Brian
03-01-2006, 03:23 PM
Why Windows Vista Won't Suck (http://www.thetechlounge.com/news/9167/Why+Windows+Vista+Wont+Suck/)
"Many users view Windows XP (and Windows 2000, and previous Windows versions) as unsafe. No matter how many patches and updates Microsoft releases, the foundation of the OS itself—the kernel—is designed and built in a way that prevents it from being truly secure. The only solution, it is argued, is to redesign and rebuild the kernel with a focus on security and stability.
Well, that's exactly what Microsoft is doing with Vista. The whole kernel has been reorganized and rewritten to help prevent software from affecting the system in unsavory ways. In Vista, it should be much more difficult for unauthorized programs (like Viruses and Trojans) to affect the core of the OS and secretly harm your system. That's not all, of course. Microsoft has made it their aim to make life easier on developers by improving and simplifying the way software interfaces with the system and the underlying hardware. Naturally, performance has been a major concern, too.
Take, for example, heaps. Most Windows XP users don't know what a "heap" is (it deals with how developers allocate memory and make memory requests), but there are problems in Windows XP when developers deal with large heaps, heap fragmentation, etc. In the Vista kernel, they have cleaned that up, helping to prevent heap fragmentation and gracefully deal with large heap requests. If that sounds like a bunch of technobabble nonsense, don't worry. You don't have to know what it means, you just have to know that it makes life easier on developers and improves performance. And it doesn't stop with heaps. Lots of relatively little, commonly-used functions have been improved, like procedure calls. "
Read full story here (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931914,00.asp)
"Many users view Windows XP (and Windows 2000, and previous Windows versions) as unsafe. No matter how many patches and updates Microsoft releases, the foundation of the OS itself—the kernel—is designed and built in a way that prevents it from being truly secure. The only solution, it is argued, is to redesign and rebuild the kernel with a focus on security and stability.
Well, that's exactly what Microsoft is doing with Vista. The whole kernel has been reorganized and rewritten to help prevent software from affecting the system in unsavory ways. In Vista, it should be much more difficult for unauthorized programs (like Viruses and Trojans) to affect the core of the OS and secretly harm your system. That's not all, of course. Microsoft has made it their aim to make life easier on developers by improving and simplifying the way software interfaces with the system and the underlying hardware. Naturally, performance has been a major concern, too.
Take, for example, heaps. Most Windows XP users don't know what a "heap" is (it deals with how developers allocate memory and make memory requests), but there are problems in Windows XP when developers deal with large heaps, heap fragmentation, etc. In the Vista kernel, they have cleaned that up, helping to prevent heap fragmentation and gracefully deal with large heap requests. If that sounds like a bunch of technobabble nonsense, don't worry. You don't have to know what it means, you just have to know that it makes life easier on developers and improves performance. And it doesn't stop with heaps. Lots of relatively little, commonly-used functions have been improved, like procedure calls. "
Read full story here (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931914,00.asp)