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Microsoft Longhorn *OMG*

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Does longhorn cook tea for 4 or something? If not, there's no way they could justify such bullshit processing power.
 
"and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today. " - laughable.

where do these outrageous stats come from? THey have special hardware?
 
Hmmm initial , I was skeptical when I say this....but apparently, may be its not soo extreme after all...

According an alternative source news.com . Long Horn has a new 3D interface......What? why would you want a 3d Interface.............Well even increasing size of Hard drives and ever growing number of data sitting on computer Hard drives. A new more inituative interface has to be used inorder to allow a user to access and make use of the data...............

I say some of the words have been twisted. You will probally need a 4GHz CPU + 1 GB ram + plus a decent video card....I am pretty confident that the current top of the crop card will do.
 
Many people are predicting Longhorn won't become mainstream until 2008. A release in mid to late 2006 means it won't be mainstream for a year or two. People tend to stick to old operating systems for quite some time. How many people do you know who just recently gave up Win 98?

Within 4 years, the "average" computer had better have a processor that is 4 GHz or I'll be disappointed.

Memory use goes up by a factor of 5 every 4 years. (Look back in history, that trend hasn't changed much over the last few decades). If you say the average new computer now has 512 MB, then the 2 GB recommendation is right on target. But I honestly think 2 GB may be a bit of a stretch - depending on how all the pricing goes.

The hard drive recommendation is also not too unrealistic. If I remember right, hard drive space goes up by a factor of 10 every 5 years or so. If 80 GB is common now, I could easilly see 600-700 GB common in 2008.

If graphics cards don't get that powerful by then, I'd be disappointed too.

The LAN requirements are probably on their way to taking over much of the service of the phone companies - read up on Longhorn and you'll see that it could be a major step to doing so.

Remember, just since the average computer will have a spec, doesn't mean that spec will be required to run. Often you can get good performance at half that spec (which is already possible with today's top computers).
 
Doesn't seem that far fetched to me. GigE will become standardized and eventually fall in price quickly, just as 100mbps cards and switches did five years ago. The ram is a no-brainer, most systems today already come with 512mb. And I remember a time when I thought it would be years before 100gb drives would be out. I agree though, the 802.11g statement is extremely short sighted.
 
Originally posted by: johnnnny5
I was wondering that actually... whether MS has access to hardware that the public won't know about for a year or so.
Click to expand...


Ah, No... The technology is not that far ahead. They most likely have copies of motherboards, video
cards, drives etc that are coming out in the next few months. But having stuff that's years away?

Nah, as others have pointed out, its hard to get samples of technology that hasn't been completely
invented yet.
 
Regardless of when Longhorn becomes mainstream and regardless of what the average computer may or may not be, those requirements are ridiculous. And the system requirements would be based on when the OS is released, not when it becomes mainstream, so even citing what "average" computers may or may not be using is off base. And on top of that, it is nothing but pure speculation. Gigabit Ethernet may be more prevelent. My guess is that it will take years (more than Longhorn's shipdate) before broadband providers are able to supply most average households with that kind of bandwidth for rates people will pay. And to even suggest that the OS will require networking, much less wired and wireless (unless it is specifically a networked OS), puh-leaze. Ludacris.
The hard drive recommendation is also not too unrealistic. If I remember right, hard drive space goes up by a factor of 10 every 5 years or so. If 80 GB is common now, I could easilly see 600-700 GB common in 2008.
Click to expand...
The hard drive recomendation is ludacris. Again, it is irrelevant what size hard drives are in 2006. Furthermore, look at Windows XP's requirements. Microsoft doesn't give a rats@$$ how big your hard drive is, as long as it is at minimum the requirement. They do not list a "40GB hard drive" or whatever as a system requirement. They list how much the OS is likely to use.
Hmmm initial , I was skeptical when I say this....but apparently, may be its not soo extreme after all...

According an alternative source news.com . Long Horn has a new 3D interface......What? why would you want a 3d Interface.............
Click to expand...
Continue to be skeptical. Those requirements are crap. A quote from the article you linked:
The top-of-the-line interface, code-named "Aero Glass," will have transparency and other advanced three-dimensional shading features but will demand a high-end video card with at least 64MB of video memory. The midlevel "Aero" interface will offer most of the improved graphics abilities and will require just 32MB of video memory.
Click to expand...
Read that? 64MB of video RAM. FOr the "top-of-the-line" interface. That doesn't sound like "three times more powerful" than current video cards to me. :roll:

And did you actually read what the "3D interface" will actually be? It is not some virtual reality style magic interface. It is shading and transparency effects.

And again, the OS needs to be developed with current hardware it is going to be tested with current hardware and near future hardware. Not with 4GHz to 6GHz CPUs and uber/"God-mode" graphics cards. Microsoft is not sitting around testing the OS with a 1TB volume. Nor will it.

The only "requirement" that is close, IMHO, is the RAM, but I think even 2GBs is over the top.

\Dan
 
Originally posted by: johnnnny5
I was wondering that actually... whether MS has access to hardware that the public won't know about for a year or so.
Click to expand...
I imagine they do, but not to any performance degree. If NVidia had the FX 6x00 ready to go last year, they would have released it. But let's say they had half-speed samples, crappy, but with the features...or something like the 800MHz Hammer samples every OEM and their dog had before the Opteron launch...even without that, companies like M$ keep up with what the hardware companies are doing, and (DirectX) even arbitrates how things should develop.
 
Originally posted by: EeyoreX
Again, it is irrelevant what size hard drives are in 2006. Furthermore, look at Windows XP's requirements. Microsoft doesn't give a rats@$$ how big your hard drive is, as long as it is at minimum the requirement. They do not list a "40GB hard drive" or whatever as a system requirement. They list how much the OS is likely to use.
Click to expand...
You too are missing the point. This is one websites speculation of what the average computer will have. I repeat, it is NOT a list of minimum requirements. You gave a link to Win XPs minimum recommended requirements. That is NOT what we are talking about. Are you arguing that the average Win XP computer today has 300 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, and 1.5 GB hard drive? Of course not. The average Windows XP computer is far above those minimum requirements. Thus the minimum requirements will be far less stringent than what that website speculated.
citing what "average" computers may or may not be using is off base
Click to expand...
No it isn't off base. You don't design a program so that all computers run it well. You design a program such that the AVERAGE computer will run it well. Thus this is possibly Microsoft's target audience (I say possibly since it is one websites speculation of what Microsoft is doing). The average computer specs is very useful information. It just doesn't happen to be what you wanted to read (you'll have to wait to see the minimum requirments later when they are announced).
 
Originally posted by: anthrax
Hmmm initial , I was skeptical when I say this....but apparently, may be its not soo extreme after all...

According an alternative source news.com . Long Horn has a new 3D interface......What? why would you want a 3d Interface.............Well even increasing size of Hard drives and ever growing number of data sitting on computer Hard drives. A new more inituative interface has to be used inorder to allow a user to access and make use of the data...............

I say some of the words have been twisted. You will probally need a 4GHz CPU + 1 GB ram + plus a decent video card....I am pretty confident that the current top of the crop card will do.
Click to expand...

A 3d interface isn't so bad, provided it isn't something that tries to be immersive or anything. Flat monitors need flat data presentations. Now, I can definitely see using an inherently 3d engine cutting down CPU use and making GUI features easier to utlize the graphics power we have now (if it can't be easily developed, nobody is going to bother) and will have in the future. It could be cool for smooth animations of windows, resizing windows and actually doing a true resize of everything in it, rather than reformatting it all, etc.. But a VR- or FPS-style 3d interface where move things around at angles would suck, unless you're making super complex flow charts are diagraming certain networks.
 
Those specs aren't completely out of line.

MS themselves said that your going to use up around 500-600megs of ram just to get the stupid thing running.
 
Yeah, but 2k & XP take 200 now, so that's not a major stretch. technically, even they work on lesser amounts like 32MB...just really crap-like.
 
If those specs are true then nobody could currently be running Longhorn. Yet the developers and alpha testers don't appear to have any trouble doing so.
 
I stuck with DOS until 1997 and only moved to Win95 because they weren't releasing games for DOS anymore. (Of note, I bought Win95 and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter on the same shop. Both sucked pretty bad...)
 
You know, I'm going to be honest.


I was able to install Windows XP Pro on my P2 266Mhz with 32MB ram and a 3.2 GB Hard Drive.

I expect the same from longhorn 🙂
 
Originally posted by: BFG10K
If those specs are true then nobody could currently be running Longhorn. Yet the developers and alpha testers don't appear to have any trouble doing so.
Click to expand...

Sure, but it's dog slow.
(I understand that it's going to have a lot of debugging code running and have lots of non-optimized code....)

The reason I think that the specs aren't complete BS, is because they aren't refering to the absolute minimal needed to run the OS, but refering to the miminal specs that machines running Longhorn will be sold with.

People have a expected level of performance that they want to run at. Nobody is going to be happy going back to the same level of performance that you get from using 800mhz celeron + 128megs of RAM that were sold with the first WinXP computers.

Anyways computers will always be faster. Computers sold within a year for a 1000 bucks will kick the ass of computers that people are paying 3000 dollars for nowadays.

Plus bloat is never anything to get excited about. It's just more code to screw up, more errors to pop up. More vunerabilities, more things to go wrong. Whoopie.
 
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