Quote:
Originally Posted by Baltar  If you count insane memory requirements as a feature or improvement then sure, Vista's got lots of them.  Vista requires a minimum of 512 MB RAM and for "Vista Premium" it's 1 GB, while the current Ubuntu Linux requires 256 MB. Windows 2000/XP by the way, can run on 128 MB (or even 64 MB with some restrictions). |
The OS itself is just one of the many things that need memory. Microsoft are just being honest with their memory recommendations. If you run Photoshop or any other 'serious' app, you will need to go over 1GB anyways.
Windows 3.1 after all ran well on 4MB of RAM.
In Vista, you have an anti-spyware app (Defender), a firewall and many other things running by default, that you didn't have in older versions (XP had the firewall).
No OS on its own is very useful. It matters what software you run on it. I use lots of software and run lots at the same time (plus virtual machines), that's why I went to 2GB. It had nothing to do with the about 100Mb (not 2x or 4x from XP) more that Vista requires.
And as a developer who has deep understanding of DX10, it really is hard to back port. There are a lot of changes on the driver side (it has been moved out of the kernel). This is not just a simple new version with few changes. And that's why both NVidia and ATI took long to provide OK drivers for DX10 - lots of changes.