I'm sure this will only work to confirm my absolute geekiness, but it needs to be said. I work in the computer industry, so I run into a lot of tech information, news and of course, gossip.

"Gossip?" you ask... "Surely computer geeks and technophiles have no room for gossip and back-stabbing and other things that only the pretty people do!"

Wrong. As it stands, the number one thing that has pissed me off this week (that's number one folks, hard to reach that status) is misinformation about stuff in web-reviews and blogs. In specific: Windows Vista.

Here's what we know: Vista is a new operating system from microsoft that will take more system resources than its predecessors. Ok, that's true. Here's what everyone speculates: It requires a dual core processor just to use it. It won't even work with 512 mb RAM. Aero requires the best video card. Blah blah blah blah.

I'm sick of hearing this. News sources and almost respected review sites have constantly been passing off random crap they think up in place of the facts that we trust them to report. With quotes like:

...but I don't bet on Aero Glass support with just 128MB, it will probably depend on screen resolution.[Source]

...To render the screen in the GPU requires an awful lot of memory to do optimally - 256MB is a happy medium, but you'll actually see benefit from more. [Source]

I'm suffeciently annoyed. Thanks for your random unsupported speculation. Don't worry about reporting the facts that you can easily look up on Microsoft's website. Or heck, why not do a little investigative journalism and try installing vista for yourself. You might be surprised. Here's the facts from the mouth of the lion:

A Windows Vista Capable PC includes at least:

A modern processor (at least 800MHz).

512 MB of system memory.

A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:

1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor).

1 GB of system memory.

Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum), Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.

40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.

And so on...

So what's this about 128 minimum? That can't possibly be true. I mean seriously, minimums never work. You should always listen to our trustworthy third party investigators to tell us the real scoop, right? Well here's a shock. Our beloved online journalists, who should be keeping big corporations in check, are instead playing right into the hands of Apple (the anti-christ). Keep pushing the online hatred of a product that's actually not that bad. Bash its excessive need for memory and cpus.

128 MB video works fine. In fact, here's a scary tale for you. I have a Sempron 3200+, with 512 mb shared memory, 128 going to the video (onboard Geforce 6100). That gives me 384mb for my system to play with, and a dredded 128 for Aero to choke on. Guess what. It works fine. Is it a hardcore machine? Not really, but it plays halo without a hitch, it browses the internet - no hitches, and best of all, it's glassy and fun. Fredrickville: 1, stupid-ass internet whiners: 0.


Another quote that got me on an article I mentioned above:

...Threading is the main target for Vista. Currently, very little of Windows XP is threaded. [Source]

I'm not sure if this is even worth pointing out, but that's a load of crap. I don't know who authorized this guy to breathe. I'm a programmer, and I'd say every damned program has threading. In fact, every process has at least one thread. Did he mean multi-threading? Guess what- most software supports multi-threading. How do you think Nero has that fancy progress bar while it's burning a CD? How do think cancel buttons work? How do you think limewire can download all those files while you can still browse the library? How do you think the world turns? Seriously. The only programs you see that don't have multithreading are Calc.exe and some other shareware programs that are crappy and lose their responsiveness when you do any operation with them. Multithreading is to XP (even 98) like stupid is to this writer.

Windows is so lovely that it'll even balance your threads among multiple processors (or cores) if you've got them, putting the next thread on the next-least busy processor.

So STFU.

Also- quick side-note. In an attempt to make this post less geeky and more bad-ass and cool, I've added a picture of a laser gun. It was only after I added it I realized that it didn't really help my geeky factor. Pretend it's a hot chick.

Stumble this article.

SpIkE @ 02/12/07 "You wanna seem less geeky so you post a picture of a STAR TREK LASER???!!" FredFredrickson @ 02/12/07 "What laser? I only see a hot chick." Riev_Mordred @ 02/13/07 "She has sexy handles. Coincidentally, I'm not surprised your computer can run Vista, but personally I will be disabling Aero. Not for functionality, but because I'm a bland boring man and I like my gray drab straight edges" FreakBurrito @ 02/14/07 "I think microsoft actually publ;ished reasonable systems specs this time. I'v also seen a lot of computer adds with 1gb and 2gb of RAM. This means the system builders are *GASP* being smart about it for a change." FredFredrickson @ 02/14/07 "I agree with freaky b!" ThatSam @ 02/15/07 "geek " ThatSam @ 02/15/07 "but seriously, Vista es awsome-o" Login to comment...

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