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Windows Vista Launches To Mixed Reactions
Several users have submitted stories reporting on the launch of Microsoft's newest operating system. The Guardian focuses on virus warnings already threatening the OS, while the New York Times discusses the bug hunt that's begun. With hackers writing scripts to attack, and well-paid bounty hunters looking for bugs to defend, Vista's first few months on the market are sure to be interesting. In the meantime, what is your impression of the OS? Have you had a chance to use the retail version yet? Are you supporting it in a business environment? What's the launch of Vista been like for you?
Since XP support is due to last until 2011, I'll let you know how it is in about four years.
-JWR
I've Beta'd Vista since Beta 1, and while the software has.....matured....since the initial beta, quite frankly, its still not ready for primetime.
Vista will still peg your processor at around 30% most of the time, mostly for bullshit you don't need or want. User Rights Management may be great for Grandma, but if you know what the fuck you're doing its just obtrusive (although it can be turned off). Driver support is dodgy, even with the big boys (Your video card will probably work, but expect signifigantly lower performance).
Oh, and add in the time during Beta 2 where Windows Update fried my install completely. Thank you for playing, re-install your OS. Yes, it was Beta still, but shit, I can see breaking pieces, or degrading performance, or any other assorted issues I expect. Frying the OS I do not.
All in all, as far as I'm concerned, this is just the next WinME
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I've been using Windows Vista for about a month now and I have found it to be more problems then a big worth while upgrade. Vista seems to be a extreme large resource hog that even with my 1 gig of DDR2 ram and a Pentium M 2.0 processor, it still runs somewhat slugish. As time has gone by and the more I use the OS I have run into countless software conflicts, video driver issues, and many other problems that just should not exist in an operating system that has been in the making for so long. Aero, although looking attractive, still poses problems that in the long run should just not exist. If your going to copy Apple, at least make the system itself work properly.
Well I have been using it for about 2 months. I am a developer and have it on my laptop, so I got it from MSDN.
:)
It's pretty good. Nothing too wrong with it, I have had some issues with drives and a few program not working but that is to be expected. I guess I would say it you get it for free or if you get a new computer it's worth it. The instant search is the coolest "New" feature. It is prettier to look at. One thing I do have to say, I bring my laptop home, my wife, who is a non-technical person like it a lot. She likes the pretty interface, and instant search.
It does have a few annoying prompt screens, and they changed the control panel again, so I can't find anything again
I give it a good 7/10. I would not actively avoid it or pursue it. Is it better than Xp, probably, worth spending money on, probably not yet.
that drives me absolutely mental though ... in the windows explorer there is no "up" button, and back does not do the same thing, and yes, I am aware that I can just hit backspace, but when I'm in "mouse only" mode, this does not cut it.
Backspace doesn't work (it doesn't go 'up' and more). They've tied it to the back key.
There's no way to go to the parent directory in vista that I know of other than clicking on the address bar & editing it.. which is hell for me (in keyboard only mode).
You're in a bind. Drivers and speed issues with games are a mess for Vista right now, but a decent bit of that might be sorted out by year's end. And while there are no current DX10 games, they'll be coming within the year. So the answer is: XP for games now, Vista by the year's end.
I've been poking around for a while trying to ask the same questions. There's a fairly good write up at Tom's Hardware on performance differences. Tom's hardware is typically pretty even handed in their benchmark reviews (IMHO), they'll often use a demo or script for a video game and run it a few times to get a solid number.
As you can see, the difference is small but present (favoring XP for games) with the notable standout of Unreal Tournament 2004, however as the reviewer notes, this has a lot to do with the current driver support.
As far as I can tell, I think in the long run when games start making use of DX10 and such, we'll see some nice results, but in the short run games will be better run in XP.
If you need a Windows OS (and I just built a gaming computer myself, so I'm in a similar boat) some stores will sell XP with a free Vista upgrade. That's what I purchased, that way I can use XP for a few months (while Vista figures out what it's doing) and upgrade when I'm good and ready. I'd list where I purchased from, but I'd hate to have my post be construed as advertising, suffice is to say you should be able to find some offers via google.
Hope that helps.
You don't need URM [DRM] to prevent deletion of "core windows files". Plus, XP already does it..
And URM [DRM] isn't responsible for "annoying extra layers" during the deletion of recipes. That is the purview of MessageBox calls in Explorer. URM [DRM] prevents you from doing things at all, and let's face it; the prospect of losing control is never a welcomed thing, especially for an old person.
This is the second time I've heard this figure cited on Slashdot and I have no idea where it's coming from. I call bullshit. Here is the Task Manager of my Vista system running idle. This is a 3.4GHz single-core P4 system (with HyperThreading, hence the two CPU meters), with 2GB RAM and an nVidia 6600 with 256MB. I have Aero enabled and this screen shows the system with several processes running, including Thunderbird and the Windows Media Center services.
The only thing I can guess is that a lot of the people who are reporting outrageous system demands from Vista are running to check the performance meters right after the system boots. (Just because you can move the mouse doesn't mean it's done yet.)
Breakfast served all day!
He meant, User Access Control or whatever it's called.
That's not the DRM aspect of the OS. If it weren't so stupidly intrusive (or so I've heard), then yes it would be great for grandma.
I've been running Vista since the RTM was released. I'm running Vista Ultimate x86. I have a dual core AMD Athlon system on an Nforce4 motherboard with 2 gigs of RAM. I'm not interested in trying betas or release clients at this point in my life, I've got more important things to do with my time. So when the RTM came out, I decided to use it on my primary workstation in a dual boot environment. I have nothing good to say about Vista actually - and lots negative. I use my workstation for the following things:
1) Email, web surfing, word processing - all the basics.
2) Video editing with tools like Adobe After Effects, VirtualDub, DivX, etc.
3) Web development - I have a version of ColdFusion dev installed, which is supposed to work with IIS.
4) Database development - SQL Server 2005.
5) Local network administration for the windows network here in the office - Active Directory, Exchange management, etc.
6) Linux server management, I only need an SSH client here.
7) Backup DVDs to either my iPod or for backups for our car.
While I may not be the prototypical end user, I think most of the stuff I do would be common and stuff that Microsoft would make sure was ready - ESPECIALLY their own tools. Here is a list of the tools that don't work are aren't stable on Vista:
1) Exchange 2003 System Manager, won't even install. It uses IIS6 for some stupid reason, and IIS7 (despite what it says) is not backwards compatible.
2) Active Directory - as a result of no Exchange tools, you don't get the exchange based tabs to administer basic email properties of user accounts. M$'s solution is to RDP to a server. Nice.
3) Windows Live Messenger - crashes all the time, mostly when you go to exit the program. It's annoying as hell.
4) SQL Server 2005 - You get a warning when it installs about how it won't work, but I did it anyway. It's mostly functional, but you still have the occasional system freeze, etc. Good times.
5) Since none of my 3rd party DVD making apps seem to want to work with vista, I tried Windows Movie Maker. After opening a raw avi movie file straight from my video camera, movie maker decided it didn't want to work. It just hung and after a failed attempt to kill it with task manager, I had to reboot. I tried again with exactly the same results. WTF?
And those are just the Microsoft products that don't work, which seems completely idiotic to me. You would think with an OS in development for 5 years, you'd iron some of that shit out with your own software. Now for the 3rd party apps:
1) Nero - I use it for CD and DVD burning like everybody else. For whatever reason, everytime I move my mouse over an mpeg or avi file in windows I get a RunDLL32 stop error and windows freaks out. This only happens after installing Nero. I'm running the latest verison as well, straight from Nero.com as of yesterday. If you do anything with videos, windows throws up these errors. Makes video editing impossible.
2) iTunes 7.0.2 - basically, nothing about iTunes works for more than 5 minutes. You can't burn cds, so that's bad. Then if you leave it open for 5 minutes, eventually the user interface freaks out and starts blinking in parts and removes the colors, etc. Then if you minimize it, you'll never get it back without restarting or manually killing it with task manager.
3) Firefox - about one out of every 10 times I open up Firefox, I get the blue screen of death with a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT error. This only happens on one of the workstations I put Vista on, the other doesn't have this same issue despite the fact that it's the same hardware exactly. Very strange.
4) Nvidia drivers - using the latest nvidia drivers from their website as of yesterday, my machine becomes completely unstable. Windows Explorer crashes every so often. I had to roll back to the default microsoft drivers for my Geforce 7600GS.
Now if all that isn't bad enough and reason to stay away, here are my gripes about the OS itself:
1) It's slow as he
Show me what Linux can do for a business, and I'll show you how Microsoft does it 20 times better.
My business is molecular modeling.
I need to do a lot of coding in C, C++, F77, and F90, along with some csh, ksh, bash, and perl scripting. I need to test the same code on my PC that runs on the 128-way SMP boxes in the high-performance computing facility, so I need compilers that support a POSIX-ish C api and MPICH, and I'll also need good (scriptable) connectivity ala ssh, scp, and rsync. Oh yeah, one of the data centers uses Kerberos. I also need reasonable data analysis tools like Matlab (though Octave will do in a pinch) and Maple. I need visualization tools like PyMOL, viewmol, vaspview, and GaussView, but also an X server so I can run beefier packages like Cerius2 directly off the big machines. I need to be able to write both small reports for quick printing and large (50+ page) papers with lots of mathematical formulas and endnotes/footnotes, and of course I need to output PDF. I also need virtual desktops to keep my workflow organized: desktop 1 is development, desktop 2 is remote terminals, desktop 3 is data analysis, and desktop 4 is general purpose desktop. Finally, I need to be able to back up my work easily, preferably with just a simple file copy, and all of my file formats will need to readable for 20+ years.
So far my needs are met at near zero cost with Debian Linux plus two commercial packages (GaussView and Maple). I have ssh, scp, rsync, perl, csh, ksh, bash, gcc/g++, g77, gfortran, MPICH, MPICH2, X11, LaTeX, Emacs, Octave, KMail, and OOo. And as a nice bonus with Debian my PC both plays DVDs (and ignores the UOP flag allowing me to skip directly to the menu) and browses the 'Net with ease, and so far I have had no problems with viruses.
I'm very interested in how a Microsoft solution will be 20 times better. Please tell us more!
What's pegging your CPU at 30% is the rendering of the clock gadget. Sounds silly, but try turning it off (only the round clock gadget, not the whole gadget sidebar) and see the difference. Looks like it has something to do with IE7 rotating the clock hands images each second.
No... I think there's some confusing language in the introduction of that article. Vista will support OpenGL ICD's and nVidia and ATI are already working on these. Apparently there was some question about the issue at first, but this is now old news from almost a year ago. I think what the article meant was that currently nVidia and ATI do not have the vista drivers for it. Correct me if I'm off base on this one, but that's how I read it.
In OS memory testing is mostly useless in my experience.
1) You have to boot up your system to use it. Much of the time I've seen bad RAM, your system won't boot as the OS uses too much of said bad RAM.
2) If your system has had a virus and/or the OS is corrupted, you're not really isolating the problem as you're still testing the OS + hardware.
I've found Memtest 86 to be a better solution since (1) uses its own OS (freeDos, very small memory footprint, so it WILL boot) (2) doesn't rely on the system having on OS so it can be used with system corruption/viruses/with a hard drive (if you're building a system) and (3) is free (can download/use on as many systems as you own without needing to buy an OS license to check you memory)
Why is the Vista tool so good again? (Am I missing something?)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
exactly, sudo su or sudo bash will (depending on the configuration of your machine) allow you to open a bash session with root privileges but you can't log in as root. No telnet, no ssh, no console, nada. Yes you can still single user mode it, but that's it.
It is HIGHER security than usual root login because you now have to know the username and password of a user that has sudo access, not just the password of root, and scripts can't be run by accident as easily as before. Mind you you still have to be careful who you give sudo access to, but at least it is safer to give sudo to 5 people than giving out the root password to 5 people.
When I'm setting up a new system, I hate using sudo for a ton of commands and would rather have access to a root shell while I'm first setting up a computer or when I'm setting up a new application.
There is an easy fix for this. If you've got a bunch of stuff to do as root, just use "sudo su -", and boom, you've got a root shell. Just remember to CTRL-D [or run 'exit'] when you're done.
Not that either method is any better than the other, but you don't have to type 'sudo' before each command, and it still keeps the root account locked.
Nothing to see here
Summary: 10% more usable OS. 35% more usable Office.
I upgraded a Compaq Z2615US 14" notebook (Semtron 1.8ghz, 128mb ATI 200M video, 1GB RAM) to Vista Business 32bit.
Aero Eye candy aside, I feel like I'm making fewer clicks and finding things easier. The sideshow doesn't have any really compelling widgets/gadgets yet (the weather gadget only show the current weather). The system feels more responsive. Had a few software compatibility issues (Visual Studio 2005 and Adobe 8 Reader installer). Office 2007 is simply wonderful. Finding things is much easier and the application seems to load a lot faster than previous versions of MS Office. Office PDF export is a separate download.
I installed a lot of third party stuff like XAMPP Lite, SciTe, Filezilla, Firefox etc without any big problems.
I ordeered the 64bit DVD and will probably reinstall everything when it arrives.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I've been running Vista at home since pre-Beta 2. When the RTM version surfaced on MSDN in early December, I decided to hold my breath and reinstall using the 64 bit version.
Specs: I'm running a stock Dell box, D620 processor, dual core with 1 gb RAM. Video is ATI X1300 with 256Mb, Dell dual tuner card, no-name Web cam, USB external drive, built-in sound.
To my great surprise, all of my applications and hardware worked fine on 64 bit Vista. There was one minor exception: the SyncToy app from Microsoft would not run. Everything else - Office, Civ 4, Diablo II, WinZip, etc - worked great. Some dev tools did require updates - Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Express both had to be patched, although they seemed to work OK before I installed the patches. There is a 64-bit version of IE, but I don't run it, so I can't speak to plug-in compatibility. Most surprisingly, I haven't had any problems with drivers; even my el cheapo Web cam worked perfectly.
Overall, I like Vista. It looks nice and works well. Programs seem to load faster, probably because of the SuperCache feature that keeps commonly-used stuff in memory. The eye candy is OK, but probably not worth the price of admission - the important thing is that it has been rock solid so far.
Things I like:
- The sidebar is nice, although there aren't many gadgets available yet. The ones that are available look good.
- The OS is very, very stable. No crashes at all in almost two months. No "this program is closing" messages that I recall.
- The anti-spyware package seems to work as advertised. I'm running OneCare 1.5 for antivirus, and that works fine too. No problems with security, although I didn't have any under XP either.
- The new fonts are very nice - especially Consolas, the new fixed-width font. Looks great in Visual Studio.
- Boot time and resume from standby time has been much improved.
- No one seems to be talking about the voice recognition features, but they are awesome. It's possible to start Word, dictate a letter, save it, open Gmail, and mail it to someone using only voice commands. Accuracy is very good, and it's pretty easy to use. This is a killer feature that needs more publicity.
Things I don't like:
- Some of the new utilities are very, very dumbed down. NTBACKUP is gone, replaced by the most brain-dead "backup program" I've ever seen. This program is not backward-compatible, so if you have Windows Backup files, you'll have to download another utility from Microsoft to restore files from them.
- The disk defragmenter is also dumbed down to the point of absurdity. There is no status display at all - no disk block diagram, no percentage indicator - just a "please wait, this operation may take several hours to complete" message. VOPT did this better in 1983.
- Existing CD burning software probably won't work.
- The new search indexer searches only a small subset of the directory tree by default. While it's possibly to manually tweak the list of directories to search, there's no easy way to tell it to, for example, index every directory except those that hold temporary files. Non-index searches (in other words, a full grovel through the directory tree) seem to be slower than in XP.
- There is a "Run" box on the Start menu, but it doesn't work exactly as it used to. I have always used it to launch some programs and Explorer windows, and it still does this in some cases, but - for example - typing "D:" won't take you to the root of your D drive - it brings up the first application it can find that starts with "D". Very annoying.
Other observations:
- The ReadyBoost feature (that allows you to use a USB key as swap space) works, but I didn't notice any speed increase. This was with a very fast USB drive (patriot XT).
- The control panel utilities and desktop properties screens have been moved around quite a bit, which may confuse some people at first, but the new order probably makes more sense than the old one.
- There's a lot of FUD floating a