[casual_games] Slow death for the current generation

[Chuck Walbourn]

> Personally, Vista is not an opportunity to do anything but send Bill and cohorts more cash.




I have to say that it is frustrating how much people view Microsoft as a monolithic entity and that only the Chairman counts for anything of substance. On behalf of the tens of thousands of people who work directly on or are associated with Windows, I must say it's pretty damn rude. I know it was mostly a cynical jab at everyone's favorite punching bag, but it's also not a terribly informed jab.



Windows Vista has been a long time in coming. There is a lot more to the release than just a version number change, a new package, and some new wallpaper backgrounds. An immense amount of R&D has gone into this release, and there are some pretty radical improvements under the covers that do in fact contribute to the evolution of the PC.



Here are a few examples:



- Security: Radically improved standard operating mode (not running everything from notepad to IE at admin level is a big deal), services isolation & hardening, restructuring of all the OS components to separate admin-only operations, a lot of appcompat investment to help older applications continue to run



- Graphics: New video driver model to make Direct3D more mainstream, stable, performant, and support better application sharing, Direct3D 10



- Networking: Fully IPv6-ready, much improved networking stack to greatly improve performance on high-bandwidth and congested links



- 64-bit computing: x86/x64-neutral licensing, greatly improved x64 inbox driver support



- Kernel: RDTSC-based scheduling and process/thread accounting, real-time scheduling for better multimedia support



- Audio: Full multichannel implementation, user-mode driver model for better performance, per-application volume control



All that is ignoring the new desktop, search, and all the other marketing stuff over at <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/>.



-Chuck Walbourn

SDE, Game Technology Group