RSSTop 10 Windows 7 Features #6: DirectX 11
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published May 8, 2009, 7:28 PM
Early in the history of Windows Vista's promotional campaign, before the first public betas, Microsoft's plan was to create a desktop environment unlike any other, replete with such features as 3D rendered icons and buttons, and windows that zoomed into and off the workspace as though they occupied the space in front of the user's face. That was a pretty tall order, and we expected Microsoft to scale back from that goal somewhat. But for several months, journalists were given heads-up notices that there would be several tiers of Windows performance -- at one point, as many as five -- and that the highest tier, described as a kind of desktop nirvana, would be facilitated by the 3D rendering technology being called DirectX 10.
DirectX is a series of graphics libraries that enable Windows programs to "write" graphics data directly to screen elements, rather than to ordinary windows. While the operating system's principal graphics library since version 3.0 has been the Graphics Device Interface (GDI), its handles on memory are tied to window identities and locations. But it's DirectX that makes it possible for a 3D rendered game to be played in the Windows OS without having to be "in" a window like, say, Excel 2003.
Microsoft's original idea for version 10 of the library in Vista was to not only create a higher-level "user experience" based on DirectX, but to help its hardware partners to make DX10 a milestone to which computer owners could aspire. For the full Windows experience, both ATI and Nvidia promised, you needed a graphics driver that was DX10-capable; and Microsoft had been working on a special marketing logo just for that highest tier, something that would have used "Aero" as the carrot and a less-than-stellar basic operating environment for non-upgraded users as the stick.
The consumer saw right through Microsoft's plan even before the Vista RTM date, which was one reason why the graphics card manufacturers ended up being too slow to upgrade their Windows drivers, even as much as a year after Vista's release. Now with Windows 7 on the horizon, DirectX 11 will actually play a significant role in the operating system, and not for marketing reasons. But the company doesn't want to repeat its mistakes with DX10 -- in fact, it's been so shy about even the appearance of a repeat that whether or not it would even ship DX11 with Windows 7 was not even an absolute certainty until the Release Candidate went live earlier this week. Even then, Betanews double-checked to make sure the inclusion wasn't an accident; it wasn't. Microsoft has confirmed to Betanews this week that DX11 is a reality.
The biggest evidence that Microsoft has learned its lesson comes from the fact that DirectX 11 will work on graphics cards rated for DX9 and DX10. During the Vista era, to run DX10 you needed a DX10 card. This doesn't mean that all of DX11's features run only on a DX11 card, but what it does mean is that it doesn't exclude older hardware and, in so doing, rate it a second-class citizen.
What the new drivers will bring to the table immediately is something I will call true multithreading (at the risk of getting into the same trouble I stepped into 21 years ago when I said Windows 386 did not do "true multitasking"). Essentially, it enables DirectX for the first time to actually make full use of multiple cores and multiple program threads, without developers having to employ a kind of flagging technique to accomplish it. The best illustration of this I've found is a beautiful rendering test by game developer Rory Driscoll. Here, after explaining why DirectX's existing multithreading support can actually slow processing down due to the crazy way it handles scheduling, Driscoll demonstrates how the new architecture lets game developers plan out a more sensible schedule of rendering threads, with some "immediate" and others "deferred," with DX11 marshalling the distribution of the sequence automatically.
Granted, the changeover is not automatic; it's an architectural adjustment that, like any form of explicit parallelism, developers have to make themselves. So the real payoff from this will come in a later generation of games and graphics software, but we may see at least some immediate improvement from Windows 7 itself. That improvement will directly impact rendering speed, efficiency, and fluidity.
But one dramatic change to efficiency and fluidity that gamers may notice right away will come from DirectX 11's first-time support for a rendering concept that has at last emerged from the laboratories. It's Microsoft's implementation of tessellation, which in geometry (especially the type M. C. Escher loved) refers to the creation of tiles of varying shapes designed to cover a surface completely. Imagine the copper shields that were welded together to form the surface of the Statue of Liberty, and you'll get the idea.
Common 3D modeling today involves taking a complex model and breaking it down into simpler shapes, or subdivisions -- what developers call sub-Ds. If you want a model to appear detailed, naturally, you create more subdivisions, made up of seemingly infinitely more triangles and quads. But a new intermediate form of processing during the rendering stage enables very detailed models that are being rendered at a distance -- where such detail might not matter anyway -- to be simplified, using a process that compiles sub-Ds into tessellations that are just detailed enough to fit the scene at the moment. Microsoft introduced this rendering scheme as part of DX11 during a company game developers' conference late last year. More complete details on the procedure may be found in the new Direct3D 11 SDK.
On Thursday, a Microsoft spokesperson told Betanews that DirectX 11 will also feature improvements to the general mathematical library that will help enable developers of all kinds to make GPUs accessible for everyday computing purposes, not just 3D rendering and gaming -- what hardware engineers are calling General Purpose GPU (GPGPU). "Rather than just focusing on pixels and triangles," the spokesperson told us, "the compute shader is intended to take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor."
All of this is being introduced to Windows 7, but also to the Windows user -- and this time, not so much as an incentive to get a new PC. Now, users won't have to join a club to get benefits. From our perspective, maybe Microsoft has finally "joined the club."
Download Windows 7 Release Candidate 64-bit from Fileforum now.
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Actually Directx 11 should be provided to all supported platforms. It is just a nasty way to force an upgrade to Win7
Score: 0
|DX10 uses WDDM1, DX11 uses WDDM1.1.
WDDM cannot easily be backported to XP and would either require a rewrite of the XP WDDM, or a rewrite of DX, neither of which are feasible. DX11 will work with Vista.
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|So retrofit the OS. End of problem. I mean, if it's a mere .1 release, it can't be THAT significant now, can it? (cheeky grin)
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|Which OS are we retrofitting?
Again: VISTA WILL GET DIRECT X 11.
XP didn't get 10...for a number of reasons...you're not actually expecting it to get 11, are you?
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|Vista.
XP is missing required plumbing, not the least of which is a re-written GDI.
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|...
...I really don't think there are many other ways of stating this, but I will try:
Vista will have DirectX 11. DirectX 11 will work in Vista. Microsoft will give Vista the 1.1 point release of WDDM and thus, DirectX 11 will work. You will be able to download and install DirectX 11 in Vista. Vista will support DirectX 11. Microsoft will offer an update for Vista to DirectX 11.
"So retrofit the OS. End of problem."
They will. There isn't a problem. DirectX 11 isn't out yet, but by the time it is released (with Win7)...
(say it with me...)
Vista will have DirectX 11. ;-)
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|Dude, did you not see the "cheeky grin" in brackets... :) :) ;)
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|I'm playin'. (did you not see the winky-smiley?)
Oh, BTW: DX11 will work in Vista. ;)
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|Hate to say it, but Vista Ultimate x64 was one of the least complicated and fasted installs I've done. Not sure who in their right mind (in a business environment of course) is going to UPGRADE...this is why you have Active Directory, folder redirection, Exchange, RIS, etc.. So the PC is really just a 'dumb terminal', and all of the docs/apps/email are managed/stored/installed automatically by servers.
Running a Q9650 w/ 4GB RAM on a 1TB drive took about 35 minutes, including partitioning manually.
Windows 7 RC1 took about 28 minutes on the same system....and runs much more efficiently...but isn't fully supported in all games on a Radeon 4850 X2 card
Score: 1
|Well on my lowly Celeron on 512Ram,got on desktop in 23 minutes,compared to 45 and 95 minutes on XP and Vista RC,s respectively on same machine?
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|"Running a Q9650 w/ 4GB RAM on a 1TB drive took about 35 minutes, including partitioning manually."
Running a Dual Core e8400 with 4 gigs of RAM and RAID0 took about 15 minutes, including partitioning. Why so long?
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|I'm going to take a guess and say that the 20+ minutes included walking away from the PC and back to a waiting screen asking to move on, or perhaps fiddling with partitioning and drive formats.
I have a Q6600 [@3.0ghz] and 8gb of Ram and my Windows 7 install took 15 minutes on a Sata 300 Seagate 750gb drive, my Vista install on the same machine took just about 4 mins more and that's PROBABLY due to lower or unlucky low avg. rates on the Sata 150 Seagate 200gb drive I was installing on at that time.
I'm not a Linux-head by any means but it WOULD be nice if Windows 7 had some spiffy effects to choose from, like Ubuntu's desktop effects and compiz. I mean...why the hell not, right? It doesn't have to be the default, let people choose - but have the option.
Score: 0
|Compiz is a 3rd party app.
I am certain, once people start messing around with WPF, we'll start seeing some "fun" desktop effects. Frankly, I am surprised it hasn't started already.. (probably due more to a lack of supporting tools from MSFT than anything else, though...)
Score: 0
|spiffy effects means $$$ support when/if it breaks some app.
They don't want to offer too many options because then they have to port those over to the next OS to maintain backwards compatibility.
I wonder how MS is going to migrate those freebies that came with ultimate? i.e. if you had ultimate and used a new sounds scheme, but migrate to nonultimate 7, do you lose your sound preferences completely? poker? etc?
Score: 0
|AFAIK, you cannot "upgrade" Ultimate to anything *but* "Ultimate"...and I would assume existing programs remain, regardless of whether they came with the OS or not.
That said, I wouldn't miss *any* of the "Extras" that came with Vista Ultimate. Microsoft pissed off a *lot* of people with that "Hey, we'll give you lots of cool free stuff!" bait and switch BS. I paid, they didn't deliver. Hell, they damn near *removed* it in SP1.
...yeah, I 'm a little bitter. Could you tell?
Score: 1
|I can tell. I'm not bitter. I simply didn't upgrade machines to vista as a direct result of testing ultimate. MSFT may have gotten a few bucks from me getting ultimate, but they lost thousands in us delaying rollouts (yes even hardware) because of Vista not being appropriate/ready for our work environment.
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|"Just to upgrade our XP SP3 machines to Vista SP1 at work took 2.5 hours for the install,(backups, chkdsk, install, reboots) and another 2-3 hours of preparing for the install and post reinstall"
2.5 hours? really only takes me 10 minutes to install vista. stop bashing and stop using it on old computers. why bother installing it when you know it going to run poorly on 10 year old PC's
and they were not holding games hostage with DX 10 it was up to the game developers to decide which DX to use and guess what they are going to use the latest software available for there games. do you see any games coming out which only require direct X 5? i think not.
all the sheep are coming out to bash vista here as usual
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|Yeah it's our fault we went through a supported migration strategy. How dare we! How dare Microsoft advertise upgrading as a migration strategy and offer media and SKU's directly that support such scenarios!
We only upgraded on
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|"Ya'll are so black and white for your love/hate for Operating systems and consoles. It is rather amusing to witness."
Could not have said it better myself!
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|If they are going to hold gamers hostage again and force an upgrade to Windows 7 to access the features of DX11, they could have another Vista (marketing failure) on their hands. Might as well hang on to XP until we are forced to go 64 bit.
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|Direct3D 10 uses the new Windows Vista WDDM 1 that's why it's only available on Vista. DirectX 11 will be available for Vista too
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|What do you mean "forced" to go 64-bit? 64 bit offers many advantages. You should have been building servers with 64-bit only years ago, and desktop clients should have it to, considering $50 gets you 4 gigs of RAM.
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|Scratch previous comment...thought you were referring to x86 RAM limit of 3.2~3.5GB being recognized, to x64 actually seeing all 4GB...not the price of 4GB of RAM...sorry!
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|Wonder why they did not use OpenCL instead of the proprietary, patent encumbered, DirectX11 GPGPU? Well, no surprise really, this is Microsoft, king of the proprietay, patent encumbered, patent laiden, super expensive software.
Vista Ultimate (LOL) has been slashed to $249 for a _single_ user license. The more feature rich, more secure, more reliable, more efficient, OSX Leopard costs $131.89 for _five_ licenses. That is $26.38 per copy of OSX! And with OSX you do not need to buy Anti-virus, Spyware removers, and the like, saving you even more money and most importantly time which is lots of money.
Score: -3
|Too bad you have to buy a *computer* with that.... (And every Mac you buy comes *with* it)
I bet you wish they came with brains too. ;)
Score: 0
|look at this ignorant moron, OpenGL is way behind Direct3D. They are still playing catch up. They finally dropped FFP in OpenGL 3 and Direct3D did that way before when they released DirectX 10. DirectX SDK is no comparison to that of OpenGL, it's way better and is regularly updated too. Don't be jealous just because you can't play games like GTA 4, Crysis in crap OS X and guess what Resident Evil 5 is soon coming for Windows too. All those games use Direct3D.
OS X...oh yeah, exploits on OS X just works. Hackers have proven it, it's much easier to exploit Leopard than Windows Vista. Too bad, ignorant morons like you will never understand.
Score: -4
|Wow, PC_Tool...just wow. Your stupidity is getting worse by the day.
"Too bad you have to buy a *computer* with that.... (And every Mac you buy comes *with* it)"
You have OSX confused with the Microsoft tax...see, Apple users actually upgrade their OS. I know Microsoft idiots don't know anything about it, but, yes, new Apple OSes actually run on older hardware and do work pretty well. Can't say the same of Microsoft's bloated, insecure, artificially limited, super expensive OS "upgrades" (ROFL). But hey, you can buy some cheapo clone box running Windows, anti-virus, spyware, with slow memory and a low resolution display, etc.... and think you are getting a better deal.
Score: -2
|"Apple users actually upgrade their OS."
Really? No s***? *gasp* Who'da thunk it?
Way to miss the point, genius. (Anyone shocked? No? Astounding...)
Let's see, I can spend $1000 for a computer with MacOSX...or I can build my own PC (Which I have been doing for over a decade) for $500 with Windows (Or I can buy a dell, an HP, a Lenovo, the list really goes on and on...I have more choices and more options than can be listed).
Hmm..how *badly* do I really need OSX? Is it *worth* the extra $500? Nope.
"you can buy some cheapo clone box running Windows, anti-virus, spyware, with slow memory and a low resolution display, etc.... and think you are getting a better deal."
"low-resolution display" are you *high?? ...or did you just conveniently "forget" the Apple LCD 6-bit "displays millions of colors" (but actually only 260K) lie? Sorry, dimwit, my 2 1680x1050 5ms 22" wide-screens are bright, can display 1080p HD just fine (and cost me a whopping total of $400...combined). I suppose I could have gotten ONE Apple 24" display...for $899 (*laughing*) Yeah, that would have been a better deal...
Slow memory? Yup, you are high. Apparently This is slow(current RAM modules in my system)... I suppose the memory in your "old mac" is faster, right? You're not actually under the impression the Apple uses non-PC hardware, are you? *ANY* hardware that can be put into a Mac can be put into a PC. Period. Try buying *any* memory from Apple... Let's see who gets the better deal, Oh Bright One.
If the "cheapo clone-box" runs everything I need it to run? Yeah...better deal. Hype ain't worth that much. Especially when it comes to your laughable claims regarding "slow memory" and "low resolution".... Pure comic genius...
Score: -3
|ROFL. you just do not know when to stop...sound a lot like someone who used to post on here a lot....
"Way to miss the point, genius. (Anyone shocked? No? Astounding...)"
Nope, unlike you, I do get it. Let me spell it out so even someone with your low IQ can understand
Hint) Ever watch those comical Microsoft ads about how you can get a cheapo cloner laptop over a more expensive, more powerful, better specced Apple? The funniest one was this last one with the Video editor lady who chooses a crappy clone over an Apple. Wonder what program she is going to buy to edit video? iMovie comes with the Mac. Wonder what anti-virus she is going to buy? Wonder what Spyware protecter she is going to buy? Wonder what geeksquad plan she is going to get to repair her broken down, slow, spyware, virus laiden computer?
"Sorry, dimwit, my 2 1680x1050 5ms 22" wide-screens are bright, can display 1080p HD just fine"
This is a prime illustration of the typical clueless Microsoft user/fanboi. Funny thing is, i bet you do not even know what i mean. I think i am going to use this in my email signature. thanks.
Score: 0
|You're still not thinking....color me amazed...
Any memory that can be used in a Mac can be used in a PC. Any monitor that can be used in a Mac can be used on a PC. A Mac *is* a PC. If she is a professional Video editor, she will need to purchase prfessional tools for the job...just like she would on a PC. The *only* apps where the Mac versions outshine the PC is the Photoshop/Illustrator combo because you can drag between apps.
Wonder what makes you think it's going to break down... Oh, I get it...you "know" anything but a Mac will break down, right? Kind of like how you "know" she has to pay for movie and AV software.
*laughing*
"Wonder what geeksquad plan she is going to get to repair her broken down, slow, spyware, virus laiden(sic) computer?"
Sadly, the more *you* "know"...the dumber you get. AV is free and I can only assume you "know" it's going to break down because you "know" anything but a Mac will...
"Funny thing is, i bet you do not even know what i mean."
I don't even think you "know" what you mean. (Considering what little thought goes into anything you "know"...)
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|@fatty: the video is about as unrealistic as you can get. It is all in the way in which the computer is configured...plain and simple. You are no more or less intelligent for purchasing an Apple or buying/building your own MS box. To believe any differently means only that you have whole-heartedly swallowed hook, line, and sinker the advertising that has been sold to you by one of the best 'hype' manufacturers ever. I don't blame you, it's catchy. I love my iPhone and wouldn't trade it for a G1 or MS device for *anything*. However, it doesn't make you nor I more intelligent for having turned an ear to Apple.
Not surprisingly, I agree with PC_Tool. The costs for Apple computers are exorbitant. Hate to say it, but my i7 rig eats my friend's Mac Pro for breakfast on video editing/encoding. 4 cores and 8 threads demolish a simple Quad. Not to mention my memory bandwidth is almost double when running Tri-channel vs. DDR2. Not to mention, for what my rig costs, I could build ANOTHER i7 rig and still cost me less total than what my friend's Mac Pro cost. So, if we're talking about the same $ spent on these rigs, my dual i7 rigs leave a Mac Pro (for the same money) in the dust.
Score: 1
|Fatty, Apple's bigest fanboi at it again... *sigh* I swear, this never ends.
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|"instead of the proprietary, patent encumbered"
How on earth can you use these in a sentence in an attack of any competing product? Apple products are themselves proprietary and patent encumbered.
OSX comes with 5 licenses, whoopee! Now, color me confused because I can't seem to source a Mac in the Apple Store with no OSX installed, so...as a Mac user, where exactly do you use your 4 extra licenses? I have to agree that Windows licenses are steep, no argument there, but they've got 85+ percent of the market. If Apple had that, OSX would be $300 too (hell, maybe more).
You have to consider the fact that OSX also only runs on (or is only supposed to) Apple computers...that being said, it's ultimately easier to develop an OS with pretty much set specs. Windows ultimately has to run on whatever people throw at it for the most part.
You're pretty ridiculous. I'd use OSX, because it's pretty and has all the sexy effects I'd love to see in Windows - but that's about it. Owning a Mac costs way more in the short and long run because of the costs associated with servicing Apple computers without and even WITH your Applecare plan.
For $1200, I'd rather have a faster, more powerful machine than what Apple has to offer at that price point. I can spend $900 on the hardware and $300 on my Vista Ultimate OEM license, Antivirus, etc software.
Score: 0
|"This doesn't mean that all of DX11's features run on a DX11 card"
Isn't there a one "DX11" too many?
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|No because one refers to software and the other refers to hardware.
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|But surely all DX11's feature DO run on a DX11 card, but not a DX10 card.
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|One thing Microsoft could do to restore confidence is make DirectX 10 available for XP. What is Microsoft planning to charge for Windows 7? Somewhere on the range of two to three hundred bucks retail?
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|$170 on Amazon for Vista HP. The upgrade is $60, and OEM editions are even cheaper. If you are upgrading an existing system, the upgrade or OEM edition would be your best bet (cheaper). The retail editions is pretty much pointless unless you want to pay the "gotta have it now" tax.
Win7 will likely cost the same as Vista.
DX10 in XP would require rewriting DX10 or rewriting the driver-model for XP. I highly doubt Microsoft sees any valid reason to tackle either.
Score: 1
|Just to upgrade our XP SP3 machines to Vista SP1 at work took 2.5 hours for the install,(backups, chkdsk, install, reboots) and another 2-3 hours of preparing for the install and post reinstall.
.net framework broke on every machine, and required a special tool on MSDN to remove and reinstall (an hourlong process with compiling and patching and reboots)
All Printer drivers had to be wiped, reboot before the install. After the install an admin had to install every driver manually.
Outlook in online mode had freezing issues on Vista that didn't exist in XP. The only thing that seemed to fix it was to go to cached mode, which we don't prefer for our environment.
Some apps just didn't work on Vista, even with the compatibility tweaks and they were not listed on Microsoft's site as incompatible.
Generic performance of logging in was faster than XP, but actual desktop use like opening apps and start menu was slower.
We terminated the testing of Vista upgrades after two installs. We now just use images and migrate profiles to base Vista images, or stick with XP using downgrade rights.
Score: -3
|Why waste the time attempting to upgrade? In the organization I am in, we simply reimage a hard drive if there is a problem we can't solve in 20-30 minutes. Upgrading is a painful process for OS's which is why a good portion of sys admins do not bother. We just push out a new image and have users turn in hard drives for reimaging with 1-1.5 hours per re-image depending on the baseline required.
Score: 0
|NEWSFLASH: Vista was a pain in the ass. (Who knew?)
"Just to upgrade our XP SP3 machines to Vista SP1 at work took 2.5 hours for the install,(backups, chkdsk, install, reboots) and another 2-3 hours of preparing for the install and post reinstall."
Win7 install: 20 Minutes. Ripping files and settings (via Windows Easy Transfer) 20 minutes (if you have a *large* amount of data). Consider this fixed.
".net framework broke on every machine, and required a special tool on MSDN to remove and reinstall (an hourlong process with compiling and patching and reboots)"
.NET worked on the Vista upgrade I tested at work. No .net upgrades needed, no dependency issues. I am assuming PowerShell has something to do with the amount of effort I am guessing they put into getting it right this time. Consider it fixed.
"All Printer drivers had to be wiped, reboot before the install. After the install an admin had to install every driver manually."
Printer drivers are the same between Vista and Win7. (You actually expected the drivers to transfer from XP to Vista? We're you on crack at the time?) Next time, share the printers from the server and store all necessary drivers there. All the end-user has to do at that point is remove the old printer and re-add it through the "Add printers" wizard.
"Outlook in online mode had freezing issues on Vista that didn't exist in XP. The only thing that seemed to fix it was to go to cached mode, which we don't prefer for our environment."
Odd. Never heard of cached mode *not* being the preferred mode of operation. I'd love to know why it isn't in your environment...
"Some apps just didn't work on Vista, even with the compatibility tweaks and they were not listed on Microsoft's site as incompatible."
Duh? Microsoft cannot test *all* apps. Unless they were listed as "compatible" they should have been tested prior to the upgrades (hell, they should have been tested regardless). Again, Win7 and Vista use the same core and basic services/API's. Compatibility *shouldn't* be an issue.
"Generic performance of logging in was faster than XP, but actual desktop use like opening apps and start menu was slower."
Vista's WPM (GUI) was broken @ launch. I don't believe it was truly fixed until *after* SP1. Have had only one issue with Win7 (due to an upgrade install vs. clean) regarding slowness. Boots in 20 seconds (or just over if you include POST) and the desktop is immediately available (Unless McAfee is loaded, which has *never* worked well...even in XP)
"We terminated the testing of Vista upgrades after two installs. We now just use images and migrate profiles to base Vista images, or stick with XP using downgrade rights."
Much better. Good ideas both. We deployed Vista to a limited amount of systems after a period of testing but the effort was quickly scrapped once we got wind (and some experience) with the Win7 beta, at which point the decision was made to skip mass-deployment of Vista. We're waiting for Win7. Still testing each build as they come out, but compatibility has only improved.
Score: 2
|We had issues with cached mode under OL 2003 Exchange 2003 under XP. OL clients with Korean characters would crash frequently. During rollout, Microsoft support said at the time it was a known issue, and to use online mode until a patch was released. We continued the rollout in online mode, and it has been our standard ever since. Because all clients can VPN in and have instant access to mail in online mode, it is far preferred. It's far preferred for roaming profiles, or even static profiles, the cache never has to be rebuilt, there never is a delay getting access to your mailbox, and there are never corrupt ost files, something I see exchange admins complaining about quite a bit. In fact I don't understand cached mode, other than being in an airplane and wanting to write an e-mail. All other times our users are connected.
As for printer drivers, they are shared Server 2003/R2 printers, and have worked fine for W2K and XPSP2/3 clients for many years. That on an upgrade of vista we would be expected to wipe and reinstall the same binary files seems rather strange.
I know the admins rant about doing an upgrade install, I wanted to test the upgrade because from the perspective of a technical standpoint, it should be straightforward. Guess not. We will be going the image and profile migrate route, and also will be looking at 7 anyway, since to train for vista and then train for 7 that would be rather silly for our end-users...
Score: 0
|We've never had to deal with the Korean character-set deal, so I guess we lucked out on that.
As for cached mode's usefulness; Instead of pulling *every* email from the server *every* time they open their client, cahced mode allows the client to store mail it's already received without having to create a PST file for their client to "deliver" to. The connection between some of our sites is not the best, and our VPN speeds range wildly depending on what service they are connecting through. Couple that with the fact that we are not allowing our users to create PST files for various reasons and cached mode really seems the best answer.
Suddenly I am *very* glad we don't have sites in Korea. :p
Score: 0
|let me guess #1 feature of Windows 7, it's either BitLocker To Go or multi-touch or the new Superbar (doesn't deserve that spot)
Score: 0
|Personally for me it is black box recorder.
Bitlocker to go and multitouch are useless to me.
Score: 0
|Yes! Agreed 100%!
That app is going to be a *godsend* for IT in instances where remote access is problematic.
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|Will see...
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|DirectX 11 will be available for Vista too
Score: 1
|I want to thank the writers and, for the most part, the posters, for the education on the upcoming Win7. While people seemed to support different OS and other things here, I found some of the comments very helpful. Thank you.
Score: 7
|oh how kind! that's the attitude i'd like to see in everyone everywhere.
Score: 2
|