nice article on parallel processor limitations

[Xon]

To use another horrible car analogy, cars require maintance. So do fucking computers. Except computers are easily orders of magnitude more complex.

Most computers I used still slow down or freeze while just doing the "casual computer user" thingy. Opening a few firefox, ms word, msn windows and not having the computer slow down - is that a sin to ask ?

It shouldn't, thus in all likelyhood it is user error. Either in building the thing (ie 5400rpm laptop harddrives are slooow, or not enough ram) or in maintaining it.

Sure the computer may take a minute or two before it stops doing shit once you login, but starting applications is primarily limited by; hard disk seektimes and/or throughput and total ram installed in the machine.

[Mad]

True, but even GeOS for the Commodore 64 was quite usable a GUI, and it ran on a computer with less than 64 Kb (yes, kilobytes!). MacOS and Windows have offered usable GUI solutions since the days of 386 processors and 32 Mb RAM. The fact is one doesn't need 3D desktops (a-la-Ubuntu, not that Aero-crap), animated-everything, and so on, if you're going to write documents, read and send emails, browse the web or play a handful of light games.

The GUI itself probably isn't the source of whatever performance problems you have with your computer.

Modern operating systems do a lot more than they used to.

If you want to read and write documents, you may want to print them. Perhaps the OS should provide a standardized way for applications to print so you don't have to look for software written specifically to support your printer. But that'll eat up some memory.

And you probably don't want your sister, kids, or whoever reading your documents, so some kind of permissions system might be nice. You don't want it to be bypassed just by using a different application, so something enforced by the operating system would fit the bill. That means the OS will need more memory and resources for the feature, though.

You want to use an e-mail client? You'll need an Internet connection. I'm sure you don't want to have to pick your client based on whether or not it supports your network card or not, so a standard way for programs to connect to networks would be nice. Maybe even supporting that fancy new "wireless" stuff for all the people that use them. Of course, the OS will need to eat up more memory loading up that stuff.

Same thing for using a Web browser.

You want to play some light games? Boy, it'd sure be nice if the OS gave programmers a way to access the features of your graphics chipset so they didn't have to waste time writing their own high-performance code for every different graphics card out there. More memory.

And so forth.

The point is, modern operating systems do a lot of things. Maybe you don't need them, but other people probably do.

And, yes, the more memory an OS needs to do that stuff, the less that is available to applications. But modern OSes support swap files, so running out of available memory (physical and virtual) usually isn't a show-stopper. Swapping between physical and virtual memory is slow, though.

But if those APIs were ripped out of a modern OS and each application had to re-implement those common features, then the system would probably end using more resources than it does not and would be buggier to boot: each implementation would require its own memory space (code can be shared if an OS feature) and each would have gone through less real-world testing and so wouldn't be as optimized and would be buggier. Oh, and the software would be more expensive because it's harder to write.

Look through the process and services list of your OS to see how much your OS is really doing. Aren't using all those features that are enabled by default? Look into turning them off if you don't need them.

Now, I'm not saying software bloat isn't a problem. It is. And there are a lot of causes for software bloat (lazy developers, bad management, bad accepted practices, lame security features in most versions of Windows, Microsoft trying way too hard to keep full backwards compatibility, etc).

And I've certainly simplified things a bit. But a lot of features that use up memory and CPU cycles are actually really helpful in one way or another, so a blanket condemnation of them is hardly appropriate.

I'm the kind of bloke who likes to keep a bunch of application windows open at once, and Alt-Tab back and forth as needed. I've been doing that since, say, Win95 (hell! 3.11!). Every now and then, I opened an app-too-many and the thing crashed, of course. But it worked fine most of the time. But if I try to do that on my current system, I just know it WILL crash, eventually. I've been told I should get a new processor, more RAM, etc. And I understand.

Those symptoms probably aren't the OS directly causing your problems. If you were running out of physical memory, then things would slow down as the OS swaps memory back and forth between RAM and hard disk, but it shouldn't crash unless you run out of disk space (or you limited your swap file size and it filled up).

It sounds more like faulty hardware, buggy drivers, or malware. (I'm assuming you're running Windows 2000 or newer.)

However, If I'm doing essentially the same stuff with my machine, then... why? Really, why? Now it's getting harder and harder to do the same, on computers that run at speeds an order of magnitude faster and with 32 times the RAM than what we had back then. That's why I ask.

Are you sure you're remembering accurately? Have you tried using an older system with an older OS recently?

[Stark]

Sounds like nonsense to me. I regularly have 6-7 apps open, including two fullscreen 3d games and alt-tab between them willy-nilly. Vista handles alt-tab much better than XP and I seldom run into problems. We should go back to the good old days of 9x where alt-tab = crash!

[Starglider]

Regarding the problem with core multiplicity, why can't each core host a particular process or application, if we're going to have a bunch of them?

It can. Good operating systems try to maintain a stable core/process mapping (Vista doesn't, but Windows always lags Unix implementing core OS features). This usually helps with performance because it means the core-local cache is more likely to contain useful data.

I'm far from being any kind of expert, but I'm thinking that would probably help stability a lot,

It has no effect on stability.

especially if processes or applications use a delimited RAM space rather than having them all haphazzardly share all of it.

Virtual memory has been a 'solved problem' for decades and is for all practical intents and purposes 100% effective at isolating user-space applications from each other's memory usage.

That way, current instruction processing would more easily retain its "linear" characteristics, and the need for highly trained parallellist programmers would be significantly avoided.

This is a level confusion. The current problem is harnessing parallelism within a particular application. The multi-app parallelism issues are pretty much solved and have been for at least a decade (even for behind-the-curve stuff like Windows).

Also, do we really need OS's with 3D desktop views, windows, animations, fancy vissual effects and the like, when in most cases we could do pretty much the same with a text-only screen + strictly necessary graphics? Are we all so addicted to the cosmetics of an OS?

The cost of UI sugar is negligable in a new PC. The 3D hardware is there anyway, you might as well use it. I agree that it's annoying when a shiny 3D interface is mandatory, for no good reason, but there's no reason to avoid them either (except when it sucks up dev time better spent on the actual program).

Hey, how much better and faster even our bloody cellphones would work if they had close-to plain text interfaces?

Plain text interfaces confuse most normal humans. We use GUIs for a reason.

Really, why can't we have commercial software applications that are carefully and efficiently programmed, instead of having big companies periodically forcing upon us newer versions

Because no one wants to pay extra for the former, whereas people will pay regularly for the later.

It would offer no gains and would be less efficient than what we have now. Modern operating systems manage memory and processing cycles, and do it well.

With the exception of Vista's stupid random process/core bouncing I'd agree. Of course work is ongoing in all major kernels to tweak this further, and there are some areas such as virtualisation and large page usage that are still improving fast, but mostly it's a solved problem.

The point is if you want you could make a tic tac toe game that needs 256 MB of ram to run you can make one with suitable amounts of bloatware. Then 2 years down the line you release Tic Tac Toe version 2.0 that needs 512 MB of ram. The new version has even more shinies and cosmetic improvements but you are still playing same Tic Tac Toe that could work with 4 kilobytes of memory even. This is what is happening with software. They are adding more sparklies every year and making software more inefficient.

The kind of bloat you're talking about is usually library and runtime bloat. The application programmers themselves aren't churning out exponentially more code each year, but they're linking in ever more crap. I personally use as few libraries and as few layers as possible, but I am constantly fighting (in the professional sense) people whose entire thought process seems to 'MOAR DESIGN PATTERNS == GOOD, MOAR ABSTRACTION LAYERS == GOOD, MOAR OPEN SOURCE LIBRARIES USED == GOOD'. At least half the Apache foundation's software seems to be designed on those principles. Of course one solution is the automated programming tech I'm working on.

True, but even GeOS for the Commodore 64 was quite usable a GUI

Umm no. It was impressive that the programmers got it to work at all, but it was pretty much useless for any practical purpose. The Mac (original) and Amiga GUIs were ok, certainly better than Windows 3.1, but frankly Win95+Office95 really did establish a baseline for decent usable computer GUIs (of course some Unix/X based systems had been there for years, but those were rarities with small user bases).

So, if I for some reason I were to have 10 spare tyres for my car, does that mean I should try and find a way to roll on all 10 of them at once, so as to not be wasteful?

Why the hell would you be carrying 10 tires around with no possible use in the first place?

Yes, if memory is there, it should be used if possible. Otherwise what would be the point of installing it in the computer? The idea of writing efficient programs is that the memory can be used for useful things rather than wasteful things, but it definitely should be used. It's not like
using more of your memory takes more power or wears it out somehow.

Every now and then, I opened an app-too-many and the thing crashed, of course. But it worked fine most of the time. But if I try to do that on my current system, I just know it WILL crash, eventually.

No it won't, unless you run out of space in your swap/page file, which frankly you have to try really hard to do these days. It will just slow down, but if you're only actually using one or two applications at once the swapping should be minimal. It's not like we still have only a few MB of memory and are constantly thrashing disk, I don't think I've ever even used the swap on my workstation (to be fair it does have 12Gb of RAM).

I'd also like to see an actual source for this bizarre claim of yours that lots of animations and shades can make things confusing for a lot of people.

That's a real issue which you'll cover if you take a HCI (Human Computer Interation) course. I can't think of any real OS that suffers from that problem though - unsurprising as they all have huge amounts of testing these days. Usually you only see it from idiot web site designers, particularly in those all-flash sites that were popular a few years back.

Should I run my car at breakneck speed at all times just because otherwise I would be "wasting" precious HP that is already there, sitting under the bonnet of my car?

Please stop making idiotic car analogies. Yes, if there were no safety or fuel consumption issues, then I would drive my car at its top speed all the time because then I'd get where I wanted to go faster. Everyone else would too. Anyway most of these analogies do more harm than good.

Not at all. My point there was precisely that if I do pretty much the same things with my system as I did some 10 years ago, why do the browser, the wordprocessor, the mp3 player, the spreadsheet, the notebook, the JPG viewer etc have to guzzle up so many more resources than they did back then?

Because most people are using more powerful computers and those resources are used a) to deliver an incrementally better experience and b) to make people feel like they got some value out of buying a new PC. If you don't like it use a stipped down version of OpenOffice. Or hell just run Office 2000, last time I checked it still opened virtually every filetype of interest.

Have you seen a modern spreadsheet or word processing program in the last 5 years? The sheer amount of functionality added to them is staggering compared to the basic setup you'd find in, say, 1990. Just because you don't use all of those features doesn't mean there isn't a wide variety of people who do.

To be fair, the in-memory footprint of most modern large programs could be improved by better modularisation (Java, C# etc give you a lot of free help with this over C++ but there's still manual work to do). This isn't usually done (or when it is done, load-on-demand isn't properly implemented e.g. PDF viewer) because it isn't a good use of developer time compared to more pressing requirements. Hardly any mainstream users actually care about memory requirements these days.

I think you've forgotten just how slow computers were back in the day. Back in 1997 when I ran my old IBM with a 200MHz K6 and 24MB of RAM, it took about 15 seconds to load up a browser instance, and that was either AOL's internal browser or Internet Explorer 3.0. Nowadays, I can open Firefox in just under 1 second on my desktop

A lot of that will be the hard disk; modern hard disks have a transfer rate about 100 times faster than mid-90s ones. Storage performance really has improved very fast, in every dimension except latency (and even that has improved quite a bit).

To use another horrible car analogy, cars require maintance. So do fucking computers. Except computers are easily orders of magnitude more complex.

Not necessarily. A lot of fixed-function servers are maintenance free. A lot of home users never have to perform any maintenance on their systems, if they never uninstall anything, don't install junk and don't catch viruses. There is no real reason for computers to require maintenance, most cases where they do are lingering software reliability issues that the industry just hasn't gotten around to fixing yet. SSDs will remove one major source of mechanical failure and if consumers can be satisfied with CPUs and PSUs low-power enough to cool passively then there will be literally no moving parts.

[General Zod]

That's a real issue which you'll cover if you take a HCI (Human Computer Interation) course. I can't think of any real OS that suffers from that problem though - unsurprising as they all have huge amounts of testing these days. Usually you only see it from idiot web site designers, particularly in those all-flash sites that were popular a few years back.

I suppose it's possible with sufficiently garish patterns or layouts, but anyone who's ever played a modern FPS is probably more than capable of handling a fair number of flashy animations and GUI features.

To be fair, the in-memory footprint of most modern large programs could be improved by better modularisation (Java, C# etc give you a lot of free help with this over C++ but there's still manual work to do). This isn't usually done (or when it is done, load-on-demand isn't properly implemented e.g. PDF viewer) because it isn't a good use of developer time compared to more pressing requirements. Hardly any mainstream users actually care about memory requirements these days.

A lot of the spreadsheets I've dealt with at work have been in the 50-100mb range simply due to the sheer amount of financial data on them. I'd be surprised if a PC with 128mb of ram from 15 years ago would be able to even remotely cope with that file size.

[Akkleptos]

Sounds like nonsense to me. I regularly have 6-7 apps open, including two fullscreen 3d games and alt-tab between them willy-nilly. Vista handles alt-tab much better than XP and I seldom run into problems. We should go back to the good old days of 9x where alt-tab = crash!

-Of course we shouldn't. I'm just loathing bloatware, that's what I'm against. And congratulations. Many people I know have experienced lots of problems with Vista, especially on the software compatibility dept. Me? I wouldn't touch the thing with a 2 meter stick.

Are you sure you're remembering accurately? Have you tried using an older system with an older OS recently?

-Yes. I always keep a couple really old computers in hand (including that old pentium MMX 200MHz with 32 Mb RAM). Without the TSR programs, they work just fine, albeit a tad slowly.

Those symptoms probably aren't the OS directly causing your problems. If you were running out of physical memory, then things would slow down as the OS swaps memory back and forth between RAM and hard disk, but it shouldn't crash unless you run out of disk space (or you limited your swap file size and it filled up).

It sounds more like faulty hardware, buggy drivers, or malware. (I'm assuming you're running Windows 2000 or newer.)

-Oh, and I acknowledge that OS do more these days. Thanks, I found your post most enlightening. And, yes, the hardware on my current system must be faulty indeed (it froze like thrice while editing this post in notepad). Still, I work with many other computers (and fixed their problems), and that's why I think OS and app bloating is not good.

RAM does not work that way. There is no performance penalty or even energy cost between having usable data in memory compared to having nothing. The CPU does have bandwidth limits, but those are in the order of gigabytes per second for even quite old DDR1 ram, compared to almost 4-8gb/s for DDR2 and ~8-17gb/s for DDR3.

-I get that, of course. I do want to have more memory. I just don't want just a couple of apps eating it all up with no real need.

Win2k/WinXP/Vista line do not crash if you open several hundred to even thousands of applications. The limitation is purely in virtual memory, which is the sum total of your pagefile and physical memory. Win9x just falls over. Applications tend to fall over if they suddenly can't get more memory, which is one of the reasons you should always have a page file.

Hell, my desktop Vista box has something like 54 processes and ~800 threads currently. My fileserver has ~80 processes and just over 1000 threads, this isn't even counting the Virtual Machines it has running on it.

Also, the answer is the hard disk. Hard disks simply have not advanced as fast as the rest of the computer and have always been the slowest aspect of it. If you really want to improve multitasking performance; throw more spindles at it. A seperate hard disk(s) for OS/apps/data will have massive performance improvements.

-I see. My HDDs are probably a tad outdated (yes, I have 2 of them on my main machine). But Win2K, XP (what I use) and Vista do crash. That's something I do at work, I'm the unofficial go-to-guy when computers don't work there, and I've seen plenty of Vistas and XPs (on machines less than 2 years old) crash and burn.

I think you've forgotten just how slow computers were back in the day. Back in 1997 when I ran my old IBM with a 200MHz K6 and 24MB of RAM, it took about 15 seconds to load up a browser instance, and that was either AOL's internal browser or Internet Explorer 3.0. Nowadays, I can open Firefox in just under 1 second on my desktop; on my 900MHz Celeron Mobile EEE netbook with 1GB RAM, about 3-5 seconds, maybe slightly more if there's something else going on in the background. In addition, Microsoft Word 95 took about 20-30 seconds to fully load; on my EEE, it takes 5-10 seconds to load Office Word 2007.

-Yes, they were slower. It's good that they're faster now, I agree (my! am I thankful for that!). It's just that I don't like it when apps get bloated (not packed with more features, I'm not against that, though in many cases I'd like to be able to choose the extras I really need). My problem is with bloatware.

You completely miss the point. Newer versions of the same thing, are simply faster/better versions as far as the OS cares or knows.

-Sorry, but I was refering to the fact that sometimes you buy a piece of hardware that works just fine, and later on it gets discontinued, and OS developers and others stop releasing drivers for new OSes or they perform erratically on newer OSes or not at all. Then you're stuck with perfectly working hardware that you can't get to work on your new OS. For many people in the world that's a problem, especially when we're talking bulk buys by governments and institutions.

I already gave a better comparison. If you can't read it's not my problem.

-I don't think so. However, let us keep it to computers. Would you rather use a word processing program (say, Word 2025 or whatever) that will sit on top of half your RAM, or use one with a much smaller footprint (say, Atlantis, or 602Text, or StarOffice) that -as far as your needs go- can do the same things, but leaves more system resources available for whatever else you want to do. Again, my problem is with bloatware, the tendency to make OSes and apps huge BEYOND what your real needs warrant. I'm all for faster processors and bigger, cheaper memory, I just don't like developers continually trying to cram more stuff into their apps and OSes just because they can, until your awesome relatively new machine just doesn't cut it anymore for the quite basic purposes you use it. That's all.

You do understand there's a reason that most companies tend to consider people who customize their own PCs as "advanced users", yes? The fact that many functional machines for these purposes can be bought pre-built for a few hundred dollars makes me think you're largely ignorant of how things are actually done in reality.

-I do understand. But, why can't it be the other way around? If you need more of your machine on a certain department, they could ready one with the needed specs, rather than have almost everybody fast processors and huge memory for the average mundane users' needs. Most people don't really know what kind of system they need. Remember that while it's relatively cheap to buy a decent, up-to-date computer in the US, Canada, Western Europe and Japan,

it's not the same deal with the MAJORITY of mankind elsewhere in the world.

By "most people" I mean "anyone with a job that pays more than minimum wage". If you fall into categories where you have to choose between upgrading your components or, say, paying the rent, then I already addressed this. Chances are you have more substantial things to be worrying about than whether or not you can afford to buy new computer equipment. Given that many companies will offer bulk discounts to governments or educational facilities, your argument is even more nonsensical.

-No, it's not. See above, last sentence.

It can. Good operating systems try to maintain a stable core/process mapping (Vista doesn't, but Windows always lags Unix implementing core OS features). This usually helps with performance because it means the core-local cache is more likely to contain useful data.

-I knew it! Thanks.

It has no effect on stability.

-Oh. OK. Again, thanks.

Virtual memory has been a 'solved problem' for decades and is for all practical intents and purposes 100% effective at isolating user-space applications from each other's memory usage.

-Ditto.

The cost of UI sugar is negligable in a new PC. The 3D hardware is there anyway, you might as well use it. I agree that it's annoying when a shiny 3D interface is mandatory, for no good reason, but there's no reason to avoid them either (except when it sucks up dev time better spent on the actual program).

-I agree, totally.

Plain text interfaces confuse most normal humans. We use GUIs for a reason.

-Agreed. That's why I said "close-to plain text". Say, more like DOSSHELL or Win 3.1 than like Vista.

Because no one wants to pay extra for the former, whereas people will pay regularly for the later.

-Yes. Isn't that sad?

Please stop making idiotic car analogies. Yes, if there were no safety or fuel consumption issues, then I would drive my car at its top speed all the time because then I'd get where I wanted to go faster. Everyone else would too. Anyway most of these analogies do more harm than good.

-I'm done with the car analogies (see above, in my reply to General Zod). Still, going faster you significatively increase the risk of getting yourself or others killed, but car analogies are through, because they suck, sorry for that.

Because most people are using more powerful computers and those resources are used a) to deliver an incrementally better experience and b) to make people feel like they got some value out of buying a new PC. If you don't like it use a stipped down version of OpenOffice. Or hell just run Office 2000, last time I checked it still opened virtually every filetype of interest.

-Agreed. But IMHO the best user experience comes from having the computer do just what you want it to do, and, isn't "b" sad also? Oh, and I use Office97 and it works perfectly for my modest and quite average needs.

[General Zod]

-I don't think so. However, let us keep it to computers. Would you rather use a word processing program (say, Word 2025 or whatever) that will sit on top of half your RAM, or use one with a much smaller footprint (say, Atlantis, or 602Text, or StarOffice) that -as far as your needs go- can do the same things, but leaves more system resources available for whatever else you want to do. Again, my problem is with bloatware, the tendency to make OSes and apps huge BEYOND what your real needs warrant. I'm all for faster processors and bigger, cheaper memory, I just don't like developers continually trying to cram more stuff into their apps and OSes just because they can, until your awesome relatively new machine just doesn't cut it anymore for the quite basic purposes you use it. That's all.

The fact that there are multiple applications to suit multiple needs makes your bizarre argument utterly baseless. Don't give me some bullshit about how not everyone understands what they need, because that's just a blatant red herring to detract from the bizarre idea that programs which adapt to take advantage of more and more processing power are somehow bad.

-I do understand. But, why can't it be the other way around? If you need more of your machine on a certain department, they could ready one with the needed specs, rather than have almost everybody fast processors and huge memory for the average mundane users' needs. Most people don't really know what kind of system they need. Remember that while it's relatively cheap to buy a decent, up-to-date computer in the US, Canada, Western Europe and Japan,it's not the same deal with the MAJORITY of mankind elsewhere in the world.

Do I honestly have to explain the difference between a capitalist society and your bizarre idea of a utopia? So what if people don't have access to the same level of resources all over the world? Quite frankly computers are a luxury item. Basic comprehension of how they work is essential in a first world country, which is provided by our school system. But for third world nations, they have more important things to worry about and generally don't have the infrastructure to make use of computerization. Your insistence that everyone should have equal access to everything is mind-numbingly ignorant, and still doesn't actually address your insistence that "big programs are bad".

No, it's not. See above, last sentence.

So what? So far your only argument against high end systems is some bullshit about it not being fair that everyone can't have the same machines.

-Agreed. But IMHO the best user experience comes from having the computer do just what you want it to do, and, isn't "b" sad also? Oh, and I use Office97 and it works perfectly for my modest and quite average needs.

Once again you're back to pretending that just because it's sufficient for your needs, it should be sufficient for everyone else's. I'm almost convinced that you're trolling at this point.

[Akkleptos]

A lot of the spreadsheets I've dealt with at work have been in the 50-100mb range simply due to the sheer amount of financial data on them. I'd be surprised if a PC with 128mb of ram from 15 years ago would be able to even remotely cope with that file size.

Well, they did work with that much data since way before that. It just took more time, more data storage, and more machines. And even before there were digital computers, someone had to do the math. It's just progress (the good kind).

Don't give me some bullshit about how not everyone understands what they need, because that's just a blatant red herring to detract from the bizarre idea that programs which adapt to take advantage of more and more processing power are somehow bad.

No, I don't think that's bad. Programs which adapt to take advantage of more and more processing power are good, if such adaptation leads to them working better and more efficiently. I think poor programming that uses more resources than necessary for a given task is bad. Sorry if I at some point I was ambiguous about that.

Do I honestly have to explain the difference between a capitalist society and your bizarre idea of a utopia? So what if people don't have access to the same level of resources all over the world? Quite frankly computers are a luxury item. Basic comprehension of how they work is essential in a first world country, which is provided by our school system. But for third world nations, they have more important things to worry about and generally don't have the infrastructure to make use of computerization. Your insistence that everyone should have equal access to everything is mind-numbingly ignorant, and still doesn't actually address your insistence that "big programs are bad".

No, big programs aren't bad per se. Bloated programs are. Moreover, the sheer pretense that all basic, low-end users need state-of-the-art systems to perform their basic, low-end stuff IS nonsensical, if you ask me. Oh, and I'm all for capitalism, liberal-flavoured. And, as you said before, there ARE options. I just think they need more support and publicity, like Linux (the easier-to-handle distros), the one-hundred-dollar laptop, etc.)

So what? So far your only argument against high end systems is some bullshit about it not being fair that everyone can't have the same machines.

No, it's not, and as much as I appreciate your insights, it's discomforting that you still fail to realise what I'm trying to say. High-end systems are good (and necessary for certain purposes). More GHz and bigger, cheaper RAM=Progress. Better programs with more useful features are great. But when a program uses four times the RAM and other system resources to do exactly the same its predecessors did, then excuse me for not calling THAT "progress". Especially if the bigger RAM footprint and resource consumption are due to shoddy, inefficient programming. Once more, my problem is with bloatware that -like gasses- will expand to eat up all your processor cycles and available memory, both in OS and apps. Essentials before bells and whistles. That's all.

[Xon]

A lot of that will be the hard disk; modern hard disks have a transfer rate about 100 times faster than mid-90s ones. Storage performance really has improved very fast, in every dimension except latency (and even that has improved quite a bit).

In comparison to ram and CPU, storage simply hasn't improved as fast. SSD has massive improvements in small random reads, which is what an OS does most of the time running applications.

A lot of home users never have to perform any maintenance on their systems, if they never uninstall anything, don't install junk and don't catch viruses.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

If that was the case, service desks wouldn't be such a nightmare to man.

There is no real reason for computers to require maintenance, most cases where they do are lingering software reliability issues that the industry just hasn't gotten around to fixing yet. SSDs will remove one major source of mechanical failure and if consumers can be satisfied with CPUs and PSUs low-power enough to cool passively then there will be literally no moving parts.

The largest issue for computer maintenance is when someone changes something. Either hardware or softwar, then you have potential issues. After all software does not rot.

[Xon]

-I see. My HDDs are probably a tad outdated (yes, I have 2 of them on my main machine). But Win2K, XP (what I use) and Vista do crash. That's something I do at work, I'm the unofficial go-to-guy when computers don't work there, and I've seen plenty of Vistas and XPs (on machines less than 2 years old) crash and burn.

Then quite simply, the hardware/drivers is broken or the software ontop of the OS is buggy. It is vanishing rare for the OS itself to be at fault except for relatively quite exotic issues.

If the computer is spontantiously rebooting (ie blue screening); the general suspects are; bad ram, bad sectors on harddrive corrupting data, bad motherboards, bad drivers/hardware, user error, .... Windows.

[General Zod]

No, I don't think that's bad. Programs which adapt to take advantage of more and more processing power are good, if such adaptation leads to them working better and more efficiently. I think poor programming that uses more resources than necessary for a given task is bad. Sorry if I at some point I was ambiguous about that.

At some point? You kept screeching in histrionics about in efficiency without bothering to define why you think it's bloated.

No, big programs aren't bad per se. Bloated programs are. Moreover, the sheer pretense that all basic, low-end users need state-of-the-art systems to perform their basic, low-end stuff IS nonsensical, if you ask me. Oh, and I'm all for capitalism, liberal-flavoured. And, as you said before, there ARE options. I just think they need more support and publicity, like Linux (the easier-to-handle distros), the one-hundred-dollar laptop, etc.)

The idea that anyone needs a state of the art machine for low end stuff is either pure ignorance or you're a lying little shit with an axe to grind. I'm not sure which at this point.

No, it's not, and as much as I appreciate your insights, it's discomforting that you still fail to realise what I'm trying to say. High-end systems are good (and necessary for certain purposes).

It isn't exactly helping your case that you're incapable of actually saying anything without going off on dozens of totally unrelated red herrings or screeching bullshit.

More GHz and bigger, cheaper RAM=Progress. Better programs with more useful features are great. But when a program uses four times the RAM and other system resources to do exactly the same its predecessors did, then excuse me for not calling THAT "progress". Especially if the bigger RAM footprint and resource consumption are due to shoddy, inefficient programming. Once more, my problem is with bloatware that -like gasses- will expand to eat up all your processor cycles and available memory, both in OS and apps. Essentials before bells and whistles. That's all.

Four times more resources to use compared to what? Ten years ago? Quite frankly this argument is nothing more than ignorant bullshit. Name a single mainstream application whose only improvements were visual that uses four times more resources than it used to. It shouldn't be that difficult to do if you really have a point.

[Akkleptos]

At some point? You kept screeching in histrionics about in efficiency without bothering to define why you think it's bloated.

What? Don't you like screeching histrionics? Buzzkill.
Perhaps you missed this:

I think poor programming that uses more resources than necessary for a given task is bad

For a sound example (no idiotic car analogies this time ):
Program A crunches your numbers. It uses 8% of your system resources. Program B crunches your numbers just as well, but it uses 25% of your system's resources. Program B is bloatware. Or just badly programmed. Free market competition ought to send it down extinction lane, right? But imagine program B is by Microsoft, and most users ignore other options (namely program A and others) even exist. Program B comes bundled with many new PCs. Microsoft has pulled all the stops in making program Bs proprietary file formats the standard. Everyone you know uses program B. Ordinary users resign themselves to that. But then comes program B 2.0, packed with lots of great advanced features, bells and whistles that likely only specialised professionals will have use for. Not you, average user, and probably about 70% of the user base (who knows these things?). You know, sooner or later you will see yourself in the need to upgrade to b 2.0. And it will use 35% of your system's resources. Eventually, since you use other apps while you use program B 2.0, you will have to consider upgrading your hardware, and forget about that smartphone you've been promising to yourself for a year. Life is good.

But if what you want me to do is give specific benchmark data on how bloating pervades common OS and apps, well, I think I can acommodate you. Please keep reading.

The idea that anyone needs a state of the art machine for low end stuff is either pure ignorance or you're a lying little shit with an axe to grind. I'm not sure which at this point.

Excuse me. Poor choice of words. I should have said "up-to-date", but in the sense of getting newer and faster hardware that you wouldn't have needed if it weren't for your new OS and apps requirements. The concern about what you think I am doesn't really keep me awake at night (other things do). But I do appreciate your calling me on the red herrings.

Four times more resources to use compared to what? Ten years ago? Quite frankly this argument is nothing more than ignorant bullshit. Name a single mainstream application whose only improvements were visual that uses four times more resources than it used to. It shouldn't be that difficult to do if you really have a point.

Well, dig into this ignorant bullshit then. This guy might just be a fellow "lying little shit with an axe to grind", I'm guessing.

Excerpts:

“What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.” Such has been the conventional wisdom surrounding the Windows/Intel (“Wintel”) duopoly since the early days of Windows 95. In practical terms, it means that performance advancements on the hardware side are quickly consumed by the ever-increasing complexity of the Windows/Office code base. Case in point: Microsoft Office 2007 which, when deployed on Windows Vista, consumes over 12x as much memory and nearly 3x as much processing power as the version that graced PCs just 7 short years ago (Office 2000).

But despite years of real-world experience with both sides of the duopoly, few organizations have taken the time to directly quantify what my colleagues and I at Intel used to call “The Great Moore’s Law Compensator (TGMLC).” In fact, the hard numbers above represent what is perhaps the first ever attempt to accurately measure the evolution of the Windows/Office platform in terms of real-world hardware system requirements and resource consumption.

Enter the term TGMLC. It's not regarded kindly. Bloating exists.

Windows XP (SP2) and Office 2003 were born into a world of 3GHz CPUs, 1GB RAM, SATA disks and Symmetrical Multithreading (a.k.a. Hyper-threading). This added hardware muscle served to offset the growing complexity of Windows/Office, allowing a newer system to achieve OfficeBench times slightly better (~5%) than a legacy Pentium 4 system, despite the latter having a less demanding code path (TGMLC in action once again).

How bad is it?

Let’s start with the memory footprint. The average combined working set for Word, Excel and PowerPoint when running the OfficeBench test script is 109MB. By contrast, Office 2000 consumed a paltry 9MB, which translates into a 12x increase in memory consumption (i.e. 170% per year since 2000). To be fair, previous builds of Office benefited from a peculiar behavior common to all pre-Office 12 versions: When minimized to the Task Bar, each Office application would release much of its non-critical working set memory. This resulted in a much smaller memory footprint, as measured by the Windows performance counters (which are employed by the aforementioned DMS Clarity Tracker Agent).

Microsoft has discontinued this practice with Office 2007, resulting in much higher average working set results. However, even factoring this behavioral change, the working set for Office 2007 is truly massive. Combined with an average boot-time image of over 500MB for just the base Windows Vista code base, it seems clear that any system configuration that specifies less than 1GB of RAM is a non-starter with this version. And none of the above explains the significantly higher CPU demands of Office 2007, which are nearly double (73% vs. 39%) that of Office 2003. Likewise, the number of execution threads spawned by Office 2007 (32) is up, as is the total thread count for the entire software stack (615 vs. 370 – again, almost double the previous version).

Fortunately, the people at Microsoft are apparently straightening out their act with Windows 7 (from here):

Uncharted territory. That's what I call the Windows landscape post-Vista. For the first time in recent memory, Microsoft is set to deliver a new OS -- Windows 7 -- that isn't any fatter or slower than its predecessor. In other words, The Great Moore's Law Compensator (TGMLC), which I famously defined as part of my "Fat, fatter, fattest" article last year, has gone bust. Kaput. No longer applies.
<snip>
Unfortunately, Microsoft's newfound restraint is not without its detractors. PC hardware vendors, who long ago built their business models around the TGMLC cycle, are now looking at Windows 7 as a potential disaster. To be sure, the new OS will spur some sales. However, given Windows 7's modest, Vista-like footprint and broad-based compatibility with its immediate predecessor, the typical TGMLC-inspired pressure to upgrade your PC may not fully materialize -- or if it does, it will do so in a much weakened state. After all, it's tough to sell customers on that new quad- or eight-core system when yesterday's bargain-basement, dual-core designs are still perfectly capable of delivering adequate (in relation to Vista) performance levels.

"AH! So, if you sell users more bloated (but overwhelmingly mainstream) software, they'd have to buy more powerful hardware? And when they upgrade their hardware, we can always slap them with upgrades and "Service Packs"! Hmm... that way, we at MonopoliumSoft and our good friends at Processors Inc would both benefit. Interesting...". Yeah, that has never happened, as anyone familiar with the behaviour of large corporations knows.

However, at long last, the people at Microsoft get it. Let's see if they expand the same philosophy to their apps, like Office, et al. At least they're willing to give it a shot. Are we?

[General Zod]

I think poor programming that uses more resources than necessary for a given task is bad

For a sound example (no idiotic car analogies this time ):
Program A crunches your numbers. It uses 8% of your system resources. Program B crunches your numbers just as well, but it uses 25% of your system's resources. Program B is bloatware. Or just badly programmed. Free market competition ought to send it down extinction lane, right? But imagine program B is by Microsoft, and most users ignore other options (namely program A and others) even exist. Program B comes bundled with many new PCs. Microsoft has pulled all the stops in making program Bs proprietary file formats the standard. Everyone you know uses program B. Ordinary users resign themselves to that. But then comes program B 2.0, packed with lots of great advanced features, bells and whistles that likely only specialised professionals will have use for. Not you, average user, and probably about 70% of the user base (who knows these things?). You know, sooner or later you will see yourself in the need to upgrade to b 2.0. And it will use 35% of your system's resources. Eventually, since you use other apps while you use program B 2.0, you will have to consider upgrading your hardware, and forget about that smartphone you've been promising to yourself for a year. Life is good.

How do you know it uses more resources than necessary? Perhaps one has dozens of extra features underneath the hood that you just aren't making use of. But that doesn't mean it's badly programmed. But the fact that Microsoft is the only business you keep mentioning is pretty hilarious.

Excuse me. Poor choice of words. I should have said "up-to-date", but in the sense of getting newer and faster hardware that you wouldn't have needed if it weren't for your new OS and apps requirements. The concern about what you think I am doesn't really keep me awake at night (other things do). But I do appreciate your calling me on the red herrings.

You don't honestly think hardware has an indefinite shelf life do you? Regardless of how little work you put it through all hardware components age. That means sooner or later you will have to replace them or you'll be getting diminishing returns in terms of performance.

Well, dig into this ignorant bullshit then. This guy might just be a fellow "lying little shit with an axe to grind", I'm guessing.

Excerpts:

“What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.” Such has been the conventional wisdom surrounding the Windows/Intel (“Wintel”) duopoly since the early days of Windows 95. In practical terms, it means that performance advancements on the hardware side are quickly consumed by the ever-increasing complexity of the Windows/Office code base. Case in point: Microsoft Office 2007 which, when deployed on Windows Vista, consumes over 12x as much memory and nearly 3x as much processing power as the version that graced PCs just 7 short years ago (Office 2000).

I'm not seeing the problem here. Office 2007 does far more than Office 2000 ever did. The idea that this somehow means it's inefficient is retarded.

Windows XP (SP2) and Office 2003 were born into a world of 3GHz CPUs, 1GB RAM, SATA disks and Symmetrical Multithreading (a.k.a. Hyper-threading). This added hardware muscle served to offset the growing complexity of Windows/Office, allowing a newer system to achieve OfficeBench times slightly better (~5%) than a legacy Pentium 4 system, despite the latter having a less demanding code path (TGMLC in action once again).

How bad is it?

Let’s start with the memory footprint. The average combined working set for Word, Excel and PowerPoint when running the OfficeBench test script is 109MB. By contrast, Office 2000 consumed a paltry 9MB, which translates into a 12x increase in memory consumption (i.e. 170% per year since 2000). To be fair, previous builds of Office benefited from a peculiar behavior common to all pre-Office 12 versions: When minimized to the Task Bar, each Office application would release much of its non-critical working set memory. This resulted in a much smaller memory footprint, as measured by the Windows performance counters (which are employed by the aforementioned DMS Clarity Tracker Agent).

Yet no comment of any kind on the functionality improvements over Office 2000; the idea that there were no significant improvements in Office 07 is mind numbingly stupid. I'm still not seeing anything substantial.

Microsoft has discontinued this practice with Office 2007, resulting in much higher average working set results. However, even factoring this behavioral change, the working set for Office 2007 is truly massive. Combined with an average boot-time image of over 500MB for just the base Windows Vista code base, it seems clear that any system configuration that specifies less than 1GB of RAM is a non-starter with this version. And none of the above explains the significantly higher CPU demands of Office 2007, which are nearly double (73% vs. 39%) that of Office 2003. Likewise, the number of execution threads spawned by Office 2007 (32) is up, as is the total thread count for the entire software stack (615 vs. 370 – again, almost double the previous version).

So far this reads like an argument from ignorance. Newer software with more features means it uses more memory? WHO KNEW??1!1!!

"AH! So, if you sell users more bloated (but overwhelmingly mainstream) software, they'd have to buy more powerful hardware? And when they upgrade their hardware, we can always slap them with upgrades and "Service Packs"! Hmm... that way, we at MonopoliumSoft and our good friends at Processors Inc would both benefit. Interesting...". Yeah, that has never happened, as anyone familiar with the behaviour of large corporations knows.

Because Microsoft is the only software maker who makes operating systems.

[Akkleptos]

How do you know it uses more resources than necessary? Perhaps one has dozens of extra features underneath the hood that you just aren't making use of. But that doesn't mean it's badly programmed. But the fact that Microsoft is the only business you keep mentioning is pretty hilarious.

Microsoft is only the most visible example. I've been hearing that Firefox is now horribly bloated too, for instance.

You don't honestly think hardware has an indefinite shelf life do you? Regardless of how little work you put it through all hardware components age. That means sooner or later you will have to replace them or you'll be getting diminishing returns in terms of performance.

No, hardware has a limited useful life, of course. The thing is we shouldn't have to stop using perfectly good equipment that got the job done for us every couple of OS or app versions.

I'm not seeing the problem here. Office 2007 does far more than Office 2000 ever did. The idea that this somehow means it's inefficient is retarded.

Non sequitur. The fact that it does more things doesn't necessarily mean it does them efficiently. Even assuming high efficiency from Office 2007, should I have to cough up the cost of the program and suffer the dissappearance of valuable megabytes of HDD and RAM to write the same tests, reports and papers I do with Office 97.

Yet no comment of any kind on the functionality improvements over Office 2000; the idea that there were no significant improvements in Office 07 is mind numbingly stupid. I'm still not seeing anything substantial.

Nobody is saying that Office 2007 has no significant improvements. Just that it takes a whole of a lot more processing power, hard disk and RAM to run, even if most people hardly ever need to, say, format Japanese vertically and from right to left, or turn text 90°.

So far this reads like an argument from ignorance. Newer software with more features means it uses more memory? WHO KNEW??1!1!!

Reductio ab absurdo. The issue is not whether Office 2007 can do more things, but rather whether the extras are worth the ridiculously increased system requirements for most users.

Because Microsoft is the only software maker who makes operating systems.

Nope. They're only the ones who make the OS that most people use at home or at work

[General Zod]

No, hardware has a limited useful life, of course. The thing is we shouldn't have to stop using perfectly good equipment that got the job done for us every couple of OS or app versions.

Except it's generally dirt-cheap to upgrade. Unless of course, you're completely broke and forced to choose between rent and computer parts, in which case you have more important things to worry about. In which case you can do without the newest shiny program.

Non sequitur. The fact that it does more things doesn't necessarily mean it does them efficiently. Even assuming high efficiency from Office 2007, should I have to cough up the cost of the program and suffer the dissappearance of valuable megabytes of HDD and RAM to write the same tests, reports and papers I do with Office 97.

Now you're just being a dishonest little cunt. You can upgrade several of the most basic components of your computer for dirt cheap. Ram is plentiful and can be had for a mere $20 for a 2gb chip. An 80gb hard drive can be had for as little as $40, and most variants of Linux are free. Parts are easy to replace. If you cannot afford this you have greater concerns to worry about.

Nobody is saying that Office 2007 has no significant improvements. Just that it takes a whole of a lot more processing power, hard disk and RAM to run, even if most people hardly ever need to, say, format Japanese vertically and from right to left, or turn text 90°.

So it takes more processing power to use more features? But that somehow makes it bloated? Neverminding the fact that there's many, many alternatives to MS office? You're an idiot.

Reductio ab absurdo. The issue is not whether Office 2007 can do more things, but rather whether the extras are worth the ridiculously increased system requirements for most users.

The system requirements are easily met by most users capable of affording a pc built within the last 5 years. Try again.

Nope. They're only the ones who make the OS that most people use at home or at work

So Apple doesn't count?

[Mad]

What is "bloat"? Can it be defined? Is it features you don't need? What if I need them but you don't? Is it still bloat then?

What if it increases memory usage but also helps make maintenance easier so bugs are less likely to be introduced? Is it still bloat?

[Stark]

-Of course we shouldn't. I'm just loathing bloatware, that's what I'm against. And congratulations. Many people I know have experienced lots of problems with Vista, especially on the software compatibility dept. Me? I wouldn't touch the thing with a 2 meter stick.

Now I know you're an idiot. Don't tell me; you read a blog about how Vista had poor support when it came out and never bothered to investigate? That you think it requires 'congratulations' to get Vista working well when it's clearly superior to XP (particularly with regard to resource management) is laughable. You JUST SAID computers lag with multiple apps running, and that's COMPLETE HORSESHIT because I can run two goddamn games at the same time with multiple chat clients, browsers, text editors, image editors and media players going at the same time and no problems. Y'know why they're running simultaneously? Because I forgot they were there, because there's no massive performance hit (obviously things like disk maintenance excepted).

[Akkleptos]

What is "bloat"? Can it be defined? Is it features you don't need? What if I need them but you don't? Is it still bloat then?

Excellent question. No, it's not bloat if you need them.
I'm going with this definition:

Software bloat, also known in noun form as bloatware or elephantware[1], is a term used in both a neutral and disparaging sense, to describe the tendency of newer computer programs to be larger, or to use larger amounts of system resources (mass storage space, processing power or memory) than necessary for the same or similar benefits from older versions to its users. Additionally, the term bloatware is used in common language for pre-installed, huge software bundles, mostly consisting of demos and trial ware.

The key term here is "necessary". It would be bloat however if it uses more resources to do something other programs can, using less. Or just bad programming.

If you use many of the new features a program has, even if I don't need them, it's okay. What I'm saying is that while knowledgable users can and do find lighter options for things they want to do, most regular users are stuck with pricey software suites with more features than they can hope to even learn to use.

Also, when it comes to writing code in 200 Mb when it could have been done in 20, well, that's not good, IMHO. Another definition is relying on Intel to make you app run fast enough when they release their next processor. Not good either, again in my opinion (these two pieces come from here).

Now I know you're an idiot. Don't tell me; you read a blog about how Vista had poor support when it came out and never bothered to investigate?

I've read no blogs. I've seen expensive programs we use at work failing to run under Vista, when they work just fine in XP. I've gone to google up fixes and workarounds only to find out it's a Vista compatibility issue, and that no solution exists at the moment. In these instances, the "upgrade" killed productivity. And, no, I'm not saying Vista is necessarily bad. Just that I see it as an unnecessary upgrade. And it was established earlier that my lagging and hanging problems are likely due to bad hardware.

Back to bloating, here's a good example of apps that do pretty much the same essential job, yet having a significant disparity on resource consumption:

Bloatware analysis
This section deals with memory usage, program fluff and HD chomping capability. Traditionally, this is the area where iTunes has always fallen short, but this time, we've been astounded at how spectacularly iTunes has surpassed itself.

Hard drive usage:

Winamp does very well on the whole. The install size is a small 8.5 MEG download (and if you're willing to forego a few features, then you can get it even for a a miniscule 2.7 meg!). The 8.5 meg install pans out to a less impressive 31 MB of disk space after installation, but I think that's forgivable considering how many plugins you get as standard.

Mediamonkey is similar to Winamp. The 6.5 MEG install eventually takes up 30 meg of diskspace after installation.

iTunes... well, well, well. After the travesty of the old 4.7 version, we expected the worst, but nothing could have prepared us for the giant 57.2 MEG download we had to endure. But then we installed the program. Apart from taking half an hour, the entire install took up a monolithic 200 MEG of HD space, 70 of which was the iTunes folder itself, 85 of which came with the obligitary QuickTime program install (no I didn't ask), and the rest of the files are littered over folders such as My Documents/My Music/iTunes, Windows/Downloaded Installations, Application Data, Program Files/Common Files/Apple and goodness knows what else. In fact, no fewer than 400 MEG was required while the install was in progress! Answers on a postcard to this address if you know why they need all this space to cram in the same kind and quantity of features that Winamp and Mediamonkey offer...

Windows Media Player is almost as bad as iTunes. The 25.2 MEG install swells to almost exactly 200 megabyte of HD space. Goodness knows where most of the installation resides (the main WMP folder only seems to eat up 11MB).

Memory usage:

We've explored hard drive space. How about the other bloat factor - system memory? For this, we use the "Total Commit Charge" which supposedly includes both RAM and Pagefile usage together. Here are the results:


MM: 32M (41M with modern skins)
Winamp: 31M (55M for Modern/Bento skin)
Windows Media Player: 31M
iTunes: 80M

Not much between them, apart from iTunes which is around 3 times as bad in this round (like before, iTunes comes with extra 'goodie' processes - "iPodService" and "iTunesHelper", which bump the memory up by about 10 megabyte). Winamp isn't totally innocent either, with its Winampa process, but at least it can be disabled easily (right click the winamp logo in the tray, and select disable).

If you just want to listen to music while you work on many other things and handle a handful of playlists, which one would you prefer? Don't some of these programs make a more efficient use of your system's resources, given the task required from them?

Finally, all I'm saying is not features=bloat (though it's nice to be able to opt out of the ones one doesn't really need), but rather bad, inefficient and redundant programming=bloat.

[General Zod]

If you use many of the new features a program has, even if I don't need them, it's okay. What I'm saying is that while knowledgable users can and do find lighter options for things they want to do, most regular users are stuck with pricey software suites with more features than they can hope to even learn to use.

So what you're saying is "regular users" = "retarded"? I wasn't aware the computer industry should have to hold anyone's hand. Because I can tell you that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to type "free office suite" into Google and get links to open office or staroffice. Or for that matter, pick up any magazine off the shelf in a bookstore that discusses dozens of free software apps.

I've read no blogs. I've seen expensive programs we use at work failing to run under Vista, when they work just fine in XP. I've gone to google up fixes and workarounds only to find out it's a Vista compatibility issue, and that no solution exists at the moment. In these instances, the "upgrade" killed productivity. And, no, I'm not saying Vista is necessarily bad. Just that I see it as an unnecessary upgrade. And it was established earlier that my lagging and hanging problems are likely due to bad hardware.

Turns out that not all programs are compatible with all operating systems? Ya think?

Back to bloating, here's a good example of apps that do pretty much the same essential job, yet having a significant disparity on resource consumption:

So people do in fact have a choice, but it depends on them not being complete morons and knowing how to use Google.

iTunes... well, well, well. After the travesty of the old 4.7 version, we expected the worst, but nothing could have prepared us for the giant 57.2 MEG download we had to endure. But then we installed the program. Apart from taking half an hour, the entire install took up a monolithic 200 MEG of HD space, 70 of which was the iTunes folder itself, 85 of which came with the obligitary QuickTime program install (no I didn't ask), and the rest of the files are littered over folders such as My Documents/My Music/iTunes, Windows/Downloaded Installations, Application Data, Program Files/Common Files/Apple and goodness knows what else. In fact, no fewer than 400 MEG was required while the install was in progress! Answers on a postcard to this address if you know why they need all this space to cram in the same kind and quantity of features that Winamp and Mediamonkey offer...

A half hour to download a 57.2mb download? Using what, dialup? And version 4.7? That's a three year old version of the software. Trying to compare iTunes to winamp and whatever the fuck mediamonkey is is a completely false comparison. Not only was iTunes originally designed for another operating system altogether, it acts as a storefront for Apple's download service, meaning that it is naturally going to have a larger footprint. The thought that 57mb is massive for anyone who's using anything but dialup is mind boggling and makes me wonder what they expected from iTunes at all.

Windows Media Player is almost as bad as iTunes. The 25.2 MEG install swells to almost exactly 200 megabyte of HD space. Goodness knows where most of the installation resides (the main WMP folder only seems to eat up 11MB).

All of this bitching, whining and moaning about a "massive" 200mb software space consumption makes me think this person is using an old 10gb hard disk from 7 years ago.

If you just want to listen to music while you work on many other things and handle a handful of playlists, which one would you prefer? Don't some of these programs make a more efficient use of your system's resources, given the task required from them?

Turns out most of these utilities have more features than just listening to music? Go figure.

Finally, all I'm saying is not features=bloat (though it's nice to be able to opt out of the ones one doesn't really need), but rather bad, inefficient and redundant programming=bloat.

You can opt out. It's called finding another program that does the same thing.

[TempestSong]

Akkleptos: Office 2007 has more features, yes, and does take more processing power...but I run it on a computer that lags behind a desktop from 2000 in terms of specs. Honestly, you are far overrating how much of a memory footprint that program is taking up.

[TempestSong]

Akkleptos: Office 2007 has more features, yes, and does take more processing power...but I run it on a computer that lags behind a desktop from 2000 in terms of specs. Honestly, you are far overrating how much of a footprint that program is taking up.

EDIT: Gah, I accidentally quoted this post and made a small edit...not realizing I hit "Quote". Late night blues...apologies.

[Akkleptos]

Again, more features in apps, more (really) advanced OS, faster hardware, more memory, bigger hard drives=good!
Poor, redundant, overgrown programming=bloat=bad.

It's easy to find better options. Still, you wouldn't believe how many people just have no idea they can do it. Ask 20 people on the street.

I thought I'd just drop these few bits by before conceding the whole argument.

Why Vista sucks for gaming:

Some of these issues could have been worked out by now. But yet, what was the need? Why pay more for an OS that won't even run your current games (or apps)? Under any perspective, that's sheer lunacy.

Turns out that not all programs are compatible with all operating systems? Ya think?

This is rich. An old saying goes: if it's not broken, why fix it? If a vital program worked fine under XP, but if fails to do so under Vista, wouldn't it suck to be the employee who suggested the whole company's migration to Vista?
Besides, Vista is marketed as an OS that will help you run things more efficiently. In a case as above, it just fails grandtime. Maybe it's not usual, but still for most sensible managers it would be a definite deal breaker. You may suggest to upgrade to a program's version that is Vista-compatible. More spending. And also, with software for special niches, that would imply waiting for months, if not years. But what you had already worked! It'd be hard no to see why this situation is bad.

Akkleptos: Office 2007 has more features, yes, and does take more processing power...but I run it on a computer that lags behind a desktop from 2000 in terms of specs. Honestly, you are far overrating how much of a memory footprint that program is taking up.

Yes, you can run it on a not-so-great computer. But, say Office 2007 takes up 15 % of your HDD (we're talking about a not-so-great PC). How many mp3s, videos, movies or games would fit there? And if you don't need all of the features, you can always find a lighter app. But not everyone can. Which brings me to:

So people do in fact have a choice, but it depends on them not being complete morons and knowing how to use Google.

My dear General, you're right. Nevertheless, if you find 20 random people on the street that could google up and install lighter, cheaper or even free alternatives I'd be surprised. If you expand that to the whole planet, where computer literacy is well below the standards of, say, the US...

All in all, I just think software developers shouldn't use Moore's Law as an excuse to write shoddy, bulky, inefficient code in general. Is that a sin?

[Xon]

Why Vista sucks for gaming:

Some of these issues could have been worked out by now. But yet, what was the need? Why pay more for an OS that won't even run your current games (or apps)? Under any perspective, that's sheer lunacy.

Out of those 5 issues that article has;

• One of them is the moron not updating drivers
• The other is ultimately the result of the limitations of a 32bit address space and how Vista virtualizes Video Memory. Previously games would maintain a copy of the video memory in thier own address space. Now Vista does it for them and better. Ultimately I blame Nvidia/Ati for past buggy POS drivers which forced that behaviour. Seriously, having the app use 2gb of emmory, the kernal 2gb and then someone mirroring +512mb or even a gigabyte of video ram somewhere in an OS limited to 4gb of vritual address space and you are suprised when shit breaks?
• The other is blaming problems with developers being idiots, despite Windows having massive backwards compadibility support. Probably is too ignorant to use Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit to work around to broken assumptions the application makes.
• Vista indexes all your games you know about. This somehow requires a long paragraph rant.
• Moron does not understand technology. DirectX 10 is a develpers thing, it allows somethings to be done more efficiencly if you have the hardware but that is it.

Yes, you can run it on a not-so-great computer. But, say Office 2007 takes up 15 % of your HDD (we're talking about a not-so-great PC).

Given Microsoft Office 2007's diskspace requirements are 3 gigabytes for Office Ultimate 2007 (aka everything) than means you must have a freaking 20 gigabyte hard drive. You can't even buy those in retail anymore.

How many mp3s, videos, movies or games would fit there?

3gb isn't even a single 720p movie rip(~4gb), or ~3 720p 44 minute TV episodes(~1.0-1.1gb per episode).

[Stark]

I've read no blogs. I've seen expensive programs we use at work failing to run under Vista, when they work just fine in XP. I've gone to google up fixes and workarounds only to find out it's a Vista compatibility issue, and that no solution exists at the moment. In these instances, the "upgrade" killed productivity. And, no, I'm not saying Vista is necessarily bad. Just that I see it as an unnecessary upgrade. And it was established earlier that my lagging and hanging problems are likely due to bad hardware.

Man, I love this. A bad OS launch (remember, we all forget what a piece of unusable shit XP was until SP1 or even later) and poor third-party porting support (which I mentioned in another thread regarding Vista) means all the giant benefits of Vista from top-to-bottom over the odious hackjob of XP are gone. The fact that Vista is now reasonably mature and manages resources better, but nah stupid anecdotes are more important than results.

Saying Vista sucks for gaming is pretty much the most absurd thing I've seen posted in GNC for some considerable time. Everyone I know uses Vista, all the time, for gaming, using games from the last twenty fucking years. Resource management is better, general performance is about the same after considering the overhead, and with certain (generally driver-dependent) exceptions backwards compatibility is BETTER.

The blinkered, retarded stupidity of being able to say 'omg why pay for an OS that can't run your current games' is mindboggling, and the cowardice of saying 'I'm going to spam some totally retarded claptrap about Vista to prove how uninformed I am before conceeding' is disgusting.

From statements made in this thread alone, it appears this guy has a 20GB HDD, 2GB of RAM absolute maximum, and a several-generation old 3D card. He has not bothered to keep up with the state of the industry and yet feels driven to comment on it. I bet he's one of those people who complains that Firefox uses 65mb of RAM OMG BLOATWARE CRIPPLING MAH PUTERZZZ. 1% of my RAM? Take it. Take double. I don't care, because I'm not obsessed.

[Xon]

From statements made in this thread alone, it appears this guy has a 20GB HDD, 2GB of RAM absolute maximum, and a several-generation old 3D card.

Probably closer to 512mb of ram, and at least a 4 generation old 3d card(that is still geforce 6) if it isn't onboard or a Geforce FX (5xxx) would be my guess.

I bet he's one of those people who complains that Firefox uses 65mb of RAM OMG BLOATWARE CRIPPLING MAH PUTERZZZ. 1% of my RAM? Take it. Take double. I don't care, because I'm not obsessed.

It would be an honest complaint if you where dealing with Win98 era hardware. But that is a freaking decade ago.