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General discussion

I have some questions about Windows Longhorn.

Apr 9, 2005 6:51AM PDT

I was reading another topic and someone said that its going to need like 8GB of RAM or something crazy like that... Is that true?

Also how much longer do you think Windows XP will be the standard OS? I remember I got a computer at the end of the windows 98 era and it was the most awful feeling after XP came out... I'm thinking about getting a new computer and I don't want it to be outdated right away (again).

How long do you think something like the Dell 9300 (I know this is notebook related) would be at least an average computer and be able to run the main streem games. (Assuming it had the 2.0 Pentium M and Nvidia 6800 go)

Discussion is locked

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I've talked to a couple of people...
Apr 13, 2005 3:27PM PDT

who are beta-testing Longhorn. According to them, it's "awesome". I must admit that I'm pretty curious.

-JDM

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You never know how it's going to work out.
Apr 14, 2005 12:12PM PDT

You said you regretted your Win98 purchase because the new operating system came out shortly after you bought your new machine. It wasn't XP that followed though, it was the dogpile WinMe. Definitely not worth one ounce of regret.

My point is unless you are a gamer or someone who spends lavishly on their pet computer it is very hard to not waste your money near the leading edge of technology.

The benfits of the latest operating system have been diminishing with every transition.

When you look at the past transitions to the latest tech, the revolutionary nature is obvious, i.e. Win3.1 to Win95 but as each iteration passes the nature of the change diminishes to barely noticable i.e. Win98SE to WinXP and sometimes there are total flops like WinMe.

This is evidenced by the large number of users still on Win98. It satisfies them.


With regard to your question on the 9300 staying relevant in games; the "WOW" factor is what drives developers to deliver more intense games every year. Will you be satisfied running 'mainstream' games at reduced frame rates and detail levels? Every year the hardware gets better and the games match the best output to the best hardware.


Here are 2 ways to try to keep up:

1. Spend as much as you possibly can to get the best machine you can afford and enjoy 1 year of having the best and gradually accept the diminished performance over the next 3-4 years.

2. Spend 50-60% of your max budget and never be cutting edge but just slightly behind the curve. Upgrade in 1.5-2 years.

They both end up being the same amount of money in the end.

Whether Longhorn ends up being revolutionary remains to be seen. My bet is it will not be since they stripped out the GUI.

AMD64 is a pretty safe bet but if you want a laptop it really limits your options. I wouldn't make it a deciding factor.

Like I said; you never know. Technology has many tombstones for things that seemed like the next great thing; Zip disks and RDRAM come to mind off the bat. Still functional but obsolete. You have to decide how much risk you are willing to take.

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Longhorn & you!
Apr 14, 2005 11:41PM PDT

First of all, you shouldn't have felt bad the last time. Truth is, Windows should (not must) be re-loaded about every 2 years anyway, thanks to its relatively unstable code. If you buy an XP now, stay with it for about 2 to 3 years, then re-format (erase) your hard drive and load Longhorn, which by then should have a lot of the bugs worked out. NEVER switch to a new Windows OS in the first 6 months it's out, you're just asking for trouble and I don't think Longhorn will be any better in this regard. One final thought, last year I loaded a Linux distro (Suse) on my computer with Windows as a duel boot set-up, that is 2 OS's on one hard drive, because I was so fed up with Windows unexplained crashes, viruses and spyware issues. It's the best thing I've ever done for my computer. Linux is so much more stable, but it does have a bit of a learning curve. Once you're use to it, if you're like me, you start to do more and more work in Linux-land and less in Windows-land.Plus most of the software is free and it's virtually immune to any and all viruses and spyware. As for the games question, at least 2, maybe 3 years for main stream games.That has more to do with the ever increasing need for video cards with more memory than the OS getting outdated.

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Who needs Longhorn Anyway
Apr 15, 2005 8:00AM PDT

I am Allready running an AMD 64 with 2GB of Ram using Mandrake, Suse 64 and Fedora Core 3 oh yes and windows XP64 bit RC1 of all the os's the linux stuff runs great...in 64 bit mode without the huge memory requirements of windows xp 64, 2GB is just fine for linux. and if I wanted to do some video editing push that to 4 GB, more than adequate to do the job. The other plus to using linux is not having to worry about viruses. One other thought there are lots of good 64 bit apps out there as well and best of all the price is right FREE.... GPL

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Longhorn Name
Apr 19, 2005 11:15AM PDT

I am guessing if I did a bit of poking around I could find this myself, but then that defeats the purpose of a Forum (ask a question so folsk can reply and show their knowledge to the world).

SO simple question (maybe) - Why is it called Longhorn? What a strange name. Did someone lose a bet or something? Seriously though, is there any story behind the name?

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CPU Names / Operating system names
Mar 14, 2006 11:10AM PST

I think it is a geek thing ....such as AMD64 (code named Clawhammer) thats an AMD64 socket 754 ...and they got other strange names for thier other processors too... Now on to Longhorn...WindowsXP-64...its a microsoft thing to come up with wierd sounding code names for thier operating systems...Using (Whistler) right now...WindowsXP-professional don't know why they do it except maybe to keep it secret when they communicate via e-mail etc as to what they are talking about when they are in the R&D phase of developing a new OS...or cpu in AMD's Case...but anyway for what its worth..alot of gibberish...to confuse and confound the masses...lol

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Animals...
Apr 16, 2005 12:26PM PDT

What kind of name is Longhorn? Why don't they code name it Mountain-goat or something? Orrr Rhinoceros...

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Its simple
Apr 19, 2005 8:43AM PDT

Dont Invest in a new machine that is not capale of running a 64-bit OS. Pentium 4's cannot run 64 bits, AMD Athlon 64's however not only run native 64 bits OS's but also speed up 32 Bit applications. Not to mention they kick the P4's but. I have an AMD 64 3500+ and love it.

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no, not really.
Apr 19, 2005 11:01AM PDT

64 bit processors dont speed up 32 bit apps. Yah, for the most part AMD 64 is more powerfull then the pentium 4, but that is debateable considering the Pentium 4 has Hyper Threading. If someone is a heavy multi tasker they will most likely prefer the pentium 4.

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Hmm...
Apr 19, 2005 11:04AM PDT

I have such and ... XP 32-bit SP2 does seem better than before and ... some apps use it such as Virtual Dub.

Truly difficult to measure but I'm not going back to 32-bit only machines.

Bob

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I ran Longhorn on an old computer...
May 23, 2005 6:17AM PDT

I just want to say that I ran Longhorn Build 4074 on an old Gateway with the following specs:
-AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz
-178mb RAM
-Maxtor 40GB HDD (slow, probably 4200RPM, I got it free)
-Old and very very bad S3 integrated graphics

That machine was perfectly capable of running this OS. I couldn't enable the eye-candy (still looks nicer than XP though) that Longhorn offers because of the terrible graphics. Files opened slowly, which I blame the very low amount of RAM for and the slow HDD.

If that 4-5 year old system could run it, any decent computer today should run it fine.

As far as how I liked the OS, I don't see the point in upgrading unless something really big is used in the final version of Longhorn released next year that Build 4074 lacks.

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Yes, really
May 25, 2005 4:03AM PDT

It can depening on what your processing.
Lets say you are comparing two fields of 256bytes each
to find out which one is larger.
On a 32bit Processor (4 bytes) it will take 64 total processing operations to digest all 256 bytes of the fields and find out which one is larger.
On a 64bit processor (8 bytes) it will take 32 total
processing operations to digest all 256 bytes of the fields and find out which one is larger.
At this level it dosen't matter that the OS is 32bit or 64 bit, once the microcode in the processor has decoded the program instruction it now controls the processor and complets the process and returns the result to the program code. Now we go back to the program (32bit or 64bit)to see what it wants to do with result. John

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EM64T
May 27, 2005 9:23PM PDT

The P4 6xx cpu's are 64 bit capable.