HELP! Mac OSX vs. WinXP Multitasking Limits?!

T

TekWiz

Guest
Hi! I started with computer in 1978 - Commodore Pet, Apple II, Wang. C-64, C-128, Amiga 500, Amiga 3000. The Amiga of 1991 is far superior to Windows in terms of multitasking. Sure there were limits but they were hardware based. Today it seems that Windows is limited by the same horrible programming of the original DOS.

I have been using Windows since 1995 and the #1 most annoying thing is that I can't open many windows before Windows doesn't work anymore.

What I am specifically talking about is the inablity to open more than a couple large programs and a few windows, or just many windows. They should call it "few windows" instead of "windows". I wonder how many Windows one can open in Mac OSX.

Please look here at this post and see how I was attacked for asking the question:

http://computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/151324.html

I tested a clean copy of XP and the result was that I was only able to open 37 IE browser windows (google page) and 16 Windows Explorer windows. This was on a 256 MB machine. The problem isn't RAM it's "resources" in the Windows stack I understand...

Please test this on Mac OSX and see how many browser windows/finder? windows you can open before you can't open anymore or wierd things start happening...

If what I suspect is true WindowsXP is truely a pile of junk...

For more info on "resources" in Windows look here: http://www.apptools.com/rants/resources.php
The article claims no limits in NT/XP but not according to real-world experience. I did notice Win2000 was more capable but I'm not sure--was a long time ago.
 
Joined
Jun 9, 2005
Messages
632
Reaction score
27
Points
28
Location
My world
Your Mac's Specs
iBook 12" G4, 30 GB, 768 MB RAM. iPod 5G 30GB.
so i tested my ibook

specs:
1.2 ghz
758 mb ram

safari windows - 100
finder windows - 50 (but could have gone so much higher)
mail open
iCal open
Text edit 1 windows open

the only reason safari was slow was because it had to open the web page.. other than that it could have done alot more.. it just.. kinda got a lot of windows
see picture:

 
OP
T

TekWiz

Guest
Cooool!!! I see that in OSX when you make windows small--everything becomes small--the contents and the taskbars, so you can have a lot of windows open on your desktop and see them all. Of course this is not possible in Windblows... :-( Weeeep...
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2004
Messages
10,345
Reaction score
597
Points
113
Location
Margaritaville
Your Mac's Specs
3.4 Ghz i7 MacBook Pro (2015), iPad Pro (2014), iPhone Xs Max. Apple TV 4K
This is easy, select a folder full of 500 pictures, highlight them all and hit enter. Whatever the default graphics program is will open all 500 of them....

Here's 123 open pictures, 3 finder Windows, Handbrake (ripping), Safari and iTunes all open.

Picture 1.jpg
 
OP
T

TekWiz

Guest
I think I'm going to freakin' die!!! :eek:neye: I think if Windows users who possess at least average intelligence saw these screenshots they would scream in anguish and switch ASAP! :mac: Hey Billy, you're in the wrong business! Get out NOW!
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2004
Messages
10,345
Reaction score
597
Points
113
Location
Margaritaville
Your Mac's Specs
3.4 Ghz i7 MacBook Pro (2015), iPad Pro (2014), iPhone Xs Max. Apple TV 4K
I went and read the post you were taking about. Pretty funny. Feel free to use my picture if you like...
 
OP
T

TekWiz

Guest
Thanks baggss. Glad you enjoyed it--it's getting better--I added more. I never realized Windows has such a loyal following. I guess every horror has it's disciples...
 
OP
L

lil

Guest
Well if it's of any help, I regularly run Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Word, Corel Painter IX etc. all at the same with minimal lag on my Power Mac G4.

But I remember those Amigas, great hardware but a serious lack of any professional apps.

Vicky
 
OP
T

TekWiz

Guest
Vicky, yeah, sure that helps--Under WinXP it would be impossible to run all that you mentioned at the same time. Maybe but at that point things would start to fail. Yeah, true that there was a lack of apps for the Amiga, but when it came out it had the hottest graphics capabilities. It's still being used today in some places for video production. The architecture for that time was fantastic and it ran much better and faster than Windows runs today. It booted and loaded programs in seconds. Windows is wait, wait and more wait. The Amiga ran at 16 Mhz and had a few megs of RAM.
 

dtravis7


Retired Staff
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
30,133
Reaction score
703
Points
113
Location
Modesto, Ca.
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
lil said:
But I remember those Amigas, great hardware but a serious lack of any professional apps.

Vicky

Agreed! The Amiga was so ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, but the applications and especially Productivity like Word Processing left a lot to be desired. I had to pull out my old Atari ST in fact to get some stuff done till I got my first Mac Plus used. The Amiga had some great games though and music applications not to mention was good with video when the toaster came out. I miss it in a lot of ways, but it needed more APPS! The Multitasking for it's time though was so good. Way ahead of anything else on the market for quite a while.

...Dennis
 
OP
L

lil

Guest
Well Jobs was right when he met those Amiga chappies or was it Commodore in saying he didn't like it because "it was too much hardware". Of course we are talking about a chap who baulks at a cooling fan and was passionate about the 5.25" floppy drive ;)

I did have an Amiga and some desktop publishing app for it, plus some word processor, but the disk swaps... The DTP package was fairly OK, but I seem to recall that the layout was always distorted because the Amiga had odd pixels, not square ones. That's when I got the IIsi and QXP 3 on it.

I never owned an ST.

That said, I always preferred the Mac over the Amiga, something about the kooky Chicago system font and that multicoloured Apple in the top left did it for me. I am a girl of simple pleasures ;)

Anyway, I'm not going to add fuel to a Windows pyre, considering that Windows has its applications, and in all honesty—I haven't sat at a truly modern desktop PC for some time, though I do occassionally use a P4 2.8GHz, but it is crippled with only have 256MB RAM—so I can't offer genuine comparisons otherwise I'd have to sit myself at Tiger on a 256MB machine, and we all know that would suck big time—sort of like those dreams where you are running away from something so scary but you are running so **** slow.

I remember Photoshop 6 starting quicker on a Pentium III with 1GB RAM—but then I got the RAID setup for my Macintosh—and well, it holds its own, I suppose the workflow paradigm comes to mind and for some reason for my way of working, the Macintosh fits into that way of working perfectly—but it is a personal thing.

Vicky
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2005
Messages
2,789
Reaction score
84
Points
48
Location
A religiously oppressed state
Your Mac's Specs
17" MacBook Pro
Right now I have 80 safari windows open and everything is just as fast as if I had 1 open. Oh yes, I have photoshop and am chatting in adium as well...
 
OP
T

TekWiz

Guest
Well, I used the Amiga between 1988 and 1995. There were a lot of cool games but I never really played any of them--I just enjoyed seeing all the graphics and demos. I mostly used it to dialup to BBSs, word processing for school, and also did some desktop publishing with PageStream with a Panasonic KXP-1124 24 pin dot matrix at first! and then a Laserjet III. PageStream was competing with Quark and Pagemaker at the time, and it did have many features that were not available in the others. The thing that really limited the Amiga in terms of productivity is that the standard non-interlaced video was only 640x200, which means you could see the scanlines. 640x400 came with a price--interlacing which hurt your eyes since it flickered like crazy unless you sat in the dark and turned the brightness down or had a high-persistence monitor. The colors were great--4,096 but this had to be in HAM (Hold And Modify) mode, which was a funky mode that only worked with some programs. Many things were also done in a shell mode which was like DOS.

The Mac had a much nicer display, even when it was B&W it was sharper and more elegant. It didn't have the animation abilities of the Amiga though. The Amigas were cheaper, with the Amiga 500 costing about $800 with a color monitor, but only a floppy drive. Like the Commodore 64, it was a cool computer at the time, but never as "serious" and "neat" as the Mac.

The great graphics chips were the cause of it's success at the time but also caused it's downfall--like someone once said they were "loose cannons". The software was so closely tied to the custom chipset, it was very hard to take advantage of newer display technology. The Amiga 3000 had a "FLICKER FIXER" which was a built-in de-interlacer. Most Amiga users didn't even have a true VGA monitor so the flicker fixer didn't do them any good. The results were also not the best. None of the larger software houses produced any of the mainstream software for it, probably due to the small user base.

With all these problems, the Amiga became big in video production, particularly with the Toaster and is still used for this purpose in some places.

The only reason I forgot about the Amiga in 1995 is because I wanted to be able to use all the mainstream software, and Windows was the most popular OS for which I could get the most software. I also liked the idea I could build my own PC, being an electronics addict. The Mac was also more expensive. But whenever I saw a Mac I was always jealous. It always looked so goooood!!! Even my mother who is not much into computers remembers a day we walked into this big Mac place on 23rd st. in NY and she was so impressed by the "beautiful blue, calm shade, look, and relaxing appearance of the Mac screens" She still insists that she isn't seeing anything as pretty on the PC screen today. I also feel something like that when I look at a Mac display. Somehow it's still years ahead. Just the screenshots put up here look so much better than clunky windows...

Hey, I am so dissapointed--that computing.net site removed the whole thread. Guess they didn't want an OS war. Sucks--It did get pretty funny--I think these WinXP loyalists got extremely angry because they knew what I was saying was true but won't admit it to themselves.

Why did Apple drop the old OS? Because they wanted to keep up with the times. They didn't want the user experience to be held back by old technology. Even OS9 was far beyond Windows but it wasn't good enough for Apple. OSX is based on rock stable FreeBSD and the whole OSX shell was written by only 150 programmers. Microsoft has thousands of programmers and they keep patching and messing with the same old code from DOS and Windows v1.0.

The result? A MULTITASKING OS that RUNS SLOW AS MOLASSES, NO MATTER how much RAM you have! You can put 4 gigs in Windows and it will still use a swap file, and you'll be waiting while the drive crunches away. Additionally you cannot run more than about 10 browser windows 10 explorer windows and a couple of major programs like photoshop before it stops working, or as I tested a maximum of 37 IE windows and 16 Windows explorer windows! That's really NOT MUCH for a freshly booted, clean install of WinXP! As I say this was not even a memory limitation--the computer didn't even increase the swap file size--this is a limit in WinXP's internal memory stack--supposedly claimed to be unlimited, but it's LIE!!!! Easily testable!!!

I will end this with a simple example: Someone I know bought 3 new Dells for his office just last month. All of them are 2.7 Ghz with 512 Mb RAM with WindowsXP Media Edition. The office manager is complaining why these things are so slow, and they are... Some of these Dells have programs crash as soon as you take them out of the box.

Another disaster: on friday I tried to install Adobe Reader 7 on a Windows PC that just recently had WinXP freshly installed on it--I couldn't--the installer (The Netopsystems FEAD Optimizer) crashes over and over again. I am trying to figure out why.
 
Joined
Jun 25, 2005
Messages
3,231
Reaction score
112
Points
63
Location
On the road
Your Mac's Specs
2011 MBP, i7, 16GB RAM, MBP 2.16Ghz Core Duo, 2GB ram, Dual 867Mhz MDD, 1.75GB ram, ATI 9800 Pro vid
TekWiz said:
I tested a clean copy of XP and the result was that I was only able to open 37 IE browser windows (google page) and 16 Windows Explorer windows. This was on a 256 MB machine. The problem isn't RAM it's "resources" in the Windows stack I understand...

Not to say there isn't other resource problems with windows, but with only 256MB of ram, your test is unfair. OS X would also be stressed with such little ram too. By the way, the link didn't work for me this Sunday.

With that said, I try to laugh when my XP box at work redraws the screen after logging back in from the security lock it is in. So slow in fact that some windows only have their frames and I can see my desktop image through them!
 
OP
T

TekWiz

Guest
I haven't been able to find any head-to-head comparison between Mulititasking ability in WinXP and OSX or Linux for that matter. I believe WinXP may be severely limited in multitasking ability and everybody who uses it pretends it's fine or just suffers with it.

xstep, I do have 10 years experience working with Windows and I have been using WinXP for hours a day for 5 years now! Currently I am using a 1500 Mhz Athlon with 512 MB. Believe me, I can't run more than a few things on a freshly booted machine, and as soon as I use it for a few days, I must reboot because I can run less and less. Photoshop loses most of the available fonts, etc.

As I explained, Windows makes use of the SWAP file if it doesn't have enough RAM. When I opened the 37 IE windows and 16 Explorer windows, the swap file didn't increase a bit and THERE WAS NO SLOWDOWN AT ALL! It's just that at that point, NO WINDOW WOULD OPEN ANYMORE! Maybe if I closed one of the Explorer window I could open an IE window but with nothing showing up in it, or maybe no toolbar, or as you say an empty frame. This is clearly an indication of some STACK LIMITATION in the OS. Let's face it, with all of the glitz and hoopla, WinXP is unable to run more than a couple of major programs and maybe 10 IE and 10 Explorer Windows. We have seen in this thread that the MAC has no such clear limit--people have easily opened up hundreds of windows with no problem and posted samples.

I am currently trying to get info on Win2000 from that other forum.

Yeah that link has stopped working because the answers I got were very abusive and the forum moderators decided to delete the whole thread. Those WinXP users were RABID--calling me names and what not. They don't like to be faced with the truth about Windows the love so much.

I'm trying to get more info on the same forum, but taking a more sophisticated approach. However already I get a negative response--"why would anyone need so many windows open at the same time?" Idea totally missed. Why did people in this forum test and give me immediate results with screenshots? Most Windows users don't know how to even get a screenshot much less post it anywhere... Hehehe...

New threads:
http://computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/64135.html
http://computing.net/windows2003/wwwboard/forum/5540.html
 
Joined
Mar 17, 2006
Messages
312
Reaction score
17
Points
18
Location
Texas
Your Mac's Specs
Mac mini i5, 2.3Ghz dual core, 8 GB RAM, OSX 10.8.2
TekWiz said:
The result? A MULTITASKING OS that RUNS SLOW AS MOLASSES, NO MATTER how much RAM you have! You can put 4 gigs in Windows and it will still use a swap file, and you'll be waiting while the drive crunches away.

Well, duh. Turn the pagefile off, then. Manually. I've got 1.5GB of RAM in a machine with a P4 2.53Ghz CPU and 256 MB video card. Turned the swap file off and that machine is now lightning fast.

I will end this with a simple example: Someone I know bought 3 new Dells for his office just last month. All of them are 2.7 Ghz with 512 Mb RAM with WindowsXP Media Edition. The office manager is complaining why these things are so slow, and they are... Some of these Dells have programs crash as soon as you take them out of the box. In fact on friday I tried to install Adobe Reader 7 on a Windows PC that just recently had WinXP freshly installed on it--I couldn't--the installer crashed over and over again.

That's not normal behaviour though, even for Windows machines.
 
OP
T

TekWiz

Guest
Kar98, yeah nice idea to turn the swapfile off, but it will only work for some programs. I had a friend who runs a printing business do that. He got 2 gigs of ram, and still complained, so I told him about this idea. He tried it, but using the usual programs, Adobe, etc. the computer was even slower than before. I have investigated this and found that some programs won't run at all or improperly with no swap file enabled.

Crashing is normal Windows behavior. A friend of mine does video editing and his life was a series of horrors with Windows. Many computers, all ended up in the junk pile, blue screens galore. (Matrox, Adobe premiere) Just got an iMAC with final cut pro, and he's kicking himself for not doing this earlier...

WOW! I CANNOT BELIEVE IT!!! Check out this nutty thing: Microsoft actually came out with a Windows XP "starter edition" in 2004. This company is really an evil joke. Can you imagine Apple coming out with something like this?

(The secret is that this limit is already in any version of WindowsXP--just not as low.)

Hey, isn't WinME geared to low-end PCs and doesn't have limits of 3 windows open? I can't believe MS actually sells such wierd products.

http://demarzo.net/archive/2004/10/04/284.aspx


Two Reasons to avoid Windows XP Starter Edition
In a recent press release, Microsoft announced the start of a pilot program for Windows XP Starter Edition, a stripped-down version of its desktop operating system intended for use by “first-time desktop PC users in developing technology markets.”

Here's two reasons why no one should use this product:

Multitasking limitations. The Starter Edition limits the user to three programs and three windows per program running concurrently. Consider: Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook Express, stop. These are ridiculous and unnecessary limitations that do nothing to improve the accessibility to first-time PC users; all they will do is create frustration and support calls. The one unintended positive: limiting Internet Explorer to three windows may stop pop-up ads.

Limited screen resolution. The Starter Edition limits the display resolution to a maximum of 800x600. This is fine if you have a 15-inch CRT, but considering the trend of 17-inch CRTs and 15-inch LCDs (which nearly match a 17-inch CRT in viewable area), this only restricts what people can do. Again, another unnecessary restriction that does not improve accessibility to users.

I am all for Microsoft fine-tuning the Windows experience to new users, especially those who have limited familiarity with computers. However, putting unnecessary restrictions on the user is not the way to do this. Simplifying does not mean restricting. What does a high resolution or concurrent applications have to do with simplification?

Too bad they didn't ask me my opinion!
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2004
Messages
10,345
Reaction score
597
Points
113
Location
Margaritaville
Your Mac's Specs
3.4 Ghz i7 MacBook Pro (2015), iPad Pro (2014), iPhone Xs Max. Apple TV 4K
Wasn't Starter Addition intended for release in third world countries as a low cost tool to fight pirating?
 
Joined
Feb 2, 2006
Messages
168
Reaction score
3
Points
18
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Your Mac's Specs
1.25Ghz Mini, 512MB, 40GB
Funnily enough in XP you can only open 127 processes at once (tested using calculator) so I'm guessing that they have a 4bit addressing limit on multitasking.

As for my mac I have had literaly thousands of windows open and if you check my specs you will know that is very impressive. I'm not on my mac at the moment but when I get a chance I will post up a screenshot.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top