February 6th, 2009

Posted by Ed Bott

I’ve been spending most of my time lately conducting in-depth research into how Windows 7 works, in preparation for my next book. In the process, I’m discovering stuff that simply doesn’t become apparent to a casual tester. Case in point: Back in 2007, I looked at Windows Vista Home Basic and determined that it could run well on an older machine with limited resources, including 512MB of RAM. I never tried it with Vista Ultimate, nor would I have bothered. And since I don’t have that 2002-vintage test machine set up, I haven’t repeated those tests with Windows 7.

Earlier this week, I fired up a virtual machine running Windows XP SP3 so I could test upgrade scenarios with Windows 7. I couldn’t do a straight XP-to-Win7 upgrade, so I added a new virtual hard drive and installed Windows 7 in a dual-boot configuration. After making a few notes on how the setup process worked, I put the VM aside and went on to other work.

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 uses less memory than you might think

A few hours later, I went back to that new Windows 7 installation to look at a few details, and that’s when it struck me: This virtual machine was configured with a mere 512MB of RAM, and yet I hadn’t noticed any slowdowns during setup or in operation. Even more startling, I realized that I had inadvertently installed the 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Ultimate in this VM. But the most eye-opening moment came when I looked at Task Manager’s performance tab. I’ve pasted a screen grab of the memory gauge here.

The x64 edition of Windows 7 Ultimate running on just over 200MB of RAM? That was a pleasant surprise. I was also surprised to see that this clean install was using less than 9 GB of disk space in this VM. With my curiosity piqued, I configured a new VM using the same settings and did a clean install of Vista Ultimate, giving me a good baseline for comparing XP to its successors. Here are the stats for all three operating systems, with memory usage measured after all update operations had completed and the system had been idle for at least one hour:

Or, in graphical terms, with the raw numbers normalized so that XP=100:

Windows 7 uses less RAM and disk space than Vista

As you can see, on this low-resource configuration Windows 7 uses dramatically less RAM than Vista, and also has a smaller hard-disk footprint. A few configuration notes can help put these results in perspective:

• For XP, the installation includes Service Pack 3, plus all available updates including Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 11, and Windows Search 4. The only non-Windows application installed on this system is Firefox.
• For Vista, the installation was of Ultimate Edition (x86) with Service Pack 1 and all available Critical and Recommended updates. No third-party software was installed.
• For Windows 7 Beta, I used Ultimate x64 edition. As with the Vista installation, I accepted any Critical or Recommended updates and installed no third-party software.

The numbers and charts don’t really tell the full story, though. With identical configurations, Windows 7 was dramatically faster at starting up and shutting down than Vista, and some routine tasks that would grind the Vista machine to a halt completed without incident on the Windows 7 machine.

Just for comparison’s sake, I reconfigured each system to include 1024MB of RAM. With the extra RAM available, the delta between the Windows 7 and Vista VMs narrowed dramatically, although the 64-bit edition of Windows 7 still used less RAM than Vista. On the Vista system,. this upgrade made a noticeable difference, whereas the Windows 7 system performed about the same.

Clearly, the Windows 7 development team has taken a close look at performance and disk footprint when resources aren’t abundant. I suspect that when Vista was being designed, this was an afterthought, with the notion that cheap RAM and hard disks would make those machines obsolete. They didn’t account for netbooks or for the impact of solid state drives, which offer capacities that are much smaller than equivalent rotating media.

Why does Windows 7 use so much less disk space than Vista? A very small amount of the savings (much less than I expected) is in program code. The biggest savings is from the preallocated volume shadow storage space, which holds System Restore points and backs up files via the Previous Versions feature. On my Vista virtual machine, this feature was using more than 4.6 GB of disk space. Under Windows 7, the system reserved less than 400 MB.

This attention to performance when resources are less than expected on a modern desktop PC potentially has positive implications for netbooks and other cheap PCs. I might have to haul that old 2002-era Pentium 4 out of mothballs and see how it handles Windows 7.

February 7th, 2009

Posted by Phil Wainewright

What have we come to when a respected VC feels no shame or embarrassment when actually publishing a blog post entitled When Talking About Business Models, Remember That Profits Equal Revenues Minus Costs, as Fred Wilson did last weekend? Has the world become so blind to the basics of commerce that it needs reminding of such a basic tenet?

Apparently yes. Even Wall St can’t count, as Robert Cringely revealed last week. (An analyst at JP Morgan came up with a graphic to illustrate the extent to which bank market caps shrank in 2008. It was widely circulated in financial circles without anyone noticing the elementary error in basic geometry which meant it massively overstated the shrinkage).

Fred Wilson’s blog post cited Chris Anderson’s WSJ article of last week on The Economics of Giving It Away, which, he notes, “suggest[s] that Internet entrepreneurs are going to have to get people to step up and pay for something instead of just giving everything away for free …” Really? Is such a concept so novel?

Have we brought up an entire generation to believe that cash isn’t important? Is this the payback for all those millions of dollars spent educating a multitude of MBAs? It turns out it was all a waste of money, because all it’s done is encourage the hubris that this generation is so smart it can defy the rules of economics (as well as remain oblivious to the tenets of geometry). For a few years there, the self-appointed masters of the universe deluded themselves that they had bypassed the normal rules of finance. Now they, along with the congressional Democratic caucus, get lectured on basic economics by Steve Ballmer, of all people:

“The hard truth is this, in my opinion: The private sector of our economy has borrowed too much money, businesses and consumers alike … The bubble has burst … America really has to return to growth that’s built on innovation and productivity, rather than leverage and private debt.”

My worry is that the culture of free money has become so ingrained that everyone under thirty-something is convinced that money can simply be conjured out of thin air by making promises for the future, rather than having to be earned from actual work that delivers real-world value today.

And then, out of nowhere, we have Fred Wilson all of a sudden saying that what matters is living on current revenues rather than spending from future projected revenue. The emperor of debt is deposed without even a shirt on his back and cash comes from nowhere to usurp the throne. In an instant the conventional wisdom switches from spending tomorrow’s wealth to conserving today’s. If we are to pursue that mantra as unthinkingly as the one it replaces, then we are in for a depression as deep and unforgiving cialis dosage 40 mg as the levity and irresponsibility of the boom that preceded it.

February 6th, 2009

Posted by Larry Dignan

Warning: This is a Friday rant that’s slightly off the beaten path, but I’m having a bad social networking week.

Perhaps I’m feeling a bit antisocial, but this social networking thing has been quite annoying of late. First, there’s the Google Latitude announcement where the big benefit is in tracking friends every step (and allowing them to track you). Oh joy. Why don’t we just implant chips in our heads and get it over with?

And then there’s the 25 things meme on Facebook. Learning 25 things about your peeps was kind of fun–until everyone started doing it. Now I know 250,000 things about my friends. I’m numb. Even worse: I don’t care anymore.

But that’s only prelude to the reason why social networking has me down. Fact is that social networking sites give people a venue to whine about things that they have no business bitching about in the first place. In the real world, you’d just slap these people upside the head and get it over with.

Also see: Are drunk Facebook photos killing your job prospects?

Enter the mortgage broker’s wife on Facebook. You see, she’s complaining about the fact she can’t go to Las Vegas on her husband’s Wells Fargo junket that was just canceled over some seriously bad PR.

Well, that’s just oh so sad. And then there’s her husband, Mr. mortgage broker who posted a big ode about his bank and how it has been wronged by the press over this Las Vegas junket–the one he and his wife wanted to attend. Turns out his bank took some U.S. Treasury money and there are a few strings attached. Boo hoo.

If social networking didn’t exist these two people would just bitch and moan to themselves–and maybe a handful of others. Instead, social networking enables a lot more people to be exposed to this whining.

There is one bright side to this. All of this new media allows me to share my response to this whoa-is-me-I-can’t-go-to-Vegas-on-a-junket-tale. The response goes something like this:

“Wah. I can’t go to Vegas.” Well, give me a #@$# break, dude. You’re lucky to even be working. A) You’re a mortgage broker (evil). B) You work at a bank. If your dumb arse worked at Countrywide, IndyMac or a dozen others you’d be unemployed. The difference: Dumb #@$@# luck. You should count your blessings. As for the bailout I have two words–make that three. Tough bleeping bleep. Given that the taxpayer gave you dough–you dumbies took it–you have to deal with the strings attached–and one of them should be your salary. Is cialis dosage 20mg it just me or is it truly whacked that you benefited on commissions the entire way up on this mess (and you helped it along) and now benefit since all the idiots you gave a mortgage to are now refinancing because they couldn’t afford it in the first place.

The one upside to social networking: Defriending. Hey, perhaps it isn’t so bad after all.

February 7th, 2009

cialis discounts align=”justify”>Posted by Garett Rogers

Information Week says that if Gmail’s growth continues at the same rate, we could see Gmail’s user share overtake Hotmail by the end of the year — an impressive feat.

Between December 2007 and December 2008, Gmail’s number of unique monthly visitors in the United States grew 43%, from 20.8 million to 29.6 million, according to ComScore. Windows Live Hotmail lost 5% of its unique monthly visitors during this period, falling from 45.7 million to 43.5 million.

Google still has a long way to go to catch up to Yahoo, but it’s realistic to think that it could happen as soon as 2011 if you look at current growth rates. Part of the reason Google’s email service is becoming so popular is their ability to push out updates and useful features extremely quickly.

For example, one of the newest features they added to Gmail Labs is “multiple inboxes”. This feature is extremely useful for me — when I star a message, or save a draft, it always stays on my main page instead of gradually working its way down my inbox, and then inevitably out of sight (and mind). Previously, starred messages were only accessible by clicking the “starred” link in the sidebar.

Which email service do you use? Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo? Have you noticed people around you making the switch to Gmail? Let’s hear what you think in the Talk Back!

February 7th, 2009

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn

cialis discount price border=”0″ title=”monty-widenius” width=”175″ height=”197″ />Michael “Monty” Widenius (right), author of the original mySQL, has left the company to launch a new start-up, Monty Program AB.

He joins former CEO Martin Mickos on the outside looking in.

This has led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, not just here but elsewhere in the computer press.

Please excuse me if I don’t join in.

For me this is a case of deja vu all over again. One of the first stories I covered here involved the acquisition of the JBOSS framework by Red Hat and the subsequent leave-taking of its founder, Marc Fleury.

As with many today I was certain this was the end of JBOSS, possibly of open source itself.

I was wrong.

Some in the old JBOSS team did leave, and pretty quickly, after Marc did. But they landed on their feet. Some went to their own start-ups, others became key men within other open source companies. JBOSS survived, too. It took time to digest, and it found new competition along the way, but the ending is not an unhappy one.

With the perspective of time I suspect things will be the same in this case. The only surprise to me is that Mickos and Widenius stayed as long as they did.

Entrepreneurs are a special breed, not built for suits and hierarchies. They can’t handle people over them saying no, and they should not have to.

They’re too precious as what they are. Open source needs more great entrepreneurs, and to have two with experience back in the fray is very exciting. The mySQL deal was worth $1 billion. Money won’t be a problem for their next projects.

All Monty has so far is a Wiki page, where he talks about building a transactional storage engine for mySQL dubbed Maria, and a branch of the language supporting it. That’s good, for him, for us, and for mySQL. A project becomes powerful as it builds an ecosystem which supports it, and no ecosystem can be contained within four corporate walls.

Besides, if Sun messes up with mySQL, remember that it’s open source. The code still lives. Mickos and Witinius could then fork it and it would continue moving forward. I hope they don’t have to, because working on cool new stuff is always more fun than maintaining the old stuff.

The JBOSS deal worked out great for everyone. I think the mySQL deal will do the same. So, too, will its founders. And so will all of us.