Boy, Windows sure does suck

[worker201]

Yesterday, I had to switch into Windows to work in Illustrator.  Well, I decided to transcode a movie in the background.  Bad idea.  Spent hours trying to find Windows software that would do the transcoding.  Then got halfway through to find out I was missing the proper xvid codecs.  So had to spend another couple hours finding the right codecs and installing them.  Finally got everything together and commenced with the transcoding job.  Then I went to open Illustrator, so I could get to work.  Big mistake.  While transcoding, it takes 3 or 4 minutes just to open Freecell.  Took like 10 minutes to open Illustrator, only to have it freeze up every few minutes, presumably due to lack of memory.  Seamonkey took a good 15 minutes to load.  I decided to call it a day and let the thing run overnight, and worked on the illustration at home.

Today, I'm back in Windows, burning the iso that was produced.  This causes even more problems.  Typing this right now, I am at least 4 letters ahead of what gets printed on the screen.  That's just crazy.

Now, you might be thinking "Transcoding is very data intensive, and so is burning a dvd.  You can't do that while working in the background on any computer".  But you are wrong.  I can transcode & burn & listen to music & surf the web & do serious math processing all at the same time in Linux.  Installing transcode via apt gives you all the codecs you need as dependencies.  I admit that having a nice little graphical frontend to all the various tools was kinda neat.  But the loss of computing power and work hours was unfuckingacceptable.  Such a tradeoff is absolutely not okay.  I would rather use barely coherent commands from the terminal than tie up my whole computer with such a minor task just so I could point and click.

Of course these are specialized activities, things that most people don't do with their computers.  But I need more from my computer than most people.  And Windows is completely incapable of giving it.

FYI:
Dell Dimension 8250
2.4 GHz Pentium 4
1.5GB RAM
100GB NTFS partition, 35% used
****
Windows XP2, fully updated
Roxio EzCD Creator 5
Avi2DVD (freeware transcoder & dvd iso producer)

[toadlife]

The Windows XP scheduler give more priority to CPU hogging apps by default than linux/BSd does. This is because it is designed to be a desktop system, and for desktop systems this helps out with things like games. You can change this very easily, by opening the task manager after starting your transcode session and reducing the priority of your transcode app to "low". After doing this, your other apps will be plenty responsive and transcode will still run just as fast. You can also globaly adjust XP's processor scheduling so that the OS gives equal priority to all processes on the system. See this link for info on that.

[worker201]

Thanks for the tip.  Next time I have to use Windows, I will give that a try.

But does XP consider DVD burning a processor intensive activity?  Because that was even worse than the transcoding.  And would changing processor priority for a burning task cause burning problems?  I would think it would - I assume that the processor works just as fast as the DVD spin rate allows, and not faster or slower.  Unfortunately, I have a slow DVD burner, from many years ago.

[toadlife]

Well the DVD burning does use a ton if I/O since it has to move data. I don't know if changing the processor scheduling would help. Burning DVDs on my PC slows down my computer in both FreeBSD (using k3b) and Windows XP. I couldn't tell you if there was a difference though, because to be safe I ususally don't touch my computer while I'm burning a DVD.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Burning a DVD ISO is CPU intensive since all of the data has to go through the CPU.

Windows might not be the only problem here, I think shit quality software might be more to blame.

[worker201]

Using growiso in Linux to burn DVDs is pretty processor intensive, but all I have to do is switch to another workspace, and I can use low-intensity programs like Seamonkey or Gaim or Open Office or Gimp with ease.  So maybe the software does have something to do with it, maybe not.  Being able to switch workspaces and be sheltered from any tough processes is very handy, as it makes multi-tasking easier.

[piratePenguin]

You can use multiple workspaces in Windows too.
Virtual Desktop Manager @ http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
I've never used it before though.

[toadlife]

Edit  - whoops what I wrote here was wrong.

[Orethrius]

You can use multiple workspaces in Windows too.
Virtual Desktop Manager @ http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
I've never used it before though.

 You realise LiteStep had that available in their alternative Windows shell about three years prior, right?  I'd rather use a FOSS frontend with full text config than secure my userbase in a contract-of-ignorance with Microsoft.  :cool:

[Pathos]

That MS virtual desktop manager screws up Visual studio and MSDN at work for some reason

Windows sucks at multitasking, changing the priority doesn't do squat from my experience.

Hard drive access can also be too blame sometimes tho.

[para_fms]

quote from another source...

...Load the program you wish to change the priority for and press CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the Task Manager. Select the applications tab and highlight your program. Right click the program and select 'go to process.' Now right click on the highlighted process and choose 'set priority.'

you can also do it via a shortcut.

[worker201]

It's interesting to me that such a thing as multi-tasking settings are taken care of automatically by Linux, and require a bunch of arcane settings to manipulate in Windows.  Isn't that supposed to be the other way around?

Yes, I know you have to use fun little command line tools to change a process's priority in Linux.  Point is, though, that I have never had to do that - since Linux's priority settings are already consistent with my uses.  While a normal day's work required major changes in Windows.

[piratePenguin]

Yes, I know you have to use fun little command line tools to change a process's priority in Linux.

No you don't. I haven't ever changed a process's priority in GNU/Linux from the command line, I use the GNOME System Monitor. AFAIK you can't pause and resume processes in Windows, I've had some fun doing that from the GNOME System Monitor (/me pauses Firefox).

I only change a process's priority when I'm compiling stuff, and even then I don't really need to (I pretty much do it just for the sake of it).

[worker201]

Thanks, I wasn wondering if there was some sort of gui process monitor.  I just use stuff like 'ps' and 'top'.

[MarathoN]

Ah hmm, I read a thread and someone claimed that Windows 2000 does a far better job of multi-tasking than XP does, which wouldn't surprise me, XP really sucks for speed.