Computer Science Stuff

Over the past few months I have been testing out Windows 7  (64 bit Build 7100) and I must say I’m impressed by their level of effort. It seems as though their desperation borne nice fruits of labor. Instead of putting out products just for making money, they are putting out products that people like which actually makes even more money. Seems like they have a nice equation system going on. So let’s get down to business.

Windows 7 release candidate 1

What I look for in an operating system is ease of use, speed and stability. So I will give you a run down:

Ease of Use

Window 7 ease of use hasn’t really change compared to Vista to the common user. It seems as though make have gotten better with administrative tasks and putting forth a better attempt making a user more aware of getting antivirus programs and backuping programs. Thy also have advertise that they have better device management but all I see is that they made the icons bigger. I’m not impressed in this area.

Speed

Speed has increased nicely! I everything moves way faster and opens up so much quicker! It is almost like your old computer has turned into a new computer if you move to Windows 7. If you check the benchmarks windows 7 shows who moving in Zdnet benchmark.

Stability

Windows 7 is amazingly stable, I haven’t seen a blue screen of death or having incompatibility problems with hardware. It runs smooth and each windows explorer window is allocated the same amount of memory for each process. Even when I run multiple programs like photoshop, dreamweaver, eclipse, firefox and windows media player I do not see any stutter in my performance. I use hibernate alot and vista will so a stutter in my performance with windows 7 you couldn’t even tell that I use the hibernate function. I would even leave windows 7 on for hours on end get on program and let other people that don’t even know how to use the computer play around. So for stability I must say windows are on it.

Also remember this is still not the final version so when it is released we will see a true showdown between Windows 7, Windows Vista, Linux and Snow Leopard.

Also remember before using (This is from Microsoft Website)

Remember expiration dates: Please plan ahead for the Beta and RC expiration dates. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to rebuild your test machine using a valid version of Windows before the software expires. Windows will notify you that the expiration process is beginning and two weeks later your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. The Beta expires on August 1, 2009, and bi-hourly shutdowns will begin July 1, 2009. The RC will expire June 1, 2010, and the bi-hourly shutdowns will begin on March 1, 2010. In both cases, you’ll need to rebuild your test PC to replace the OS and reinstall all your programs and data.

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One thing that has been really bothering me lately is the slow development of software adaptation to hardware. We have all of this powerful hardware being sold on the market but the software or the operating systems we use do not tap into its full potential and could relieve a lot of users speed problems. And one problem I believe that can be easily relieved is better conversion of 32 bit architecture to 64 bit architecture. You are probably like what is 32 bit architecture or architecture at all.  Well the architecture I’m talking about deals with the principles of design and construction of the way your processor and operating is designed and when I refer to 32 bit or 64 bit anything it refers to the number of bits (the smallest unit of information on a machine) that can be processed or transmitted in parallel, or the number of bits used for single element in a data format. So the more bits that can processed at one time the better the performance. So 32bit < 64bit (64 bit is greater than 32 bit architecture), but here lies the problem

The problem

Now as a common user you are probably thinking what is 64 bit architectures and what does this have to do with me? Well let me tell you why? First off people are always worried about speed, reliability and as long as it does what I want that all that matters. But what if I told you if are a common user and you are buying a new laptop or desktop that I will guaranteed 9 out of 10 that it is a 64 bit processor. For instance one of the most common 64 bit processors out there are :

• AMD’s AMD64 extensions (used in Athlon 64, Opteron, Sempron, Turion 64 and Phenom processors)
• Intel’s Intel 64 extensions (used in newer Celeron, Pentium 4, Pentium D, Xeon, Core 2, Core i7, and Atom processors)

Now heres the kicker as a common user you are most likely using an operating system that is 32 bits. So if you are using a 64 bit processor and 32 bit operating system you are not fully utilizing your processor it is just doing 32 bit work. Also if you have a 64 bit processor, 64 bit operating system and 32 bit program you still are not fully utilizing your processor. So here is the equation for full utilization of a 64 bit architecture:

1. First have a 64 bit processor (32 bit processor cannot work with 64 bit operating systems)
2. Than a 64 bit operating system to put on 64 bit programs (you can’t put 64 bit programs on a 32 bit operating system)
3. Than install a 64 bit program

So processor > operating system > program

So if you have this equation you will have a even faster performing machine. Also 64 bit is backwards compatible meaning you can install something that is lesser on it like 32 bit programs on a 64 bit operating system or 32 operating system on a 64 bit processor. But that is not the case with drivers (How your computer works with your hardware: printers, webcam, fax machine, etc). Is that all 64 bit architectures affect?

RAM

Also 64 bit architecture affects up to how much ram you can use if you have a 32 bit architecture you can only access up to 4 Gigs of Ram but if you have 64 bit architecture you access over 4 gigs to 1 terabyte of memory. Imagine how many programs you can manage if you had that much MEMORY!!!!!!

Operating Systems

Some of the top 64 bit operating systems 32 bit equivalents so pay attention to the numbers. I also provided supporting information for each operating system and its 64 bit technology:

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard technologies

Vista and Windows 7

32-bit and 64-bit Windows: frequently asked questions

A description of the differences between 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista

Programming Guide for 64 bit Windows

Linux

Ubuntu: 32-bit v. 64-bit Performance

Ubuntu 64-bit More Competitive Against Mac OS X

Now you are on your way to 64 bit computing!!!

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