NoelC

What I've found is that certain file system I/O activities are a lot slower than with earlier operating systems, such as Windows 7. And some are actually faster, but overall Win 8.1 works out to be a bit slower - maybe a bit less interactive and responsive is a better way to say it - than its predecessors. I can't shake the gut feeling that Microsoft has hobbled the Windows 8 file system implementation in version 8.1 on purpose so that they can claim Windows 9 will be faster, but it's impossible to prove. Premiere is quite I/O intensive, from my understanding, though I've only run it once as a test. How have you set up your I/O subsystem (i.e., disks)? What hardware do you have, and how have you set up the caching? Do you have a lot of RAM? Also, what's your situation with regard to GPU operations (i.e., video card)? I believe Adobe has more/better/faster integration with nVidia GPUs than with ATI or Intel. Take heart, with a well-tuned setup there are some things Win 8.1 does better than Win 7 at a subtle level. Multithreading performance on a system with a lot of cores can actually be better. -Noel

I enjoyed that article on longevity very much, thank you. I would suggest not focusing quite so hard on the 4K QD1 numbers. Single threaded 4K writes and reads by definition can't exceed the speed of a single drive - a data block that small doesn't get broken up across multiple drives in the array, so basically the process goes like this: Queue a 4K block write, RAID controller selects a single drive to receive the data, drive writes, drive signals it's done, software is notified. Good thing in the real world data blocks much larger than 4K are typical, I/Os are queued deeper than 1, we have caching, and we have multi-threaded systems. -Noel

Yes. Read the instructions. Try the beta version of the GUI configuration tool. -Noel

Impressive! Especially so given the 512GB can be had right now for $219 at Newegg.com and Amazon.com. For those without SSDs it's hard to find an excuse not to upgrade at that price. Such an upgrade is likely the single biggest thing you could do to make your system hugely more responsive for just a few bucks. Do you know of anyone who's set up two or four of them in a RAID array yet? -Noel

No. I disabled UAC (EnableLUA = 0) long ago and Aero Glass works fine here. Wolfshadow, I did not log out; I used BigMuscle's GUI tool and thought it would replace everything. Apparently it didn't. -Noel

Not a bad idea. I don't see the green when hovering over the button on the active window, though - just with an inactive window. -Noel

Cute! I wonder when it'll be when kids will no longer have seen a computer. Not that a tablet or smart phone is actually a replacement for same. -Noel

Louis, have you downloaded the latest Aero Glass for Win 8.1 software? The version for Win 8.0 doesn't work on 8.1. You have to install the latest. If that's not it... Are you running on battery? -Noel

Big Muscle, your GUI configuration tool got me to try out white Title Bar text again. Last time I tried it I didn't do enough to give it a fair chance. But having a GUI to tweak the color made easy enough to try again. Doing these other things helped integrate the experience better: 1. I reworked my theme atlas to have a dark "glow" that's composited behind Title Bar text. 2. I had to reconfigure Classic Shell's Classic Internet Explorer piece to also make the text white and the "glow" dark. Since I like fairly transparent borders and since my desktop backgrounds are always dark (astroimages), I think that the white text is actually overall a bit more readable. It's growing on me. Thanks again, Big Muscle, for making my desktop a bit easier to use. Remaining issues where integration is not perfect (not the fault of Aero Glass for Win 8.1): A. WIndows with ribbon bars don't composite the title text in the same way as other windows. I know that a theme change could fix this, but even though I use a custom theme atlas, I have avoided a full-fledged theme replacement so far on the general principle that running less software is better. I've set Explorer (via Classic Shell's configuration) to show the path in the address bar anyway, and I only rarely use WordPad, so practically speaking it's not that bothersome. B. Microsoft Office 365 has rolled its own UI all in its client space and doesn't make the kind of composited borders that Aero Glass works with at all.. So the Title Bar text in Outlook, Word, etc. is still black on a light background, and the windows do not throw shadows. It's ridiculous of Microsoft to break their own desktop standards this way, and I know of no one who likes the look of Office nowadays. C. Visual Studio also has it's own "borderless" UI as well, but at least I can set it to have a dark theme, so it's not as intrusive. Still, it would be nice if the title text was brighter and the windows threw shadows. You can see how it comes together here: -Noel

I was just pulling your chain (note the smiley). B) I'm a firm believer in "to each his own". It's good to know some folks like the Start screen. That's why these are personal computers. Me, I click once on the Classic Shell start button and the menu just stays there until I click on one of the entries, or something else. I use Classic Shell's "Classic style", which IMO is better than any version of the Start Menu Microsoft ever made. The coolest thing is I've been using it for a very long time, since Vista, and it's one thing about the UI I've set up that I haven't had to deal with changing out from under me in the last several major OS releases. There's a level of "muscle memory" utility that one reaches when things remain familiar for a very long time that's hard to reach again with a new approach. Maybe this is part of why I like Aero Glass for WIn 8 so much. Big Muscle, do you like how I worked the word "muscle" in there? -Noel

I agree - except for all those ugly squares and rectangles. -Noel

That's just it, the "viable code" for resurrecting Aero Glass was in Win 8, but it's not in Win 8.1 - Big Muscle had to do a bunch of GPU programming to bring it back (read the first post in this very thread). Microsoft is making changes to the desktop to turn it AWAY from what we users want it to be. They clearly want to go "somewhere else", though they have not created a "somewhere else" that's viable yet. Your argument about VS2013 vs. VS2013 makes my point. Same could be said about Win 8 vs. 7. Microsoft is moving their products away from what we need/want. I'm just pointing out that they're not a bunch of bumbling fools doing it by accident. -Noel

Individual interactive computer workstation, mouse, keyboard, interactive GUI (with decent FPS!), along with telepresence and video conferencing, complete with geeks who can barely express themselves without using jargon (but which we fellow geeks can still easily understand). In 1968! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY -Noel

You're aware Microsoft has removed Win32/desktop development information entirely from the list of documentation downloadable with Visual Studio 2013? Fortunately the VS 2012 info is still out there and can be loaded. Nothing they do is by accident. -Noel

You are of course quite welcome to make it work the way you think it should work; I was just offering my suggestion. But I'd say more software works the way I described, where an OK or Cancel button press cause the dialog to exit. If you're going to have it work the way you describe, where it doesn't exit, maybe [Apply] and [Revert] might be better choices for button names? -Noel

It's nice that so many offer their opinions to try to be helpful, but did it ever occur to you folks that it's just barely possible that legal pressure has been put on the guy that prevents him from selling it or presenting it just the way that would please your idle musings? You folks have no idea what tactics go on in the real world of competitive commercial products. Money talks, BS walks. Microsoft doesn't WANT Aero Glass to be made available. They took it out on purpose. And they have a legal department to further their goals. Think about it. And what of it? It's Big Muscle's product to do with as he pleases. It's not like he's shoveling marketing BS to try to make it sound like it does something it doesn't; just the opposite - it delivers what it says it does where it counts. Deal with it. -Noel

Ordered Nichicon HZ all around. Thanks again. -Noel

GUI seems to work nicely to update things in real time here. Seems like a nice adjunct to the program. I like that you can see immediately the changes to the effects in the windows already on the screen. The Donate tab screen is all blank, I assume on purpose. I agree with dhjohns, it would be more like known interfaces (and thus easier to use) if it just would save and exit on pressing the [save] button (also it should exit on pressing [Cancel] as well). -Noel

Never mind, I found: http://www.techno-star.biz/capacitors/zl.pdf -Noel

The taller 2200 uF one is definitely between the ducts. I will have to check carefully whether the 1500s are in or out. Perhaps I can work up some kind of mod that will improve airflow there. This is not going to be a mission critical system, but will be used for training so it will be nice if I can restore it to its prior reliability (it used to run Vista x64 for months between update initiated reboots). I can get Rubycon ZL 1500s. Not being a wizard with spec sheets yet, and not seeing a ZL spec sheet at the same site you referenced, I'm not sure where to look. Is the ZL a lower spec model? Thanks, by the way, for all the attention and time you're spending on this. One more question: Given that I'm going to pay a bit more attention to the cooling, should I replace the Rubycon caps that have not obviously failed? -Noel

There was a lot of dust build-up - almost like a blanket. I suspect neglect was the culprit. Plus the placement of these as related to the processor fan shrouds seems to be such that air does not flow strongly over them. Thanks for the tips. I didn't put much effort into getting exact brand replacements, since these had failed. Maybe I should rethink that. Since I did not realize the minor specs would matter, I had already ordered several replacements (not expensive) based on only the specs (same uF, V, and 105C), I did not consider the additional data you noted. Should I just ignore the first order (not expensive) and seek better specs? Those that I ordered are Illinois Capacitor JWT 1500 uF 6.3v 105C Radial and Panasonic FJ 2200 uF 6.3v 105C Radial ("Low ESR"). I'm looking for the additional specs now. One thing that has me initially concerned is that I don't see a "JWT" moniker listed at all at Illinois Capacitor. -Noel

That wasn't perfecting anything, it was Microsoft marketing trying to "wean" people off a perfectly good, usable desktop in just one version release to further their evil (and as it turns out foolhardy) plans. I'm sure those people got bonuses at the time for figuring out a way (Public preview! Yay!) to get people to run several different versions between actual version releases, making it seem like there was a progression and a grand plan, all the while trying to shovel BS into our faces like "digitally authentic" and "that awful skeuomorphism". And Ace2, I'd like to point out that with a suitable themeatlas.png, Big Muscle's tool re-enables drop shadow, the removal of which was the SINGLE BIGGEST DEGRADATION of the windowing desktop system they made. A secondary issue is that the "glass" borders tend to step out of the way and stop distracting the user from the client area, which is where all the real work gets done. I think it's okay if you don't like it. Staying on Win 7 is a fine idea for now - though you WILL find you get less and less support, just like XP lovers did. In fact, the market mostly agrees with you - Windows 7 adoption numbers (presumably by previous XP and Vista users) are growing faster than Windows 8's However, you need to come to grips with the fact that those of us who like to keep current AND have a usable desktop are doing something that's okay too. If/when it stops working we'll figure out how to do without it. For now, and into the foreseeable future, it works perfectly and we choose to use it. -Noel

Thanks for checking. This is as it should be. I can reproduce that in a Win 8.0 VM on the very same hardware that will only count up 8,000 files/second running Win 8.1. Fortunately, in further testing I've seen programs such as grepWin enumerate all the files on the disk (e.g., during a search) at a MUCH faster pace, so I can only assume it has something to do with the implementation of File Explorer itself. GrepWin enumerates all 900,000 files on C: in 23 seconds. I guess I shouldn't let it bother me. I don't know why this particular function is slowed down so much in Win 8.1. I have never run across anything that justifies it. And something in the file system implementation just got a bit faster with the latest (June) Windows 8.1 updates. I've been able to measure file access improvements of about 5% across the board (confirmed on several different systems). Other than the File - Properties enumeration other I/O operations are almost up to the performance levels I was seeing with Windows 7. Compare this graph to the one I got when I started this thread that showed disk access down to about 100 MB/sec. -Noel

A very simple test of simple integer and floating point math. Nothing to be ashamed of. I got 52 and 227 respectively. Might be fun to see what a 24 thread version would do. -Noel

A bit before my time, but this was the typical construction of a commercial electronic product (an AM table radio) about 70 years ago... That just did AM radio reception. Today we have stuff like... This chip does: Wide range of ferrite loop sticks and air loop antennas supportedWorldwide FM band support (64–108 MHz)Worldwide AM band support (520–1710 kHz)SW band support (2.3–26.1 MHz)LW band support (153–279 kHz)Advanced AM/FM seek tuningAutomatic frequency control (AFC) and gain control (AGC)AM/FM/SW/LW digital tuning with digital FM stereo decoderProgrammable de-emphasisMultiplexed stereo audio AUXINADC with 85 dB dynamic rangeSeven selectable AM channel filtersProgrammable reference clockAdjustable soft mute controlRDS/RBDS processor2-wire and 3-wire control interfaceIntegrated LDO regulatorEN55020 compliantDigital audio outIntegrated VCO-Noel