What's Windows Vista Worth? Play Guy's Guesstimating Game.

[niz]

All Macintosh computers now are running Intel chips and they just released a new vrsion of Bootcamp that finally does allow for dual-boot.... Me? I have a copy of XP Pro I bought a few months ago. It will serve me for years while at the same time I run Mac OS or Unix and phase our my legacy apps.(90% of which are games).

The other option to dual boot is to run Windows apps in a virtual machine on OSX or Linux. The Parallels Virtual machine software runs $50-$80. The other option is VMware. They are in beta with the OSX version of their software. It will probably cost a bit more but you can create a VM machine and then use their free VMPlayer to run in on whatever, wherever. You can download the player and try out various flavors of Linux right now. The nice thing about running Windows as a VM is that you can create a VM just strip out a lot of the services and junk so it is lean and fast. And bonus features: security and easy to "reinstall" from a VM file backup.

Not sure Xen is ready for the rest of us but that's another option that will be available on the Linux desktop soon. When VMware and Xen get their act together and the hypervisor interface technology gets embedded in the Linux kernel things will get even more interesting.

Xen is already been available for a long while, now has VT hardware support so you get near native performance running windows as a VM, and is free for download.

Why would you pay $80 for crappy VM software that gets about 20% performance when you can download Xen for free?

 

[cruiseoveride]

You can run Windiows with Xen?

 

[niz]

You can run Windiows with Xen?

Yep with the latest version of Xen, if you have a VT-enabled CPU.

 

[smlong]

there is also the solution of running Office on Wine... At least, it uses the same binaries than the Windows version of Office - while Mac's version had to be rewritten from scratch due to humongously pervasive porting bugs.

Yep .. I got Office 2000 working quite well with Wine. At least, Excel and Word worked fine.

 

[smlong]

The next version, though, is amazing. No more Apple hardware.

I'll believe this when I see it. Apple is so used to developing for a closed system that it will be quite interesting to see how they pull out of such a support nightmare when little Johnny can't run OSX on his generic PC.

It's amazing to me that anyone ever dares mention Apple in this thread. The biggest complaints have been COST regarding Microsoft and their products. Apple products are the most overpriced piles of crap ever unleashed on the public. (this goes for Mac's and iPods)

Their CHEAPEST Mac laptop with paltry 13.1" LCD, 256 megs of RAM, and GMA950 (integrated shared memory) graphics is $1100. For the SAME price, I can get a Dell Inspiron with 1 gig of RAM, 17" widescreen LCD, and an Nvidia 7800 or 7900GS. That speaks volumes to me about how overpriced Apple.

At any rate, quit bitching about cost and then spouting off about Apple being somehow better. You can get TWO PC's for the price of one halfway decent spec. Mac. Better yet, you can get the mediocre PC with 3 or 4 copies of Vista compared to the cost of a single Mac.

 

[mitch074]

Macs are overpriced? First piece of real news here! They're for the 'elite', those who don't want to have Joe Sixpack's computer!

Jokes apart, it's true that Macs are indeed overpriced. However, for having used several in different occasions, I must contrast this with the fact that hardware-wise, Macs are damn straight and tightly run, and actually built to last - which isn't the case with most cheapo PCs. In fact, to reach the hardware quality you get in a Mac with a PC, then you need to put up pretty much the same amount of cash.

A VW Golf II cost more or less the same as a 1992 Ford Escort - which is bigger, with a heavier engine. The VW still runs well, the Ford has already collapsed into a pile of rust. See the difference? Note: I've owned both. Still have the VW - after 453 000 km. The Ford collapsed at 192 000 - due to clutch rupture, gearbox meltdown, body work half eaten away by rust...

 

[cruiseoveride]

You can run Windiows with Xen?

Yep with the latest version of Xen, if you have a VT-enabled CPU.

Is that some type of CPU instruction set?
I dont see anything with "VT" in /proc/cpuinfo

 

[smlong]

Macs are overpriced? First piece of real news here! They're for the 'elite', those who don't want to have Joe Sixpack's computer!

A VW Golf II cost more or less the same as a 1992 Ford Escort - which is bigger, with a heavier engine. The VW still runs well, the Ford has already collapsed into a pile of rust. See the difference? Note: I've owned both. Still have the VW - after 453 000 km. The Ford collapsed at 192 000 - due to clutch rupture, gearbox meltdown, body work half eaten away by rust...

Paint a pretty picture all you want. I'm only pointing out that the same people who say Vista isn't worth the cost don't mind mentioning the Mac which is already costing too much. As I said, for the price of a Mac desktop/laptop, I can get an equivalent or BETTER PC from the likes of Dell/HP/Compaq and an ADDITIONAL 2-3 copies of Vista.

I have had MANY generic/home-built PC's in my life and I have never had one 'die.' So, I think your car analogy is way off the mark (not to mention your one example isn't indicative of every Ford). But, if that's what it takes for you to think paying twice as much for a Mac is reasonable, go right ahead. Also, the general function of a car hasn't changed since its inception. The hardware requirements for PC's change all the time. No matter how 'built to last' a PC/Mac/whatever is, it's a moot point. I still have my Amiga 500 from Sept 1990. It still works flawlessly. But guess what? It's still pretty much a door-stop to me at this point. The same is true for my old DX4-100 (or 120, I forget) PC. It never stopped working, but with only ISA expansion available, I still put it on the curb.

As a side note, I find it funny that people who like Macs always seem to like VW's as well .. very strange correlation .. it must be the perceived 'cutesy' factor.

At the end of the day, you can attempt to rationalize the exorbitant price of a Mac, but it's just an exercise in futility. If Apple releases their OS to the mainstream and it runs on non-Apple hardware, then yes, the cost argument goes out the window if it is far cheaper than Windows. But, I really can't see that happening as it would directly affect their hardware sales, and that's where they make their money.

 

[qukza]

Xen is already been available for a long while, now has VT hardware support so you get near native performance running windows as a VM, and is free for download.

Why would you pay $80 for crappy VM software that gets about 20% performance when you can download Xen for free?

I haven't used Parallels but people who have reviewed it running Windows on OS X seem to be fairly enthusiastic and it's only a version 1.0 product. Already there are some fairly substantial upgrades in the works. It's free to download and try so anyone could compare them for free.

Xen hasn't been around for a long time and it's support for Windows is very new and, as you note, only avalable on certain new Intel x86 chips. It may be a great technology when it matures but I suspect not for use by the faint of heart at the moment.

From the Xen Wiki:
"The paravirtualized approach we use to get such high performance has not been usable directly for Windows to date. However Xen 3.0 added Intel VT-x support to enable the running of unmodified guest operating systems, including Windows XP & 2003 Server, using hardware virtualization technology. We are working on implementing support for the equivalent AMD Pacifica technology."

Novell is at the front of the pack in supporting Xen into Linux. Red Hat won't support Xen until next year. This is all fairly new and is mostly targeted at enterprise servers rather than desktop users. See:
http/www.novell.com/products/server/virtualization.html

And here's what eWeek reviewers had to say about XenEnterprise :
"Xen is a rather young technology, and anyone who's surveyed the current field of Xen implementations knows that besting them is leaping a fairly low hurdle."
(http/www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2016548,00.asp)

For desktop users the most mature x86 technology is VMware Workstation. It costs $189, hardly cheap, but it's a product that was first released in 1999 and is now at version 5.5. See http/www.vmware.com/products/ws/ (OS X version info here: http/www.vmware.com/news/releases/mac.html).

Note that VMware's VMplayer software is free as are a lot of premade virtual machines using assorted Linux and BSD distros. If you search Google you'll find a number of sites with instructions on how to create a Windows virtual machine using VMplayer, obviously without all the bells and whistles of Workstation, but maybe with enough functionality for some users.
http/johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html
http/www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/linux/vmware-player-image-creation.php

 

[qukza]

Is that some type of CPU instruction set?
I dont see anything with "VT" in /proc/cpuinfo

In 1998 VMware started to make virtualization products to run on x86 chips without any hardware or native OS support. in the last couple of years virtualization has gotten hot as it allows enterprises to consolidate and better manage servers and save lots of money so Intel and AMD have started building support for virtualization into their chips. I'm not sure when the first chips appeared, probably around early 2006. The support in the chip makes the virtualization process easier and more efficient. Going forward this will become a standard feature of all chips and I think additional support will be added. Virtualization support is also being baked into operating systems.

BTW, IBM was doing this stuff on mainframes 30-35 years ago. What's new is the implementation of virtualization on x86 hardware.

Here's links to Intel and AMD pages:
http/www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/
http/www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8826_14287,00.html

 

[mitch074]

@smlong: geez, you had to edit out the 'joke apart' part - meaning you've read it but decided to belittle me anyway.

I've built all the computers I've ever owned (or at least, modded them as much asthey could be - sodering included), and all of them were PC's. I said I've used (and maintained) a few Macs (at work, or friends'), and hardware used to make them was first rate - stuff that you can find in PCs sometimes, sure, but at a premium, making a Mac expensive, yes, but not a piece of crap (it's still expensive).

I've owned an Escort, several pals of mine owned Fiestas, my mom likes them too, and I have a few friends working as mechanics. They all agree on one thing: a Ford will be rusted through (I mean pierced bodywork) in as little as 2 years after buying if it's kept outside; compared with a VW which will start having a few specks of rust on damaged parts fifteen years after they're bought, when kept outside in rainy places. Why? Better quality steel - more expensive.

As to VW Golf being cute, I think you're mixing up your bugs there.

 

[smlong]

@smlong: geez, you had to edit out the 'joke apart' part - meaning you've read it but decided to belittle me anyway.

Hmm.. didn't mean to belittle you at all. I value your opinion and enjoy talking to you, believe it or not.

I've built all the computers I've ever owned (or at least, modded them as much asthey could be - sodering included), and all of them were PC's. I said I've used (and maintained) a few Macs (at work, or friends'), and hardware used to make them was first rate - stuff that you can find in PCs sometimes, sure, but at a premium, making a Mac expensive, yes, but not a piece of crap (it's still expensive).

I don't think Macs are expensive. They are over-priced though. In my mind, that makes something a piece of crap.

I've owned an Escort, several pals of mine owned Fiestas, my mom likes them too, and I have a few friends working as mechanics. They all agree on one thing: a Ford will be rusted through (I mean pierced bodywork) in as little as 2 years after buying if it's kept outside; compared with a VW which will start having a few specks of rust on damaged parts fifteen years after they're bought, when kept outside in rainy places. Why? Better quality steel - more expensive.

I still don't see the connection you're making here. Macs use the same parts (now anyhow) as PC's. Apple goes to the same vendors as Dell/HP/Compaq (IE Taiwanese manufacturers typically) for their motherboards and other parts. If I take apart my shiny new over-priced Mac and see that it has an ASUS motherboard, where did all my extra money go? If I take apart my old Dell system and see that it has the SAME motherboard, I'd then start to feel like a real sucker.

Any analogy you throw out there is going to miss the mark. The extra expense of the Mac doesn't provide any value in the long term (or short term), unlike cars or whatever else. I would be willing to pay a little more for a VW Jetta since it is rated the 'safest' car/sedan out there. But, at least there is a perceived benefit to the extra money I plunk down. I would never even get that perceived benefit if I shelled at $1100 for an IBook with 13.1" screen, integrated graphics (GMA950), and 256 megs of RAM. I don't know about you, but I get a queesy feeling in my stomach when I feel like I spent WAY too much on something. Just the thought of owning a Mac gives me the same feeling.

As to VW Golf being cute, I think you're mixing up your bugs there.

It seems like all VW cars are cutesy ...

 

[p05esto]

Screw Vista. I'm on W2K and have no complaints, I will not switch until my core apps no longer function.

Vista/XP = bloatware of crappy features I DON'T want.

 

[gm0n3y]

You know, I think that once OSX is available for non-Mac hardware, the price will go up considerably. It will just be either thrown in or sold at a discount for users who continue to buy Mac branded PCs. They would drive away too much of their own hardware business if they didn't do this.

 

[gm0n3y]

You know, I think that once OSX is available for non-Mac hardware, the price will go up considerably. It will just be either thrown in or sold at a discount for users who continue to buy Mac branded PCs. They would drive away too much of their own hardware business if they didn't do this.

Allow me to disagree,
Price might go up a bit, however it will be considerably cheaper than a Vista. Unless those sitting up there in Apple are truly nothing but morons, they would really like to push their OS in the market and bite a nice piece of the cake. Apple proved over the years than their innovative minds were the major reason for users buying their products, while their OS was the thing that held them back a little, due, that is, to lack of software solutions.

I think that the moment Apple moves to a more PC-form of hardware, their sales, both OS and hardware, will kick up - simple because people will assume that software (GAMES) will be more available - and I expect it to be so.

I do agree with you that OSX will likely still be cheaper than Vista (at least the more expensive versions). They are going to want to get market share and won't be able to without some sort of price incentive.

That being said, I don't believe that OSX will ever become a viable alternative to Windows (or Linux for that matter) since it is still designed for people who don't like computers. Gamers are likely to stay with Windows so most games are also likely to stay. Unless the gamer demographic changes, I think OSX will continue to be useless for gaming.

The only users that OSX has been able to get in the past have been professionals that have no computing experience but require computers for their work (musicians, film editors, etc). Once OSX moves to non-Mac PCs there will be inumerably more bugs with hardware, etc, which will tarnish its image as an easy to use (relatively) bug free OS (to some degree).

 

[smlong]

You're so full of crap it must hurt. You are spouting nothing more than fan-boy rhetoric and will OBVIOUSLY disagree with anything negative someone points out about Apple. There's no point, in discussing the topic with you.

I will, however, point out that Vista will NOT cost $519 as you alluded to. Furthermore, as I have already stated, there is NO justification for Apple's OVERPRICED HARDWARE. Apple's hardware is >SUBPAR< to >REAL< PC's. If you REALLY think that the LOWEST end Apple iBook/desktop is better than >MOST< other PC's, you're dilusional. At the SAME price point, Apple's hardware is LOW-END while other brands are MID to HIGH end. Apple's LOW-END IS WORSE THAN $99 PC's. PERIOD. Stop fantasizing about Steve Jobs and step back into reality.

Again, argue all you want. If you really think GMA950 graphics and 256 megs of RAM is better than Geforce7900GS and 1 GIG of RAM, all at the SAME PRICE, then go ahead and buy an Apple.

 

[one_fierce_beer]

I've read through this topic and i agree with alot of people on here. Personally, i'd love to see all the "extras" that were thrown into xp removed - too bad they're only adding more bloatware. I hate the new Aero look, i hate the widgets and the sidebar, i hate the flip 3d thingy... you get the picture. The only improvements I can see are that 'vista' doesn't sound as dumb as 'xp', and, oh that's it.

I want my operating system to be like a hub for everything else. It shouldn't be hogging all the resources. I still think xp's requirements are a little steep for an o/s, even though i of course exceed them. But apparently aside from my video card it seems i wouldn't be able to get vista off of the runway. That's funny. I can run ghost recon at medium-high settings but not an operating system. I like the new security features (except integrated drm or whatever), but as i understand it alot of your system will essentially be hidden. Not good. It sucked enough when dos was destroyed in xp, will it be completely obliterated in vista?

But really what other solutions do i have? Mitch074, i would really like to know what version of linux you're running, because i'll sign up in a second. About two years ago i tried everything from suse, to mandrake, to debian. I still have nightmares from it. Heh. Earlier this year i had a laptop that decided it didn't want windows anymore and had to use ubuntu. Yes, it was slightly better than those other versions i used a while back, but installing simple programs was still horrible. I was up all hours of the night just trying to get a dvd to play! All those packages, all those dependencies... oh god the dependencies...
I do like how linux uses the command line alot. I like that stuff.
Programs in linux crashed way more often than i've experienced in windows. In fact, i often moved a crashed program to the fourth virtual desktop - and they would just pile up until i restarted the computer.

Linux is for linux people. I'll try and hold onto xp as long as i can, until the inevitible like what happened to 98. When that happens, maybe linux will be better. I hope so.

 

[smlong]

You know, I think that once OSX is available for non-Mac hardware, the price will go up considerably. It will just be either thrown in or sold at a discount for users who continue to buy Mac branded PCs. They would drive away too much of their own hardware business if they didn't do this.

Allow me to disagree,
Price might go up a bit, however it will be considerably cheaper than a Vista. Unless those sitting up there in Apple are truly nothing but morons, they would really like to push their OS in the market and bite a nice piece of the cake. Apple proved over the years than their innovative minds were the major reason for users buying their products, while their OS was the thing that held them back a little, due, that is, to lack of software solutions.

I think that the moment Apple moves to a more PC-form of hardware, their sales, both OS and hardware, will kick up - simple because people will assume that software (GAMES) will be more available - and I expect it to be so.

I do agree with you that OSX will likely still be cheaper than Vista (at least the more expensive versions). They are going to want to get market share and won't be able to without some sort of price incentive.

That being said, I don't believe that OSX will ever become a viable alternative to Windows (or Linux for that matter) since it is still designed for people who don't like computers. Gamers are likely to stay with Windows so most games are also likely to stay. Unless the gamer demographic changes, I think OSX will continue to be useless for gaming.

The only users that OSX has been able to get in the past have been professionals that have no computing experience but require computers for their work (musicians, film editors, etc). Once OSX moves to non-Mac PCs there will be inumerably more bugs with hardware, etc, which will tarnish its image as an easy to use (relatively) bug free OS (to some degree).
I think I said most of this earlier. Yes I agree with you, except for one thing. If Apple WERE to release their OS for any brand PC, Microsoft would more than likely lower the price of their OS to be competitive. So, even if OSXYZ were to initially be cheaper, I don't think it would be for long.

I do however think Microsoft's tiered pricing scheme is very lame. There should be two versions of the OS: workstation and server.

 

[gm0n3y]

Good point with the pricing. I actually hope that Apple comes out with OSX(I?) that will run on any PC, if that will bring the price of Windows down. Any yes, the pricing scheme is lame. I think its just an excuse to change a lot for the premium one. Without the middle ones, it would seem even more outrageous.

 

[niz]

Xen is already been available for a long while, now has VT hardware support so you get near native performance running windows as a VM, and is free for download.

Why would you pay $80 for crappy VM software that gets about 20% performance when you can download Xen for free?

I haven't used Parallels but people who have reviewed it running Windows on OS X seem to be fairly enthusiastic and it's only a version 1.0 product. Already there are some fairly substantial upgrades in the works. It's free to download and try so anyone could compare them for free.

Xen hasn't been around for a long time and it's support for Windows is very new and, as you note, only avalable on certain new Intel x86 chips. It may be a great technology when it matures but I suspect not for use by the faint of heart at the moment.

From the Xen Wiki:
"The paravirtualized approach we use to get such high performance has not been usable directly for Windows to date. However Xen 3.0 added Intel VT-x support to enable the running of unmodified guest operating systems, including Windows XP & 2003 Server, using hardware virtualization technology. We are working on implementing support for the equivalent AMD Pacifica technology."

Novell is at the front of the pack in supporting Xen into Linux. Red Hat won't support Xen until next year. This is all fairly new and is mostly targeted at enterprise servers rather than desktop users. See:
http/www.novell.com/products/server/virtualization.html

And here's what eWeek reviewers had to say about XenEnterprise :
"Xen is a rather young technology, and anyone who's surveyed the current field of Xen implementations knows that besting them is leaping a fairly low hurdle."
(http/www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2016548,00.asp)

For desktop users the most mature x86 technology is VMware Workstation. It costs $189, hardly cheap, but it's a product that was first released in 1999 and is now at version 5.5. See http/www.vmware.com/products/ws/ (OS X version info here: http/www.vmware.com/news/releases/mac.html).

Note that VMware's VMplayer software is free as are a lot of premade virtual machines using assorted Linux and BSD distros. If you search Google you'll find a number of sites with instructions on how to create a Windows virtual machine using VMplayer, obviously without all the bells and whistles of Workstation, but maybe with enough functionality for some users.
http/johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html
http/www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/linux/vmware-player-image-creation.php

Sure VMware has been around forever, so its stable, safe and well-integrated. However Xen blows it (and any other similar product) out of the water perfromance-wise. You need to consider if youre someone who needs a comfortable gui or someone who can get their 'hands dirty' with configuring a Xen-based system. I think if you're the latter, you wouldn't consider VMware unless you had a non-tehcnical or enterprise-level reason.

The eweek article you cited seems to be old and focused on Xen's enterprise product v3.0. It says it can't run windows. The current standard Xen download is currently at 3.0.2 and can run windows. The 'low hurdle' statement was in comparison to other enterprise-level products like vmware that costs about $500 per install because it comes with all the coprorate support etc. Basically VMware is a slow safe corporate product but for out-and-out techies its a pig in lipstick compared to Xen.

The audience of this board are mostly home enthusiasts and aren't probably gonna be paying $500 for any VM software for home use. The reality is that Xen works, is available for free download, and gives you about 5 times the performance of VMware if you have a VT-enabled CPU.