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Microsoft Admits Vista Has "High Impact Issues"
EggsAndSausage writes "Microsoft has granted, in a roundabout way, that Vista has 'high impact issues.' It has put out an email call for technical users to participate in testing Service Pack 1, due out later this year, which will address 'regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues.' It's hard to know whether to be reassured that Service Pack 1 is coming in the second half of 2007, and thus that there is a timeframe for considering deployment of Vista within businesses, or to be alarmed that Microsoft is unleashing an OS on the world with 'high impact issues' still remaining." In other news, one blogger believes that Vista is the first Microsoft OS since Windows 3.1 to have regressed in usability from its predecessor (he kindly forgives and dismisses Windows ME). And there's a battle raging over the top 10 reasons to get Vista or not to get Vista.
Oww, my knee!
Exactly how is it less usable then XP. They pretty much both work.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Microsoft has granted, in a roundabout way, that Vista has 'high impact issues.
I'm sure they're using the phrase "High impact" in much the same way as the NTSB.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
for a long time, unless you just like to pay to be a beta tester.
It is way too expensive to be a business user and wind up "testing" a new OS with no easy way to regress.
Win XP Pro is going to be an option to install on most PCs for a long long time.
Since when does "one blogger"'s view qualify as "news"? I'm sure at least "one blogger" thinks that OSX sucks or at least "one blogger" thinks that Linux sucks. Would that qualify as "news" as well?
The quality of the "news stories" that slashdot carries has gone downhill drastically in recent months.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
8. Inbuilt undelete
Or, depending on how you look at it, inbuilt rolling backup. Every time you make a change to a file or delete it, Windows keeps the previous version. As a result, the "oh !@#$ I just overwrote my entire PhD with Document1" feeling can be quickly assuaged. Read more...
But the read more link is broken. Maybe they need to restore it with undelete.
This sounds exciting... I've always wanted a filesystem that would act like CVS with each save. I don't know if this is doing quite that, but it's intriguing at least. (I think there's a Linux filesystem called Elephant that does something like this, but I haven't looked into it much.
(The other thing that I wonder why other file systems haven't adopted is NTFS's alternate streams. They seem like they could be really useful for some stuff...)
There are only four comments and already the sites are slashdotted!
I don't have Vista. Can anyone with Vista verify what this guy says about the file dialog? I'm just a bit shocked and even with my general lack of respect for Microsoft hesitant to believe they'd release something that broken.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Ok, announcing SP1 for the second half of 07 is reasonable since all software has bugs. Calling for testers for the first service pack before the turd actually drops from their butts[1] is another thing entirely. If they have known 'high impact issues' they should delay initial release one more time. This is supposed to be a stable commercial product. Fedora would (hell, HAS) hold a release if it had 'high impact issues' and they pitch themselves as more of an early adopter testbed. Vista is going to be forcefed on millions of unsuspecting computer buyers whether they want it or not. Is it really unreasonable to expect the KNOWN bugs to be squished before forcing OEMs to preload it?
[1] No I do not count the corporate edition released in Nov because it was simply a stunt to claim to have shipped in 06. They knew full well no same corporate IT dept would do anything other than begin testing with a version they would consider the 'final beta'.
Democrat delenda est
That's just cruel.
1: It's more of the same. How many times do you have to buy more of the same before you realise it isn't solving your problems?
2: Ubuntu. It's even free.
3: OSX was out in 2000, Vista is 6 years behind the state of the art.
4: Wired for DRM, your computer is no longer fully under your control... muses... Was it ever with Windows.
5: It costs money. See #2.
6: Massive monoculture bad juju. Perfect for virus/trojan/worm writers. Hell, even evolution produced sexuality to avoid monocultures, that's how good diversity is.
7: Retraining costs. See #2.
8: Bad for the environment. Requires another round of system purchases and junking of "old" systems.
Bill Gates: Profit!
I'm sure there are more.
Deleted
Before you mod me troll, RTFA #5. Then mod me troll.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with Vista file transfer performance? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Vista box for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Color iBook G3, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Vista compatible heavy duty hardware, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Explorer will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on my Vista beast, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista machine that has run faster than my old C64, despite the latest dual core goodness and a $400 video card in this Vista box. My TRS-80 color computer with 16 KB (that's "kilo", not "mega") of ram runs faster than this core 2 duo machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Vista is a superior OS.
Vista addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Vista over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Reckon you won't upgrade to Vista until the first service pack is released? That's looking likely to be the second half of this year, according to Microsoft's latest email blast.
.NET-based command line shell with its own scripting language.
The company has put out a call for "customers and partners (to) actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07 (calendar year 2007)."
Microsoft hasn't released details of exactly what changes will be wrought in Vista SP1, which has been assigned the codename 'Fiji' but some OS components which missed the RTM cut-off will almost certainly be rolled into the update.
One of the candidates for this better-late-than-never brigade would be the Windows PowerShell, previously Microsoft Shell -- a
However, the Redmond clarion call declares that "regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues as are the primary focus for the Service Pack."
So, yes, the still not-yet-released Vista has "high impact issues".
Testers will be enrolled in the Vista SP1 "Technology Adoption Program" and "must be willing to provide feedback and deploy pre-release builds into production environments."
In exchange, Microsoft promises they will have "an opportunity to influence product changes including the opportunity to work directly with product groups influencing their short term and long term goals".
Channels of communications back to the mother ship will include weekly LiveMeeting sessions, "onsite events and regular conference calls" with "24/7 production support for the Service Pack throughout the program."
There's also a clear desire to ensure that SP1 is rock sold. One of the goals for TAP testers will be to "validate the stability of Windows Vista SP1 through production deployments" says the email.
"It's important that customers deploy the Service Pack into production environments within 30 days of a milestone release. Issues will surface from the deployments as well as throughout the program as end users test its limits thought their day-to-day activities. The Windows TAP team will work with customers to identify and drive these issues."
If Vista SP1 scrapes in by December 2007 it will have been 11 months since the OS itself debuted -- the same length of time it took for Windows XP to get its first service pack. However, Microsoft is almost certainly aiming for a much earlier arrival, perhaps to overcome the reluctance among consumers and businesses alike to plunge headfirst into Vista. This is most often espoused in the conventional Windows wisdom which suggests waiting until Service Pack 1 ships.
So how do you get invited to sit at the cool kids' table with all the other TAP folk? This isn't a program for mere mortals. Microsoft suggests that interested users contact their" Technical Account Manager at Microsoft to get nominated".
The Chosen Ones will be expected to "deploy pre-release versions of Service Pack 1 into production environments at each major milestone (Beta, RC, RTM) within 30 days of the milestone release, actively provide feedback on all builds made available to them" and also "meet or exceed predetermined deployment count goals for each milestone."
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
The fact that so much people are thinking just like us "I'll wait Vista mature a bit, at least until SP1, before I give it a try" is the exact reason why Microsoft is going to rush out the fastest Service Pack you're ever seen.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
-Vmware still has yet to release a new VMWorkstation (6.0 is in beta) designed to run Vista as the host O/S
-Novell has yet to set a timetable for a Novell client capable of installing on Vista.
-AutoCad 2007 no timetable yet
-Lotus Notes client 7.01 (no Official support from IBM, though seems to work fine)
-Symantec Antivirus (need to upgrade to version 10.0)
Those are the biggies for our campus (that we've found so far....)
> Microsoft has ... has put out an email call for technical users to participate in testing Service Pack 1,
No thanks Bill. I'll wait for my degraded video and audio like everyone else.
"ui built for the era of video and photography"
...... or someone somewhere will just hack dx10 to work with xp and that will be all.
... no choice but to stupefy in the wake of my 10 reasons to get vista
JUST WHAT the hell does that mean ?!?!?!
"Image-based install"
god, WHAT is this ? im gonna make a critique, but i am speechless. WHAT is image based install ? and why is it good for us ? Were the installations of xp domino-based ? god, i cant establish relevancy - WHAT is that ?
"Up-to-date driver base and better driver handling on installation"
a driver base that will get old in the next 4 months with the coming of new graphics cards and mobos into the market. is that it ? so, it means that xp users were being left to fend for themselves until now ? and vista users will be so after they buy vista ?
"Desktop search and search folders built in"
what is a search folder ?
" Sleep mode that actually works. "
it already works under xp if you have an o.k. quality mobo ?!!
"Rock-solid laptop encryption"
anyone who is able to use encryption is already doing it for NO cost with free programs ?
"Better file navigation"
ehehehee. i read this, understood what the bloke is meaning there, and smiled. so just more shortcuts to display on left hand side eh ? great feature.
"Inbuilt undelete"
s/he who was afraid of deleting something by mistake was already using the recycling bin. SO ?
"9. DirectX10 OK, this isn't so much a benefit as your hand being forced: DirectX 10 will never be made for XP"
you just got that one right there, bloke, and this summarizes why there are no other features that microsoft needs to BULLY people into vista with the direct x 10 shit. they didnt need to put out a new directx version for a long time now, and just with the coming of vista suddenly a need for a new directx appears.
ill tell you what - we wont be playing games that force us to directx 10. im a gamer, not a moron. world of warcraft, age of conan are not forcing dx10 either, so, microsoft will have to shove it up their
"10. Face it, you have no choice"
Read radical news here
Even the below is single-handedly enough for deterring me away from vista :
5. Driver support -- Key hardware like video and sound is crippled at the moment -- while Nvidia is working furiously to get a stable driver for the 8800 out by the 30th, there's still no SLI support for any of the Nvidia range. And thanks to the removal of hardware accelerated 3D sound in Vista, Creative's popular DirectSound based EAX no longer works at all, muting this feature for just about all gaming titles on the market today. Creative is in the process of coding a layer for its drivers to translate EAX calls to the OpenAL API which is seperate from Vista, but going by past experience with Creative drivers we won't see these any time soon.
not only nvidia stuff, but eax too. horrible as i got a creative xtreme music card to listen to 500+ classic music pieces, not to mention quality gaming sound. what kind of lack of foresight is this on part of ms ?
"DRM -- And to a lesser degree TPM -- were made for the RIAAs and MPAAs of this world, and the even tighter integration of copy protection mechanisms and 'Windows Rights Management' into vista are nothing more than a liability to you, the user."
well, this was the main shit that vista was delayed a few years anyway. im happy with my current situation as it is.
"half the limit compared to XP for Home Basic and Premium on how many machines can connect to yours for sharing, printing and accessing the Internet;"
i can say that loads of small businesses in turkey will be yelling the hell outta ms representatives on this one.
Read radical news here
Our company did last year, cities of Vienna and Munich did, French parliament did, it should work out very nicely for you too. Our former XP users love KDE.
No need to put yourself through pains when you can improve security, save money and achieve a good deal of vendor independence all at the same time. Why support the Microsoft monopoly by paying ridiculous prices for bug ridden software with DRM restrictions, when you can run Free software on the industry standard (and thus inexpensive) hardware?
Knowing everything I know now, I only regret that we did not migrate to GNU/Linux sooner.
This is a story about Vista. While the opinion of $random_blogger isn't really worthy of a mention on Slashdot alone, it fits well within the context of the entire story.
Of course, it'd be a lot more interesting if we could actually read the other slashdotted links. But even the "one blogger" story is at least interesting. Just because he's not some respected journalist (or even a disrespected journalist like Cringley or Dvorak) doesn't mean his opinion of Vista isn't just as valid.
AccountKiller
I do not care what they think might be fixed 6 months after they release it. Straight up I will not deploy it until it's more than 3 STD's complete. That means 99.4%. MS has some colossal balls to make something this shoddy and incomplete. I swear they WILL abandon the data center at this rate, by the end of 2008. In fact they should freeze the damn thing right now finish the code for 'significant impact issues' and delay the release another 6 months. What's the difference in another delay at this point?
These are Trouble with a capital "T".
/etc/fstab or via the tune2fs program.
(For those that don't know: a file can have multiple bodies, and a directory can have file bodies too. You can do "notepad C:\WINDOWS:holycrap.txt" to put a stream on the WINDOWS directory.)
Viruses hide in alternate streams. Backup software forgets alternate streams. Web servers and browsers forget alternate streams. FTP servers and clients forget alternate streams.
When next you are running out of disk space, perhaps it is an alternate stream! The file size shown in Windows explorer does not show the alternate streams.
If you really want this load of crap on Linux though... see the user_xattr mount option, which you may set via
buying this M$ crap. Why is there even a discussion? When are we going to learn that these guys have been hosing the worlds computer users for over 20 years - its time to Stop. Pen and Paper has a clear advantage over Windows. Bloody hell, my CAT could write better software. Probably. Use Linux, use OSX, use anything you can, but STOP with this Vista M$ crappy fuc*wit rubbish.
Here, now there are two. Please qualify for which N slashdot is allowed to post. Thanks.
Uh? In Vista you can use Alt-Up (yeah, same as OSX) to go to the parent of an open folder. He must be thinking of XP with its retarded Back/Forward only navigation.
Hmm, no. Perhaps he missed the "Advanced Search" drop down? The MS UI monkey hid it well, but it's there in his screenshot... (It still ignores unknown formats though, like XP SP2 does)
Still, he makes some good points. There are many UI "regressions" in Vista, and for some things productivity drops down. For example it takes ages to delete a bunch of files now, apparently because of the new progress bar... ("computing time remaining" shouldn't take 10 seconds for three files!)
I sincerely hope SP1 addresses these issues, because they are a nuisance...
gcc: no input sig
mabe this is a stupid question, but why microsoft is already working on SP1 for vista? I mean, don't they have a QA department, don't they have people to test the thing? Shouldn't an OS be somewhat working and already have dealt with security issues before they launch it on the public. what makes this so onerous is that you can't get computers with XP, or if you can now, you won't be able to in the near future. they might criticize OSS, but at least a .9 release is a .9. what the hell, I run OS X.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
JUST WHAT the hell does that mean ?!?!?!
"I like buzzwords"? I dunno.
god, WHAT is this ? im gonna make a critique, but i am speechless. WHAT is image based install ? and why is it good for us ? Were the installations of xp domino-based ? god, i cant establish relevancy - WHAT is that ?
Did you RTFP (paragraph) or just the heading? I can't see exactly what it says, but I *do* remember that it says that it should be faster, and I just skimmed.
what is a search folder ?
I bet the paragraph under it went into more details. But in liu of that, a Google for "Vista search folder" leads to this description:
s/he who was afraid of deleting something by mistake was already using the recycling bin. SO ?
Again, RTFP. It's not just undelete, it sounds like a versioning filesystem. Thing CVS+NTFS. As I posted above, I have longed for a filesystem for this feature for some time, if it does what it sounds like.
But the version of OSX that was available 6 years ago was a lot worse than the current one. Apple has made a lot of improvements over the past 6 years.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
will just address some of your trolling, quite frankly the fact you were rated as interesting says it all for the /. community.
god, WHAT is this ? im gonna make a critique, but i am speechless. WHAT is image based install ? and why is it good for us ? Were the installations of xp domino-based ? god, i cant establish relevancy - WHAT is that ?
rather than slowly copy each file across to your system as it works out what you need it copies an image of the OS containing all the files, thus significantly increasing the speed of an install. nothing new here except that now windows can do it instead of needing 3rd party imaging software.
ehehehee. i read this, understood what the bloke is meaning there, and smiled. so just more shortcuts to display on left hand side eh ? great feature.
no, it allows you to actually click on any component of the path and navigate to that, so this is instead of having to have shortcuts on the display or having to step through the paths.
anyone who is able to use encryption is already doing it for NO cost with free programs ?
ahhhh so just because someone can use a free encryption program this is irrelevant? name one free program that easily allows you to encrypt your entire harddrive content including the OS and is easy to use?
s/he who was afraid of deleting something by mistake was already using the recycling bin. SO ?
this is just your lack of understanding, it is not just undelete of somethign you press delete on, it is undelete on stuff you overwrote, try recovering that document you overwrote from your recycling bin.
"9. DirectX10 OK, this isn't so much a benefit as your hand being forced: DirectX 10 will never be made for XP"
directX10 has a lot of changes that make utilising new graphics cards more efficient and allow for much better utilisation of CPU and graphics memory and GPU, if you really were a gamer as you stated this would be something you would be looking forward too as it increases a programmers abilities to deliver better games to you. but hey your a troll so no point in explaining that.
from troll
Read radical news here
1. UI built for the era of video and digital photography.
When you open a folder of photos, they come up as they'd appear in Google Picasa or Apple iPhoto.
So where's the reason not to buy Apple?
2. Image-based install
PC enthusiasts spend a lot of time installing and reinstalling Windows for their own and other pe ople's PCs.
Windows enthusiasts do. But is ease of install a reason to buy? Surely there has to be something more.
3. Up-to-date driver base and better driver handling on installation Enjoy the just-baked driverbase while it lasts (19,500 drivers large).
Er, I'm a slackware user. In comparison, getting a driver for Windows has *never* been a problem.
4. Desktop search and search folders built in
??? Doesn't every OS have a find command or keep a database of current files? How is this different from XP?
5. Sleep mode that actually works.
Ah, the number five reason: They fixed a bug.
6. Rock-solid laptop encryption
Already have it in Linux. HD encryption has been around for years.
7. Better file navigation
Vista now has some time-saving features like favourite folders displayed in the left column of every Explorer window, as well as "breadcrumbed" folder lists allowing you to quickly jump backward and forward through a path. Sure, these should have been put into Windows years ago, but at least they're here now.
This is plain silly. How you display files should not be a reason to buy a whole new OS?
8. Inbuilt undelete
Or, depending on how you look at it, inbuilt rolling backup.
All undelete means is that instead of doing remove you do move. Nothing exciting about that.
9. DirectX10
You probably have me there because I don't know what it is.
10. Face it, you have no choice
Think I'll stick with slackware. Did I tell you the top ten reasons you should get slack-11? Really there's no reason, stick with 10 and upgrade your libraries.
you by any chance are not assuming that it was too hard to read the paragraphs below the headlines do you ?
Read radical news here
An image-based install is an installation that simply copies the disc image to the hard drive. No decompressing, no installing individual selected files, no .cab files, etc. The plus side is that it's faster. Another plus (though perhaps not 100% related) is that Vista will be able to be booted off a DVD, flash drive or anything else and theoretically run on any machine.
I built a linux install CD a few years ago, and most tasks were automated, it had to:
Those 5 steps completed in under 5 minutes (I timed it) compared to half an hour or more using the debian installer and apt to install one package at a time.
My "source" for the filesystem images, what I called the "pristine copy" was a virtual machine under User-Mode Linux. Whenever I wanted to update my install CD I'd just boot it up, do "apt-get upgrade" and use the tools to build a new install CD.
Machines installed from the install CD were naturally upgraded using normal "apt-get upgrade". Image-based install only works for the initial installation.
Well, not as an OS. You see, with a fairly different UI and most familiar things gone, you'll have to re-train people to use it.
Can someone remind me of the top few reasons not to switch to linux and other free software? Did someone say that there is a hidden cost in re-training people?
Another reason is software, much of which is windows exclusive.
Both these problems are suddenly overcome: re-training is not an additional cost for linux during this update since it is shared with Vista. Since many applications will have to be re-written anyway, companies with their own software only for windows.... don't really have that reason for choosing vista.
So if your software has to be re-written and your employees trained to a new UI either way, which are you going to pick... $400 Vista+office2007 or $0 (insert favorite flavor of Linux)+(favorite free/open source office suite).
It just seems to me that the (new to windows) disadvantages of Vista are the same as switching to Linux... and of course then you skip the old disadvantages of windows (stability, security, cost, more). If you want out of vender lock-in, this is the year.
So ? How is this useful and a fantastic new feature for the millions of users who get os'es installed by a techie and use it for over 1-1.5 years ? i dont think that vista requires regular reinstallations so this feature is useless for mainstream user ?
no, it allows you to actually click on any component of the path and navigate to that, so this is instead of having to have shortcuts on the display or having to step through the paths.
directory site navigation like linking ? this is some fantastic, exciting feature ? we already have shortcuts for what we often use and need swift access, so what use is this when browsing some deep folder once in a week or even month ?
ahhhh so just because someone can use a free encryption program this is irrelevant? name one free program that easily allows you to encrypt your entire harddrive content including the OS and is easy to use?
tell me one encryption system that wont take toll on system resources and tell me one techie that wont go nuts trying to tell an average joe why his/her computer slowing down like hell with encryption and why s/he cant "make it faster". is this something that can justify hundreds of dollars of new purchases both in terms of hardware and vista cost to boot ? free > easy in most situations, especially in mid $xxx range and over.
this is just your lack of understanding, it is not just undelete of somethign you press delete on, it is undelete on stuff you overwrote, try recovering that document you overwrote from your recycling bin.
you are meaning that something that is marked as deleted in filesystem and the space it occupied was overwritten by some other file, hence previously unrecoverable. then it is so that it will use a svn like system for it. actually this might be curse than a blessing, since even the registry file structure most often gets corrupted in even xp and causes many hard to detect errors ranging from driver issues resulting from the records to even more serious stuff. more stuff to be broken here that means ?
directX10 has a lot of changes that make utilising new graphics cards more efficient and allow for much better utilisation of CPU and graphics memory and GPU, if you really were a gamer as you stated this would be something you would be looking forward too as it increases a programmers abilities to deliver better games to you. but hey your a troll so no point in explaining that.
im sorry, but for these arguments here about dx10 and gaming, i will outright and flat out say you are totally wrong.
there are acceptable levels of gaming - NO gamer wants to unload around $3000 on hardware so that their vistaed new box will function as fast and acceptable as their previous xp box. any hardcore gamer knows that from some point on there are limits to what human perception can discern in terms of visuals, sound and any other input from the interface. it does not matter in a heated 20vs20 battle the orc you are facing has 1 degrees more smoothed out corners or not, even. and the current state of gaming art delivers more than what is needed.
and you should know that the phrase "better games" does not mean nothing to a hardcore gamer. it is undefinable and too obscure.
you are calling me a troll, but you are speaking like a microsoft salesman citing vague arguments ?
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Having serious ME flashbacks. I think it's time to put all my Win 2000 disks in a bank vault.
From: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_200 70105_001440.html:
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Microsoft swore up and down that they would have a new service pack for Windows XP after Vista.
Who cares if Vista is broken? Most computer users will not see it on their systems for years. Windows XP is still "good enough" for most everybody, except... The hours of patching and updating after a SP2 install.
Microsoft: Are you listening? This user wants a consolidation of all the XP fixes into one service pack.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I will be running WinXP Pro and MS Office 2k7.
Users, well businesses anyway don't seem to care one bit whether MS WIndows, any version, works or not. That's my observation. Use it and shut up...
My work PC is a 2.8GHz P4. Not high end but typically over 40% of it's processor is taken up doing god knows what security wise. There's "service" after "service" designed to bolt on what should have been there from the start but won't ever bet. Put Sparcos, tinted glass and 20in spinners on a piece of crap and it'll still handle like crap and throw you out the windshield the first time it hits the curb.
So it'll be with Vista evidently. We can whine as we wish- anyone here making purchasing decisions? Anyone here said no, I'm making the decisions here and we're moving this business or University or town to Linux or OSX or anything but? If we're not a position to make that sort of decision in our little corner of the world, we're rocks Vista's going to crush into the pavement.
Every single Windows release, I've seen lot of people bashing Microsoft. And I don't remember the last quarter that Microsoft didn't profit at least US$1 billion. Ok, today things are more difficult for them, but I'm getting tired. Most probably I'll die and won't see Linux beating them in the desktop. And to be honest, I'm getting tired and have thinking if this is the right cause to fight.
For example, I have a friend that is a kind famous cardiologist. Although he isn't a computer specialist, he was able to install a bunch of free software in his computer (Ubuntu, OpenOffice, FireFox, etc.) and it was just perfect for his needs. And you know what? He told me that he couldn't believe some guys could develop this for free, while he could charge whatever he wanted that his patients wouldn't think twice to pay him.
Just to close my rationale: I don't think I'm making a better world fighting for the FOSS. I think that I should fight for something with higher priorities, like cheaper/free medicines and medical assistance...
google desktop search does wonders in any xp box ? why spend hundreds for something that needs more resources to function while this one is free ?
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Frets on fire (Free PC version of GH2) It makes heavy use of OpenGL and gets 1 frame every 3 secs in vista but easily does 80fps on the same machine running XP. After Effects 7 also bluescreens alot I'm not sure f the reason but I suspect it's also related to the Opengl.
I just read your entire post and came to the conclusion that you are retarted.
Anyone other then me remember the DOS Undelete program? MS gets credit for restoring useful tools I guess.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
It's the ME version of XP.
I'm not a strong believer in the "Microsoft has no real choice" hypothesis. I don't think MS need the RI/MPAA members of the world as much as they need MS. First of all, MS are a part of, and presumably very active, member of the AACS licensing agency. I know this because it says so in the specifications. Maybe the other members could block them from implementing it, but I consider that unlikely (and why would they want too?).
Secondly, and the real point, MS rule basically every desktop in the world already. Do you believe that computes to leverage FOR or AGAINST Microsoft when negotiation with the MPAAs? Truly, the MPAAs would be at the mercy of MS. "Here's the DRM we're willing of giving you in Vista, be glad you're getting as much!".
I'm more a follower of the "Microsoft is doing this for their own, lock-in based, reasons". The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.
Maybe MS really want the RIAAs and MPAAs on their side in the fight against the iPod? Maybe if MS give the RIAAs and the MPAAs what they want. One back scratched for another... If I didn't despise the MPAAs of the world, I'd raise a warning about MS long documented betrayalish ways, but I do.
BTW. Do you know what company I didn't see stamped on the first page of the AACS specifications?
Apple.
Lesser members perhaps. Now who is in control?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
A number of other bloggers have written rebuttals to the list of 10 reasons to use Windows. Some of them are actually pretty scathing.
n ot-to-get-vista.htmln t_conjure.html
http://www.tipsdr.com/?p=725
http://pinderkent.blogsavy.com/archives/30
http://scott2096.blogspot.com/2007/01/10-reasons-
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2007/01/it_wo
These lists were also discussed a lot over at OSNews recently: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17024
My brother has Vista on his ThinkPad. Imagine how disappointed we were when iTMS couldn't properly play his purchased music. It turns out you need to run iTMS in an XP compatibility mode, and it takes a little digging to find that out.
Nice.
What people should do if they ever want windows is INSIST on XP instead of Vista!
c ost.txt
If we hijack the Windows bandwagon from Microsoft, then Microsoft will be like a BIOS vendor when it comes to Windows. Anyone remember "IBM compatible PC"?
If almost everybody stays with XP and DirectX 9 and doesn't move on to Vista, then Windows XP+DX9 could become a defacto standard that even Microsoft can't get rid of! Just like Intel can't get rid of x86 - they tried and failed with their Itanic, and when IBM tried to switch to MCA.
Then the jobs of people doing Wine, Crossover office, Cedega and more become a lot easier - they have a fixed target instead of multiple moving targets.
Be realistic and ignore the fanboys out there, there are many valid reasons for wanting Windows. XP will continue to make a good substitute for Vista, unless more and more people start switching to Vista.
There really is no Linux substitute for Windows yet, BUT if enough people stick to XP, it becomes far more likely for there to eventually be one.
Just a look at Vista will tell you that Microsoft is no longer improving things significantly or meaningfully, so we might as well freeze Windows, and be able to spend more time and resources on innovating elsewhere.
So everyone, start telling Dell, HP et all to preload and sell XP instead of Vista, and tell your friends to insist on XP instead of Vista.
There are already other valid reasons to prefer XP to Vista, for example: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_
Macintosh, mid 1980's: Mac Filing System (MFS, used on the 400k floppies) and Apple's older and current HFS revisions all support(ed) an alternate stream. In Apple's case, theyre referred to as Forks. There's a resource fork, which contains application data, document resources, etc. There's also a data stream which commonly contains the document data itself.
Picture, if you will, an application with all of its support DLL's included within the executable file. You have nearly every macintosh application written prior to OSX.
"Alternate file streams" as it is is not a new invention from MSFT. It's a 20 year or more old technology. It's yet another other rework of a technology by MSFT that Apple originally designed.
Alternate file streams may have their uses, but theyre pretty much outmoded by the true random file access granted by any modern filesystem. You use a standardized file format (ELF, BFT, EXE, DLL, etc) that contains a table which contains locations and sizes for each data segment within a file. Even Apple have seen the light and moved away from forked and multistream files to a solution that works on flat (non-forked/streamed) filesystems.
-jbevren
>But the question is, how much of the MPAA's market are PCs responsible for?
While I don't presume to *KNOW* the mind of the Media Executives of the world, I believe that the key here isn't the present, it's the future. I believe that the people in control want (and firmly believe) in HD Everything and HD Everywhere. Microsoft believe that they will rule the "media center" in every home, just like they rule every desktop. This is their mission, and they're going for it (and remember, in their vision your media center is Windows Vista Powered!).
So MP/RIAA and MS share the same goal, and between them they're planning on cashing in, and cashing in good.
And remember, Microsoft is in on the AACS specification, they're getting their part of the toll loot on everything that plays "HD", including set-top boxes. They're in, with a finger in the cookie jar!
HD Everything: It's not obvious today how much we use computers to view and play media in the context of HD, because most things aren't HD yet. First, remember that "HD" isn't just about Movies. It's about all media, including Sound. The media industry vision is "HD Everything". A large percentage of the clips on youtube come from a source which in the future vision will be HD, and therefore protected, from the BIOS up through the Media out to the monitors and speakers. You want to see clips on the internet? Sure. But it's "HD". And it's protected. Play music through digital outputs? Sure. But it's "HD". And it's protected, and we've just deprecated analog output, for your convinience. Don't need it with your new Microsoft Media Center anyhow.
HD Everywhere: "HD" will be in portable players, on your computer, in your living room, in your office, on your radio. You can pick any entertainment you want, as long as it's "HD". I believe their mission is to plug not only the analog hole, byt the Non-HD Hole, as it were.
So, many people might not use HD at all today. Heck, relatively few use it at all, never mind in their computers instead of set top boxes. Basically, "HD" isn't much of an issue to any consumer, if we look at the numbers today.
But it's really not about today. Where you and I see Ozymandias desert, they see the first stones of their new empire.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
you responded to an ancient slashdot troll post that has been transmorgrofied into using vista instead of some other OS (usually it has been mac classic). Could have happened to anyone, no law says you have had to read every thread on every post on slashdot for years. Heck, I once got nailed by goatse, WELL after I was aware of the need to carefully scrutinize links before clicking. It's just nerd sport. Stuff happens. Every single one of us has at least a touch of bart simpson in us. ;)
DirectX 10. As soon as games start complaining for lack of DX10 support, people will have to switch. My current video card is already DX10-ready and I intend to use it in its fullest potential.
But the version of OSX that was available 6 years ago was a lot worse than the current one. Apple has made a lot of improvements over the past 6 years.
Who said that Vista was as good as OSX was six years ago? Transparency is not a stubsitute for system usability or stability. They have yet to catch up to the decades old Unix user management, filesystems and networking.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I just read your entire post and came to the conclusion that you can't spell.
"kindly forgive Windows ME"?!?!?! I'm still waiting for some hungry lawyer to launch that class action lawsuit. What a mess/tragedy/travesty ME was. The only upside was it gave me the righteous outrage I needed to allow me to start using unauthorized copies of (more useful) Windows discs.
I am not left-handed, either!
would be just this.
"Team, find me a way to remove the driver signing check from Vista. I don't care if we have to patch the kernel image and bootloader to do so."
Vista is so delayed, would it hurt to delay it a little more, to fix those high impact issues?? I mean, wouldn't it be great to get a Microsoft OS that works from release, and not having to wait to SPxxx for it to work right? Its been delayed a million and one times already.. whats the friggin difference anymore...
WinXP works well in its current stage, for what I need it to - work stuff, and play at home. Haven't tried any of them on the RCs of Vista because I couldn't install it in the frist place. Seems like Vista did not like my SATA HDD. Talk about lack of hardware drivers.. it was RC and all.. but if XP works on it, shouldn't its successor work too?
Is anyone else having deja-vus left right and center? It feels like last week we were arguing why people should stick with 2k and not adopt XP. How XP was just eye candy over 2k and how it didn't improve anything of importance and it happened before 2k, etc etc. Once again, here we are, arguing that the new version of Windows is nothing more than an empty upgrade forced upon the masses to continue increasing MS's bank. What has changed since the last iteration of brown matter MS flicked at us? Is this really the best Windows version ever? Will people finally wake up and smell the poop MS packages? Will the masses give Linux/OSX a "serious" try? Will we be here x number years from now arguing about how people should stick with Vista instead of upgrading to MS's new Windows 2k10?
[alk]
I do have a Windows XP desktop and I have had significantly fewer problems with it than my debian box in lab or my zenwalk laptop
... Application. Shall I search for it.
Do you have the time to troll the forums to find the solution to fix my wife's XP box? She doesn't want to lose her email again by doing the reformat/reinstall everyting again thing.
List of problems I haven't been able to figure out and gave up trying..
I have photocopy software on the machine. It worked fine until I tried to edit a photo. This loaded the 30 day trial of the bundled photo editor. Now anytime I try to use the photocopier, the twain driver brings up the 30 day trial software instead of printing the result. Any ideas. Removing the hijacking software simply brings up the Windows is unable to find
At least once a day, we have to reboot, because clicking on a username to log in brings up the password box, but no cursor. Have to reboot to enter the password. Any ideas on how to fix?
The Ubuntu box on the other hand had one glitch in the entire time I had it that prevented going to SU in Gnome. A quick look at Google brought up the solution and a short edit of the hosts file fixed it.
Windows can be fixed by wiping and starting over. Ubuntu can be fixed.
The truth shall set you free!
Right now it's running perfectly fine, with no BSOD, no DRM issues, awesome graphics, and a wonderfully intuitive OS/desktop combination (that can't be matched by any other OS on the face of this earth) on my brand new Acer Ferrari 1000 laptop computer, that I got from my good friend Steve Ba.... wait, uh... Palmer.
Did I mention it's also runs blogging software without any problems?
Normal APIs don't support extra streams. Getting fopen() to work with streams is a hack, to put it mildly.
The notation used on Windows is... interesting. If you are in D:\ with a file called C, does C:foo refer to a stream on D:\C or to a file called foo in the current directory of the C drive?
On a Linux or MacOS system, all characters except '/' and '\0' are valid in filenames, so we have nothing to spare. No, you can't steal the ':'.
Today I can copy a file with the dd command. I can copy a file using the cat command and shell redirection. Multi-forked files would lose data.
It looks like you need a directory... why not use one? This is how MacOS X apps work.
There are fundamental difficulties with on-disk data structures related to fragmentation and bloat. You add complexity for little gain.
Do these extra streams get permission bits? Can you solidly justify your choice?
Can a stream have a stream? If not, why the limitation?
Can I move a stream from one file to another? Can I move a stream to be just a regular file? Can I move a file into another file, to become an extra stream?
Why should everything become more complex (buggy, slow, insecure, confusing, etc.) for this barely-useful feature?
because while google make a great website search engine there desktop software is shamefully bad and makes M$ security look like fort knox when compared to the absolute garbage google create for desktop search. Don't know about you but I value my computer enough not to install googles desktop shit.
Vista doesn't have issues. It *IS* an issue to anyone who cares about secure, reliable, affordable computing. I've been telling clients to avoid it like the plague that it is. The main problem with the plague known as MS Vista is that it is spread by the carriers known as computer manufacturers.
:-) That would be another great requirement of any settlement the US and EU might reach with M$: if a new system is shipped with an M$ OS as the default, it ought to include a full set of generic Windows install discs, with a license transferable to any other machine the consumer decides to put it on. Making that part of the agreement retroactive, so that current users of Win98, WinME, WinNT, and WinXP could easily obtain installation discs for their old OSes when they decide to upgrade their hardware would annoy MS but impose no significant burden upon it, as long as it could charge a nominal fee to people who want physical install discs instead of DLing ISO images and burning and burning their own. I think a fair price for a set of Winblows install discs could be pegged at what it costs to have a set of install discs for a quality OS such as Ubuntu delivred to one's door. :-)
One way the plague might be stopped is for the US and EU to re-open their anti-trust cases against Micro$oft with a minimum goal of having any system where an MS OS comes pre-infec^H^H^Hstalled boot up the first time to a screen that gives the customer a choice of alternative non-MS (FOSS) operating systems. Since none of the major vendors, Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo, etc. provide much in the way of technical support unless a customer pays them outrageous prices, they really wouldn't have anything to lose by pre-installing one or more flavors of Linux or Unix on the new boxes they distribute via the major chain stores.
My point is that the typical PC buyer has little choice but to pay for and try to figure out how to deal with the Microsoft crapware that comes on almost all new systems. I suspect that many computer vendors would welcome an opportunity to stop wasting money on lame MS products and distribute FOSS equivalents. The neat thing is that MS has already implemented a system whereby it can charge only those customers who actually decide to use its buggy bloatware instead of one or more of the other OSes and office suites that manufacturers decide to allow the consumer to select from when she first boots a new computer.
I truly wish new systems came bare by default, with consumers getting to choose which operating system(s) and office suite(s) they want to put on them. I fondly recall when systems came with complete sets of installation disks (not discs
Basically, in order to end the Microsoft monopoly and stop the spread of Microsoft Buggy Bloatware(tm), the anti-trust regulators need to force the supply chain to change so that costly MS operating system and office suite software is no longer the default. As much as I dislike MS these days, I have little doubt it could deliver a very high-quality OS (far superior to the flashy junkware known as Vista) if it had to compete on an even playing field. This would be especially true if big companies such as Google or Sun could put their own (new) OSes on new systems as options, right alongside the MS product, since all existing contracts MS has with hardware vendors that pre-install its OSes would be nullified as part of any reasonable anti-trust settlement.
"You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens." -- Angelina Jolie
With oppressive DRM and licensing restrictions being shoved down your throat, I see no reason anyone other than a dumb fat fuck who shits gold and has pond scum for brains would "upgrade" to vista. Vote with your wallet. Don't buy vista.
Q&A both single and network, many nonprofits use it
Paradigm a fund raising program still popular
Mailers+4 again, mission critical
And if you've never heard of these programs, God help the country's charities.
Not the same thing at all. I still have GDS installed because of its speed, but it is very primitive compared to the vista search. The latter supports far more advanced types of queries.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is that the best a MS fan-boy can do for his new fav toy? That is not a good sign for the company. I don't want to spend time on installation more than anyone else, but I would at least like to pretend it is a one-time cost (even though I have just had to re-install on the home computer) and it is certainly not 20 % of my calculations when thinking about upgrades.
The last reason, well, that is just a complete turn-off for me.
Reality or nothing.
I am a longtime computer user and i UNINSTALLED it after using it for a total of 3 days.
I sent a couple of files for assignments I had to teachers, and guess what! You can't even get a viewer for excel 2007 so they can open and read what I've done! WTF. And to top it off, the interface is so crazy I couldn't find the undo button without doing a google search 2 or 3 times. Yeah, go ribbons... If Vista is anything like that, they are going to go down like the Hindenberg...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
I applied for a contract job a day or two ago, desktop rollout engineer, ello, all things being given this likely means MS Windows Vista rollout engineer, and / or MS Office 2007 rollout engineer.
Being a diligent sort of bloke I downloaded a release candidate version of Vista Business edition from the usual sources and proceeded to test it on the main box.
The "main box" is currently an AMD 64 bit jobbie, A-bit mobo, 2 gig of Mushkin, WD raptor HD, so not the absolute latest and greatest, but no slouch either.
In common with all versions of Windows this install (XP SP2) picks up "cruft" and after about 6 months the only real cure is a reinstall of Windows.
Knowing it was a dying install I thought I'd play with AutoPatcher, which patched everything sure enough, but made things around the edges even more flaky, and in particular made the ethernet connection unstable, this then was the candidate for Vista.
Installation / Upgrading was NOT straightforward, I had to manually uninstall Kaspersky anti virus, Spybot S&D, and two MS windows updates, one was powershell, I forget now what the other one was.
I tried a virgin install as opposed to an upgrade, rather than uninstall all the above, and got a BSOD at the first installer reboot, clearly a hardware / driver issue.
Nota Bene, this is hardly exotic or just released hardware, nor is it obsolete hardware, so immediately the tables are turned between Windows and Linux, Debian will simply install, Vista will not. Don't even ask about trying to get hardware drivers for Vista
So I went back to the upgrade path, uninstalled the software that Vista was moaning about, and tried again.
Well, it worked, but.......
This installer very clearly said on the splash screens two extremely worrying sentences.
During install your computer will restart several times - it did.
Installation may take several hours - it took about 2.
This is NOT Linux, so taking the upgrade path and the multiple reboots mean you cannot use the computer for anything during the upgrade process. I am not a coder, but the fact that Vista STILL requires several reboots during installation speaks volumes about the fundamental workings of Vista, this is not a "professional" Operating System.
The astonishingly slow upgrade times, bear in mind this is a 64 bit AMD CPU on a good A-bit mobo with 2 gig of Mushkin (best memory money can buy) and 10k RPM Western Digital Raptor hard disks, beggars belief, XP SP2 will install on this box in 25 minutes, Debian + about 1000 applications will install in about 15 minutes, Vista took TWO BLOODY HOURS, and I must say again, unlike Linux, totally rendered the box unusable in the interim.
So, eventually, the Vista upgrade / install is complete, and it boots into the OS.
Before I go any further, I must give this some perspectiive, I have been using computers since whenever, punched card on mainframes, 8 bit DIY stuff at home, not quite Altair but damn close, and I've used most operating systems too, the various DOSes, the odd bit of CP/M and OS2, Sinclair speccies, Tandy TRS 80, Commodore PET, Apple ][, the 16 bit NMS machines from the likes of Philips, Atari, BBC and Acorn RISC, MIPS based Cobalt servers when they came out, DEC, etc etc etc.
The point of this comment is to reassure the reader than the mere sight of something different does not give rise to "oh noes! this is the suxxor!" shit, different is "OK, let's see what you've got." and of course assuming that whoever wrote this OS will, like me, have some idea of what went before and therefore have a good idea about what are good ideas, what works, what doesn't, etc etc etc.
In 1995 the Acorn RISCOS 3.5 had full screen font anti-aliasing so you could read 8 point text on a 14 inch CRT, it had a Pause and Resume dialogue button on the file copy / move function, and would not fall over as soon as it encountered a file that could not be copied or moved, and would simply get on with moving or copying the rest
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
...it means no more pr0n surfing in Windows! no one will dare download anything and risk it being undeleted by someone else...
Does this mean it doesn't crash as gracefully as XP ?
cp file.iso /mnt/cd/wd # burn to cd /mnt/cd/wd # fixate /mnt/cd/ctl # eject
rm
echo eject >
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/4/cdfs
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
In a few years we will remember these discussions and smile...no new O/S comes out without problems...especially one that is rewritten from scratch and has fundamental changes like Vista.
Familiarity is one of the key concepts of usability. Something that is familiar, no matter how backwards, promises to be more usable. Vista, for the most part, builds off its predecessors. It's like having a cluttered office - and then one day someone comes in and cleans it without you knowing. It may not have been "usable" (by an objective third party perspective) before, but it's certainly not usable (by your own perspective) now. That said, I really like some of the design concepts in Vista, although they certainly have taken getting used to. For example, breaking the file path in Windows File Explorer into breadcrumbs each with a drop-down menu makes traversing the file system much faster for your average user - at least once they get used to it.
Well that's a new low. If we're making stories out of what one blogger believes then we also need to announce that Linux is dead, AmigaOS is both dead and alive and that capri pants are back in fashion.
And no-one wants that.
Doesn't make a lot of sense.
/net/www.slashdot.org ? What if I eject /net/www.microsoft.com?
Multi-session is always going to be awkward. If you discard the capability, then surely the eject command should fixate.
PS what does it mean when I rm
The "everything is a file" works well in many cases. It doesn't ALWAYS work, though...
The latest Nero 7 (7.5.1) works just fine under Vista.
Got anything else?
"ui built for the era of video and photography"
JUST WHAT the hell does that mean ?!?!?!
It means that the reviewer has finally spotted a number of features that have been available since XP was released, and is getting thrilled about them because he thinks they're new. I.e. image thumbnail view, photo album folder format, file metadata columns in explorer, etc.
How about damn near ALL internet distribution.
Either MP/RIAA give up on internet distribution and take piracy as a loss, write their own OS, or do what MS want.
Writing their own DRM for windows won't work if MS doesn't want it to because any DRM would have to dig deep into the OS to stop bypassing the content (see why Linux won't be used often for an example). If they don't supply internet media then the independants will and piracy will continue. MS don't require DRM so there isn't any need for piracy to work around it: just don't install anyone else's DRM suite either.
That is what would happen if MS *didn't want* DRM.
But it locks desktops into MS Windows and locks distributors into using MS Servers too. Why wouldn't they love that?
1. Noticeably slower out of the box than 2k3/XP (for obvious reasons like Aero, but also for non-obvious reasons like the HDD indexer running incessantly)
;), but Vista has serious issues that should have been fixed in the 5 years MS had to fix them.
2. Retarded Explorer UI - each explorer window has about 50% of it's real-estate wasted through useless "information bars" etc. And you can't remove most of it.
3. Awful sound - on a laptop I purchased only 2 months ago the sound is awful replete with popping sounds and unexpected sound sub-system deaths (i.e. the sound frequently just stops working, requiring a reboot).
4. DRM
5. Poor as ever security (because no matter what anyone says, Vista has not been built from the ground up - it is NT version 6).
6. God-awful sleep/hibernate support - this is an area that is meant to have been improved, but it worked flawlessly on XP and 2k3, on my 2 HP laptops I frequently have to hard re-boot because they will not wake-up.
On the flip side, there are positives such as improved out of the box hardware support and the inclusion of a chess game
My guess is that MS-V is running OpenGL in "software" mode (i.e., the driver is doing all OpenGL calcs using the CPU, and then transferring the image to the card's image buffer using its VESA interface), whereas MS-XP is running OpenGL in "hardware" mode (i.e., the driver is using the video card's GPU).
Check your OpenGL settings.
My understanding is that MS-V doesn't support hardware acceleration in some older graphics cards (at least, not yet).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Good luck with that. The rest of us will be buying a better card for 1/4 the price in two years, and still have it installed well before the number of published games that really take advantage of DX10 hits double figures. And our drivers won't crash the whole PC at random intervals, either.
Seriously, buying the latest and greatest graphics card is a fool's game, and has been for probably five years or more now. Lack of game requirements and poor quality early drivers mean that you won't get the best out of such a card for several years after you get it. By that time, the rest of your system spec will be struggling to keep up, and even the budget graphics cards will support the same API standards.
Point for comparison: I last built a PC around 4 years ago. At the time, I went for high-end pretty much throughout. For the processor, RAM, and hard drive it was well worth the extra: they gave a direct advantage in things I could do with the PC at the time. However, my Radeon 9700 Pro (replaced after 6 months with a 9800 Pro because of the power supply issues) that was pretty much state-of-the-art at the time has never been used to its full potential. The games I bought it for, which would really benefit from DX9, weren't released for another year or two in reality. Today it's actually that then-high-end graphics card that is the biggest limiting factor in running more recent games (along with, ironically, simple things like not installing a DVD drive, which was a luxury item back then). I might as well have bought a cheap 'n' cheerful Radeon 9500 or then-mid-range nVidia card, and used the significant financial savings to upgrade the graphics card a couple of years later when the games could use it, spending less money overall, winding up with better kit, and suffering no practical loss of functionality in between.
In any case, in the time frame we're talking about, it's quite possible that the whole DRM house-of-cards will be crashing down around poor Microsoft's quivering OS dept. and execs will be running around trying to distance themselves from the mistakes underlying Vista. That's likely to require a significant reworking of the whole multimedia framework within the OS, which in turn is likely to do weird stuff to DX. There's still a lot of potential in DX9 that most new releases don't tap, and a lot of the PC gamer market will be on XP rather than Vista for some time to come. With this sort of environment, I would think DX10 is a pretty unappealing target for game developers right now, so I wouldn't be rushing out to upgrade things just to support it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
FTA:
"Simply stated there is no one button that will always bring you back up to the parent."
No one button? What about the other numbers?
I agree...
I've been using NT 5.0 since december 1999, both at home and at work. I never bothered "upgrading" to NT 5.1 and never understood why people did. There was no business case for NT 5.1 except for MS to ship a "home" version of NT for the first time (byebye msdos at long last!). There was no point in "upgrading" to winME either. Why did you?
I see the business case for NT 6.0 from the MS standpoint (killing openGL, killing java, killing the msdos emulation, killing OSX, and pre-installing the CSharp# 2.0 virtual machine in every home). But I still don't see the point in installing NT 6.0 for everyone else. Maybe the eye-candy graphics will help selling a few boxed copies.
Strategically, NT 6.0 is the first NT release that *officially* competes with a NextStep/OSX release. At this point, OSX has more mindshare than actual marketshare, but it is nice to see it present in the debates, unlike what happened with every previous NT release (where the only theoretical contender was linux). When NT 3.51 was released, no one compared it to NextStep486 v3.0 although the comparison would have been appaling (for NT).
Have a look at the Gaming on Vista article at Tom's Hardware. Apparently there are some problems with getting OpenGL hardware acceleration working properly.
...users doesn't really care about DRM. Ask an ITMS fan.
I care about DRM, but I care more about not having to buy eleven other songs that I don't care about to get the one I do. So, iTMS gives me the ability to get twelve or fifteen songs that I want for the price of one CD that perhaps has only one that I want. Sure, it would be nice if there wasn't any DRM.
As far as 'lock-in', I hear a lot about this, but it's nothing but crap. Every song I bought from iTMS is mine. I can burn it to a CD, and re-rip to any format I choose. Where's the 'lock-in' you are complaining about? Now, my nephew subscribes to one of those monthly paid plans where if you stop paying the subscription fee, guess what? No music. Now, there's 'lock-in', my friend.
The final beta of most OSs are tagged with "RC2", the final beta of a MS system is tagged "SP2".
Learn the difference and heed it!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm buying Vista, and there is only one reason why:
1. My software company requires that I support it.
I need it to test the software will run on it. Other than that, I have zero use for it. I imagine people are in the same boat as me.
what about the whole untested, virgin lands, a new world for hackers and exploiters, the vista itself ?
Read radical news here
They want us to test their half bakes crap again...??!! Pass...
If they want me to benchtest any more of their half baked code they can send
me a cheque to the tune of $135/hr. That's what my clients pay.
And *They* aren't large multi nationals that could afford a league of Alpha/Beta testers.
Mind you, anytine you use a M$ Product and send in a detailed complaint, they save R&D money anyways....
End of Line.
And what do you think they've been doing since wrapping up the code for final vista bits last year? They had what... 10,000 engineers on Vista. You think a few of them found a bug or two worth fixing? Every fix released on Windows Update ends up in a service pack. Yes, there are fixes. Yes, there are still fixes coming out for XP and it's been 6 years since that release.
Should the headline be: "Haha MS is planning to release a service pack"?
How is this news?
I rememeber Windows 3.1 being an improvement over Windows 3.0, and Windows 3.0 was certainly an improvement over the copy of Windows/286 2.1 I used previously.
Bad wording on the blogger's part, I think...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Who needs Vista?
Same crap in a new box.
More sludge from MS to keep you broke and miserable.
Just say "No Thanks, Vista's not for me."
(For all you Troll-spotters out there-- I just thought I'd say preemptively that this is NOT a troll, this is my OPINION-- there is a difference. So go take your troll-hating self someplace else and leave my post alone)
Maybe Vista is the Zune of operating systems.
The discussion here makes me uncomfortable because I don't think enough attention is given to Microsoft's record of abusing its customers. As in, "Our customers are beta testers." Windows XP cause a lot of grief until the more than 600 fixes in Service Pack 2, some of which were not documented.
My experience with Vista is still limited--My only serious look to this point was with Longhorn right arounf the time MS announced the release name of Vista. Being far from release at that point, I was willing to forgine its shortcomings but it sounds like the final release s still pretty rough around the edges from a usability perspective.
So MS tried to move to another paradigm (am I using this properly?) to help more non-technical people understand how to find "basic" information.
While it's admirable that MS would put so much effort towards this problem it clearly looks to me that they've employed a scatter-shot approach in applying that effort and the result is actually a step backward. Is there NOBODY at Microsoft who took into account the mindset of new users? When an inexperienced user wants to free up drive space and remove a program the Win95-to-XP interface was cumbersome but at least it was intuitive: "Hmmm...I wanna get rid of this big game...uhhh, well start then...uhhh well this control panel thingy must be where you do systemy stuff....oh there it is...add and remove programs".
The "new and improved" Vista? Well, we'd better generalise the name to something meaningless so we can add more functionality there in the future...but how are the uninitiated supposed to know this? What about changing your graphics settings? It's buried in the catch-all "personalisation" category. What the hell is that? The LAST think Windows needs is MORE layers to sift through to find crap. What about the drop-downs that show items that when selected say you can't do that! This frustrates the author of the article who is a computer expert! These sort of things make computers even more intimidating and confusing to beginners.
The only thing that is going to save MS Windows from a slow, agonizing death is an extreme makeover (reliance on monopoly status will not work forever whether or not it holds off the antitrust hounds). The UI is much too fat with layers and gadgets and wizards and MS has to stop adding and start changing and removing. Make intuitiveness AND clutter reduction TOP priorities.
Here is an example: Add/Remove programs seems too cumbersome? Then don't just rename it and mess with it...GET RID OF IT COMPLETELY. You already have a menu of programs in the start menu...just put at the bottom of the list "Install new program...". To remove programs, make it an option on a context-sensitive menu when you right-click on a program, and when a user hits the "delete" key upon selecting the executable for an installed application (or its associated shortcut) have it launch the uninstaller (or give the user that option anyways). This shrinks the control panel by one item and makes navigation to the task of adding or removing programs quicker by removing a level of menus.
For how long we've all waited for Vista I'd have thought these sort of things would've been done. Sadly it seems that in the avalanche of work done in the name of security ands stability that usability suffered a complete lack of attention and was relegated to modernised desktop themes and piecemeal fiddling.
Since when does "one blogger"'s view qualify as "news"?
Since when was "one blogger's view" the subject of this "news" in the first place? The links are just supplementary to the main story which was that MS THEMSELVES have acknowledged that Vista has shortcomings..to the point that they are already starting beta-testing of a service pack even before Vista is in wide public release!
"One bloggers opinion"? Sure that is more of a curiosity than news. The company that MADE the friggin thing? I think that constitutes news.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Mind you, I don't mean to be a dick with my subject. You bring up some good points:
But I don't think Microsoft gives the proverbial flying f**k at a rolling doughnut what your needs are as a user. Once Vista is out for good, i.e. once Dell & other computer resellers have Vista pre-loaded, good luck getting a new machine with XP on it.
I actually think this is partly why Microsoft makes it so difficult / expensive to get your hands on full Windows OS installation disks. The "system restore" disks or partitions that are often the only option with new machines are generally useless for anything but the machines they come with, thereby ensuring that Microsoft can force consumers to eat whatever Microsoft feels like dishing out. In this case, overpriced and apparently unfinished dog food labeled "Vista".
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It is very easy to go back to the parent. Simply click on the parent folder in the breadcrumb. Or, you can use alt+up arrow on the keyboard. Or, if the parent was the last directory you were in you can alt+back arrow on the keyboard. There are probably others.
Dumb ass. Either a) Put a freaking trailing backslash on the c: from the search textbox or b) Go to the start button properties menu and reenable the run command on the start menu and it will act just like it did in XP.
How 'bout clicking on "manage network connections" and it's the same as it was in XP. Was that quick enough?
Two options. If a search returns no results, you will see an option to "search within files". Or, alternately, if you want to always use this option, go to (gasp!) options and choose "always search file names and contents". Dumb ass.
Which is why in Vista all file copy problems are moved to the end of the queue and will not display any dialog until all the copyable files have been copied.
Hooray for the FUD which, despite being nearly 100% wrong still gets 3211 diggs. Now, everyone say "baaaaaaah!" and follow the sheep in front of you.
Forgive me, might be the sleep deprivation and caffeine doing funny things to my mind, but I read your bit above about creating content that is exposed to a large mass and the image that popped to my mind was a bunch of monkeys throwing poo at a rhinoceros.
I think it's time for my nap...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
In Windows 2000 and XP.
You're a new user and you want to stop the computer and shut it off, so where do you go?
The START button, of course!
From the article:
"Issues will surface from the deployments as well as throughout the program as end users test its limits thought their day-to-day activities."
Disregarding the confusion between thought and through, it's slightly worrying that the limits of Windows Vista SP1 are expected to be reached during the performance of 'day-to-day activities'.....
No matter what you say the m$ schills will howl you down.
I don't argue with people over their choice of OS any more, I just let them stew in their own juice.
Case in point :
My local parish priest mentioned to me that he was sick to death of getting someone to reinstall his Windows OS due to registry corruption, malware et al . He knew I was a Mac user & since I had never pushed it down his throat he asked me for advice. I gave him a summary of pros & cons of Win/Mac/Lin asked what apps he absolutely had to have etc. A friend loaned him a powerbook for a week with the understanding that he ask for uidance if stuck.
Next Sunday after Mass he grabs me & proudly explains how he just bought a new Wintel Acer latop.
My first thought was "But what about...." then I just bit my toungue.
Let em drown in their bugridden malware rubbish i say.
I know I'm late on this one, but the pro-Vista article is basically "now Windows does OS X" and doesn't crap out quite so much anymore. And I love the last argument- "you have no choice". At this point, yeah, I do. The work arounds may be clumsy and take more time, but I don't HAVE to shovel monkey poo down as food.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.