Posted on 09/12/2005 8:09:27 AM PDT by BallandPowder
If you've been wondering why Windows Vista has taken a long time to reach Beta 1, we can now tell you why: there are seven separate editions of Vista headed your way. OK, that's not the reason for the delay, but how else do you introduce that many OS versions, without invoking Snow White & friends? Join me know as I romp through the various editions, many of which you'll see are just barely differentiated.
First up, there's Starter Edition, which like XP Starter Edition, is a crippled (and lame) product aimed at the two-thirds world. It will limit users to three concurrent applications, and provide only basic TCP/IP networking, and won't be suitable for most games. The next step up is Home Basic Edition, which is really the sibling to today's Windows XP Home. However, as the name suggests, there's also Home Premium Edition, and this is where we start to split features like hairs and create a gaggle of products. HPE will build on the the Basic Edition by adding, most notably, the next-generation of Media Center capabilities, including support for HDTV, DVD authoring, and even DVD ripping backed up (of course) by Windows DRM. For non-corporate types, this is probably going to be the OS that most people use. It's similar to XP Pro in power, but with all of the added bells and whistles for entertainment. Well, most of them.
Windows Vista Professional Edition won't occupy the same spot that XP Pro occupies today, because this time it's truly aimed at businesses. It won't feature the MCE functionality that Home Premium Edition has, but it begins to provide the kind of functionality you'd expect in a business environment, such as support for non-Microsoft networking protocols and Domain support. But don't expect too many businesses to necessarily turn to PE. Microsoft is also planning both a Small Business Edition and an Enterprise Edition, which build upon pro by adding (seemingly minor) features aimed at appealing to each market. SBE, for instance, includes a networked backup solution, while EE will include things like Virtual PC integration, and the ability to encrypt an entire volume of information.
Last but not least, there's Ultimate Edition. Hey, I'm just glad that they didn't call it Extreme Edition. I'll leave it to Paul Thurrott, who has all of the details, to explain (and promote) this beast:
The best operating system ever offered for a personal PC, optimized for the individual. Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is a superset of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Pro Edition, so it includes all of the features of both of those product versions, plus adds Game Performance Tweaker with integrated gaming experiences, a Podcast creation utility (under consideration, may be cut from product), and online "Club" services (exclusive access to music, movies, services and preferred customer care) and other offerings (also under consideration, may be cut from product). Microsoft is still investigating how to position its most impressive Windows release yet, and is looking into offering Ultimate Edition owners such services as extended A1 subscriptions, free music downloads, free movie downloads, Online Spotlight and entertainment software, preferred product support, and custom themes. There is nothing like Vista Ultimate Edition today. This version is aimed at high-end PC users and technology influencers, gamers, digital media enthusiasts, and students.
OK, everyone got that? There will be a quiz on Monday.
My initial reactions are reserved, because there's just not that much detail available. Pricing, for instance, would be really nice to know. Will Home Basic Edition debut below the price point of XP Home today? Place your bets. The one thing I will say is that I fear that this may cause a great deal of confusion on behalf of your average consumer. Two versions of XP were enough to cause confusion, and now Joe Blow has four choices that may fit the bill.
One final note worth mentioning is that this strategy does remove the "corporate Windows XP" option from the hands of pirates. Volume licensing for Pro, SBE, and EE may still mean that there will be copies of Windows Vista out there that don't "call home" for Windows Product Activation, but as you can see, Microsoft has removed most of the features that most pirates would want from those OSes. You won't see corporate licensing versions of Ultimate Edition.
"After rushing to Starbucks for some overpriced faddist "coffee", my pinky is sticking firmly out. I now understand game theory completely.
A game either entices you to play it, or it doesn't."
So what, the Pentagon (who uses Game Theory extensively) are a bunch of pinkey-waving homos? It's a branch of mathematics. Not psychology.
There is nothing more pathetic than pure ignorance which mocks that which it is incapable of understanding.
From wikipedia:
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that uses models to study interactions with formalised incentive structures ("games"). Unlike decision theory, which also studies formalised incentive structures, game theory encompasses decisions that are made in an environment where various players interact strategically. In other words, game theory studies choice of optimal behavior when costs and benefits of each option are not fixed, but depend upon the future choices of other individuals.
It's not like the rest of us care to notice, but pretentious "intellectuals" and MS shills who appear on almost every tech thread seem to make a habit of making their rear end the most prominent speaking part.
Slightly tweaked??? The whole graphical user interface is REWRITTEN! The point and click commands may be the same, but the display will be completely different.
If the contract that you agreed to when you purchased you content expressly states that the content may only be played on a particular system, then that is their right, as the content producer, to do so. Your right is to not purchase the content if you feel you cannot live with the terms of the contract.
Please refer to my comments about pretentious "intellectuals" and of keeping things simple. Thank you.
While you're at it, read the biography of John von Neumann, one of the inventors of Game Theory... along with Quantum Mechanics, the Atom Bomb, and the computer science that led to the building of ENIAC the first digital computer.
John von Neumann... a latte drinking homo? I think not. You don't have the candlepower to spitshine his shoes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Von_Neumann
Scientific contributions
Von Neumann was one of the initiators of game theory and published the classic book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior with Oskar Morgenstern in 1944. He worked in the Theory division at Los Alamos along with Hans Bethe and Victor Weisskopf during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic weapons.
One of von Neumann's signature achievements was his rigorous mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics in terms of linear operators on Hilbert spaces. He provided a rigorous foundation for quantum statistical mechanics. He also proposed a proof of the impossibility of hidden variables, showing that quantum mechanics was profoundly different from all previously known theories in physics. His proof contained a conceptual flaw, although subsequently correct proofs were provided by John Bell and others. He apparently held a belief in the role of the observer in creating the collapse of the quantum wave function, which reflects in his contributions to the development of the theory of quantum measurement.
Von Neumann gave his name to the von Neumann architecture used in most non-parallel-processing computers, because of his publication of the concept, though many feel that this naming ignores the contribution of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly who worked on the concept during their work on ENIAC. Virtually every commercially available home computer, microcomputer and supercomputer is a von Neumann machine. He created the field of cellular automata without computers, constructing the first examples of self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. The concept of a universal constructor was fleshed out in his posthumous work Theory of Self Reproducing Automata. The term "von Neumann machine" also refers to self-replicating machines. Von Neumann proved that the most effective way large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt can be accomplished is through the use of self-replicating machines, to take advantage of the exponential growth of such mechanisms.
In addition to his work on architecture, he is credited with at least one contribution to the study of algorithms. Donald Knuth cites von Neumann as the inventor, in 1945, of the well known merge sort algorithm, in which the first and second halves of an array are each sorted recursively and then merged together.
He also engaged in exploration of problems in the field of numerical hydrodynamics. With R. D. Richtmyer he developed an algorithm defining artificial viscosity, that proved essential to understanding many kinds of shock waves. It can fairly be said that we would not understand much of astrophysics, and might not even have highly developed jet and rocket engines, without that work. The problem to be solved was that when computers solve hydrodynamic or aerodynamic problems, they try to put too many computational gridpoints at regions of sharp discontinuity (shock waves). The artificial viscosity was a mathematical trick to slightly smooth the shock transition without sacrificing basic physics.
Von Neumann had a mind of great ingenuity and near total recall. He was an extrovert who loved drinking, dancing and having a good time. He had a fun-loving nature with a great love of jokes and humor. He died of cancer in Washington D.C..
Do you think this will make for sharper text on an LCD monitor? With (I think) it's smaller number of pixels than a CRT? I read a lot of text each day and this is important to me.
"Please refer to my comments about pretentious "intellectuals" and of keeping things simple. Thank you."
Not everything can be understood by a simpleton. You aren't keeping it simple - you're being stupid.
OK, if you insist: go ahead, then, smell it.
I do, because I build my own... Besides, you can't play games on a set top HDTV player...
I seem to have struck a nerve in an "intellectual".
example. if you purchase the velvet revolver album, M$ allows that CD to PLANT A VIRUS ON YOUR COMPUTER so that you can't copy it. now that was easy enough to work around but that is not the point.
the point is YOU are calling ME a pirate because WE disagree on fair use in copyright law.
you REALLY need to know where you stand on that before giving free ticket to the copyright lawyers.
What's your make and model?
If you upgrade computers, how much pain are you willing to suffer through to get your content back?
Samsung 760v. 17" LCD monitor. Analog only/ no DVI. Cleartype does make a difference on it.
Rewritten from who's perspective? As a software developer, I can appreciate that a huge amount of work went into the interface.
But most people AREN'T software developers. They're going to look at it and see the same Start Menu, the same Recycle Bin, the same Programs List, and on, and on. Things have been moved around slightly, and (whee!) the windows can now have transparencies, but it's basically the same interface that Windows users are already familiar with. The fact that the screens are now rendered in the GPU rather than the CPU isn't going to mean squat to 90+% of the people who are actually going to be buying PC's.
So YES, the typical user is going to look at it and see the same old interface, with just a "few tweaks". There's NOTHING in the UI that would prompt someone to run out and buy a new computer.
that's one more point.
the wife purchased all these music files from walmart.com. when i upgraded here computer with a new mobo and larger hard drive i somehow lost all her licence crap.
i am using the same computer but yet i'm a pirate if i find a work around to listen to the music that she purchased.
%#$#$ micro$oft.
You want an answer? Games.
Games are the driver for graphics, bus and memory speeds,
and onboard memory for GPUs.
|"I seem to have struck a nerve in an "intellectual"."
You are quite possibly the most willingly ignorant person I have yet conversed with on this forum.
You use the word "intellectual" like a club, which you are too ignorant to know is generally used to refer to phony social scientists and so on, such as Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky.
Game Theory is a branch of MATHEMATICS, a hard science, and was discovered/invented by one of the greatest mathematical minds of the 20th century who also invented much of computer science, the atomic bomb. Game theory is heavily used in "thinking machines" and used by the DOD in wargaming simulations, it's also the mathematical proofs for the economic theories of men like Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, and provides mathematical proofs for disputing socialism and communist economic theories.
You managed to reduce it to whether a game is enticing to play or not. That's not even a summary, it's not even CLOSE.
Stupid is a stupid does.
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