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1. Comment - PDC 2009: Scuttling huge chunks of Vista architecture for a faster Windows 7

   (Nov 19, 2009 - 11:35 AM)

   If you think Linux or OS X (or worse, MacOS, as you indicate "a decade") have a better SMP scaling story than NT (and now 7), you are very mistaken.

2. Comment - PDC 2009: Scuttling huge chunks of Vista architecture for a faster Windows 7

   (Nov 17, 2009 - 11:04 PM)

   Exactly--and very well-put. The title and conclusion (written at the beginning) miss the point--these improvements aren't noticed until you get into hardware that most people just don't have, even today. These are big iron limitations... consumers certainly haven't run into those limits in Vista yet. That day is coming, but to characterize this as "scuttling huge chunks of Vista" is just plain wrong on many levels. These are very important changes, but they hardly constitute "huge chunks" of Vista's code or architecture. And they certainly have nothing to do with the allegation that Vista slows down over time.

3. Comment - Leaks indicate Microsoft is un-rethinking the Win7 taskbar

   (Dec 9, 2008 - 3:39 AM)

   "...the Aero windows have semi-transparent borders. Of course, that's a feature that premiered in Windows Vista. But in a virtual machine, semi-transparency doesn't typically work because the virtual video driver in Microsoft's Virtual PC does not enable full DirectX 9 compatibility."
   
   No--this is already available in Vista (and has been since the betas). This is a feature on the client side (RDP client), not the host. The rendering is done on the client (i.e., this requires Vista or higher on the client side), but it is not enabled in the RDP client by default.
   
   This keeps popping up as a new feature of Win7, but it really isn't. There are some other new RDP features in Win7 that are definitely worth talking about, but this isn't one of them.

4. Comment - PDC 2008: Sinofsky acknowledges Vista UAC is a problem, Windows 7 adds options

   (Oct 30, 2008 - 2:32 AM)

   "However I still wonder how Windows secures itself from malware which can press buttons and click mouse on its own."
   
   That attack vector was acknowledged and addressed with Secure Desktop (when the screen dims for a UAC prompt). Programs cannot respond to these dialogs.

5. Comment - Windows HPC Server 2008 ships: Is this a 'cloud' alternative?

   (Sep 23, 2008 - 2:09 AM)

   I think you're a bit wet on this--"ghosting" did not come from Microsoft. That honor goes to Binary Research, which was later purchased by Symantec. If you look back at NT Server going WAY back, they had support for SW mirroring--and it was called mirroring, not "ghosting."
   
   And as for HPC apps, they are aiming this mostly at industry verticals, along with some more general-use apps such as Matlab and Mathematica. It uses an MPI stack just like *nix clusters, so yes, it really is a modern supercomputer. And for x86, they are seeing record efficiency scores (on LINPACK, anyhow).