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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates lays praise on Windows Vista

Yesterday, DailyTech reported that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was cautious about "overly aggressive" forecasts for Windows Vista. Ballmer went on to say that Vista’s slow retail start can be attributed to piracy which has become increasingly popular in emerging markets.

It appears that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Ballmer haven't had much communication on the matter recently. Reuters asked Gates about any trepidation Microsoft might have about the outlook for Vista to which he responded "I don't know what you mean. Vista's had an incredible reception."

Gates deflected the questioning and instead decided to focus on what he sees as positive progress for Microsoft's newest consumer operating system. "The reviews have been fantastic. This is a big, big advance in the Windows platform. It's the world's most used piece of software... Overall, the reliability feedback has been well better than we expected," said Gates.

"People who sell PCs have seen a very nice lift in their sales. People have come in and wanted to buy Vista," Gates continued.

Gates is right about the lift in PC sales. According to NPD, PC unit shipments were up 67% the week Vista launched in comparison to the same period in 2006. That is a key measure for Microsoft as 80% of its OS revenue comes from PC OEMs. Vista's retail performance, however, was down 60% in comparison to Windows XP's opening week in 2001.

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hehe
By sprockkets on 2/21/2007 10:46:43 AM , Rating: 2
I just received 17 retail copies of WinXP Pro from work, I do not need vista for now, but will get a copy to work with it for business purposes.

But if this site says it works well with 3GB of RAM, I'm 2 short. For that matter, it is kinda weird to have just three, don't ya need like 4, as in, needing to have 4x1GB DIMMS? Or can you just have 3 slots populated?

Funny, cause SuSE 10.2 has some Vista features, namely, the translucent window borders, the start menu style. Of course, they had a 3d desktop before vista.




RE: hehe
By bplewis24 on 2/21/2007 11:20:04 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
But if this site says it works well with 3GB of RAM, I'm 2 short. For that matter, it is kinda weird to have just three, don't ya need like 4, as in, needing to have 4x1GB DIMMS? Or can you just have 3 slots populated?


I believe that is specific to the Mobo you're using.

Brandon


RE: hehe
By bplewis24 on 2/21/2007 2:12:54 PM , Rating: 3
Am I being voted down because my answer is factually wrong or is it just on general principle because I don't always go with the flow on this site?

If I'm wrong any clarification will suffice. I was pretty sure that when I built my computer they only discourage odd-numbered dimms because of the lack of dual-channel memory feature. But I'd be genuinely interested in knowing if that's wrong.

Brandon


RE: hehe
By Myrandex on 2/21/2007 3:10:03 PM , Rating: 3
No reason to be voted down, but 3GB is easy for dual channel.

2 * 1GB and 2 * 512MB gives you 3GB

Its good to see my applied math degree go somewhere. There are also machiens that don't even support dual channel RAM that have 3 slots, so then the point doesn't matter either.

Jason


RE: hehe
By mindless1 on 2/23/07, Rating: 0
RE: hehe
By Scabies on 2/21/2007 11:41:45 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not the expert, but the general idea is that a 32bit OS can only address either 3gb or 3.5gb of ram, whereas a 64bit OS can do some double digit number I cant think of immediately (16 may be wrong)
If you are talking about XP, they are likely saying "it works well with three, but one is fine. Anything greater than three will cause issues" [holyhandgrenade, jk]
3 DIMMs will not do dual channel properly, since it is an odd number. To my knowledge, you can dual channel 2 and have to run single channel on the third.

If you are talking about Vista, I can say from personal experience that the deal is "the more the merrier." It works with one, it works better with two (where I stand) so maybe it works "well" with three. I will say that I went from (vista scoring) 4.5 with one DIMM DDR2-800 to 5.3 on 2 DIMMs of the same stuff (800) in single channel to 5.9 in dual channel. Currently, vista scoring puts that on par with my processor (overclocked conroe @3ghz) so adding more would be ineffective, as most cases call for a lowest denominator performance

a direct answer is "3 dimms populated is fine, you wont have data corruption or anything."


RE: hehe
By Orthogonal on 2/21/2007 12:07:26 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I'm not the expert, but the general idea is that a 32bit OS can only address either 3gb or 3.5gb of ram, whereas a 64bit OS can do some double digit number I cant think of immediately (16 may be wrong)


FYI: 32 bits can address 2^32 bits of address space or 4 GB. A 64 bit OS can address 2^64 which is 1.844E19 bits of address space. MS has artificially limited the physical address space to 8, 16 and 128 GB's depending on the OS of choice.


RE: hehe
By Scabies on 2/21/2007 12:34:14 PM , Rating: 2
Sorry, I was referring to the issue where XP (32bit) would only recognize 3gb. This was caused by the HDD based page file (or swap space / virtual memory) plus physical RAM adding up to a number above 4gb. In most instances, this is overcome this by turing off their HDD based page file, but upon furter research you are correct, a 32bit processor and a 32bit OS CAN address 4gb maximum.
Another limitation is the motherboard, some dont work with more than 3gb.


RE: hehe
By TomZ on 2/21/2007 12:57:43 PM , Rating: 2
The 3GB limit is not due to page file, it is due to memory-mapped devices being allocated the top 1GB or so. But you are right, that the OS can address a 32-bit memory space - it's just that not all of it can be filled with RAM.


RE: hehe
By Orbs on 2/21/2007 12:38:06 PM , Rating: 1
I'm running Vista on a tablet with 1GB and it runs just fine.


RE: hehe
By alifbaa on 2/21/2007 8:11:37 PM , Rating: 2
I think your question has probably been answered by now, but I seem to remember MS recommending 2GB for 32bit and 4GB for 64. Those weren't minimum figures, I believe they were suggested as some sort of optimum performance number. If you've got a 3 slot board, I would assume you aren't trying to light up the world with performance, and are probably running 32bit. 2GB would probably work pretty well for you for the next couple of years.


RE: hehe
By cheetah2k on 2/21/2007 9:00:44 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
I'm running Vista on a tablet with 1GB and it runs just fine.


I bet its not Vista Ultimate. 10 bucks says its the Basic version you're using.

Orbs, try Vista Ultimate on your tablet, and watch it grind to a halt with full time Hard Drive access.......


RE: hehe
By TomZ on 2/21/07, Rating: 0
RE: hehe
By cheetah2k on 2/21/2007 10:27:57 PM , Rating: 3
Vista Ultimate with 512mb RAM?

Do you have Aero Glass going? I think not, Vista wont let you with poor specs

No FUD, but i think youre BS'ing


RE: hehe
By TomZ on 2/21/07, Rating: 0
RE: hehe
By StevoLincolnite on 2/22/2007 1:03:53 AM , Rating: 1
I have Vista Ultimate running on my Pentium M 1.6Ghz, 1024Mb of ram, Radeon 9700pro 64Mb card, and a 40Gb 4200rpm HDD, Running Aero just fine, Infact if some on-boared Intel Solutions can handle it any Radeon or Geforce that has Pixel Shading or Vertex Shading could handle Aero Just fine, From what I have noticed On my old test box, That has an 800Mhz @ 1000Mhz Celeron, 512Mb of SDRAM, and a Geforce FX 5200 Aero runs flawlessly no hiccups no stutters, nothing of the sorts why? Because its all loaded into the graphics card.
You don't need INSANE hardware requirements to run vista, Unlike popular belief, Think about it, The minimum system requirements are the minimum requirements for games a year or more ago. And I was able to Run Oblivion on Vista Ultime running Aero at 800x600 with everything on medium quality, Not bad for a 64Mb card, And I was getting on average of 25fps outdoors and 40fps in doors. All in All I hardly if at all noticed a performance difference doing anything in Vista that I did in XP, It seems its memory management is leaps and bounds ahead of Windows XP.


RE: hehe
By StevoLincolnite on 2/22/2007 7:00:24 AM , Rating: 4
I got voted down for that? In fact all my posts EVER have been voted down, from just a few hours ago.


RE: hehe
By cheetah2k on 2/22/2007 1:58:06 AM , Rating: 2
hehehehe, not changing the subject..

I should have been more descriptive 1st off. I think if you intend to buy Vista Ultimate (ie, shelling out your had earned cash), you are buying it for a good reason (above all of the other versions).

You are buying it for nothing but the "whole" package - eg, you intend to run Aero, the annoying UAC, etc, etc. I have used Vista Ultimate for the last week, with all the "bells n whistles" running, and it has been a terribly time consuming, partially negative experience.

However, my experience with Vista Basic has been quite the opposite. With Vista Basic, i was able to run HL2 without getting any "out of memory" errors, etc. Infact Vista Basic was quite quick and felt very similar and responsive to XP Pro. Similarily, on my HP DV9005tx laptop with 2gb of DDR2, i have Vista Home Premium, and i have sinced removed this and installed Vista Basic with similar results. This is purely because Vista Basic only consumes about 500mb of memory, even with readyboost.

However, this isnt enough to convince me to leave XP Pro..

The bottom line, for me - My (test system) AMD FX-60 (cooled by Coolit Freezone TEC), Abit AN8-32X motherboard, with 2gb of Corsair XMS 3500LLPro DDR433 memory, 3 x WD160JS SATA II (drives in RAID 0) Gigabyte I-Ram with 4Gb of Corsair value, 2 x XFX 8800GTX video cards in SLi (fully cooled by EK8800 waterblocks and cooled by Coolit Quad TEC-modified for 8800GTX), 1000W Enermax SLi PSU - Running Vista Ultimate with all the bells n whistles turned on, had out of memory, and other issues running Half Life 2.

Of course, closing the DWM.exe (aeroglass) file in taskmanager freed up enough memory to run HL2, and to be honest, Vista Basic did it ok, and without the memory hogging black hole that Ultimate has.

My last 2 cents on this subject....


RE: hehe
By Nekrik on 2/21/2007 11:49:52 PM , Rating: 3
Have you done any perf comparisons using readyboost and different usb flash drives on the 512MB/850Mhz box? I want to try it but it's not really the highest priority so haven't gotten to yet.


RE: hehe
By TomZ on 2/22/07, Rating: 0