Is Vista a Trap?

logube writes "BBC has up an article about the trap of installing Vista in your existing desktop. Written by Tim Weber, a self-confessed 'sucker for technology,' this article is a good introduction to the pain and extra money required to get going with the newest version of Windows. See how you can spend an extra 130 british pounds, and still have no working webcam! Says Weber, 'It took me one day to get online. The detail is tedious and highly technical: reinstalling drivers and router firmware didn't work, but after many trial and error tweaks to Vista's TCP/IP settings, I had internet access. Once online, Creative's website told me that my sound card was a write-off. No Vista support would be forthcoming.'"

Comments

Re:No.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Microsoft isn't completely blameless here. If Microsoft had adopted the same strategy for drivers as the OpenBSD project has (accepting either fully open drivers or no drivers), then somebody (even Microsoft) could make the drivers work on Vista.

This is yet another why open drivers built from publicly-available hardware documentation are better than binary-blob drivers.

Re:My Vista Install

[LWATCDR]

And people survived trench warfare but that is no reason to throw a mustard gas party.

The simple truth is that right now most people will get zero benefit from Vista. And for some people they will actually loose functionality that they currently have.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

[koan]

Yes unfortunately I tend to forget how different /. is when it comes to vague posts or ranting.
I have used Vista, I do not like it, it's intrusive and annoying to me (yes I do want to run that exe), I personally don't care about eye candy, I am into performance which vista does not have unless you are running a state of the art proc, 4 gig's of RAM and a high end graphics card (which none have decent drivers as of yet)
I'm not going to get into the DRM portion of Vista.
You're a sucker to buy it and a fool to run it.

Conditioned Response

[TheNinjaroach]

I'm not sure what lies you've been reading about UAC, but it conditions users to always say "Yes" to security prompts. This is a very terrible idea and in this situation the criticism is well deserved.
"You are about to open the Control Panel -- allow or deny?"
"You are about to open the Program Files folder -- allow or deny?"
"You are about to modify user preferences -- allow or deny?
"You are about to open attachment pzxyTrojan.exe -- allow or deny?"
Allow.. allow.. allow.. allow.. allow..

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not supporting DX9 makes no business sense. DX10-only games will be games by Microsoft, or games for which Microsoft paid the developer their expected DX9 profits to be DX10-only.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

[ShieldW0lf]

I was reading an article recently where people were looking for ways to explain what the problems are with digital rights management technology to non technically minded people.

Examples given tended to be along the lines of "I can't watch foreign released films, they were never released locally so I have no legal option, and I need this for my book report." and "You shouldn't have to pay for that song again, you already paid for it."

These are, quite frankly, not the most pressing examples I could think of.

Here's some examples you can show your mom and dad:

1) Broadcast news will be all be digitally signed by the big media companies.

The same technology used to cause your saved version of American Idol to self-destruct can be used after the fact to erase news right off your home electronics. It will also prevent it from being transferred to unprotected permanent media, or played back from any backup.

2) Medical software and data will all be digitally signed by the rights owners.

The same technology used to stop software piracy could be used after the fact to switch off hospitals and clinics that don't pay their bills. There is massive financial incentive to design this to happen automatically. Anyone who doubts the realism of this scenario need only look as far as the behavior of the existing drug companies.

3) Company files will all be digitally signed.

If you are being screwed over by your employer or any company you have business dealings with, they will be able to ensure that you don't make anyone else aware of it.

Anyone who thinks this technology is about protecting Britney Spears from Bluebeard the Pirate is missing the point. This is about totalitarianism.