No XP, but Look Forward To 7

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item No XP, but Look Forward To 7

  • Gates should give everyone who bought Vista a free copy of XP to install whilst we all wait for a decent version of Windows (7?) to come out in 2009. 😉 I don't have Vista (thankfully) but I've not heard anything really good about it. Lot's of folks are comparing it to the other mistake known as the "Millenium Edition". 😀

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
    "Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
    Intro to Tally Tables and Functions

  • Vista is a change and I could deal with all the changes, the UAC isn't too bad, but it's slow. That's my biggest complaint. It just slows me down, as in waiting for the cursor to come back while it does something.

  • :

    Jeff Moden (4/6/2008)


    Gates should give everyone who bought Vista a free copy of XP to install whilst we all wait for a decent version of Windows (7?) to come out in 2009. 😉 I don't have Vista (thankfully) but I've not heard anything really good about it. Lot's of folks are comparing it to the other mistake known as the "Millenium Edition". 😀

    True, but Millenium only had a single edition, so you could at least count on it screwing up in the same predictable places...:) Not like you had "Millenium Home Basic/Premium/super unleaded/ultimate".....:P

    All right, I'll stop being mean....:w00t: Vista isn't so bad. As with pretty much every other new OS, there are some things I truly dislike, some things I used to curse at I now am used to, and some fairly decent things.

    I do however think that the "32 flavors of Vista" was a disaster, especially with what I see as a lack of clear direction as to what does or doesn't work, what should or should not work, and what is included in the arcane version you happen to have.

    When things don't work/stop working/don't install, it would be nice to know that it's because the OS doesn't support them, and upfront. I've run into 4 products so far (2 Microsoft products) that have the "Vista Certified" logo, only to find out that they don't work with my current VERSION of Vista.

    Choices can be a very cool thing, but you have to be able to know what your choices entail, and the specific documentation on that is, well, "lacking".

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?

  • I wouldn't hold my breath. The BBC has posted an article about this citing Ars Technica which points out that the likelihood of a 2009 RTM of Windows 7 is bleak at best.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7334123.stm

    When ME came out, 2000 was already in the works, and XP already had betas (as Whistler). I remember because I was in High School at the time. My one pal was a beta tester for Microsoft and he already was running 2k. He made fun of me because I was running ME (I was really into that Movie Maker crap at the time, hey I was in High School 🙂 ). As near as I can tell from the BBC article and from the Ars Technica site, the alpha of Windows 7 is almost exactly like Vista, and thus would not provide any improvements. Kind of like how SP1 of Vista has not provided any improvements.

    For me, I run Vista 64 in a virtual machine on a MacBook (not pro) with 4GB's of Ram. No Aero Glass and no UAC (I run in Administrator). I don't have many issues with this kind of setup, but then again, it isn't my primary operating system either. I have never been a proponent of windows, and likely never will be. I can say that I find a few things reasonably anoying about Vista, but I think most of the complaining about it is WAY overboard. Yeah it sucks, but its more stable than ME was. I should know, in addition to having ran it myself for about a year, I had 200 or so laptops I administrated at the time running ME on a Novell 5 network. Looking at XP vs Vista and 98 vs ME I can tell you most certainly that ME sucked 200% worse than 98 SE. Vista sucks only about 50% more than XP.

    Even if it was so bad as to be a ME, does anyone seriously believe Microsoft is capable of shipping a replacement OS that isn't even in serious development in 1 year? Are you out of your mind? They couldn't ship Vista on time, and I am thinking that server 2008 was also late. Even if it were in the works, Microsoft has a bad rep as far as shipping on time. The most I would hope for is a half baked beta by 2009, and I mean HALF BAKED. The probability is that the 2009 versions of Windows 7 will be as much as crap as Windows Vista, if not as bad as ME.

    In any event, those who like to run Microsoft will undoubtedly be forced into running rubbish Operating Systems for some time. Too bad, because I love SQL Server, and I love VS.

    Aleksei


    A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!

  • Vista is stable. I only run a few things on it and use it for video editing, but it runs well. Just slow. I have 4GB of RAM, no Aero Glass, UAC (non-Admin). I can deal with the workflow change and hidden stuff. There are things I like, but the slowness isn't acceptable.

    With a 3 year old laptop, 1GB of RAM, Firefox and IE are quicker. That's unacceptable.

  • I haven't used Vista yet, except for a brief trial, but am quite happy with XP, so won't be changing soon.

    On the matter of Consistency. Since Microsoft control the specification of both T-SQL and C#, the logical thing to do would be to extend T-SQL to support the C# syntax (which is what the Policy Based Management tool uses).

    In case you haven't read the blog, the difference is that PBM uses, for example, DATEADD('day',1,getdate()). So the unit keyword is a string constant. In my view, the logical thing to do would be to allow the T-SQL parser to accept string constants as well as keywords. From my knowledge of parsers, this wouldn't be a major change.

    Derek

  • I've been using Vista since beta, and there are some problems with it, but for the most part, it does a good job for me. I use it at home, and would use it at work if IT would let me. I really like the desktop search and file meta-tags. Basically, any OS I use has some advantages and some disadvantages, and I like the tradeoff in Vista well enough.

    On the consistency point, I have enough problems with T-SQL having weird consistency issues already. My (least) favorite example is Replace vs Charindex. One has the parent string first, the substring second, the other has this reversed. Another is Join vs Apply - these just don't mesh in my mind. I can use them, but I find it awkward.

    - Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
    Property of The Thread

    "Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon

  • Heh... you should compare those with STUFF 😉

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
    "Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
    Intro to Tally Tables and Functions

  • Yeah, Stuff has yet a third layout inconsistent with either Replace or Charindex. There's a reason I have the string functions page bookmarked in BOL.

    - Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
    Property of The Thread

    "Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon

  • GSquared (4/8/2008)


    On the consistency point, I have enough problems with T-SQL having weird consistency issues already. My (least) favorite example is Replace vs Charindex. One has the parent string first, the substring second, the other has this reversed. Another is Join vs Apply - these just don't mesh in my mind. I can use them, but I find it awkward.

    My point was that it should be fairly easy to allow T-SQl to accept either syntax. If you are used to T-SQL only you'd putselect dateadd(day,1,getdate()but it would also acceptselect dateadd('day',1,getdate())Of course, there are some questions to be answered, such as is this OK?declare @chunk varchar(10);

    set @chunk = 'day';

    select dateadd(@chunk,1,getdate())If this is allowed, then the error checking moves to execution. If it's not, i.e. only string constants are allowed, then the error checking remains in the 'compile' phase.

    Derek

  • I think that we should have some consistency as well, as Derek suggested. If that means all my T-SQL syntax needs to change, I'm ok with that. Probably easier for us to change than developers.

  • Derek Dongray (4/9/2008)


    GSquared (4/8/2008)


    On the consistency point, I have enough problems with T-SQL having weird consistency issues already. My (least) favorite example is Replace vs Charindex. One has the parent string first, the substring second, the other has this reversed. Another is Join vs Apply - these just don't mesh in my mind. I can use them, but I find it awkward.

    My point was that it should be fairly easy to allow T-SQl to accept either syntax. If you are used to T-SQL only you'd putselect dateadd(day,1,getdate()but it would also acceptselect dateadd('day',1,getdate())Of course, there are some questions to be answered, such as is this OK?declare @chunk varchar(10);

    set @chunk = 'day';

    select dateadd(@chunk,1,getdate())If this is allowed, then the error checking moves to execution. If it's not, i.e. only string constants are allowed, then the error checking remains in the 'compile' phase.

    Consistency is cute, but the optimizer needs to be able to keep up and know what the right way to handle that variable. Jeff stumbled onto one of those cases where Top @n is NOT treated the same way as top N the other day, and there's ultimately no good reason for it.

    Take a look here: http://qa.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/FindPost482005.aspx

    Introducing anything that makes the optimizer have a conniption because of a parameter that way - no thanks.

    Speaking of - the optimizer really needs some help IMO. I know I'm standing on the outside, whining about non-trivial things, but there are real issues that just don't have a good answer.

    For example (and this is a bit of a stupid example, but still), how is it possible that the longhand version work better than the built-in, deterministic, precise function as below? If that's the case on a lot of scalar functions, then why wouldn't these functions get the same treatment as non-indexed views (copy the text in to the query, execute the whole).

    Function do NOT need to be this "broken".

    drop table #mattnums

    create table #mattnums(id int identity(1,1) primary key clustered, n bigint)

    insert #mattnums(n)

    select rand(checksum(newid()))*400

    from sys.all_columns sc1, sys.all_columns sc2

    go

    declare @b-2 bigint

    declare @bsh bigint

    set statistics time on

    select @bsh=n,@b=@bsh*@bsh*@bsh*@bsh*@bsh*@bsh*@bsh from #mattnums

    select @b-2=(n)*(n)*(n)*(n)*(n)*(n)*(n) from #mattnums

    select @b-2=power(n,7) from #mattnums

    set statistics time off

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?

  • Matt Miller (4/9/2008)


    Consistency is cute, but the optimizer needs to be able to keep up and know what the right way to handle that variable. Jeff stumbled onto one of those cases where Top @n is NOT treated the same way as top N the other day, and there's ultimately no good reason for it.

    That's why I think only the string constant form would be allowed. The logic becomes...-- new bit

    if next_token is string_constant then

    strip_quotes_and_retokenize

    endif

    -- end new bit

    if next_token is symbol

    if next_token is datetime_keyword then

    process

    else

    error

    endif

    else

    error

    endif

    As I mentioned, if any sort of string variable or field is allowed then it opens a whole new can of worms!

    Derek

  • Matt Miller (4/7/2008)


    I do however think that the "32 flavors of Vista" was a disaster, especially with what I see as a lack of clear direction as to what does or doesn't work, what should or should not work, and what is included in the arcane version you happen to have.

    it's the only way you can get customers to pay the most they are willing to pay for something. sell the same item for 10 different prices. they do it with orange juice at the grocery store. 10 different SKUs, 10 different prices.

    except in that case, you can pour the juice into any cup.

    with vista, you have to buy special cups too. 🙂

    ---------------------------------------
    elsasoft.org

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