Jan 30 - Vista Release!

[Mags]

OEM is tied to the motherboard of the machine its installed on.  No thanks.  Also with memoryexpress they are pretty sticky about selling it with a full PC.

the point being, depending on your upgrade cycle, you can buy 2 oem versions for less before the next version of Windows is released. Combine that with the fact that Microsoft has said many times the Vista took much longer then they liked and plan on increasing their release schedules for future OS's, this is a very viable solution for many people.

Memoryexpress is only selling the oem version and linking it right off the main page in a big ad. So, I would be surprised that they are limiting it in this case.

[Adams]

Yep, I talked to a salesperson unless you purchase hardware you should not beable to buy it... that being said. Nothing says they check everyone or all salespeople acutally follow the rules.

[Mags]

Yep, I talked to a salesperson unless you purchase hardware you should not beable to buy it... that being said. Nothing says they check everyone or all salespeople acutally follow the rules.

*Surprised*

And many stores in the city would not be as above board as Memoryexpress and probably price match.

[Darren Dirt]

Yep, I talked to a salesperson unless you purchase hardware you should not beable to buy it... that being said. Nothing says they check everyone or all salespeople acutally follow the rules.

Some will allow the OEM hardware purchase to even be a 99 cent cable, from what I've heard...

[Adams]

I hope the guy I know at memory express will let me get an OEM vista ultimate.
If not I will get it off of tigerdirect.ca, I don't think they have any OEM prerequisites as they do not mention it.

[Cova]

You can order OEM copies of windows from Newegg - they bundle a molex splitter with it when they ship it.

Can't say I read anything that Cova went back and forth on, as really I didn't care too much.

I think the same of your comments quite often too - but I keep my mouth shut about it...

[Ustauk]

Memory Express has OEM versions listed on their software page, but I don't know if you have to buy any hardware to get it.  The Ultimate versions are out of stock, and it appears each disc contains only the 32 bit or 64 bit version, not both like the retail copy.

[Lazybones]

Memory Express has OEM versions listed on their software page, but I don't know if you have to buy any hardware to get it.  The Ultimate versions are out of stock, and it appears each disc contains only the 32 bit or 64 bit version, not both like the retail copy.

There are three differences in the OEM edition if you read some of the links posted:
- Key bound to mother board on install
- Only includes 32bit OR 64bit not both versions
- No first level support.

[Cova]

Here's a good article I stumbled across.  And considering how much unprotected HD content I have from recording with my home-built PVR, some of whats in that article is kinda scary.

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

[Thorin]

Wow, long article, great read.  What I liked best about reading it is that this fella actually appears to have read the Microsoft specifications and is pointing out all of the inherent flaws in them.

Funniest quote:

Note M: If I do ever want to play back premium content, I'll wait a few years and then buy a $50 Chinese-made set-top player to do it, not a $1000 Windows PC. It's somewhat bizarre that I have to go to communist China in order to find vendors who actually understand the consumer's needs.

Although that quote does no justice to the depth and detail to which this fella considers the security implications of the Vista content protection system.  The picture he paints is a tad bleak, although as he states he's a security analyst and it's his job to think of the possible negative impacts of whatever he's analyzing (which in this case was the Vista content protection system).  The idea that it could shut down a hospital or air traffic control system seems absurd, until you read the whole article to understand how he comes to this conclusion...

[Cova]

The picture he paints is a tad bleak, although as he states he's a security analyst and it's his job to think of the possible negative impacts of whatever he's analyzing (which in this case was the Vista content protection system).

Maybe that is why I always seem to have a negative view of this type of stuff as well.  I'm not a security analyst, but it is part of my job to analyze the potential points of failure of computer systems from an availability/reliability point of view - downtime costs NAIT money.

[Darren Dirt]

Here's a good article I stumbled across.  And considering how much unprotected HD content I have from recording with my home-built PVR, some of whats in that article is kinda scary.

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

"Final Thoughts" (i.e. the conclusion) is where all the low-level heavy painful-to-read details come together into a very scary picture.

The comparison to Apple's iTunes DRM/monopoly results is chilling, when you consider how many people will be unquestionably "upgrading" to Vista without being aware of the possible effect on their content (short-term, their current legally-purchased stuff, and more importantly *future* industry-wide impact).

[Lazybones]

"Final Thoughts" (i.e. the conclusion) is where all the low-level heavy painful-to-read details come together into a very scary picture.

The comparison to Apple's iTunes DRM/monopoly results is chilling, when you consider how many people will be unquestionably "upgrading" to Vista without being aware of the possible effect on their content (short-term, their current legally-purchased stuff, and more importantly *future* industry-wide impact).

It's chewing up some memory, not that much, but it doesn't register for CPU usage. The module isn't loaded when playing unprotected content.

So if I read this right.
Your own content or content you aquired that does not have content protection will play fine, but if you where a person whom purchased protected content you might be screwed?

So it comes down to boycotting the content again as far as I see it, not the OS that supports everything under the SUN.

[Cova]

I hear too many conflicting reports about whether it is active or not on non-premium content to trust it.  For that matter, I also don't like this whole idea of "premium content" - MPEG is MPEG, just decode it and play it.

Anyways, this blogger apparently has the module taking significant CPU just to play MP3's:

http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/2007/01/23/microsoft-on-content-protection-in-vista/

For those of you running Windows Vista, start Windows Media Player and play a random MP3 audio file. Go into Task Manager and look for a process called ?mfpmp.exe? with description ?Media Foundation Protected Pipeline EXE.? Notice how much CPU it uses. On my machine it fluctuates between 10% and 20% CPU time. Other users are seeing even larger consumption of CPU resources, just check out this comment.

Or this quote from the article I linked in my last post:

The exact nature of this Media Foundation Protected Pipeline is somewhat mysterious, the executable image is mfpmp.exe but there's no file of that name present in Vista which implies it's being generated on the fly by another executable. The process only shows up with Windows Media Player, not with other players like VLC or WinAMP, and even then only when certain content like MP3s or video is played. It doesn't show up for older/simpler content like WAV files, but then again it does show up for non-protected content.

Though I would think that it's not specific to windows media player, but any direct-show based player (which VLC is not, and I'm unsure on winamp, though I think it is, maybe for video playback only though)

And, whether content-protection is active or not (so even if you are getting your full-resolution video without degredation), your system is still wasting it's resources on @%&# like this:

In order to prevent active attacks, device drivers are required to poll the underlying hardware every 30ms for digital outputs and every 150 ms for analog ones to ensure that everything appears kosher. This means that even with nothing else happening in the system, a mass of assorted drivers has to wake up thirty times a second just to ensure that... nothing continues to happen

Ignoring the CPU utilization of that, just the number of context switches back and forth from kernel-space to user-space (those drivers doing the polling will be in kernel-space) will have a significant impact on overall performance.

[Darren Dirt]

On a funny-timing note, last night I decided to take my previous system (ancient by most standards) and I'm gonna do a clean install of the not-supported-anymore standby known semi-fondly by some as Win98 on it, so my kids can play games on it.

And media files without worrying about quality degradation.