Saved to the RAM from.. , err.., RAM?
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From Vista home, http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/performance.mspx
It says 'When you turn off a Windows Vista-based desktop, all the documents, applications, and data that are currently in use are saved in two places. First, they are saved to the memory, or RAM, where they are quickly accessible (in Windows XP this was called Standby).'
Saved to the RAM? WTF?
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[quote user="Ezekiel Rage"]
From Vista home, http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/performance.mspx
It says 'When you turn off a Windows Vista-based desktop, all the documents, applications, and data that are currently in use are saved in two places. First, they are saved to the memory, or RAM, where they are quickly accessible (in Windows XP this was called Standby).'
Saved to the RAM? WTF?
[/quote]
Remember their audience.
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That's no excuse. When you teach misinformation it just makes it harder to teach the truth later.
Simplify the explanations if you must, but use the correct terms at least. That way you don't get
a whole bunch of people who think they know what they're talking about but who're actually just
speaking gibberish.
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When you turn off a Windows Vista-based desktop, you might just make out the faint cheer of a penguin watching you through that RDP connection you didn't know you had...
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I think that if a MS machine is in Standby then it does save to RAM, which is what the clause in parentheses at the end is hinting. Reading the doc, it sounds like that when you turn off Vista, it doesn't necessarily turn off, but may go into semi-standby instead, which they call Sleep. Maybe they thought combining standby - hibernate - shutdown into Sleep will simplify things for the user by reducing the number of options.
However, if reducing options was the goal, they've succeeded in screwing it up anyway.
Choices = Headaches
I’m sure there’s a whole team of UI designers, programmers, and testers who worked very hard on the OFF button in Windows Vista, but seriously, is this the best you could come up with? …
--RA
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[quote user="Ezekiel Rage"]
From Vista home, http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/performance.mspx
It says 'When you turn off a Windows Vista-based desktop, all the documents, applications, and data that are currently in use are saved in two places. First, they are saved to the memory, or RAM, where they are quickly accessible (in Windows XP this was called Standby).'[/quote]
You're taking out of context:
"Sleep on desktop PCs
Sleep works in a different way on Windows Vista-based desktops than it does on Windows Vista-based laptops. When you turn off a Windows Vista-based desktop, all the documents, applications, and data that are currently in use are saved in two places. First, they are saved to the memory, or RAM, where they are quickly accessible (in Windows XP this was called Standby). Simultaneously, the information is saved to the computer's hard disk (in Windows XP this was called Hibernate). In Sleep, Windows Vista simultaneously saves the current user information to both memory and the hard disk."
It's talking about sleep, not total 'turn off computer and lose all data save to ram because it's volatal memory'. Memory is RAM. I see no WTF, sorry.
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[quote user="malfist"]
It's talking about sleep, not total 'turn off computer and lose all data save to ram because it's volatal memory'. Memory is RAM. I see no WTF, sorry.
[/quote]
I think you misunderstood, I dont think WTF is that they are 'saving to RAM while turning off' (or sleeping or whatever), it's they are saying its 'saving to RAM'. Period. Saving to RAM? from where? Isn't it already in RAM?
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[quote user="Ezekiel Rage"][quote user="malfist"]
It's talking about sleep, not total 'turn off computer and lose all data save to ram because it's volatal memory'. Memory is RAM. I see no WTF, sorry.
[/quote]
I think you misunderstood, I dont think WTF is that they are 'saving to RAM while turning off' (or sleeping or whatever), it's they are saying its 'saving to RAM'. Period. Saving to RAM? from where? Isn't it already in RAM?
[/quote]
Sorry, but actually YOU are misunderstanding what "Standby" mode is. In standby mode, an "image" of the contents of RAM is created and then written to RAM (and the previous contents of RAM are deleted); when the machine comes OUT of Standby, the RAM image is read and re-written into RAM (and the "image" of RAM is deleted). This is functionally very similar to the way "Hibernate" mode works, except in Hibernate mode the RAM image is written to the hard drive and the RAM is then powered down (along with the rest of the computer). Standby mode allows the computer to enter a very low-power mode but resume normal operations very quickly. You can google for more details.
There is no WTF here - the Microsoft website is absolutely correct (though intentionally sparse on the details, considering their audience).
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[quote user="edifyyo"]
Sorry, but actually YOU are misunderstanding what "Standby" mode is. In standby mode, an "image" of the contents of RAM is created and then written to RAM (and the previous contents of RAM are deleted); when the machine comes OUT of Standby, the RAM image is read and re-written into RAM (and the "image" of RAM is deleted). This is functionally very similar to the way "Hibernate" mode works, except in Hibernate mode the RAM image is written to the hard drive and the RAM is then powered down (along with the rest of the computer). Standby mode allows the computer to enter a very low-power mode but resume normal operations very quickly. You can google for more details.
There is no WTF here - the Microsoft website is absolutely correct (though intentionally sparse on the details, considering their audience).
[/quote]
Does this mean that I won?
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[quote user="edifyyo"]
Sorry, but actually YOU are misunderstanding what "Standby" mode is.
[/quote]
I guess one learns something new everyday! The Vista documentation says Sleep/Standby is same as ACPI-S3 also known as 'Suspend to RAM'.
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=5560975395
BTW, what's the benefit of creating an "image" of the RAM contents and storing it in the RAM? Since CPU is not executing any instructions, RAM contents wont change anyway? I thought it made more sense to just run the RAM at reduced refresh?
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BTW, what's the benefit of creating an "image" of the RAM contents and storing it in the RAM? Since CPU is not executing any instructions, RAM contents wont change anyway? I thought it made more sense to just run the RAM at reduced refresh?
I don't think an actual image of RAM is created in Standby mode, but the registers aren't in RAM and need to be stored somewhere. Where else but RAM? :D Actually, I doubt those are stored. More likely other things are stored to RAM, such as the CPU instructions necessary to resume.
That should answer Ezekiel's WTF. It's poorly worded, but it's not an outright WTF.
BTW, Vista's Sleep is more a combination of S3 and S4. On a Desktop when you enter Sleep mode it enters the S3 state, but at the same time it writes to the hard drive (and sets up the boot instructions) as if it were entering S4 state. That way, if you lose power you don't lose data. On a Laptop, it's not necessary to enter S4 at the same time, since you have a battery and can't lose power unless you outright remove the battery. It only enters S4 if necessary, when the battery power diminishes.
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This is more like what they're talking about, at the bottom of that link. They talk about Hybrid hard disks with built in NVRAM. Like the old days of the modem where you'd store different profiles for different BBSes, you could store to this particular kind of ram that doesn't delete it's contents without power. Modern stuff is Flash drives (USB thumb drives, etc.) while up and coming is PRAM which could win the war. I'd still stay away. Vista requires so much hardware to do things that could be done with windows 95. Just in a prettier package with more "security".
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I see another WTF:
"ReadyBoost" - Using a memory stick as 'more RAM' it will slow down the system, memory sticks are slow compared to the disk drives and _real RAM_ -- like... how can you use a device that, sure the band is at 480 MB/s (Given the benefit of USB2) the actual write speed to the chip is another thing.
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[quote user="DigitalXeron"]
I see another WTF:
"ReadyBoost" - Using a memory stick as 'more RAM' it will slow down the system, memory sticks are slow compared to the disk drives and real RAM -- like... how can you use a device that, sure the band is at 480 MB/s (Given the benefit of USB2) the actual write speed to the chip is another thing.
[/quote]
While I'd generally agree with that, usb memory has been getting much much faster. The other day I was copying ~600mb of data to a coworkers memory stick and it wrote at something like 20-30MB/sec. That's quite impressive, especially compared to laptop harddrives.
Read speeds have doubled from 2004 to 2005 in these tests: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/flash2005.ars/8 and the current generation is even faster. It's starting to become a real alternative.
Phase-change memory - Wikipedia