DirectX4+ Why not?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

For my own education, whay was DirectX never kept up-to-date for Windows NT?
Was their an architectural reason or merely MS trying to squeeze me into
buying Win2K?

Paul DS.
--
Please remove the "x-" if replying to sender.

 

[Calvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi Paul,

A darn good question !! Perhaps someone with detailed knowledge of this subject
can enlighten us

I suspect you are right, if it is like most other issues with NT4, it is a
COMMERCIAL decision to attempt to strongarm us into a needless upgrade, no real
technical reason at all :-(

Calvin.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Calvin wrote:

> Hi Paul,
>
> A darn good question !! Perhaps someone with detailed knowledge of this
> subject can enlighten us
>
> I suspect you are right, if it is like most other issues with NT4, it is
> a COMMERCIAL decision to attempt to strongarm us into a needless
> upgrade, no real technical reason at all :-(
>
> Calvin.
>

It is right in there with the lack of built-in USB
and Firewire support. NT's feature set was finalized
very before USB and Firewire came out - and while
DX3 was just coming off the drawing board.

The way MS didn't keep modifying NT to keep up with
new technology was annoying, but I do understand
their position. At some point the ROI on making
such mods to NT becomes very poor compared to making
the same investment in the next OS.

As well, eventually the new technology gets so far
ahead of the old OS that it becomes increasing difficult,
if not impossible, to modernize the old OS. As an
analogy, consider that it would be idiotic to try to
modernize a 1922 Model T (just saw one a couple of
weeks ago) until it has all the features that are
standard in modern cars - at some point you simply
have to abandon the old car and make a whole new
car.

 

[Calvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi Rob,

I understand your position, and to a degree, I support it. Obviously, a point
has to be reached where you stop development on any project - but what I find
galling is the ease with which Microsoft reach this decision, particularly when
you consider it is in their financial interests to make it !

Carry your car analogy a bit further - if you did retro-fit your 1922 'T' model,
it would cost a lot of money to bring it up to modern standards, the result
probably wouldn't be very 'pretty' - but you can bet your life that the result
would probably be a lot sturdier than the 'flash' models that came after it

I would argue the same is true in the computer OS world to !

Calvin.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Calvin wrote:
> Hi Rob,
>
> I understand your position, and to a degree, I support it. Obviously, a
> point has to be reached where you stop development on any project - but
> what I find galling is the ease with which Microsoft reach this
> decision, particularly when you consider it is in their financial
> interests to make it !
>

Continuing with the car analogy ...

If you have a Model T and you need a Taurus, I would expect
everyone to agree that you either buy a Taurus or you pay
through the nose for the upgrades necessary to add the Taurus
features to the Model T. No one would expect Ford to do
those upgrades for free or to give you a Taurus for free.

However, when it comes to software everyone whines that
they don't get all of those expensive upgrades for free.
And those upgrades *are* an expensive investment for a
company like MicroSoft, so they need to either charge you
for those upgrades or they need to recover the costs
through future sales.


> Carry your car analogy a bit further - if you did retro-fit your 1922
> 'T' model, it would cost a lot of money to bring it up to modern
> standards, the result probably wouldn't be very 'pretty' - but you can
> bet your life that the result would probably be a lot sturdier than the
> 'flash' models that came after it

I doubt that very much. I have done enough programming to
know that you can only go so far with upgrades before you
reach a point where it is time to start from scratch.

Going back to the car analogy, if you want a modern suspension
on a Model T, you first need to replace the frame so that you
have something to hang the new suspension from. And because
you have replaced the frame, none of the body panels fit
anymore so those all have to be replaced too. And the new
suspension isn't worth much unless you also have modern
wheels with modern tires on those wheels. And son of a gun,
so far we've added 40% to the weight of the vehicle so now
the original engine is feeling a little underpowered ...
ah screw it, lets just build a new freaking car.

>
> I would argue the same is true in the computer OS world to !

It is not true in either world.

>
> Calvin.
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi,

Well I can only agree with Calvin. I have worked with W2K and
XP................ The latter is enough to make you cry your heart
out.

Thing is Ms made W2K for money and that's the only reason, features
like USB and Firewire (although I am a SCSI addict could have been
built into NT4/5 and still keep a small size

Talking about size nothing better illustrates the size issue than this
page: http://www.symantec.com/nav/nav_9xnt/sys_req.html.

Look at the processor needed to run this product and than knowing that
W98 is about three times bigger (about 400 MB) than NT4 with SP 6a and
the patches, etc..

Can anybody tell me in what aspect windows improved in the W2K and XP
versions, leaving the USB and Firewire aside?
In my humble opinion only lots of space needed for the OS with the
result faster processors that didn't make anything faster at all.
At XP a user interface made for complete idiots even W2K makes me
uncomfortable.

I understand that Ms understood that the marked demanded something
like XP so that every dummy could use a PC. One of the side effects is
the internet today *.

* I am on the net since 1993 and I agree that there's no need for an
Internet for the happy few, till about 1996.
However, the situation today makes me sick. Spending time and efforts
to hard and software firewalls is normal but to make efforts against
things as spam and problems relating to messenger(s) of various kinds
and so on is also an effect of the 'popular Internet'.

*** I have been about four month of line since I caught a pneumonia
with side-effects.
Was hospitalized for two months, recovered about a month at home and
found out I must have changed my password the days before I went to
hospital. Good opportunity to start again with installing NT4 (still
had my data) and about 90 programs :-( but it's done. Still running
small two Pentium Pro's 200/512, 512 MB Ram and SCSI: HD's, tape, CD
and Scanners.

Sorry if I might have bothered some of you but I had to 'ventilate
this

All the best from this Dutchman in Belgium - Europe.

Hadrian

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 08:47:51 +1000, Calvin <nospam@spamcop.net> wrote:

>Bottom line, NT4 was compact, fast, simple and incredibly stable. I have seen
>major projects in this country as recently as 1 year ago created using NT4 as
>the base. One I cited in this newsgroup a while ago was a POS app by a major
>retailer here in Australia (approximately 1200 stores with on average 15 sales
>terminals each) based ENTIRELY on NT4. Why did they choose this OS ? For exactly
>the reasons I mentioned above.
>
>I'm afraid I don't think I will EVER forgive Microsoft for their decisions. I'm
>afraid I can't see any of the choices made in any other light than cold,
>calculating, and deliberately designed to improve nothing except their financial
> position.

it's Hadrian

hadrian.spam-not@40whyspamxs.com

 

[Calvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi Hadrian,

Welcome back Glad to hear you are recovering from your health problems ! I
was wondering what happened to you. I actually asked after you about a month ago
in this newsgroup, but obviously nobody knew where you were, because I certainly
got nil responses :-(

The reason I was looking for you is that I have now done what I have been
threatening to do for ages, and set up a support site specifically geared
towards installation and maintenance of NT 4.0 - it has become more of a
neccessity since Microsoft decided to cut NT4 loose.

I was hoping you would be able to contribute some expertise to the
symmetrical/multiprocessor area - the knowledge I have on this subject could be
comfortably written in 10 point font on the head of a pin !

Please have a look at http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au (specifically the multiprocessor
page - I've done all I can in this area) and let me know if you want to
contribute anything. I'm happy to publicly acknowledge sources for information
provided.

I have found a couple of other similar 'support' sites for NT4 on the net in the
last month or so, but it would appear from the time/date stamps on the pages,
that they are no longer under active development/support.

NOTE to other persons conducting similar endeavours: I would be delighted to be
proved wrong on the previous statement - if you are doing anything in this
arena, please contact me via this newsgroup or the email provided on the NT4Ref
site - it would be great to be able to 'crosslink' our sites and offer more
variety

Calvin.

 

[Calvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi Hadrian,

The Symantec page you make a reference to is very interesting. I realise you
were merely citing the page as an example of Microsoft 'bloatware' at it's worst
As it so happens the page also makes quite a few more interesting points:

You'll note that the Symantec product doesn't even support NT4 and requires IE
5+ be installed on the machine. Those requirements alone would be enough to
persuade me not to touch the product with a 10 foot barge pole ! I've actually
never liked their anti-virus product. The few customers of mine who were using
this product found that the updates nearly NEVER worked, and the product was
slow and unweildy.

I actually use and recommend AVG from Grisoft http://www.grisoft.com - it does
support NT4, is fast, compact and doesn't need IE

There is an ever increasing body of software out there that has these same
STUPID requirments. What it says to me when they lock out NT4 as a supported OS
is that their product is second rate. If they also need IE installed, the
ranking falls still further. You then look at the sizes of some of these
packages (their installed HDD footprint) and I'm left wondering HOW they could
possibly write such poor code that could WASTE so much space. It is no wonder
that the products run slow!

You compare these 'bad example' products with (for example) the tools written by
Mark Russinovich (http://www.systinternals.com) - his products are fast,
efficient, very stable and miniscule in size in comparison - obviously the
product of someone who actually DOES have a clue what he is doing!

Other annoying 'Anti-NT4' activities I recently encountered:

1. Real networks - they now want you to install RealOne player (rumoured to be
full of spyware) - massive bloat, requires IE 5+, latest version 2.0 does not
work on NT4. The reason cited for requiring the latest version of their player
is that RealPlayer8 (smaller, worked well under NT4 and didn't need IE) can't
play back the new RealVideo9 format.

REALITY: Continue using RealPlayer8. Find somebody who has RealOnePlayer
installed and borrow a copy of the updated codecs suppled with it, and copy them
back into your codecs folder on RealPlayer8 - result, RealVideo9 format now
plays just fine.

2. Apple QuickTime. According to Apple the last version of QT for NT4 is
Quicktime V6.1 - this is just plain mis-information being circulated by Apple.
I've installed V6.51 on multiple NT4 machines - no problems to report, functions
perfectly. I'd be interested to see how much money Microsoft payed Apple to
assist them in their 'your NT4 OS is toooooo old - upgrade' campaign

Calvin.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi Calvin,
I am still alive, it seems rather difficult to kill me I agree, I
just disappeared from the scene.

Your web site was book-marked before I passed out some months and saw
it grew considerable Lots of work well done.

Well, yes I can contribute to the symmetrical/multiprocessor area.

There's some in the resource kit.

However, just one thing there 're programs that won't run on a
multiprocessor machine. I advise to leave them alone. If you need them
there's a way:

1. Open your task manager.
2. Select Processes.
3. Select the running application.
4. Select Set affinity
5. Uncheck one CPU (best the CPU that has the heaviest load mostly
CPU). 0.

** This can not be done with all programs but you'll find out when you
select or try to select affinity (4 above). Nearly all NT4 program
parts don't respond to this but things as notepad and or not NT4
included programs do this, say it works 40/50 percent of the time.

*** Still remember that NT4 is a symmetric multiprocessor system when
the CPU's are there so tweaking to much as above might give strange
results. I didn't try it very much.

Well that's my two cents for the moment. I'll come with more but I
need some time.

Btw I have sent you some email

To message two now


it's Hadrian

hadrian.spam-not@40whyspamxs.com

 

[Calvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi Hadrian,

if you have the time to put together a list of things that may cause trouble in
a multiprocessor environment - and the fixes for said problems - I'll add it to
the page for you

Calvin.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Hi Calvin,

I'll have a look for that in the resource kit and from experience. It
will take some time maybe about a forthright or so since I have to
change some system things but it's in the pipeline

All the best,

it's Hadrian

hadrian.spam-not@40whyspamxs.com

 

[Calvin]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Thanks for your efforts Hadrian

I look forward to reading what you put together ! A note, by the way, if
anythning you refer to makes mention of, or has a Microsoft Knowledgebase
article dealing with the subject, can you include the Knowledge base article in
your comments. I'll turn them into 'clickable' links on the web site.

All the best,

Calvin.