[mdlug-discuss] [Fwd: [phoenixinn] A windows user reacts]

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Garry Stahl

> The backlash mounts.
> 
> http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/tudor/tudor2.html

 I've had a bit more time with our new Vista system. (AMD Sempron 1.8GHz
(allegedly equivalent to a 3GHz+ processor), 1GB RAM, 80GB disk, Geforce
6150 integrated graphics.)

 Vista with 1GB of RAM is slow. Just plain slow. Frankly, it feels a bit
like a LiveCD, except things don't speed up that much after they've been
loaded. I've disabled some stuff (particularly 'superfetch') and, well,
haven't noticed much of an improvement.

 It's also unreliable. I've had a couple times when the screen goes blank
for a second, and then it comes back up with a message that the "display
driver froze". And I've loaded up a few games onto it, with bad results.
These are older games, far from state of the art:

 1. Aliens versus Predator 2: Runs slow, audio is skippy. Many times fails
    to launch properly.

 2. Tron 2.0: Slow, skippy audio. Seems to always launch into the game
    menu, but firing up a save game crashes the program more often than not.
    Vista doesn't crash at this point, but it takes about five minutes for
    it to recover.

 3. No One Lives Forever 2: Actually runs okay, much of the time. But
    about 50% of the time it won't launch a saved game, it instead crashes
    to the desktop. At least it's faster than Tron 2.0 at crashing, and
    a relaunch usually (~90% of the time) is successful.

 One thing to note is that all of the above games are based on the
Lithtech game engine.

 4. Freedom Force: "This program is not compatible with Vista."

 5. Half-Life, Half-Life 2: Worked for the limited testing I did. HL2
    is much slower and jittery on this system, though.

 I'm going to have to dig out some other games and see how they work.
Of course, all the *other* games I like run fine on Linux, either with
native ports or one or two under WINE... and even the Half-Life based
ones work at about the 95% level.

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                         (313) 227-2317

 "The White House is starting to backtrack a little on this whole
 National Guard thing. Like today they said President Bush may not
   have actually attended the National Guard, but he did attend
          National Guard-related programs." - Jay Leno

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                   (313) 227-2317

 "Open source code is not guaranteed nor does it come with a
      warranty." - the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute

 "I guess that's in contrast to proprietary software, which
 comes with a money-back guarantee, and free on-site repairs
            if any bugs are found." - Rary
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