That's funny... I should attach a little voice clip to every page here for Vista users: "DELETE STAR DOT STAR".

That actually sounds really cool -- I would only use it with a headset, and this should be a security policy that Microsoft should make very apparent to the end user if they don't already.

I wonder how customizable it is... I should check it out.

Just for information:

Benchmarking on same computer, Vista VS Windows XP SP2

In French, but pictures are worldwide.

Plus there is some new bug, there is no speed improvement. In fact, there is speed loss.

The only thing that look interesting in Vista is the ReadyBoost feature.

Better Memory/64 bit/Dual Core support perhaps ? That what I was waiting for.

What is better, having a gig of fast flash attatched to your PC at all times or having a gig of extra RAM? First has latency of a millisecond or so and bandwidth of a few MB/s, other has latency of few tens of nanoseconds and bandwidth of couple of gigs per second.

Why on earth would anyone want to have a slower cache instead of faster one?

In what way?

64bit will not improve speed in most cases. Thanks to taking a bit more memory it is often even slower since less stuff would fit to caches. E.g, every element in a doubly linked list will take around 8 more bytes of memory. if you have list if ints you would have 20 bytes per element instead of 12.

What would be the difference there? I bet less than 1% assuming they fixed XP process handler.

You do not understand what is ReadyBoost. Your memory is cleaned at each boot. Not the USB. I do not think that your HDD is quicker than a good USB 2.0 key. And I know that it will only speed up application startup, but that's a start.

Management, virtual driver bigger than 32 meg,...

For the 64 bit part, I am already waiting for the OS who will not use (as you said) much memory for nothing. I was thinking to something as using 2 int on a 64 bit chunk ( yeah I am a dreamer )

I am not a pro vista, but I wil answer you :p

Readyboost:
Windows ReadyBoost introduces a new concept in add-on system memory. You can use nonvolatile flash memory devices, such as universal serial bus (USB) flash drives, to improve performance without having to add memory "under the hood." The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard disk drive.
(from Microsoft)

I hope they will cache it at the first start :p

For the meme part, I am not talking of mem adressing, but 64 bit processor eating more int at each clock tick instead of eating them one by one ;-p It is perhaps already done but I doubt it.

Last, I am a linux debian user ( DEBIAN FTW !! ! )

I installed Win 3.1 on my PC (Athlon 2400 with 1GB memory) for fun before I installed XP. The installation was so fast, I barely saw the installation windows. And then the system was amazingly fast.

Of course Win 3.1 processes are not protected; the multitasking is co-operative, and all processes are in the same memory space. The CPU does not waste any time in scheduling stuff or jumping from userland to kernel.

Perhaps the future lies with O/Ses like Microsoft's 'Singularity', where process security takes place at compile level.

Regarding voice recognition, it presents a real problem if it is ever realized in its full capacity. With CD sound recording devices on the palms of our hands (e.g. mobile phones), voice recognition can get really dangerous.

I'm confused

When I first looked at the screenshots, I thought that it was like turning your computer into a virtual city, and programs/components would correspond to 'buildings' that relate to their purpose.

Francois: then change. I'm pretty sure that there are drivers either present in the latest kernel or under developement. I was also objecting against Linux on my laptop - since it was not supported properly, but now I came across latest SuSe and I'm in the process of switching the entire OS. The only thing I'm still under Windows is that I'm unable (understand "lazy") to set up mplayer and xmms to play my music and movies.

Anyway that hole in Vista made laugh. More the solutions MS has posted:

I have a USB head set that is usually plugged in and laying on the top of my desk. I'm sure it could pick up something at regular-to-loud volume from my speakers.

For someone with voice control enabled, I think it's very likely that their microphone could pick up something from the speakers. I don't think it's a far-fetched scenario at all!

Plus, it's simple: Make a flash game that says, "Turn up your speakers and try to click the bird as soon as you hear it make a sound." Make sure it's quiet so the user turns up his speakers very high. Then after a few mins, just blast out a command. Okay, I'm tempted to do this. Don't tell.