meta-review of Vista
…or why I hate Digg and idiots who can’t even spell Blu-ray properly.
Windows Vista, in all of it’s forms, has been getting universally lukewarm reviews. While this has been quite satisfying to me, there is a large contingent on certain social networking sites that feel the need to defend and rally around spending hundreds of dollars to lose features. The article in question is hilarious first, because when i was doing background research to write this, I came across an article with a completely opposite view from last year by the same author. Whoops! Looks like its fashionable to be contradictory. His next mistake is dissing Bruce Schneier … one of the modern founders of hardcore cryptography and security. In my mind, he has already lost any credibility without even examining his claims further, but for completeness there are some Vista-esque points I wanted to mention.
One of the things being discussed on Digg and in the article is the idea of the Protected Media Path that Vista uses. No one involved in the aforementioned discussions would mention the proper technical name of course, but the confusion comes from not understanding things like the ICT and the analog hole . The Protected Video Path (a subset of the PMP) is a requirement to encrypt audio/video data passing over the PCIe bus. Wow, I’m sure that really helps performance out…but this is not the issue under discussion at the moment. The primary confusion is that there is a set of people who take Vista’s restrictions too far, claiming that all video is down-sampled to 960×540 and digital audio outputs are disabled when playing back music, etc. These people damage the credibility of the legitimate critics of Vista who simply hate its reduction of features (virtualization restrictions, etc.) and terrible performance. The people whining about HDCP don’t understand that the existing software for XP that plays back HD DVD and Blu-ray already refuses to allow output of video over a digital connection (HDMI/DVI) unless both the video card, video card drivers, and display are HDCP-compliant. XP won’t even down-sample to half-resolution/analog audio for you the way Vista would.
The author also mentions how since legal DRM playback options don’t exist in Linux, Vista must somehow be superior. Well, legality aside, you sure as hell can playback EVO and VOB files in VLC (which still runs in Linux the last time time I checked). VOB can even be decrypted thanks to DeCSS, but with the WinDVD 8 device key floating around , I’m sure it won’t be long before any HD DVD or Blu-ray disc will also be capable of being played.
The last thing Ou drags into the discussion is gaming performance not being hindered by Vista’s DRM requirements. I agree that it isn’t hindered directly - however, it is hindered indirectly by the fact that the absurd driver layer (which some allege will reset the computer if a voltage drops low on the PCIe bus to prevent hardware snooping) is not yet ready for prime time so existing NVIDIA/ATI drivers suck. Gaming performance blows ass in Vista . These guys agree . Read the whole articles for either of those, but you can see an average 5-10% performance hit, sometimes much worse, sometimes trivial. Certainly not a good reason to spend $200. There is also the allegation that DirectSound has been dropped in favor of OpenAL (wtf?!), so surround sound gamers who like EAX, etc. better enjoy stereo for a while until a driver compatibility layer and/or per-game patches are released.
My final $0.02 is on the subject of performance - across the board (regardless of gaming), it sucks. Even power consumption is higher. 32-bit Vista is universally faster than 64-bit Vista , and 32-bit XP is faster than either (even 64-bit XP sucks less than 64-bit Vista ). What I find funny is that it seems (despite conventional logic) Aero glass performs better than Aero basic (the UI included in the cheapest/most common of the four major versions of Vista). Aero glass can’t even compare to Beryl .
The bottom line is, George Ou doesn’t know what the fuck he is talking about (and can’t even spell Blu-ray), and neither do the rest of the mouth-breathers at Digg. Anyone who doesn’t have a desire to lose performance and features shouldn’t upgrade to Vista. If you are lured by the shiny twirlings of Aero glass, try a LiveCD w/ XGL , as you’ve got nothing to lose.