettie, the very few cards that fully support the 2D window accelerator functions will run XP at full resolution, with full colour depth even with no drivers installed. However, these cards are rare."

Rare???????????  WTF are you talking about??  Do you have $25?

www.newegg.com/.../Product.aspx

Gorath I have come to the conclusion you are complete idiot.  I send you that link and you still dont get it.  It spells it out clear as day.  I cant believe this is even disputable??????  The sky is blue by the way.

Here from Intel, the GMA 950 can do 2048x1536 at 75 Hz maximum resolution, 2D accelerated and that is a notebook GPU from 2006.

www.intel.com/.../index.htm

That would pretty much cover 99% of all monitors out there right now at that GPU is 3 years old.

Here is their latest Integrated GPU....

"The Intel® G45 Express Chipset, with the next-generation Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD (Intel® GMA X4500HD), includes built-in support for full 1080p high-definition video playback, including Blu-ray* disc movies. This powerful video engine provides users with a rich, new media experience to deliver smooth HD playback without the need for add-in video cards or decoders. Intel® GMA X4500HD comes with Intel® Clear Video Technology, a combination of video processing hardware and software technologies designed to enhance the visual experience."

So that GPU not only maxes out 2D, but if you install their codec/driver  the GPU will handle BR decoding.  That GPU is probably targeted at media center PC's.

Full 2D acceleration at 1600x1200 was capable under Windows 98 with Vesa Local Bus cards, as in VLB, prior to PCI, prior to AGP and now PCIE.  2D windows desktop speed was maxed out 10 years ago.  Word can only draw so fast.

3D is another story.  DirectX8 and then 9 battled OpenGL and Microsoft won the battle.  Only the very latest Intergrated GPU's GMA 950 and above fully support DX9 and even then they are not gaming GPU's.

"In May 1991, the company released Mach8, its first product able to process graphics without the CPU"

en.wikipedia.org/.../ATI_Technologies

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