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Microsoft, Sony Clash Over Vista Turbo Memory 161

Posted by CmdrTaco from the why-can't-we-just-get-along dept.
Anonymous writes "Sony is claiming that the current release of Vista does not support Intel's Turbo Memory technology, but Microsoft has dismissed the allegation. If Microsoft is telling the truth then all is well. But if Sony is right, Microsoft has opened itself to being sued for deceptive marketing practices."
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Microsoft, Sony Clash Over Vista Turbo Memory More

Microsoft, Sony Clash Over Vista Turbo Memory

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  • So, sue me (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mangu ( 126918 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:30AM (#19457867)
    if Sony is right, Microsoft has opened itself to being sued for deceptive marketing practices."


    That wouldn't be the first time Microsoft was sued. What does Sony have that the US-DOJ doesn't?

    • Re:So, sue me (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sunburnt ( 890890 ) * on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:32AM (#19457875)

      That wouldn't be the first time Microsoft was sued. What does Sony have that the US-DOJ doesn't?

      Other than positive regard by a larger number of the American people, I have no idea.

      • Re:So, sue me (Score:5, Insightful)

        by speaker of the truth ( 1112181 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:41AM (#19457931)
        Its pretty telling and sad when the company responsible for root-kits has a higher regard among us then the DoJ.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Sunburnt ( 890890 ) *

          Its pretty telling and sad when the company responsible for root-kits has a higher regard among us then the DoJ.

          True. I don't buy CDs, though, and all I know is that my Sony has, for years, provided clean, crisp images of such things as the incompetent lackey in charge of the DoJ, lying desperately in order to cover his political ass. In fact, when I first purchased the Sony, it provided great imagery of his predecessor explaining the need to ruthlessly prosecute pornographers and head shops.

        • There's no end to this sadness (Score:5, Interesting)

          by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @01:18PM (#19458889)
          When presidential candidates are debating about evolution you really must wonder how enlightened the masses really are.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          All Sony did is rootkit a few million PCs to make a quick buck. They were windows PCs so it's not like they weren't already stuffed full of spy/ad/crapware. The DOJ is trying to destroy the foundations of our nation just to avoid having to actually do their damn jobs.

      • Re:So, sue me (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DMaster0 ( 26135 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @04:45PM (#19460119)
        wait, who's in positive regard?

        Sony? The rootkit installing, graffiti sponsoring over priced pusher of mediocre quality products?

        Microsoft? Of course not, we're on slashdot after all...

        the US Department of Justice? After the media coverage of the Paris Hilton ordeal and the fact that millions of people now realize that convicted people in most cases only serve %10 of their time and even less if they're rich socialites... followed by the abrupt reversal of the status quo to put the rich socialite in jail to the fullest extent of her sentence rather than getting treated like any other common probation violator... I'd say the average American is rather unsure of where they stand with regards to the justice system in the US and I'd suspect that money would have a lot to do with it today in any case.

        they're all pretty shady in their own respects if you ask me, and it all seems to come down to money.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by BuhDuh ( 1102769 )
      He said, she said. Handbags at dawn. Ho-hum.

    • Re:So, sue me (Score:5, Informative)

      by arthurs_sidekick ( 41708 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:06AM (#19458059) Homepage

      In all likelihood, buckets of money. Compare MS' or Sony's ADVERTISING budget to the ENTIRE budget allocated to the DOJ's antitrust division:

      • MS [joystiq.com]: $945M (reportedly)
      • DOJ [usdoj.gov]: (2003) $140M

      My google-fu on financial info breakdowns for publicly traded companies is obviously weak, but Nintendo said they were going to spend $200M on marketing the Wii *alone*, so it's likely that Sony's advertising budget for the PS3 ALONE is on the order of the entire allocation for the DOJ's antitrust division.

  • Its all marketing... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by click2005 ( 921437 )
    Sony is dying because of the way they've been treating their customers lately.

    By attacking one of the few companies more hated than them, they're trying to re-direct some of their bad karma.

    • Sony is not dying .. (Score:5, Informative)

      by rs232 ( 849320 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:52AM (#19457985)
      "Sony is dying because of the way they've been treating their customers lately"

      "By attacking one of the few companies more hated than them, they're trying to re-direct some of their bad karma"

      http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SNE&t=6m [yahoo.com]

      was: Re:Its all marketing...

      • Re:Sony is not dying .. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:00PM (#19458363) Journal
        Yeah, if Sony is dying, then Apple must be dying faster

        http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=6m [yahoo.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
        Sony's not dying..? You mean to tell Sony and Microsoft execs aren't sitting here whole day defending their "hated" companies from pissed off slashdotters?!

        Outrageous claims.

      • Vista currently supports file caching not only on motherboard-loaded Turbo Ram (Intel's solution) but also on USB memory devices.

        Sony makes the Memory Stick, which is just about the most expensive and least widely-usable flash-memory solution out there. But, if you plugged it into a USB port on a Vista machine, it could give you a caching boost.

        Switching that process to the motherboard is one less advertising opportunity for Sony to foist their proprietary, expensive solutions off on people. Not to mentio
        • Yes..., number three, which is why the PS2 is STILL outselling the 360.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by KarmaMB84 ( 743001 )
            Probably because everyone stuck with massive PS libraries and not enough money to afford a PS3 are replacing their broken shoddy POS PS2s. Sony seems to be the master at building products that last until about a month out of warranty then suddenly drop dead.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by e2d2 ( 115622 )
              Speak for yourself, I love my PS2 thank you very much. Years in and they still support it well, focusing on it instead of the PS3. Why? Because it still makes money.

              In the years I've owned mine the only thing I had to do was clean off the laser, it got dusty and wouldn't play.

              It's not the end all, but it's not a POS in my opinion.

      • By attacking one of the few companies more hated than them, they're trying to re-direct some of their bad karma
        One of these days, they're going to have to put some kind of disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying "the views represented on Slashdot, are not necessarily indicative of those held in the Real World(tm)"

    • Re:Its all marketing... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:39AM (#19458241)
      By attacking one of the few companies more hated than them, they're trying to re-direct some of their bad karma.

      Bad karma? What bad karma?

      Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates proved even more appealing than cuddly babies in the eighth-annual Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal ranking of the world's best and worst corporate reputations.
      Top-ranked Microsoft managed to beat Johnson & Johnson, whose emotionally appealing baby-products business had kept it in first place for a remarkable seven consecutive years. In the Reputation Quotient survey conducted by market-research firm Harris Interactive Inc., respondents gave Microsoft very high marks for leadership and financial results. But Mr. Gates's personal philanthropy also boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft. How Boss's Deeds Buff A Firm's Reputation [wsj.com]

      Apple ranked 22nd in the Harris poll.

    • Insightful? The reply below yours pwns your assumption. Sony is way more than the PS3 or any nerd-focused rootkit debacle. The public at large is still in love with Sony regardless of what some internet crybabies would have them believe.

      • Insightful? The reply below yours pwns your assumption. Sony is way more than the PS3 or any nerd-focused rootkit debacle. The public at large is still in love with Sony regardless of what some internet crybabies would have them believe.

        So deciding that it is wrong for a company to try to deliberately install a rootkit on our computers makes one a crybaby? Unfortunately, like most other security issues this one is "nerd-focused," that is, until it's YOUR machine that is compromised.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      "Sony is dying because of the way they've been treating their customers lately.
      By attacking one of the few companies more hated than them, they're trying to re-direct some of their bad karma."

      Shame. Looks like the end of your post got cut off, so I'll paste it here to avoid confusion:

      "</sarcasm> LOLzers! Hahaha! I'm kidding rite, you don't real think I thought that sereously! OMGWTFBBQ hehehe! ROFLMAO"
  • Another niche tech product backfires on its creators. I wonder if they'll ever learn.

  • From TFA: (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sunburnt ( 890890 ) * on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:38AM (#19457915)
    Sony's specific allegations:

    [T]he omission of Vista support for Turbo Memory arose to avoid further delay of the OS released. Vista currently cannot recognize which kinds of processes and files need to be preloaded into Turbo Memory, [Sony's David] Spaeth said.

    vs. Microsoft's vague assurances:

    "Windows Vista supports Intel's Turbo Memory, and Microsoft and Intel have worked together to ensure that Turbo Memory works with Windows Vista technologies. There are no issues which we are aware of that would prevent [manufacturers] from adopting Turbo Memory for great performance results with Windows Vista."

    Guess who seems more confident in their assertion?

    • Re:From TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:13AM (#19458093)
      So are you trying to say one marketing droid is more credible than another? The whole turbo memory issue is dubious at the moment. Under certain load conditions and system configurations it does appear to offer decent performance improvements but can frequently degrade general performance. It's currently more attractive to the manufacturers than the end user though because it's a lot cheaper for them to put in flash memory rather than ram and let the user take the performance hit. I'm curious about what happens when the flash memory fails. Have you got a new paperweight or does the OS just ignore it and carry on with the ram available? HP have opted against it as well because they feel theres no substantial benefit from what is still quite immature technology.
      • the way its been told to me it goes
        1 stick inserted and recognized as "turbo boost" capable
        2 one of the items in the menu is "use to speed up system"
        3 it starts shoving stuff on the stick
        4 the stick fails or you yank the stick out
        5 the system then falls back to normal performance (or lack thereof)
      • Microsoft said "There are no issues which we are aware of" as opposed to saying "There are NO issues." Henceforth, Microsoft has plausible deniability.
      • MS Win XP already has similar tech to turbo memory. It's the boot and file load optimizer that runs in background every few days to move + coalesce disk reads to all come from the "same area", "sequentially", on disk. Already they measure what areas of disk are used the most during boot and program launch. It would be a simple matter to write the most frequently read areas to "Turbo-memory", _backed_up_ by real disk. The Turbo memory does what it is supposed to do -- speeds up "reads" of frequently used

    • From TF Intel.com (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:23AM (#19458149)
      Tests run on customer reference boards and preproduction latest generation Intel® Centrino® processor technology with optional Intel® Turbo Memory enabled against like systems without Intel Turbo Memory. Results may vary based on hardware, software and overall system configuration. All tests and ratings reflect the approximate performance of Intel® products as measured by those tests. All testing was done on Microsoft Windows Vista* Ultimate (build 6000). Application load and runtime acceleration depend on Vista's preference to pre-load those applications into the Microsoft ReadyBoost* cache. See www.intel.com/performance/mobile/intel_turbo_memor y.htm [intel.com] for more information.

      Which in turn yields:

      Performance measurements collected on pre-production Lenovo ThinkPad* T61 with pre-production BIOS. Detailed Notebook Configurations

        PCMark05 Test from FutureMark is an application-based benchmarking tool used to measure overall PC performance. By using portions of real applications, this benchmarking tool can assess PC performance. (+36% improvement)

        Google* Earth loading a fly through of a national park followed by Adobe Photoshop* Elements 5.0 creating a slideshow showing pictures from the same park. The input files for Adobe Photoshop Elements are 48 digital photos with a resolution of 10 MPel. (+127%)

      Performance tests and ratings are measured using specific computer systems and/or components and reflect the approximate performance of Intel products as measured by those tests. Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance. Buyers should consult other sources of information to evaluate the performance of systems or components they are considering purchasing. For more information on performance tests and on the performance of Intel products, visit www.intel.com/performance/ or call (U.S.) 1-800-628-8686 or 1-916-356-3104.

      But Sony is trustworthy, they'd never lie.

      • Re:From TF Intel.com (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:49PM (#19458689) Homepage
        What appears to be going on here is that Microsoft is technically correct in stating that Turbo Memory is supported. Sony appears to be incorrect in claiming that it is not but may well be correct in stating that first generation support does not improve performance as it should.

        Looks to me more like Sony overstating their case in explaining why they are not offering support now.

        Why anyone would expect this to work 100% till the first service patch is beyond me.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Hektor_Troy ( 262592 )

          Why anyone would expect this to work 100% till the first service patch is beyond me.

          Why anyone would expect brakes on cars to work 100% till the first service visit it beyond me.

          Yes, I know the car analogy is always flawed, but why the hell should we always expect to have to wait $deity how long till the company decides that they'll finish getting things working?

          If they say they support $techonology, I expect them to support it. Not halfway or a quarter way. Same with cars - if they advertise a car as havin

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cnettel ( 836611 )
            The thing in supporting Turbo Memory is that "proper" detection of what should be put there is no binary feature. It's obvious that it can be done in a more or less efficient way. It's kind of like regenerative braking in hybrid cars, to keep your analogy. You can have it, but think that the mileage advantage is too low, maybe even low enough to indicate that there is something wrong in the design of the system. As long as there is actual some juice coming from those breaks when the car slows down, it's har
          • Why anyone would expect brakes on cars to work 100% till the first service visit it beyond me.

            Bad analogy, the brakes on your car are the result of over a century of engineering effort.

            We actually use less effective brakes than we could these days, drum brakes are actually superior in stopping power. The switch to disk brakes took place because disks are less prone to fade.

            At the end of the day the stopping power of your brakes is no greater than the ability of your tires in any case.

            Turbo memory i

    • I'm actually glad someone has taken Microsoft to-task on this one, because the overall picture I'm getting from the online review world is ReadyBoost doesn't really help performance [hardwaresecrets.com].

      I don't think the feature is "broken" by definition, in fact I think the intended benefits are so tiny that people are left confused. According to this FAQ page [msdn.com], we know the following:

      1. This is designed "at best" to deliver a few percent faster performance, targeting smaller files. It is intended as an upgrade path of last re

  • Deceptive Marketing Practices... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Organic Brain Damage ( 863655 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:43AM (#19457937)
    ...must be one of most redundant statements in the English language.
  • Sony: Vista doesn't support TurboMemory.
    Microsoft: It does too. See? It uses the flash memory for...things. Vroom.
    Sony: You call that support? It doesn't do what it's supposed to.
    Microsoft: Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. It's integrated and magical.
    Sony: Yeah, it'll half-work, as long as you micromanage what files are cached.
    Microsoft: See? Integration.
    Sony: Um...no. Not quite.

  • It is likely that there is some support but it.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @10:56AM (#19458011)
    does not work in the way that it was marketed as giving a nice speed up and M$ just pushed it back to vista sp1.

  • Sony is right... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:16AM (#19458113)
    There was a test recently in the german gamers magazine Gamestar, and they found that ''turbo memory'' did nios speed things up at all in a number of different set-ups they tested.

  • Must be a day that ends in "y"... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:20AM (#19458139)
    Microsoft? Using "deceptive marketing practices."

    Huh.

    Who'd of thunk it?

    Must be a day that ends with "y".

    (rolls eyes)

  • The real problem... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Eric Damron ( 553630 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:22AM (#19458145)
    "The issue is that the OS needs to learn what to load into the Robson memory in order to increase performance," Sony said."

    It sounds to me like Microsoft may have implemented it poorly so it's a feature that doesn't really help.

    How many people here are old enough to remember the transistor radio? I remember the big thing was to get a five transistor radio. That was a radio with five (5) transistors. And they had five too but if you looked you might see that one of the three leads on two of the transistors were cut.

    Unscrupulous companies were putting five transistors into their radios so that they could advertise that feature but they were using two of them as simple diodes not as transistors. What you paid for was a five transistor radio but what you got was a in effect three transistor radio. You couldn't really sue because the unit had all five transistors, just some of them weren't being used as transistors.

    • Re:The real problem... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:55AM (#19458327) Homepage

      I remember seeing an article about that. The first had one transistor, then two, then three. Then people kept adding transistors and claiming it made their radio better. While some actually did that, the article had pictures of radios where off on a part of the circuit board that wasn't connected to anything there would be 3 or more transistors just soldered onto the board, no connections. They would buy bad transistors and just stick them in, not even using them as diodes, so they could call it a 5 transistor radio.

      Frankly, I believe Sony in this case. Getting the algorythim right for this would be tough. It woudn't surprise me if the one MS made is currently ineffective. It will take time to find a better one.

      • Actually most standard transistor radios, including some early ones [transistor.org], had six transistors.
        The Regency TR-1 [arczip.com] had four [msoe.edu], using only one transistor in the audio section.
        I just fixed an old 1958 vintage Sony TR-610 the other day. The schematic [roetta.it] shows a converter transistor (oscillator that also performs mixing function), two I.F. (intermediate frequency) amplifiers, an audio preamp stage and a push-pull audio power amplifier. Although many later radios had the PNP variety of germanium transistors, early ones like

  • I'm a bit confused... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by keithjr ( 1091829 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:36AM (#19458217)
    Is Turbo Memory technology hardware that is designed and built around an OS (Vista)? That seems to be a very peculiar (read:bad) idea. What does it mean for other users who intend to utilize different operating systems? Is there a loss of performance or just an added feature that cannot be used?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by dave420 ( 699308 )
      No, it's not Vista-only. It can be used by ANY operating system. It's designed as a way to allow parts of an OS, or indeed applications within an OS, to persist when the host computer is off, allowing, say, the OS to boot from that faster memory than a hard disk. If drivers were written for it in Linux, then Linux could use it.

      • Intel disagrees with you... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by msauve ( 701917 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:43PM (#19458637)
        It's interesting that Intel themselves calls it an "entirely new system innovation for Windows Vista PCs..." [intel.com] and says that it "Works on Windows Vista only." [intel.com]

        Perhaps you can point to the specification which would allow it to be used by other operating systems. If I have a dual-boot system, does the specification allow it to keep info for each? If so, how is it determined which OS gets use of how much of this memory?

        • It's interesting that Intel themselves calls it an "entirely new system innovation for Windows Vista PCs..." and says that it "Works on Windows Vista only."

          The reason why it only works in Vista is that, right now, there are no other OS which support it.
          Unless they have some funky hardware in there that actively monitors which OS is running and disables the Turbo Memory hardware if it doesn't recognize it as Vista, any OS should be able to support it.
          The specifications might be closed though. (Haven't checked) Maybe Intel won't allow anyone but Microsoft to read the specs, forcing all other to reverse-engineer it if they want to support it? =/

          Regarding dual-bo

      • Sounds like a security flaw to me... Is the Flashed memory CRC'd and stored on the HD for verification?
      • While initial seek is definitely faster than hard drives, is data throughput better than a SATA hard drive? If not, it should probably be used only for small files that don't change often, as an extended cache.
        • That's exactly how Readyboost works with Vista. Smaller files are cached, larger ones are generally not. In real world scenarios it really only gives a slight boost though, unless you're running it on a memory contrained system.

  • Deceptive marketing (Score:4, Funny)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:39AM (#19458239) Homepage
    Microsoft has opened itself to being sued for deceptive marketing practices

    Considering they got away claiming they were selling Operating Systems, I don't think this will be a problem.

  • Sony, psts! (Score:5, Funny)

    by fluch ( 126140 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @11:44AM (#19458269)
    Sony, look, if Vista is not using the turbo memory technology you could use the free space there to load your root kits even faster....

  • The Death of "Turbo." (Score:2, Insightful)

    by djmcmath ( 99313 )
    (rant)
    Does anyone actually remember when "turbo" had a technical definition beyond "really fast?" Does anyone realize that, in the computing world, "turbo" is essentially meaningless? (Go ahead, demonstrate for me how you pressurize the incoming bitstream mix using the processor bitstream exhaust pressure...) Or has the influx of market-roids slapping a "turbo" badge on any slightly-faster-than-last-year's technology made this term utterly useless?
    (/rant)

    • Re:The Death of "Turbo." (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anno1602 ( 320047 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:17PM (#19458473)
      (rant)
      Does anyone actually remember when "turbo" had a technical definition beyond "turbocharger"? Does anyone realize that, in the engineering world, all that "turbo" means is "involving turbines" (go ahead, demonstrate me how you pressurize the incoming steam mix using the turbogenerator exhaust pressure)? Or has the the influx of market-roids dropping the "charger" on any turbocharged piston engine made this term utterly useless?
      (/rant)

      SCNR.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cnettel ( 836611 )
        I remember Turbo Pascal. Then C#. Anders is a great language guy, but the name-giving could certainly be improved.

    • The Turbo Button! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Man in Spandex ( 775950 ) <prsn DOT kev AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:50PM (#19458693)
      The death of "Turbo" was when the Turbo Button stopped appearing on computer cases :X Now wasn't that cool or what, you had TURBO and the speed of your procesor was indicated on a led display.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by pimpimpim ( 811140 )
        Funnily enough, the TURBO button was always on, except when it was used to slow down the PC in case you wanted to play an old dos game whose speed depended on the clock speed. So effectively it was more a slow-down button. Ah the days. Also I had stickerbooks with TURBO stickers in it, probably also glittering. Intel should've called it Hybrid memory. It would've probably also been true in a way and is much more contemporary.
    • Or maybe Afterburner Powered... that would explain why your laptop gets so hot.

    • Yeah. I remember [porsche.com].

      Have you heard the exhaust note on one of these?

      But alas, I'm just a photographer.

    • Does anyone actually remember when "turbo" had a technical definition beyond "really fast?"

      I'm guessing you never used Turbo Pascal or had an XT PC with a Turbo button on it.

      I'm guessing there was a gap of about 30 seconds between turbochargers being advertised for engines and marketing putting them into common usage as "really fast and neat and new".

  • What it does, and why it doesn't work (and does) (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:12PM (#19458437)

    To keep it simple, it is flash memory (slower then ram (regular memory), cheaper then ram, not as long lasting as ram) that is added as an extra cache.

    That is it, nothing more. Just a file cache. The OS controls it and has to tell it what to cache and what not.

    Cacheing in itself is pretty simple and its speed increase is pretty damn obvious to all those of us who have lived through the age of the minimal/full setup for games. The game/data comes on the CD, with it being optional to "cache" it to the HD. The more you cache on the HD, the faster the game will load its data.

    Now there are problems with cacheing. What to keep, and what to loose.

    Take again a game. Say I a racing game. As I drive around the track new scenery comes up and has to be taken into memory. If it is full then old scenery needs to dropped out. Obviously the machine that has enough memory to take the ENTIRE track into memory will perform the best. Next will be the machine that can at least load it from something like an HD, preferrably a special cache file of the track that combines all the needed data in one handy arrangement, slowest will be the machine that is forced to read the track data from the CD as you drive around.

    Turbo Memory(cache) is designed to load frequently used data(applications are data as well) into its memory, so that it can be loaded into main memory faster then if it had to be loaded from HD.

    And there is its problem. HD's ain't slow, and it still got to be loaded from the cache into memory. The game engine itself barely benefits from this, it just might reduce the loading time IF your OS deems the game engine to be fit to be loaded. The game data itself will be too big to load. In a linear game you wouldn't even have much to cache, either stuff is needed constantly, and needs to be in main memory OR is used once, and there is no point in cacheing it.

    This kind of tech ain't knew. Were it excells is in reducing the startup time of many small often run applications. Were it sucks donkey balls is when it comes to big run once, stay loaded type apps.

    What is even worse, AI in OS'es generally just isn't very good and often gets it wrong. In trying to guess what you are doing it will often guess wrong and actually hurt performance.

    Turbo Memory works with certain workflows were you would be better off with just more memory and or faster HD but can't have/afford that.

    I am therefore not suprised at the Sony and MS reaction. Both are absolutly correct. Sony tested it with their set of tests, and found it not worth the cost. Very likely they just have a certain workflow they test for with memory setups that are designed for that. (Might Sony make more money from selling main memory, then turbo memory) MS will have tested for different circumstances, perhaps those that favor their cacheing system and with the knowledge that MS does NOT sell main memory?

    So what does this mean to you? Make sure you check that any review of technology like this resembles what YOU do with your computer. Always run the same apps that stay active, handfull of large apps and can afford/have enough main memory, then don't bother. Are you someone who runs countless little apps, constantly closing them and reopening them and just don't have enough or can't enough main memory, then it might work for you. IF Vista properly regonizes what you are doing and can use the cache as it is intended.

    So no Sony OR MS bashing needed here. Simply different views of how users us their computer.

  • Intel and Microsoft Marketing at it's best (Score:5, Informative)

    by kungfoolery ( 1022787 ) <kaiyoung.pak@gmail.com> on Sunday June 10, 2007 @12:23PM (#19458523)

    According to several articles regarding this subject, the questionable utility of Turbo Memory is not the fault of MS alone:

    http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31976/135/ [tgdaily.com]

    TG Daily reports that Intel's showcasing of Turbo Memory included benchmarks that's anything but real-world applicable: "The benchmark appeared to slam several pictures at lightning speed into Photoshop, something that would play to the strengths of flash memory because the pictures would already be stored in flash for fast opening by Photoshop. Realistically though, we think the average user wouldn't capture dozens of pictures and then open them all in Photoshop in one fell swoop."

    Which leads to an Anandtech article showing that in many cases, performance suffered as a result of Turbo Memory implementation - particularly with boot and hibernation times. Now these are cases where users are MOST likely to notice performance differences.

    Finally, in the cases where Turbo Memory would seem useful, it appears that HP discovered that using far more versatile, ubitquitous flash solutions such as SD and USB drives (not to mention just adding regular system memory (what a concept!)) yielded similar and more economically sensible results: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6188522.html [zdnet.com]

    Maybe if Vista didn't need such obscene amounts of memory, this wouldn't be an issue; but I digress.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hxnwix ( 652290 )
      Mod parent informative.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      It's a shame really. Howzabout just sticking a CF socket on the mainboard and calling it good? Any OS that can't support an IDE drive probably won't care anyway.

  • Turbo button? (Score:4, Funny)

    by adnonsense ( 826530 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @01:39PM (#19459031) Homepage Journal

    The case of the AT box under my table which I use as a router-cum-fileserver has a "TURBO" button on the front display.

    The box usually runs OpenBSD, so I tried starting a Vista installation to see what all the fuss was about.

    Unfortunately, it appears 64MB of "tradtional" RAM is not enough for Vista.

  • Right. Call me when... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tim Browse ( 9263 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @02:13PM (#19459231)

    ...Sony have a fecking clue about software.

    The day I trust Sony's views on what makes good software is the day I call up Satan for his advice on which Snow-Plough model gets you to work fastest.

  • Turbo? (Score:3, Funny)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Sunday June 10, 2007 @02:57PM (#19459507) Homepage
    That sounds so, so...eighties.

    Or is it memory that can only be used by TurboPascal?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cnettel ( 836611 )
      EMS is back, and this time you can't load a driver in config.sys to emulate it!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Mattsson ( 105422 )
      I think it's obvious.
      They use the spin of the harddrive, since it's spinning most of the time anyway, to run a compressor that compresses the data (It's a well known fact that data has properties very similar to a gas) so that more of it can fit into the memory at once, giving instantly improved performance.
      For added performance, you can also have the data-bus go through a cooler.
    • Nothing's more '80s than Tess Turbo [wikipedia.org]
  • So there's contention because Sony says a Microsoft feature doesn't work but Microsoft says Sony corporation just can't figure out _how_ to make it work?

    Now there's an advertisement for hap-hap-happy Windows user friendliness. Wanna pay $400 to set me up with some Vista _real_ soon with news like that.
  • "well.... it doesn't NOT support it!"

  • Bigger question (Score:3, Funny)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @12:57AM (#19462465) Homepage
    The bigger question here is:

    When is the Linux kernel going to make use of Turbo Memory? It would be funny if, after MS touting this tech for so long, we can say "but you need Linux before it will work properly".

  • put the freaking OS on it's own solid-state drive. Half of the time shit loads slow because it has to load subsystem crap from a moving platter. Once it's been stored to RAM, things load faster. OS+subsystems on it's own direct to FSB connected solid-state chip would fix half of this mess as it is.

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