Avalon Desktop screenshots :)

[Lee H]

Looks like avalon is coming on nicely as shown here ;

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2403

All I can say is... where is it Microsoft as that looks really great

[ikonia]

that just looks like a desktop wall paper to me the sunflower is repeated many times on that backdrop.

[0iD]

Will be nice to see how this is implimented in real-world applications. Looks darned funky tho.

[cm_uk]

hmmm WHATS THE POINT!... ram hogging prolly too.

[Nick F]

Looks amazing to me, by then most pc's will have 2GB anyway so should be able to cope with it.

[smtkr]

I am not impressed

[[GSV]Trig]

Looks amazing to me, by then most pc's will have 2GB anyway so should be able to cope with it.

Thats not the point, what happened to the times where you could boot an entire 32bit multitasking OS off a 1.44 FDD inc a game, web browser and various other things, programmers just dont seem to spend the time streamlining programs n stuff and if something doesnt run the ansa these days is to just turn round and say get more ram, get a faster CPU....

Look at a full install of Win98
Then WinME
WinNT/2000 and then WinXP...

For the "advances" that XP gives you its bloatware at its worse.....

[Paul Adams]

Thats not the point, what happened to the times where you could boot an entire 32bit multitasking OS off a 1.44 FDD inc a game, web browser and various other things, programmers just dont seem to spend the time streamlining programs n stuff and if something doesnt run the ansa these days is to just turn round and say get more ram, get a faster CPU....

IMO...

Pro's of streamlining code:
- sometimes faster
- often less memory / disk space used

Con's of streamlining code:
- development time increased
=> UAT time increased
=> projects cost a lot more and take longer
- debugging complex code is a lot more difficult, even for the original programmer
- less likely to obtain portable, flexible, reusable code
- less likely to be backwardsly-compatible
- documentation is more difficult

The IT world has moved steadily towards a place of "objects" and common APIs with backwards-compatibility, or even web-based applications which require a very high-level language to provide a common level of functionality across platforms.

Maintaining multiple code trees is very difficult, time consuming, expensive and more liable to errors - so an OS which is capable of participating in a huge corporate environment with masses of network resources, collaboration tools, common mail systems, intranets, shared printers, etc. might not have a fraction of these features used in a home environment.

In the days when processors were not a fractions as powerful as today it was common to code the most efficient way possible for small projects, but for large-scale projects it's not reasonable to expect a pure assembler-written application.
The most commonly-used pieces of code are the bits to streamline, shaving 0.1s off the run time of a function called 100 times is better than shaving 5s off a function called just twice.

I remember having discussions with a friend who used to code demos on the Amiga in pure assembler years ago (about 14) and he used to boggle at how large my simple programs would compile to - but in comparison I would show him how much quicker I could produce a working program (in C and assembler) which performed identically to his.
His program was tied to the Amiga 500 only, mine would run on any "IBM PC compatible" (I think mine was a 286-12 at the time).


When did a full multi-tasking 32-bit OS including a game and browser fit onto a 1.44Mb floppy?
I can remember squeezing a trimmed-down MS-DOS onto a boot disk with a few command-line tools for system building, but never any 32-bit OS?
(Windows 9x was a 16-bit OS with a 32-bit shell.)

[[GSV]Trig]

Few years back now, Amiga were looking at the QNX core for the new AmigaOS, there was an x86 compatible floppy demo...
Had to remove the drives from a PC to show ppl that it didnt use the drive or any part of the OS and that it was self contained....

[Matt1eD]

You can tell Paul works for MS

[cm_uk]

You can tell Paul works for MS

lmfao

[suryad]

If that is what Avalon can do I am not impressed. Looks like my investment in XP will remain for a while...cause I dont want that DRM **** on my comp anyway plus all the f***ing bloatware from Longhorn.