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Business 2.0 Says 'Boycott Vista'
amyandjake writes "Business 2.0 has a story about Vista's delays, the amount of time wasted by Microsoft bringing Vista to market, and the fact that it doesn't seem to have any compelling features for upgrading. The last paragraph of the story says 'Boycott Vista. Keep your old Windows XP PC around. Don't buy a new one. That's the only way we have to let Microsoft know Vista is an overhyped, late, and pointless update to XP — a perfectly fine operating system.'" Relatedly, torrensmith writes "Paul Thurrott is at it again with his seemingly never-ending supply of information about Windows Vista. This time, he discusses the things he dislikes about the program, in the article The Dark Side of Windows Vista RC1."
Is the decree of consent over? In Paul Thurrott's article, aside from the refreshing observation Mr. Thurrott is willing to critique as well as fawn, I find it notable he picks one example where MS has been inconsistent and stupid (I agree) with their navigation ergonomics.
From his article, it's pretty clear MS is shipping a DVD maker, and from just one screen it appears to be a video/other type of application. Is this now considered de rigeur intrinsic Operating System? I know the definition of OS has blurred and been trickier to pin down, and I would expect an OS to have the appropriate drivers to allow burning of a DVD (it is after all, a component of the OS, or at least drivers for a DVD burner are).
If I were ROXIO or NERO, I'd be pissed, this looks like a de facto and direct competitor product, and if it's bundled as "part of the OS", it would seem close to the line of leveraging again.
And later in Thurrott's article he mentions the builtin virus checking -- something previously discussed on slashdot -- this also seems like another market niche MS is conveniently incorporating as part of their OS.... (how about making an OS much less susceptible to this in the first place?).
Is MS free to do this now?
As for boycotting Vista, I wish the world would consider, but it won't. And, I'll have to have some Vista machine and exposure to continue to pretend to support friends and family. Everything I've read about Vista bolsters the view there is not much new worth the upgrade, and there's enough annoying to induce a ferocious case of buyer's remorse.
they had me right until the point where they say "XP is a perfectly fine operating system".
why?
what features are you looking forward to in vista? i'm not trying to flamebait or troll, i just want to know what you are looking forward to.
-- lol pwned
I'm not buying another version of Windows. I don't care how good they say it is. I was told Windows 95 would be awesome, it was suffering incarnate. I was told Windows 98 would be great, they started putting in irritating behaviour and it was still a pain to do things with. I was told Windows XP would be great, it's widely credited with being worse than Windows 98.
Next for me is either Mac or just throw everything I don't have in Linux into Linux. At least that way I stop paying a tax every few years to enrich people who have been very careless with security while at the same time trying to control everyone's market by bundling everything under the sun into it.
I think Vista could be the best thing Microsoft ever did for Apple or Linux.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A perfectly fine operating system.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Sooner or later, it will have something that you need and can't get on XP, or you will get a new PC that has it bundled (or you are not on windows anyway so you aren't part of this conversation :) )
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
you mispelled "downgrade" ;)
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Vista's extreme support for DRM is my concern. I realize that XP also supports DRM in various ways, but Vista has quite a focus on it, and I'm not inclined to support that. That's what made XP my last Windows purchase. I bought an early Mac mini, and I've been nothing less than delighted with the thing. Feels like my linux machines, only prettier and a lot friendlier. Going to buy another Mac soon.
Apple's pushing DRM in a big way too; but Microsoft dominates the market and that's who I think the message needs to go to. In the meantime, buying MP3, staying away from iTunes AAC media, and supporting anyone who posts actual uncompressed, high-quality audio is the way to go. Vote with your wallet. That is the only thing these companies pay attention to. Every time you buy iTunes or any other proprietary DRM'd solution, you're screwing yourself and everyone else. And not in a fun way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
1. If Vista is pointless, what does it matter if it's "overhyped and late"?
2. Would good does it do to send MS a message that XP is perfectly fine? Is any business going to stop developing new versions of sucessful products just because people liked the old version?
I don't think "churning" is the quite the right word, maybe "lurching" would be a better description.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
XP was late and overhyped as well. Many argued that NT4SP6, W2K and W98SE would be enough for anyone. There were numerous predictions that companies and consumers wouldn't upgrade and stick with what they have.
But this didn't happen. XP was adopted, just like Vista will be adopted over time. Trying to stop this inevitable progression is really a complete waste of one's political vigor.
People saying Vista is going to be a terrible OS just because of so called computer 'gossip' they heard [hello juding a book by its cover]! I went a TechNet meeting last week on Vista. After sitting in an auditorium for 4 hours, listening and watching what Vista can do, I can't wait to upgrade.
Vista has matured greatly since Beta 2 (as I had run Beta 2 and am currently running Pre-RC1 right now and RC1 will be installed later tonight). I would greatly appreciate people actually installing it and then saying why its no good after they have something to back-it-up with.
Boycott all you want - it will became a standard anyway. Just like [insert_windows_version_here] was. Justl like XP is. You want it, or you don't. It will.
Because changes happen. Welcome to the world of computing.
More accurate to say :
Paul Thurrott is at it again with his seemingly never-ending supply of linkbait, generating page views for his advertisers by beathlessly stating Vista is great one week and it sucks the next.
Paul Thurrott:
Even calling this thing Windows Mail is an insult. The Windows name should only be added to first rate products.
But what would they call their operating system, then?
Wow guys, from your reactions it seems as though you don't like windows vista, or xp. What a fucking suprise. I know everyone here says that xp is crappy and unstable, but iv been running it on one of my systems with no problems (except for a few hardware fuckups). Hell, i was running another system on 98 for a solid five years without any thing to worry about until i broke down and got another xp license. For many people xp just plain works, and im sure vista will be the same way. For a grand majority of consumers that all the matters, frankly i have more important shit to worry about instead of making sure i can find hardware and device drivers for linux and that i can actually play the game i just purchased. Everyone knows vista is going to be the new standard and will be used in most new systems, if you want to bother complaining about it, go on. btw, im not trying to flamebait or troll, im just tired of reading this crap, on my xp system that has been running for 6 months straight i might add.
In just about every text entry box in Mac OS X, Apple-Shift-RightArrow will deliver the desired result; in carbon and cocoa the base TextView class has the same behavior, and everybody uses NSTextView unless they're using a decades-old or explicitly cross-platform UI codebase. I can think of a few programs that break this rule, but they're extremely rare -- however I am aware one particularly-popular productivity suite that does not conform to the selection keybindings, on account of legacy behavior and a cross-platform codebase.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I would guess hundreds of thousands considering the number of huge mufflers and space wings I see glued onto primer gray Honda's..
So exactly what ARE the new features of Vista that are compelling? All I'm reading is that you don't like OSX. The question was not about OS X, it was about Vista.
All in all, it might not be what the customer wants, but MS is ensuring that resellers are doing their best to convince customers that. With their new online software purchasing model, resellers are seeing a need to do this so they get some sort of revenue (credits) for lost software sales that are supposedly going to be done online through MS and their partners.
Remember, reality doesnt matter... marketing and pressure on resellers does - most people arent computer saavy enough to know whether they are being sold a boat or a boat anchor we've tied around their neck.
-Rob
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
So we're back to buying audio CDs? At least I get mine used, so take that RIAA.
Just what do you mean by "it's widely credited with being worse than Windows 98?" Show us three credible references where Win98 is shown to be better than XP for any common activity today. Win98 was a nightmare, XP more or less works. Believe me, I'm as much of a Microsoft basher as the next guy, but Dude, don't get all foaming-at-the-mouth on us.
From what I hear it's still pretty much the case that windows is the ...well, not necessarily preferred, but frequently required... OS for gaming. A friend of mine in the world of Warcraft tells me that the Vista RC1 gets 10 fps higher than winXP.
From DOS 6.22 through Win XP; I was a M$ junkie. I even went so far as to become MCSE cert. and to attend various M$ propaganda shows here and there. I was one of those guys who justified my addiction by saying "everyone has it" or "I know how to use M$ stuff- I'm too set in my ways to change".
But it wasn't OSX, *Nix or even the delays of Vista that turned me off to Heir Gates- it was the Internet. As soon as I realized that 90% of my "mission critical" activities were all web-based (email, research, development) I realized that it really didn't matter which desktop I used- they all connected to the same Internet.
Once I got past that hurdle, I found the courage to play with various linux distros and ended up on a Mac running OSX. In retrospect, I can see perfectly well that all of these options are superior to windows (for my needs, perhaps not yours). However, I was unwilling to even explore my other options because I had trapped myself into a proprietary mindset- something even more dangerous than a proprietary format.
Having played with these various OSes, I can see that each of them has "borrowed" from each other; features that prove popular in one almost inevitably find themselves to the others. Just like a favorite make/model of car, there is no "wrong" answer, only preferences and favorites. I think the "masses" are begining to understand this, just as they understand a choice between pickup truck or sports car (good for different things).
And this is why Vista is "doomed"- the dreaded Microsoft Monopoly preys on the ignorance and confusion of the masses. And yes, most people over the age of 40 are mildly retarded in terms of computers. But these dinosaurs are quickly being replaced by a new generation, the first generation "raised on the Internet", the first generation of which 90% are proficient and experienced with a home PC. The confusion factor shrinks more every day, directly proportionate to the decline in M$ market share.
barack to the future?
I really think that Vista is going to be a reality check for alot of longtime Windows users. Now, to put this in perspective, I've been a longtime Windows user myself since Windows 95 first hit the market. I've used every version of Windows since then on my own desktop and have gone on to break into IT management when Windows 2000 first came out. I also broke into web development by learning ASP six years ago. So you could say that I've supported Microsoft for a very long time and have stood by them ever since....at least up until about two or three years ago! I used to swear by Microsoft. I never understood Linux; I always thought it was overly complex. I didn't get the overzealous, almost cult-like attitude of the Mac community of users. Let's face it...Windows simply dominates the desktop and it's easy to see how Microsoft can continue to hold onto their userbase.
However, with the release of Vista, I really feel that it will be very similar to what happened with Windows Millenium Edition. Starting with beta 1, I've installed and tried out each subsequent build of Vista all the way up to the latest RC1 release. All I can say is...WHAT THE?? It's a dog...a big ole' stinkin' dog! I couldn't believe the amount of resources you really need to run it. The default install is over 6 gigs, you need at least a gig of RAM just to get by, and the new interface is pointless unless you have a fairly decent video card that is DirectX 9 compatible. All in all, lots of fluff with little substance. Plus, the new User Account Control features really feel like something of an add-on...as if Microsoft just layered it on top of their existing security model leftover from Windows 2000 and XP. UAC is useless...especially when you consider that a user with administrator rights can simply disable the damn thing!
The problem is this: In order for Vista or any other future version of Windows to continue to succeed, Microsoft needs to learn that Windows needs to be rebuilt and reworked with a new security model that rivals even Unix-based operating systems. Nobody can say that Unix, Linux, and even Mac OS X are bad operating systems when it comes to security. They are very secure by their very nature on how they were built. Microsoft needs to learn from this and build on top of it. This is why Apple made such a smart move when they developed OS X. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, they simply took a proven secure OS and built on top of it. The beauty behind this is that the OS is modular and can be easily updated and upgraded. Windows is anything but modular.
I've since moved on from ASP and am now using PHP as my web development platform of choice. Naturally, I use Linux as a server platform and plan to use a Mac as a desktop. I'm simply tired of Microsoft and all their shenanigans. At least with Apple, when they say their going to do something they do it! They don't tease their customers with features and then pull them out later and say, "Sorry! We screwed up!" So, make mine Apple! I'm really looking forward to Leopard! :)
Jeff Whitfield jeffwhitfield@gmail.com "I can learn to resist anything but temptation..."
I guess I'm just going to have to keep saying it until it stops:
When it is released and available for purchase, have someone review it like any other product, make one post, and be done with it. We don't need to hear about or debate every single time a developer in the Windows group sneezes or a random blogger decides to write their personal conclusions on a product that isn't even released
Owen Thomas's article is horrid, but if you had yet to read Thurrott's article go read it. He actually makes points, not just observations and tells you to boycott. He puts the blame squarely where it should go. On microsoft's head.
I fear the idea of Windows Mail, a system that makes Outlook Express seem advanced? Sadly the only thing I'm hearing that will cause users to upgrade to vista is DirectX 10 and of course graphics, and I don't see anyone saying they won't support XP in games just yet.
As a gamer I know they are going to force me to upgrade by not providing DirectX 10 for Windows XP. Hopefully it will be awhile before this really matters because I do not look forward to installing Vista prior to the eventual release of service pack 1.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I'm still learning shortcut keys on OS X
That's no fault of MacOS X - it is simply a lack of practice. I have been using the Mac for fifteen years and I'm super efficient at using it (keyboard shortcuts you wouldn't even know about probably). I can barely use Windows at all. Is this because Windows has bad keyboard shortcuts - no... it is because I don't have any experience using it.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
You know, I really don't think we are. We can buy MP3s, we can encourage uncompressed and non-lossy recordings — disk space isn't really an issue any longer, and when there's no compression, there's less work for your CPU to do, so there's a good reason... and no compression inherently rules out lossy compression which audiophiles and anyone with a really good ear will appreciate. Plain encodings also mean that they are easy to process, easy to write loaders and savers for in terms of audio programs, and they're also easier to maintain error correction for (row/column error correction can fix single sample errors with almost trivial ease when the surrounding data doesn't have to be decoded.)
I'm really tired of being told what I can do with something I purchased. I don't steal or share audio or video I buy (I'm a musician, and I appreciate the idea of intellectual property and support it fully) but by Darwin, if I bought a recording, I think I should have ZERO flipping problem putting it in my PSP, my MP3 player, any computer I own, any editor I want, and so on. Compression mechanisms are, for the most part, patented and otherwise encumbered — and it seems to me that these days, they mostly serve to make things more difficult. So I say the hell with them. It's not like we're using 64k byte machines any more. Plopping a 30 megabyte tune into RAM is no problem for my machine; most current machines are 512 megs or more, so playing an uncompressed tune (typical) is about a 10% RAM load... who cares? Not most people, I suspect. Likewise, most portable players carry LOTS of memory and I bet hardly anyone is using all that space, or if they are, they're not listening to everything they've got stored... and memory continues to get less expensive and denser as time goes on, so what are we doing, really, by insisting on compression? Let's use our memory and encourage the memory manufacturers to give us more of that instead of the damned DRM trolls giving us more grief.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A perfectly fine operating system.
That is until IBM killed it.
Boycott Vista. Keep your old Windows XP PC around. Don't buy a new one.
That's the key that I think a lot of the other comments are missing. As individuals, we're not nearly as important to the absorbtion rate of Vista as Dell, HP, Gateway and all the other PC manufactures are. People "in the know" about Vista don't seem to be terribly excited about it, at least not as much as previous versions of Windows. Those not in the know will be presented with the opportunity to pay a couple hundred dollars for an upgrade, at minimum, to get no more functionality then thay have, and likely find out that the experience will suck unless they also purchace new hardware. That doesn't seem exciting to me either.
But from the day Vista is released, every small to large scale PC manufacturer will be preinstalling it instead of XP. Just about every new machine purchased will be a Vista purchase. The number of copies of Windows bought off the shelf pales in comparison to pre-installed distribution. So what if we don't go out and buy a retail upgrade?
And that's where the magic of Microsoft kicks in. Even when delivering a half-baked, late-delivered operating system, they'll still be successful. There's little to no chance that someone like Dell will be convinced to not deal with Vista. Bigger operating systems need bigger hardware means more sales means more markups. An individual boycot is not only unlikely, it's completely ineffective.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Let's assume Vista hits the streets in February 2007. After how many months will Dell, etc be required to drop XP and only ship Vista? (My guess 3 - 6 months.) At that point:
About 200 million pcs are sold annually. And 96% (?) of those will have Vista.
Microsoft is not worried about the 1-2 year upgrade holdouts.
What kind of consistency are you waiting for? I haven't found Windows to be very consistent in functionality, except to consistently barf white-on-blue onto the screen at least once a week. The Mac platform has used the same intuitive keyboard shortcuts for years, if that's what you really care about. Not once has a Mac OS X machine completely crashed on me (excepting a hard disk failure). The worst I've got is a failure to save wireless network settings, which I have encoutered on every platform I've used, and which happened to be a simple security update bug, fixed within a month. There's also the spinning beach ball of death, easily remedied with Opt-Cmd-Esc, the one-handed Mac equivalent of Ctl-Alt-Del, without the system-crashing side effects. You will of course need to relearn shortcuts on a new platform, seeing as you unsuprisingly fall into the 90% pie slice of lifetime Windozers, but if that is all of which you complain, you have no reason to do so here.
This is not the signature you're looking for.
...even if you, as an individual, boycott Vista, it won't matter. Next time you go to buy a new PC, XP won't be a choice, HP/Dell/etc. will only give you the option for Vista, preinstalled.
Maybe this will push a few people to OS X. But my money is on Vista becoming the defacto standard, much as XP is now.
The only thing that may work, is if corporate America doens't standardize on Vista. If large companies only want PC's with XP, im sure the boxmakers will oblige them.
What I worry about is there being 32 and 64 bit versions of Vista. I think it just confuses the market. I use the computer for software development, business, media editing, and gaming. I would like to get the 64 bit version of Windows Vista for the expanded memory capability, and the signed drivers. What scares me away though is the fact that there is a 32 bit version of Vista.
Are the people who make my development software, business software, media software, and games going to develop their products for both versions of the operating system? Will I have to worry about compatibility issues? If my current library of software, hardware, and games work with the 32-bit version of the Vista operating system will they also work with the 64 bit version?
Can we really expect hardware manufacturers to make top quality drivers for both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Vista? Will it take longer for hardware manufacturers to produce drivers now since they have to provide two versions? Why didn't microsoft make a single unified driver model for the 32/64 bit versions of Vista? As I understand it, Apple has done this.
I wish they had just made a 64 bit version of Vista, and focused on giving it a good Windows on Windows emulation for 32 bit apps and backwards compatibility. The only reason I can see for having a 32-bit version of the OS is because Intel currently ships Core 2 Duo chips that are only 32-bits.
Usually I've always upgraded to the latest version of windows as soon as it was released to retail, but I intend to wait several months before I make a purchase. Now I feel forced to wait until I hear all reviews about compatibility and stability, and opinion articles about 32 bit versus 64 bit. I plan to buy a whole new machine to ensure full compatibility with the new OS and to take advantage of it's high end features.
I like a lot of what I've seen about the architecture of Windows Vista and the new features they have added, what I don't like is the uncertainty of the compatibility. If I buy the 64 bit version of Vista will I be screwed by compatibility issues, and slow hardware driver releases? Will I be able to play my games or am I buying a Beta machine?
I'm the odd man out in an even number of participants
they have already boycotted XP in large part... when i look around at various places the workstations seem to almost always be running win2k not XP... as 2k is in extended support ending (according to m$ 2010) can business users boycott vista? Assuming corporate customers are not willing to move the desktops to XP or Vista what does m$ do at that point... stick to the plan and end support for 2k ??? running the risk that corp customers look at other options?
....so if your going to have to do that anyway. maybe it is the perfect time to look at moving to *nix desktop enviroments or something.
/timewasting stuff to disable /remove.
Vista's UI is different enough that end user training is going to seem necessary
my question with XP pro in a corporate network setting is what exactly does it bring that is useful to the table over 2k? not much really more stuff to turn off to keep people from wasting time and improved wifi support i guess...and somewhat better boottime.
with vista it seems there would be even more bloat
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Since Microsoft's OS is the dominant home OS and one of the largest OS for business, the preparation and potential capabilities of its new OS seem like they would be worthy of more than average consideration, particularly since many of the people here might end up working on them and/or programming for them. The emphasis on DRM in Vista also seems worthy of consideration before it comes out, as once a nucleus of users have Vista, others will be forced to change to it (and its DRM) in order to preserve compatibility with others - thus dealing with the DRM before Vista comes out might prevent complaints about DRM from being so much tilting at windmills (and the users might know what they are getting).
Complaining about the lack of substantitive information in articles about Vista is legitimate, but the discussion of Vista does not seem to be misplaced, even before its release, because the consequences of its release for Microsoft users, for other programmers, and for related issues are significant and widespread.
FLAC. It's lossless, it's unencumbered by patents, it's open source, and it compresses well, and it's supported natively by many, many media players. It's what I use for all of my audio.
CPU load is probably the least of my worries. RAM however, is a big concern. RAM affects the speed of your computer more than CPU. 30 Megs may seem like a drop in the bucket, but what happens if you have all 512 Megs in use? Or even worse, you're using Windows (which for some reason just *adores* its swapfile.) You start using your swapfile or partition, and now your computer goes from hopping to dragging along like a molasses zombie in a vat of liquid oxygen.
So next time you rip a cd kids, just flac --best -o %o --tag=Artist=%{artist} --tag=Album=%{albumtitle} --tag=Date=%{year} --tag=Title=%{title} --tag=Tracknumber=%{number} --tag=Genre=%{genre} %f
"Build a man a fire warm him for a day, set a man on fire and warm him for the rest of his life."
I've read that some people did studies using actual stopwatches and found that using the mouse for things like selecting text and moving your input cursor is faster than using the keyboard on average. Using the keyboard is faster for some things, but mostly it's that using the keyboard feels faster than using the mouse. Sometimes when I'm bouncing around in Vim I realize that some of my operations would be much quicker easier if I used the mouse (Vim, of course, has a mouse language but I'm not all that familiar with it). It feels like there are more situations where the keyboard is quicker, but when the mouse is quicker it's a *lot* quicker. But I don't have stopwatch numbers to back that particular feeling up. It's hard to test things like that without a bunch of test subjects.
You make good points, but you have a slightly incomplete notion of compression and "lossless" formats.
Sound is an analog phenomenon by nature, and with a good microphone the amount of information we could extract, were we interested, is really incredible. Consider though that 6-channel, 96kHz, 24-bit digital encoding (for instance) is 1.7 megabytes per second. I am not even remotely kidding -- that's 13.824 megabit. A five-minute tune isn't 30MB, it's over 500MB. (We're sticking to SI units here, as is standard).
In digital recording, we're taking quantized samples of an analog phenomenon at regular intervals. This is inherently lossy compression. (Analog recording is inherently lossy also, but that's another issue).
If we want 30MB songs instead, we could use a very simple method of lossy compression -- we could throw away half the samples, two-thirds of the channels, and a third of the sample detail. Then we'd have CD-quality audio. Trouble is, this is very crude; we've thrown away useful detail, like the subtle, soulful sound of a sax, while keeping the same level of detail in silent passages or for simpler waveforms. We've cut the bitrate, but lost too much sound.
Another thing that we could do is use sophisticated mathematical algorithms to analyze the sound in detail and figure out which bits to throw away. We might have problems if our algorithm is poor and throws out something we want, but after years of refinement we've developed algorithms that are far better than simple bit-tossing. In all blind testing, this gives much better results; you may hate a 128kb/s MP3, but try listening to an 8-bit 11khz recording sometime (88kb/s... for mono!)
What we DO need to do is use higher bitrates. MP3 can be encoded pretty well, but nowadays there's no reason to cut the bitrate so much. If we used the bitrate of a CD (1.4 megabit) and our better "lossy" compression formats, we'd get way better sound than we get from a "lossless" regular CD.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
And Hondas have way, way better uptime than Windows.
I meant that to be funny, but now that I think about it, it's kind of an interesting point. Cars have wear items like belts and seals. And yet they're often WAY more reliable than Microsoft's software, in terms of how long they can run without a problem.
How is this an insightful comment? This author shows his complete LACK of knowledge about Vista, not some insight about it.
Just because you haven't done more than 30 seconds of research on what's new in Vista doesn't mean there aren't any useful new features.
It means you're being willfully ignorant.
I don't really care about Vista. I deal with server systems, what desktop users are using...bleh, don't really care.
.Net. PHP is better than original ASP though (VBScript is terrible). Just my 2 cents.
That being said :
1) You cannot judge a software's performance by betas.
2) Windows has always been large, but honestly I can't say that my typical Linux desktop that I actually *use* winds up being any smaller. My working Windows machines typically wind up being about as big as my working Linux machines. Windows has never been about customizability, its about working for people who are complete idiots.
3) The admin user should be able to disable that UAC garbage. Frankly, I've never had a problem with Windows security, because I use things like permissions and limited user accounts on my home computers as well as in the office. If you're handing out admin privileges to everyone that touches your box, you're doing something wrong from the get-go. You wouldn't do that on Linux and you shouldn't do it on Windows either, even though Windows makes it easier. Microsoft defaults to that on XP Home edition and such because its too confusing for your "average" user otherwise. For those people, disabling UAC may as well be "constructing a rocket to fly to space".
I'm not sure I agree with you about Windows security system. It isn't bad...it should just have different distros for different users. You'd be surprised how many people don't want to mess with security at all. On the other hand, for those users who want a secure box, they should have that option more readily available and with less configuration. Additionally, the real problem with Windows isn't even Windows, its the software developers that use registry & system folders for everything and don't follow good software design principles. Applications should be capable of running once you copy the folders...unfortunately, few in the Windows world are that simple to deploy.
Re: ASP vs PHP. PHP is garbage compared to ASP
Vista is supposedly rewritten from scratch. That's fine, because the code now incorporates an awareness of security issues that weren't anticipated when the original codebase was developed...or so they say.
If you listen to Steve Gibson's latest Security Now podcast, he talks about the same mentality at work again - creating new 'features' that might be 'cool' to a technically-minded person, but will create nothing but headaches. The specific feature to which I am referring is Vista's purported ability to broadcast internal, non-routeable IPs, making them accessible from the outside. This completely eradicates NAT as a first (and very effective) layer of security for many people.
Issues like this aside, when code is rewritten, it introduces a whole new set of problems. Obviously, the objective is to minimize them, but I have a feeling that Vista users will experience some of the same kinds of pain they've already endured with XP.
Ah!
So, perhaps you can name a SINGLE "useful new feature" that is worth $170k in new desktops across my enterprise. And when I say "useful", I mean it'll earn that $170k BACK somehow.
Please, name one. And, "Solitare 2007" doesn't cut it.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
but I have a feeling that Vista users will experience some of the same kinds of pain they've already endured with XP.
Exactly. It reminds me of The Onion's article on "World Death Rate Hovers at a Steady 100%" Microsoft says Vista will revolutionize security and make it (nearly) tamper-proof. When you look at how that's been promised in some form for every single OS they've released, and then later proven wildly false, you have to see a pretty consistent pattern.
After switching to Linux, Ubuntu to be exact, I have booted into windows about 3 times. Once to get some settings I needed, once to convert some video (I later found I program to do what I needed under Linux, and once by accident.
Frankly, I don't care. I won't buy Vista, because it has nothing I want. Linux does the job, doesn't cost loads, and is better in so many ways. I'm no linux fanboy, but I will use the overall best thing for me, and that in Linux. I'm not going to ask people to Boycott it. I'm just going to use what I find best, and encourage others to do the same, aswell as telling them all the options.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I want the latest AND the greatest. And whether people like it or not, when Vista comes out, it will be both.
Vista has nothing to do with 'latest and greatest'. It's the last gasp of the two massive but crumbling monopolies, Microsoft and the entertainment industry, to try and lock down everything you see and hear so they can charge you for it. The future doesn't have these monopolies, content creation is becoming more and more decentralized and their business model is dying and they are well aware of this.
I for one will absolutely be boycotting Vista.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
It must be me, but having 3 flavours of linux running, a Mac G4 and 3 PC's with windows XP, XP-x64 and 2003 I don't understand all the flaming back and forth. I love the Linux for getting me on the internet worry free and letting me experiment with all kinds of stuff, I dig the Mac for feeding my Ipod and driving my KORG WS and I just cherisch my Windows flavours for getting my Canos EOS connected and playing my games, doing my SQL 2005 and putting my ASP based forum up nice and secure. I have dedictated a disc for Vista (RC1 at the moment) and I don't realy see the reason for all the big fuss. Everybody is shouting about monopolies and in the same sentence is pushing there own fav OS. Realy, it CAN work, I have all those PC's working in harmony and I wouldn't want to part with any of them. Whenever I get comments to ditch this or that it reminds me of all those fundamentalists trying to force their religion onto the world. Believe me, they all work, they all are manageble, they all have their down and up sides. You just need to know what you are doing... And that is what REAL system administration is all about. Everything else is just an inabbility to deal with it.
Supporting MS products doesn't mean you have to like them.
XP doesn't let me do that. I actually am MORE experienced on XP, and it is my preferred OS, but I'm not as fast at it. To my knowledge there's no handy "go-up-a-folder" shortcut or "go-to-desktop" shortcut when in the "open" or "save" dialog. There ARE shortcuts, but none are the ones I used most frequently. Navigating folders/files by keystroke alone is more tedious.
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
You know, I've seen this list dozens of times, and the majority is still complete marketing BS.
First of all, the UI changes, IE7, simple network changes, start menu, explorer changes, new dialogs, USB caching, search, WPF, backup utils, audio changes, and speech recognition are next to useless, and are certainly not worth paying for. Some of thing are even a further step backwards over the old W2k way.
The kernel scheduling, file operations, superfetch, DX10, driver changes, and driver API improvements should just have been there already. They are not worth paying for. They are definitely not worth a new OS. These things fix things that Microsoft should have been fixing in service packs.
This leaves the new TCP/IP stack, desktop compositing, and DPI independence (part of the composition engine anyway), and some new security model improvements. Considering how broken people have been saying UAC is, this *really* is leaving the network stack and the composition engine.
As far as the speed recognition FUD, yeah, it might work. It's much more likely that it just doesn't work well enough to be useful. You can't use it while on the phone, or having a conversation. You won't use it in a busy office. It's just a gimmick.
If you want to hype improvements, they *REALLY* need to be both useful and novel. Many of the things on that list we've had for years on other platforms. Many are only niche useful, or not useful at all. Most of the rest of fixes for poorly implemented MS functionality.
Disclaimer: My experience with Vista has been limited to pre-RC1 and RC1, but both times, making a sincere effort to use them as both my dev OS and my primary OS.
Various kernel improvements in scheduling
Vista does seem to handle high-load situations better than XP (which quite frankly, sucked at dealing with them.)
Completely new TCP/IP stack
Both a plus and a minus -- on the plus side, yes it is fast. On the minus side, what are the bets that a completely new TCP/IP stack is free of security-holes, especially given that this isn't the OpenBSD team we're talking about...
Composited desktop / Aero prettiness
Compositing and hardware-accelerated windows are nice. It's a little on the graphics heavy side though, and does require a beefy video card for the really shiny bits to be usable. That said, I personally (although I expect that others feel differently) find Aero to be so-so... it's got several cool effects, but I actually ended up turning it off when I got sick of it. To each his own, I guess...
Resolution/DPI independence
Except not really. While the frameworks/APIs are in place for this, and some of Vista is resolution independent, much of the OS is still very much bitmap-based. If you don't believe me, take a peek inside some of the shell DLLs. It is prettier, and high-res icons are being used in many places, but the res-independent stuff isn't used very much. (For anyone who thinks I'm an Apple fanboy.... OS X doesn't have res-independence either. Leopard does have it, but it's off by default, and is very very very alpha.)
Revamped security model (UAC, new system services model, etc.)
About time. The UAC stuff is nice, as are the sane default settings, but this isn't really a compelling reason to upgrade (since it's all stuff that a properly configured Win2K or XP box will do.)
IE 7+ (Protected Mode IE) - this will virtually eliminate malware via the browser
Ha ha ha ha ha.... IE Protected Mode is nice... but "virtually eliminate malware"? I think not. As long as the mshtml engine is used as part of the OS, it is still a risk. IE7 is an improvement from IE6, but is still outpaced by other browsers, IMHO.
Much better networking UI / auto network discovery
Better, but still a pain in the ass compared to OS X. This actually _is_ a good feature for people, at least if they're travelling, but not very computer-savvy.
New start menu really is a LOT better than XPs
I agree with half of that statement: it's new. Better is subjective... but it's basically just tries to get you to use the search field instead of the traditional "Programs" hierarchy. I guess that's easier, but I honestly don't like the OS guessing what I want to run. So yes, it's new... but from me it gets a solid "meh... so what?"
Far better Explorer interface
Amen. I like the new concepts seen in the Explorer interface. Some of them are really cool features. My only gripe, and the reason why I currently dislike explorer hasn't changed: from a UI consistancy standpoint, it's complete crap. It breaks it's own rules all the time -- stuff looks different depending on pretty much everything except for the phases of the moon. I know easy UIs have never been Microsoft's strong point, but Vista's Explorer is pretty darn inconsistent. Apple's actually made a screw-up like this too: the "Services" menu in the application-name menu. Each service is pretty cool, but the reasoning behind why they're there, and why they're enabled/disabled seems to be an arbitrary one (to the user.)
WAY better file operations dialogs
WAY better file operations in general
The dialogs are nicer. The operations themselves... well... I haven't really noticed that much of an improvement over XP, to be honest. No complaints though.
ReadyBoost
Works well... if you have a USB drive... and if you keep it plugged in...
The real litigious bastards...
Dude! Thank you for correcting me! You are right, I am wrong. I'm switching back to 2k this weekend, I hate XP.
Unfortunately, I'm a game developer so I don't think I'm going to be able to get away with this for long - the DirectX SDK will no longer install to 2k unless you use a version that's a few years out of date.
> I would say the TCP/IP improvements,
No value; existing network is tuned as good as it gets.
> productivity gains from improved UI,
I've yet to meet one SINGLE user who spends *ANY* time in the OS UI. Result: 0. Users spend time in app-land, not the desktop. And again, a new improved "open/save" common-dialogue doesn't cut it. On a good day, a fancy new dialog might change an 8 second process... to a 7 second process. It'll be years before we see our $60 at that rate; you're also ignoring the cash required to pay me to roll this stuff out, which is one hell of a lot more than $60 a shot.
> the revamped security model,
Again, not relevent - it does not allow for the relaxation of any legacy tactics... at the end of the day, it's just more eye-candy that accomplishes nothing, just another layer of complexity that must be managed yet provides no value. "Revamped"... you mean, "not yet debugged". You know, like WMTimer priv escallation design flaw stuff.
> and the general reliability improvements you'll get from Vista
Sorry to take exception to this one, rofl... that would be a negative value. We're already at a 2-nine uptime (if we *ignore* black tuesday) with XP and 2K; any "crashes" are generally a result of bad behavior in userland, which has no bearing on the OS. You're asking us to start back at square-one, and you're retroactively giving credit to the stability of WVSP6a before we've even hit SP1, yet. Sorry, but "reliability improvements" are long, long ways away.
So, you gave it a good amateur try... but I'm still waiting for an actual reason that puts money on the table, which includes User's Time.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
What is being said in that article is nothing. The bulletted list lists nothing specific that could not have been included in XP. Essentially he's confirming that the 10000 programmers were wasting alot of our time, and theirs. Virtually everything listed could have been incorporated into windows xp and in fact a great many of them probably. The idea that we should upgrade because of dialog boxes or network discovery or ipv6 is downright insane.
99% of the stuff they promised to make into VISTA is gone. The compelling reason to upgrade is because Microsoft will make it non-compelling not to via whatever tactics they can find once they disciver that people are not willing to pay for new dialog boxes and a pretty interface.
Some of the things that guy wrote about in his prior slashdot article are obviously open to personal tastes. I've seen the new interface and I love how pretty it is but the fact remains that Microsoft's programmers don't know how to do 3d code well. They are using features that are unnecessary thus forcing you to buy a newer graphics card. Another major problem lies in that most of the machines that were sold from the likes of Dell (most particularly), HP/Compaq, Gateway, eMachines, etc aren't capable of using the Aero interface, specifically for that reason.
I installed Vista on a geforce 5200 card with 128mb of video ram and the OS refused to enable the interface. On a 6800gt it worked. The point is that even a card capable of playing most of the modern games in the past 3 years won't even display rather minor effects of a glass-style 3d interface which is a far cry from the number of polygons that geforce 5200 card could generate.
The drivers suck for this for alot of hardware. I wound up using old XP drivers because none were provided for components that were well provided for under XP. Copying a file or a series of files takes excessively long periods of time. Wireless cards essentially function a a fraction of their abilities. Any networking seems to take excessively long periods of time.
These are the compelling reasons--you give vendors something more to sell you.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I, for one, don't care if Hollywood movies stop being made. It's not as if they're capable of making anything good with those billion-doller budgets anyway!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Nitpick: it's not iTunes; it's the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). Plain AAC files created by iTunes (e.g. by ripping a CD) are not restricted.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
# I'll just lump UAC, the more-secure IE7 running in protected mode, Mandatory Integrity Control, Session 0 isolation, BitLocker drive encryption, Address Space Layout Randomization,and, oh, a handful of other security features into this one little bullet point. Properly taken advantage of, these could deliver that $170k of ROI all by themselves, in the form of less 3rd-party security requirements, managment of same, and management of security incidents.
All of this is irrelevent or already covered by a competent and tested solution. You'd really retire tried and tested legacy "security measures" for brand new, immature, untested ones? No, the legacy layers stay intact for quite some time... long enough that they effectively never go away, because they stay until every other legacy piece goes away. And by then, Vista will be the thing we're upgrading *from*.
# Speech recognition that works. Not sure if you want a cube-farm full of blabbering knowledge workers, but hey. I can see some orgs using this to good advantage.
You have a new definition of "works". I do have a cube farm; not only does the fun SRE not work that well for realtime production usage, but it's several orders of magnitude slower than typing.
# IPV6, much better wireless support, saved network profiles.
Uh... I've got installs of NT4 with IP6. "Wireless support", again... last I checked, (a) who cares in a desktop world, and (b) "better" defined as "sucks less". Saved profiles? As opposed to the original prism drivers from a century ago?
# mklink -- create, modify and delete junctions, hard links, and symbolic links.
Are you new? We've had this since day 1 of NTFS!
# Completely re-written image-based installation will make deployment a lot easier. It'll also make it a snap to move an employee from old computer to new computer, preserving all apps and settings without extra frobbing by IT staff (or the user!)
That will be a nice feature; too bad it goes against deployment costs, which are only required AFTER the deployment is justified. "We need to upgrade to Vista, because we'll save money by the method of deployment! In fact, if we deploy enough copies... we'll actually turn a profit! We can setup an automated batch job to repeatedly deploy Vista to a single machine, over and over, and make a fortune off the money we save!" My wife uses that same argument about buying junk we don't need that's "on sale". Bzzzt... and then there's Ghost.
As for legacy app migration, aside from most of this already being handled by conditional GPOs and things like X-Setup, such migration will only work as well as the legacy software's copyprotection allows. In other words, it won't... massive frobs will still be required, and in fact existing 2k/xp kludges will need to be redesigned because we're now on... Vista. (This last part doesn't really matter, though; the kludges would eventually need adaptation anyway, once Vista is deployed as a replacement... but we're not talking replacement, we're talking upgrade. Very, very, big difference.)
# Deadlock detection should remove most hang conditions. User-mode drivers should also be worthwhile in this respect.
How that applies to our devices remains to be seen; most users never encounter such deadlocks, unless something got fudged. And if that's the case, then they have bigger issues. Then there's the whole FUD surrounding the signed driver/module/whatever issue, which has yet to be de-FUDded to anyone's satisfaction.
# New task manager can perform specific actions in response to system events, or even multiple triggers.
If you're talking about what I think you are, again... we've had this since NT4. Just not from MS.
# Restart Manager should make most reboots a thing of the past.
Our only major outages seem to mysteriously occur on the 2nd Tuesday of each month, even with 2K3R2... our uptime is actually worse than we had when the backline was NTS4. Will those "mysterious outages" be going away? No?
# Service
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
...is not crash, then you should get yourself an old copy of DOS and be happy.
Some of us, on the other hand, have somewhat higher requirements for an OS: decent POSIX support and standard utility programs (e.g. bash), a UI that doesn't mostly freeze when all we're doing is copying a file, the ability to use the machine without having to worry about malware, etc.
Windows wouldn't meet this criteria even if it were perfectly stable!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
cmd-D navigates the "open" dialogue to the desktop. and, in the "open" dialogue, ENTER opens folders. But I am sure you knew that.
Oh, and all the spare "ENTER" hits were because QuarkXPress 4.0 is always fussing about some page layout reflow baloney and so one has to go through a bunch of dialogues to open a document. Anyway, I am female. :-\
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
Your ROI calculations actually raise two interesting points. At the company I work for where IT supports operations, our formula is a bit harsher. How will this IT upgrade help us net (cost of upgrade * cost of doing business) + incremental sales. (As that isn't totally clear, here is an example). The way it works is say you want a new software package at $1000. We have a 10% (not true value) profit margin on sales. We have to sell $10,0000 worth of merchandise to cover your purchase. For it to stand a chance of being approved, you want the $10K bump plus at least another $20K incremental. Now for Vista to be justified across 2000 computers at $100 volume upgrade pricing, that is $20,000. Double it for testing and implementation, $40,000. Sales to support cost = $400,000, plus incremental benefit = $1.2 million. Another way to consider the incremental is evey project should net a strong positive ROI. For your project, it has to be in the top projects on total ROI because implementation resources are limited.
Now, your post claims nearly all the features of Vista are minimal, which I agree with. With OS X upgrades, each release has improved transactional performance. Every time a file was opened, it took a little less time than the previous OS release. Each release increased 'teh snappy'. An OS X upgrade would be much easier to justify.
Sig-"Out beyond fields of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." Jelaluddin Rumi