Windows Vista and the Future of Hardware 300
NSIM writes to mention an article on ExtremeTech looking at the impact that Windows Vista will have on the future of computer hardware. In addition to obvious elements like CPUs, GPUs, and display interfaces, the article also touches on things like DRM (which Vista heavily supports) and audio formats. From the article: "Currently, only a few shipping products actually support the crypto-ROM needed to ensure compliance with Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and CableCard. It's looking like next-generation cards will all implement the needed firmware. Continued... The impact on future displays is a bit more subtle, but we're starting to see the impact already. Widescreen displays offering very high resolutions, such as the Dell 2407WFP are starting to become more affordable. But a 1920x1200 resolution often creates legibility problems for some users resulting from the tiny size of the default Windows font."
at what point (Score:5, Insightful)
At what point does the advancement of technology become either irrelevant, unnecessary to the casual user, too expensive, too complex, or some combination thereof? This has already happened in audio -- how many people out there really are vested in SACD? How many people do you know who even know what SACD is?
How many people are using 7.1, or THX sound? Or, if they have it, have it set up correctly? Or, if they have it, have any reasonable collection of media to make use of it?
And now there is evidence of death on the vine with new and improved video formats -- HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray. Other than mostly a slashdot type crowd, who really cares about the arguably incremental improvements for hefty investments?
At what point do consumers shrug their collective shoulders at any news around HDTV (hint, they're already starting to)? And when do all of the complexities of the combinitorials to lace all of this technology together push new consumers away?
It's possible Vista may be entering that twilight zone of indifferent consumerism. I'm totally technology driven, and have most of my life been a bleeding edge investor, but lately it's become less interesting. I can tell the difference between 1600x1200 resolution and WVGA, but I have to explain it to everyone else. They don't care, and they're not willing to spend any extra dollars to get the extra resolution kick.
All I'm seeing around Vista is toned-down expectations from their original promise, and ramped up requirements for hardware. That hardly lights a fire for me, and is a frigging wet towel for the lay-people considering new computers.
I don't know many in the technology world knocked out of their socks by the announced features (especially after all of the un-announced, and I don't know anyone outside of the technology elite circles who are interested, or care, and have any inklings of plans to move to Vista -- and if new rollouts of computers are significantly more expensive at all because of Vista, I know lots of people who are proactively not buying.
Maybe the world is reaching a point where people really don't need mini-Crays to read e-mail, manage photos, and surf the internet. And maybe the fork in the computing world can finally focus on useful applications and customer service rather than eye-candy translucent windowing graphics.
Re:at what point (Score:5, Insightful)
Gamers.
Re:at what point (Score:5, Funny)
".But I repeat myself."
- Mark Twain
Re:at what point (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:at what point (Score:5, Funny)
What do you think quad core processors are for?
Re:at what point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:at what point (Score:3, Informative)
Re:at what point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:at what point (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:at what point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:at what point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:at what point (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:at what point (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently I bought a new laptop, and now I don't ever want to buy a desktop again. This laptop has 100GB, my desktop has a 400GB HD and a 500GB HD (will buy external enclosure soon). None are close to full but it's very useful. I really no longer care about video cards as my laptop can handle most games, and most games aren't worth the time anyway (I want a fun game, not graphics!). It's nice to have eye candy, but not at the expense of a good game. The PS2 has plenty of games with mediocre graphics that you can really have fun with, beats the hell out of the Xbox 360 (I don't plan on buying a PS3 or Xbox 360). If I really care, I'll buy a Wii. Due to price and non-rediculous information surrounding it, it seems everyone around me is getting a Wii, so I can play with them.
I could really care less about Vista now. It's the most pointless thing, and I have even beta tested. The last time I customized it and installed most of the software I use on my Windows XP partition, but every 2 seconds the screen would fade to warn me about system changes. I know exactly where Microsoft gets this from, most Linux GUI's do it now, and Mac OS X does it too. But it only happens on seriously important stuff (Synaptics for Ubuntu, applying update on Mac OS X). I couldn't find the option to disable it entirely or disable it to a certain extent (which I would prefer). If Windows Vista is just going to be me clicking Yes to warnings every 2 seconds, then forget about it. I'll stick with XP and Ubuntu, and I'm going to switch to Ubuntu entirely soon enough.
Re:at what point (Score:3, Informative)
Re:at what point (Score:2)
Re:at what point (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on advertisers, make me WANT STUFF!!
How about... Come on DEVELOPERS, make me want stuff!
Re:at what point (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with much of what you say, but being able to use much better screens, such as the large Dell TFT mentioned in the submission, is definitely a plus as far as I'm concerned.
This is partly because of the productivity benefits of getting more on-screen: try editing a book or magazine in a DTP program when you can actually see two real-size pages side-by-side at a useful resolution, and suddenly the idea of zooming in to part of one page on a 19" CRT to make out the details seems quaint and old-fashioned.
Equally important, newer TFTs tend to be a lot easier on the eyes than the older TFTs and mid-range CRTs that fill offices around the world. As someone whose eyes are degrading because of unfortunate genetics anyway, I want to make sure I do as much as possible to help them, and since I sit in front of a computer screen for a large proportion of my waking hours...
I think the problem alluded to in the submission, where large, hi-res screens become effectively unusable under Windows due to poor UI scaling, is a very real one. So, if a new version of Windows will support proper scaling for things like fonts, icons and UI widgets, and thus make bigger and better screens more usable, that is a clear benefit for me.
Re:at what point (Score:5, Insightful)
And then I discovered ClearType. Why ClearType isn't on in Windows XP by default (or even installed by default) I don't know. I had to go to a microsoft website to turn it on and download a control panel applet to let me tweak and configure it. But it made a great display even better... to much so that it was like getting glasses! I even use it on my CRT display at work, and it's better there too. It just seems odd to me that it's not the norm...
Re:at what point (Score:3, Informative)
I'm guessing ClearType isn't on by default because by its nature, it would make the display worse if improperly configured.
For example, I too normally use it even on my CRT at work, because it doesn't have an artificial lower threshold below which it won't smooth fonts. The standard anti-aliasing cuts out just around the point where most of my fonts are normally configured, making it pretty much useless. With ClearType, most of the fonts I use regularly do look smoother.
OTOH, a couple of the fonts I use
Re:at what point (Score:3, Informative)
Turning it on for displays that don't respond well to ClearTyp
Re:at what point (Score:2)
But I use it just fine on Windows XP, I don't see how Vista will improve it at all. And I found the article comment on the pixel size on the 240FFPW surprising too, since its about the same as any other LCD. Now had he mentioned the display on my new D820, whose 15.4" display ALSO sports a 1920x1200 resolution, I might agree with
Re:Desktop vs. Laptop LCDs (Score:3, Interesting)
If your windowing environment did proper font scaling (i.e. it renders a font at a specific _physical_ size rather than a number of pixels, and allows you to configure the top-level scaling so you can make everything larger/smaller) then you would be best off running in the highest screen resolution they can get.
If you've got bad eyesight you get large-type books - not super-pixelated books.
P
Re:at what point (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as the complexity, well... sadly it really is a case of "your brain is too small for this century" when it comes to most users. There is no way to provide the flexible and advanced functionality that a user may want and not add complexity. Take for example the concept of de-interlacing. It's a complex issue with video. I use Xine on Linux and the TV Time filter to take care of my DirecTV signal and make it look as nice as possible on my LCD HD monitor. (Heh... it actually looks better than connecting the DirecTV box right to the monitor's composite in) But, in order to actually take advantage of this with a simple click of an icon for my wife to use, I had to write a script that calls 'xine' with the appropriate options, and tunes the GeForce driver for optimal color overlay. It's once click for her and hours of work at the outset for me. Joe User will NEVER do this. The only way to offer it to him is to have the application make automatic (and stupid) assumptions about how things should work and then give him the lowest common denominator result. If Windows Media Player took care of this, you know it would make lame assumptions about how the de-interlacing should work and he'd wind up with a crap signal unless he had all his ducks in a row hardware-wise. And then you're back to complexity that he shouldn't have to deal with...
Re:at what point (Score:4, Interesting)
The industry certainly isn't helping the problem by coming up with new and inventive DRM obsticles that they'll force the consumer to hurdle. Nor will they win a lot of friends by burning early adopters.
Ultimately if we get to the point where the DRM doesn't matter and the HD-DVD/Blu Ray decks are only slightly more expensive than regular DVD decks, and the cost for premanufactured discs is the same either way, then it will be adopted (but nowhere near as fast as DVDs were adopted), but if the costs are higher or there is some onerous DRM to contend with, then the technology is going to be stillborn like SVHS.
Re:at what point (Score:4, Insightful)
XP entered that "twilight zone".
Almost no one bought XP when it came out (compared to the other OS microsoft sold). People gradually switched to XP when they replaced their old computers with newer ones that came pre-installed with XP.
Even now, people don't upgrade their PC every two years like in the mid-90s. People now wait for 4 or 5 years, some even more.
Re:at what point (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think home users ever really upgraded that often, other than the geeks.
What's changed, IME, is that businesses are breaking the three-year upgrade cycle that used to be accepted without question, and instead asking what measurable benefits will come from splashing out another few thousand on faster desktops for Susie Secretary and Ollie Officeworker. That, combined with
Re:at what point (Score:2)
Right now, people are buying new systems cause "they need a new one" because their old system is crufted up too badly and because of a desire for new and shiny. The shiny idea will always persist, but because most computers do way to much, they become infected with crap making them get slow very quickly.
I stopped bothering to get a new computer because my older system works well for Ubuntu, and is still a decent system to use. I b
Funny you mention that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:at what point (Score:2)
That is far too simplistic a statement to be accurate. It's more like this: Most consumers want choice but dislike the burden of dealing with the consequences of other consumers's different choices as they affect their own.
Re:at what point (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is that eye-candy sells.
Otherwise if it was all about utility, we'd all be using Redhat Linux 5 today with Gnome desktop.
The truth of the matter is PHB's and Joe Sixpack are easily impressed by computers that look as futuristic as possible. At least as much so as those fake OS's they see in movies ("Zoom the image to the right hand side and enhance by 50%!")
Although when you combine utility and asthetics like OS X, then you have a pretty good balance.
The ever vanishing pixel (Score:4, Interesting)
But a 1920x1200 resolution often creates legibility problems for some users resulting from the tiny size of the default Windows font."
Fonts and documents can be scaled, in browsers, word processing, Adobe Acrobat, etc. Even Flash objects can be scaled, if the page is set up properly (which they often aren't, so you get a postage stamp at hires)
The worst thing is images. I have a picture on a web page which was, back in 1999, a large image. Now it's tiny and I can hardly make out the detail. Some images can be stretched, but others, particularly those which include text can be rendered poorly if not scaled by even multipliers. Where is all this resolution going, anyway? It's nice for some things, like photo editing of large images, but redundant for most other applications.
your new computer consumes 200 watts on idle, requires a 64 bit processor, 2 GB RAM, and a phat video card, so you can do what? Work in MS Office and surf the web? Seems about as appropriate as requireing everyone in Manhattan to have a Hummer.
Re:The ever vanishing pixel (Score:2, Informative)
display resolution and font size are NOT related. So you can have a 4000x3000 resolution on a 15" monitor and all the fonts will be the correct size; in fact most sizes are defined as they will appear on the screen (e.g. cm, inches) and not as they are stored (pixels). However I think this applies only to fonts and not images; I'm not entirely sure.
And Opera alows you to zoom html pages scaling everything in
Re:The ever vanishing pixel (Score:5, Insightful)
display resolution and font size are NOT related. [...] in fact most sizes are defined as they will appear on the screen (e.g. cm, inches) and not as they are stored (pixels).
About time. This is hardly rocket science -- some of us have been doing that with apps since the late 1980s (sometime around the X10 to X11 transition). Yeah, the software needs to know how big a screen pixel is (the old DEC and Sun graphic monitors were about 0.35mm -- huge by today's standards) but that's easy enough. From there it's simple arithmetic to convert a font or feature size in screen inches (or cm) to pixels.
You could also do stuff like choosing to rescale or not when you zoom in or out, handy for maps. (The apps mentioned above were GIS and mapping software). And yes, we interpolated raster images too so you could specify the image display size without worrying about its stored pixel dimensions -- although obviously a 20x20 pixel image is going to be pretty blurry blown up to 10cm x 10cm.
Display Postscript could probably do this too, that's been around for about as long.
News windowing system (Score:4, Interesting)
They used postscript as the screen rendering language.
Thus fully abstracting away the attrbibutes of the monitor.
This is back in the 80's.
Re:News windowing system (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The ever vanishing pixel (Score:2)
I love that screen (Score:3, Interesting)
With the editor font in eclipse at 8pt, i can fit so much code on the screen. Probably about 80 lines vertically and enough columns to get two full size code views side by side.
It's an amazing productivity booster and for the first time I'm actually using a windows system like a unix box and not having everything maximized.
Re:The ever vanishing pixel (Score:5, Insightful)
High resolution improves the legibility of text. Just you a bigger font! Your average printed page is 5100x6600. Do you find that hard to read?
Pick the right font and you will not have a problem.
images are a different matter but even those can be re-sized.
Re:The ever vanishing pixel (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The ever vanishing pixel (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, say I have a web site with images on it. I could have some javascript detect how big the page is and the user's text size, then request appropriate resolution images. Server side there would presumably be something that resizes and caches a variety of differe
icons! (Score:4, Informative)
My workplace issued new laptops with ~150 DPI (measured with a ruler). Basically twice what the old standard was. Twice what everyone designs their icons for, so those icons take up 1/4 the amount of screen real estate as they should.
I was able to get my applications to use reasonable fonts. It's NOT as simple as just setting the Windows display resolution to 150 DPI -- many apps merrily continue to insist on what they know you really meant and I still had to specify 24pt font to get what should be a 12pt font. But you can largely force the apps to behave.
But icons? WHERE ARE YE OLDE INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE?!
I'm serious. Few applications support multiple icon sizes, so I have to take it at faith that the icons on this application actually mean something. E.g., I'm told that the subversion plug-in indicates if the file has been modified, if it's been modified on the server, locally, or both, and probably other nifty information. I can't tell since the icons force that information into about 6 pixes square.
Controls aren't quite as bad since they're not trying to cram the information into such as small space, but they're still so small that I have to remember that the icon for the local webserver is the grey box that's the second icon in the third group, not the little icon of a server.
I'm only in my 40s and only need reading glasses occasionally, but mild presbyopia and icons a fraction of their intended size is a bad combination.
Re:icons! (Score:3, Interesting)
Defaults (Score:2)
So how long? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So how long? (Score:2)
Slashdot, for example, displays some very unpleasant behavior when fonts are scaled large. Every site that I know that handles font-scaling well does so with a layout whose total width is fixed.
If you're going to do fixed width, it should probably be no more than 1
Re:So how long? (Score:5, Insightful)
And by "web designers," I'm sure you mean "control-freak relics from print publishing who don't know how the fuck to use the new medium properly," right?
If you're going to do fixed width, you're already doing something wrong. How wide the page should be is the user's decision, not yours!
Re:So how long? (Score:2)
Re:So how long? (Score:2)
In the good old 'table layout' days, it was easier to do dynamically flowed layout.
Just my observation/impression. May be wrong.
Re:So how long? (Score:2)
Yes. That's EXACTLY who I mean.
Re:So how long? (Score:3)
Not if they click "agree" with my site's EULA!
Of course if they happen to be using IE and hit yes on that Active X install popup, we can change their screen resolution for them.
Re:So how long? (Score:2)
As to the rest of the comment chain... hear hear!!
[Me, I design for a *browser window* set at 800x600, but I test how it floats both at lar
Yeah... (Score:3, Funny)
Then the end-user does something stupid and makes the font legible and you lose desktop real estate again making 1920x1200 pretty small. While high resolution is nice and all, what we really need are 37" wide screen desktop monitors to come down in price. Or better yet, something that paints the image directly onto the rods and cones in our eyes. Of course at that point a screensaver will be mandatory if you don't want to be walking around with a Start button floating in view even when you're not on the system.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah... (Score:2)
Re:direct eye hookups (Score:2)
Vector based graphics systems are the answer (Score:4, Interesting)
In any event DRM hardware that stops popular garbage being played without a license isn't really an issue - it'll push people who don't like the situation to make their own. In fact that's kind of the best thing that could happen to indie media, increasing the pool of contributors massivly.
The only kind of bad DRM hardware is the kind that stops users playing, modifying or distributing their _own_ stuff cheaply and easily*. That's the real issue.
Re:Vector based graphics systems are the answer (Score:2)
Assuming Vista is Widely Adopted (Score:2)
Re:Assuming Vista is Widely Adopted (Score:2, Insightful)
That, my friend is the devil in the details. Although I don't know anyone who is excited about getting Vista, Dell and Gateway are going to preload it onto all of their new machines. App vendors are going to start developing for Vista's features and XP support is going to fade away and the rest of us are going to be forced to upgrade.
Opportunity for Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Opportunity for Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Future of Linux (Score:2)
Re:Future of Linux (Score:2)
Then screw your system and I stick with the stuff I got. Because that runs what I want. And that's what matters to me.
Yes, I'm selfish. I learned from the industry.
Re:Future of Linux (Score:2)
*Sigh* -- If only more of the non-technical public shared your attitude...
Vista vs. Hardware (Score:2)
What does this have to do with Vista? On the software side it only relates to drivers, which can be written for any OS. I fail to see how selling Vista has anything to do with demand for this hardware.
Re:Vista vs. Hardware (Score:2)
In the Audio Seciton of TFA.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ya see, I copy CDs of music recorded at a local church. This enables the choir to actually listen to themsevles, hear the choir director's version, and just help them do a better job.
My point is if DRM gets in my way of copying non-RIAA, non-MPAA, non-[Insert big corp here],... Someone's "Base" is going to be really pissed that they can't record their music because they can't produce CDs of their church's music that they performed.
BTW, the music itself is in the public domain - like just about all church hymes and other music.
DRM? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why can't Microsoft use its position in the software industry to leverage content providers away from DRM. What if Microsoft stopped supporting DRM... what would the Record/Movie Industry do? They'd be forced to adopt a universal standard, to ensure their music could be played (because we all know that someone would hack the encr
Re:DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM? (Score:2, Informative)
Because they want to control the DRM. They want to do what Apple did with iTunes and the iPod. If all downlaodable media is designed for Windows, then they when downloadable content becomes mainstream, people will want PVRs with download capability running Windows CE because that will be the OS that's most compatible with the exisitng downloadable contnet.
Re:DRM? (Score:2)
MS does not compete with the MI.
They compete against other OSs.
Linux is in their way, gaining shares even in the Desktop environment.
They can't do the usual routine of "buying and dissing", since there's nobody able to sell them Linux.
"The user" (being generic here, forgive me) wants to watch movies on his computer, and play songs (or load either to his portable medium).
It is near impossible to implement completely throughly DRM in open source software.
Catch my
Re:DRM? (Score:3, Funny)
High resolution and legibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Scaling has to be something that all app vendors take into account in their code for it to work. I actually have my large LCD at a higher DPI right now, and several aopps don't resize their icons, etc.
When everyone was running 17" or 20" screens at 1280x1024 or so, this wasn't an issue. Now, look at monster displays like the Apple 30" widescreen display. Mac OS finally got around to letting you scale the cursor size...before, it was a fixed-size tiny speck on that huge monitor when you ran it at the native resolution. The old solution was to change your resolution...doing this now either doesn't work or makes LCDs look really ugly.
Re:High resolution and legibility (Score:2)
but the problem with this is that the graphics widgets don't scale porportionately (sic) in XP.
Yes, they do. Only poorly written applications which use bitmapped widgets/graphics don't scale properly. Ironically, ATI's control panel doesn't work at any other font resolution besides the default 96dpi.
Re:High resolution and legibility (Score:2)
Having exprienced the Vista BETA... (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect this will happen to a number of us who have been at this a while and even some casual home users will opt out of the MS patch cycle. I wonder if anyone at MS feels this way, or if they just assume their current dominance is pre-destined?
Re:Having exprienced the Vista BETA... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've already moved out of the patch cycle for my home workstation, WGA did it for me (and I'm running a legit copy). I'd rather deal with more aggresively scanning for malware than deal with the patch cycle and WGA.
And, wonder of wonders, my technological impaired wife asked me yesterday about getting a linux box (to be fair, she didn't use quite those words. It was more like "If we get a Linus [sic] machine next, does it come with a security blanket?") But the fact that she had even been thinking about the existence of *nix boxes was... exilarating. Titillating, even. A sign of the endtimes for MS? Dunno, but it gave me the warm fuzzies.
Re:Having exprienced the Vista BETA... (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows activation did it for me, five years ago. I'd rather deal with imperfect interoperability than deal with either WGA or malware.
Continued... (Score:5, Funny)
Continued...
officially crossed the line.
os (Score:5, Insightful)
Font size? Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that Windows used to act rather weirdly if trying to set the DPI factor to anything other than the default - back in '95, but the situation cannot be the same anymore...can it?
Linux and X-servers support this too. I haven't seen any problems except with a few gtk+ 1.x apps - and sometimes some windows are sized improperly. You can even manually specify the monitors physical measurements if autodetect does not work, with DisplaySize option in xorg.conf.
Anyway, with 1900x1200 screen, you get the same physical font sizes as before, there are just more pixels to draw them with, so they look nicer.
Re:Font size? Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
I use a 200 dpi display for both Windows and Linux so I get an extreme look at what goes wrong. I set both to 100 dpi and deal with matters in other ways.
Interestingly, only one monitor provides this resolution. OS X supp
Re:Font size? Huh? (Score:2)
That said, most Windows software designers don't handle the resized fonts properly and have their windows sized for the default pixel sizes because the Windows API is terrible for handling such things.
I'd love to see this handled p
Re:Font size? Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Broken font rendering? (Score:4, Interesting)
Only if font rendering are broken on such OS. Font size is configured in points, which are physical unit equaling about 0.35 mm (or 0.014 inch). Now matter what resolution is, ten point font will always be 3,5mm high. Higher resolution can help -- if resolution is bigger, there will be more pixels per those 3,5mm, so font will look better. That's why configuring display DPI is so important when it's not autodetected.
Re:Broken font rendering? (Score:2)
Too bad Windows doesn't completely support display dpi. I have purchased Dell laptops with 130dpi displays and Dell configures the display dpi properly (130) from the factory. trouble is that the initial boot dialogs didn't display properly. How embarrassing!
I th
Not readable? (Score:2)
X11, and i`m sure OSX too, takes the DPI of the screen into account, and sizes the fonts accordingly, so they're still readable.
Cracked Foundation (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this the road to the glue factory? (Score:3, Insightful)
(sigh) Zonk, what are we gonna do with you?
DRM is imposed on operating system vendors by Big Media. OS vendors' choices are limited to compliance, getting sued for lack of compliance, or lack of support altogether. So Microsoft complied with Big Media's demands for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray in Vista. Why do people keep acting like it's some stunning revelation, when Microsoft's stance has not changed between XP and Vista? Yes, that's rhetorical. Kinda like asking why Buffalo Sabres fans hate Brett Hull.
And yes, I know I'm beating a dead horse. But every time I turn a corner, there's a carcass and a convienently-placed blunt object...
Re:Is this the road to the glue factory? (Score:3, Informative)
No, Microsoft is enthusiastically supporting DRM because it wants to become the standard for it. That's what "Plays for Sure" is all about, and indeed is why Microsoft basically invented it (see: Palladium/"Trusted" Computing) in the first place!
1920x1200 (Score:2)
Windows Vista? Really? (Score:2)
From what I've seen yesterday (WWDC 2006 keynote video), Apple are gonna be the ones pushing the future of computer hardware. Microsoft simplies (tries to) follow them.
DRM is not a feature... (Score:4, Informative)
Vista 'shoves DRM down your throat like prison king-pin does, in return for 'protection'...
High DPI displays (Score:2)
Vista's "Protected Processes" (Score:3, Interesting)
You might ask what these are for. The answer: DRM. Windows Media Player is such a process when playing protected media. If you try to mess with it, the system bugchecks.
DoS attack against Terminal Services machines, anyone?
Melissa
Er... illegibility? (Score:3, Informative)
(yes, I know that it's actually PPI, not DPI. But the "standard term" is DPI nonetheless).
Bigger screen does not mean smaller dot pitch. (Score:3, Interesting)
2: Even if you don't adjust it, the dot pitch on a 24" 1920x1200 monitor is
Re:Resolution is to become moot point in Vista (Score:3, Interesting)