Meanwhile, a couple moderately amusing articles from the Register today.
Microsoft fudges Win2K speed trials theregister.co.uk
In the press release announcing the shipment to manufacturing of Windows 2000 on 15 December, Microsoft said "new benchmark results illustrate the specific performance benefits that customers will receive with Windows 2000. These tests show that Windows 2000 Professional outperforms Windows 95, Windows 98 and the Windows NT Workstation 4.0 operating system running on a computer with a minimum 64MB of memory". This claim is not sustained by the data.
The same press release also states that "Windows 2000 Professional is the fastest Windows client yet. Independent tests conducted by Ziff-Davis Labs and IT Week show that Windows 2000 Professional is... up to 24 per cent faster than Windows NT Workstation 4.0 in configurations with 64MB of memory or higher". Again, the "up to 24 percent faster" claim does not follow from the ZD report.
Microsoft's introduction to the ZD Labs report, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional -- System Performance Comparison, states: "In tests running the most popular business applications, Windows 2000 is... significantly faster than Windows NT 4.0 on configurations with 32MB. It is comparable to the performance of Windows NT 4.0 on configurations with 64MB and 128MB of memory, according to the November report by ZD Labs." So already we have gone from "outperforms" to "up to 24 per cent faster" to "comparable".
The ZD report tells another story that Microsoft did not see fit to mention: "On average, however, we found that Windows NT 4.0 provided slightly better performance than Windows 2000 when running with 64MB and 128 MB of RAM. Although the performance difference at 64MB was small, we found that the performance difference between the two operating systems grew when we added more memory. With 128MB of RAM, Windows 2000 was three per cent slower than Windows NT 4.0." The clear extrapolation, unfortunately not tested, is that with 256MB and more (a real world probability), NT4 would be significantly faster than Windows 2000.
The executive summary of the ZD report indulges in some fudged averaging of its own to create a false impression about Windows 2000 performance. It so happens that, according to the tests, Windows 2000 performs better then NT4 with 32MB, but of course in the real world, nobody would use 32MB and, as ZD points out, "Microsoft recommends at least 64MB of memory". This slightly improved Windows 2000 performance with 32MB is just enough to tip the balance and make it seem faster "on average" -- but only just (a score of 16.2 to 16.4 in ZD's Business Winstone 99 test). As ZD points out, Microsoft requested tests with 32MB (because it no doubt knew about the performance anomaly), but carefully avoided suggesting 256MB, lest the average went in favour of NT4.
Well, there's more, but that's already too much. Meanwhile, in
Microsoft bullies IT news site into submission theregister.co.uk
Microsoft is apparently succeeding in removing Windows from the English language, or anyway restricting it to the off color language muttered by people absorbing "the integrity and uniformity of the Windows experience" firsthand. No more WinCE, no more NT, just Windows, Bill would say.
Edit: oops, one more for the road.
MS cancels Neptune, consumer version of Win2k theregister.co.uk
But you can see what's coming next, can't you friends? Microsoft's got some cool technologies which, with considerable work under the covers, it could ship as a consumer version of Win2k, i.e. Neptune. But having got Win2k out of the door it's also got the Odyssey project to provide the next rev of Win2k, so rather than do two parallel radical rewrites, wouldn't it make more sense to merge the two? The codename for this is Whistler, and it's due for first beta next year, says Thurrott.
You can see the hand of Jim Allchin in all this. Jim, now Microsoft's unchallenged Windows supremo, was driven near-demented by the difficulties involved in synching IE development on both NT and Win98, and the downgrading of Millennium, the death of the consumer Windows division and now the return of Neptune to the One True Church are all steps away from a repeat of this kind of nightmare.
Of course the snags that spawned Millennium in the first place, the difficulty of supporting existing games under Win2k and getting the footprint down to consumer levels, still exist. But look at it this way. Presuming Millennium does ship as Third Edition in the summer, that takes care of 2000-2001. Fourth Edition might be a little embarrassing, but it's perfectly feasible then to put out another rev of the Win9x code and call it something else, if that's what's required. And at some point along the way, Microsoft might even manage to ship a version of Win2k that'll play in consumer markets. You never know.
Jeez, got that all? I was confusing cancelled Millenium with cancelled Neptune when I first read that, though now that I read it correctly, it's not exactly less confusing.
Cheers, Dan. |
