Windows Vista, More Than Just a Pretty Face

Nash writes "Ars Technica takes a look under the hood of Vista, discussing the need for a new API and comparing the graphics engine in Vista to that of Mac OS X. 'With Windows Vista it will be possible to implement Exposé properly-with live window updates and low system overhead. That said, it doesn't thus far look like Microsoft will be doing anything so useful as Exposé. Though the blurred glass effect is rather attractive, it's not exactly useful. Other visual effects include miniature window previews when the mouse cursor is hovered over taskbar buttons and an upgraded alt-tab device, and Flip3D.'"

Comments

More than a pretty face. . .

[MistaE]

Vista's a whore!

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[Endo13]

Well said.

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[ThatsNotFunny]

Whores are less expensive, and less prone to viruses than Vista.

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[gtinferno]

Hahaha...funniest thing i've read in a while!

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[Clandestine_Blaze]

Whores are less expensive, and less prone to viruses than Vista. Yes, but can Whores run Linux?

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[guruevi]

That's why she's a virgin, not (yet) penetrated, waiting for it to happen and when it happens she won't have the proper protection and get infected.

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[Anpheus]

FUD, simply put.

The offloading of graphics handling to the GPU decreases the load on the CPU and main memory. And, what do you know, 90% or more of all current PCs that you can buy have a motherboard with an integrated video solution that supports that GPU acceleration. In addition, I didn't have to shell out any bucks to get my computer to run Vista. And even if yours lacks a shiny new video chipset, don't worry, there's a non-Aero GUI for the soon to be 5% of you who don't have integrated video.

Given that... I think it's quite reasonable, given what you've said, to think that you're an idiot. What I'm worried about is that you idiots <em>do</em> seem to come in bunches.

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[BlindSpot]

Whores are less expensive, and less prone to viruses than Vista.

Whore off!

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[Simon80]

Yes, yes they can.

Re:More than a pretty face. . .

[Anpheus]

What measurements? Most of the tests I've seen performed* have placed Vista and XP pretty much at the same capability, within their margin of error. Unless you count that one test I read in which XP consistently tested 1% better (all but one test,) XP and Vista seem to be relatively the same in capability. It's true the kernel eats up more space, which sucks, but on the other hand, the process scheduler is more efficient and caching is greatly improved. Have you considered that those enhancements may be helping keep the larger Vista kernel on-par with the XP/2003 kernels? * other than those using the still-somewhat-beta ATI/nVidia drivers for graphics comparison. The DWM is pretty lightweight so it's easy to do, but I've heard of some games running more slowly because the drivers aren't quite there yet. nVidia drivers still occasionally crash, etc.

Glass Effect and Screenshots

[snowgirl]

It's kind of unfortunate that the Glass effect is transparent. If you take a screenshot of a single window, it will pick up whatever is behind the window.

So, say you have something you don't want to show up in your screenshot, but it's behind the Glass effect. It will show up in the screenshot.

Not normally that big of a deal, but it's kind of annoying taking a screenshot of a "single window" and picking up content from other windows.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[SirSmiley]

What about Alt+Print Screen, it only captures the active window...

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Applekid]

This is one feature I really like. I remember using NVTools to make all my windows in XP 75% transparent so I could "multitask" my screen real estate. Some applications which bypass the regular Windows GDI API tended to not be transparent and it usually was all for the best (games, mostly).

While I hardly ever have to perform screenshots, I guess now you just need to set up your desktop for a snapshot just like you might have to set up to get a halfway decent picture of anything in real life.

(I don't have Vista, but surely there's a way to turn off Aero if it's that big a deal?)

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[snowgirl]

This is percisely what I'm refering to.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[errxn]

It's kind of unfortunate that the Glass effect is transparent So, in other words, it's kinda like...glass?

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[SEMW]

May I suggest Kenny Kerr's Window Clippings, a (freeware) screenshot utility that "generates a transparent image - the shadow and glass have their alpha channel set".

From a review: "This isn't a perfect simulation of what real Glass does - it won't blur the area behind the title bar. This is because there's no way of building a bitmap file that will have such an effect. But given the limitations of what you can do with existing bitmap formats, Kenny's utility is as good as it's possible to get".

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[amdandcode]

Actually, there is a way to turn off transparency in Vista through the new redesigned desktop properties dialog.

I actually quite like the new UI in Vista--including the transparency effects, but that's about all I like. Beryl and XGL are actually a lot better, and they don't suck up the memory that Vista uses.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Hatta]

This is one feature I really like. I remember using NVTools to make all my windows in XP 75% transparent so I could "multitask" my screen real estate.

Real operating systems have virtual desktops so you don't have to layer everything 3 windows deep. Vista doesn't even have a power tool to do it.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[voice_of_all_reason]

You mean like the equivalent of "tabbed" desktops? One for my video encoding folders and related apps, one for the video game I'm playing and its forums/cheat sites, one for my music directory and winamp? That does sound kind of cool.

I usually meticulously position windows every login (because windows never remember regardless of the settings you choose) to have these all set up at the proper viewing, but having to fiddle with a 2-line deep taskbar to bring up the right ones for the task I want to do at the moment can be frustrating,

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[mackyrae]

Just move the window to a different virtual desktop...er, after downloading that extra app that brings Windows up to speed with Linux.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Sinbios]

http://www.codeplex.com/vdm

It's still being developed, but works pretty well so far.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[ebingo]

Why not just minimize all other windows? Too complicated?

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Gr8Apes]

Isn't the purpose of technology to make things easier, not harder? This would be another major negative to Vista - it makes things harder, and doesn't help me in any way that I've heard.

I don't need transparent windows for the most part either. A second monitor is much more helpful. The exception is the way that Apple's Mac OSX does property windows. Those being somewhat transparent is helpful at times.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[norman619]

Well, you can focus on the window you actually want to capture then use the alt key along with the print screen key and then you have captured only the window you wanted and not your whole screen.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Hatta]

You mean like the equivalent of "tabbed" desktops? One for my video encoding folders and related apps, one for the video game I'm playing and its forums/cheat sites, one for my music directory and winamp? That does sound kind of cool.

It's very cool. In fact it's too cool, once you get used to it you can never go back. Fortunately you can replace window's desktop with a real window manager. Add in Cygwin in a Terminator window and it's almost tolerable.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[itsmilesdavis]

Dude, just move your porn off of your desktop.

Then you can take all the screenshots you want.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[GIL_Dude]

You can turn off glass. Although what I do when I want to get the single window without any of the glass "bleed through" is to maximize a notepad window behind what I am getting a screen shot of. Simple and quick enough to do that way.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[omeomi]

I use this product that both removes the "glass" effect, and gives me an estimated 20% performance increase. It also has less DRM crap installed. It's called Windows XP.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[bazorg]

are you sure screenshots are legal these days?

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[SharpFang]

Dear slashdot. The OP tries to beat around the bush talking about screenshots and annoying. But this is an absolutely horrible misfeature of Windows for all of us. Normally, when you browse porn, you un-minimize Excel or some other "serious application" and it covers whatever you've been watching. Now OP did just that, and the tits were showing through. He got caught. Any of us can get caught like that when using Vista for porn. Beware of the traitorous glass effect.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Eternauta3k]

So, say you have something you don't want to show up in your screenshot, but it's behind the Glass effect. It will show up in the screenshot.

How about minimizing your pr0n before taking screenshots?

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[gregleimbeck]

Vista comes with the snippet tool that lets you cut out parts of your screen that you want to save. It's only marginally more useful then ctrl+shift+print screen then pasting into mspaint, but definitely worth the $400 upgrade.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[benwaggoner]

I just Win-D to get to the desktop to take my shots.

Of course, working as I do in video, I've got a fully gray UI, with my desktop set to RGB=127.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[snowgirl]

Someone doesn't particularly pay attention to the gender of the poster. Let me repeat my user name here for you to get an idea of which gender I am. Snowgirl.

Ok, I know it's really hard to believe that there are actually girls on the internet, but trust me... it does happen.

As it so happens, I work at Microsoft, and I didn't want my screenshot to include a tab that showed the Google logo in it.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Ant P.]

I don't know if this works in Windows, but The Gimp's Linux version has an option to take a window screenshot without the window manager decoration.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Coryoth]

usually meticulously position windows every login (because windows never remember regardless of the settings you choose) to have these all set up at the proper viewing, but having to fiddle with a 2-line deep taskbar to bring up the right ones for the task I want to do at the moment can be frustrating. Obviously you haven't played with virtual desktops and such, so I'll give you an idea of the sort of thing that many people do. You can divide up your windows over several different desktops, usually according to task or some such. That means to switch tasks you just switch desktops. This has the added bonus that if you have a bunch of windows all carefully positioned for a given task then, by switching to that desktop, you go from dealing with none of them to having just those windows visible, and all positioned appropriately - a lot better than picking through a taskbar and raising the 3 or 4 windows you need each in turn. Virtual desktops also help clean up your taskbar since you can set the taskbar to only show windows on the current desktop, thus you don't get buried with a 2-line deep taskbar. Throw in a window selector applet (a single button on the taskbar that pulls up a menu of all windows, grouped by which desktop their on) so you can go straight to any window from any desktop and things start to look much more manageable.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[AeroIllini]

Fortunately you can replace window's desktop with a real window manager. Add in Cygwin in a Terminator window and it's almost tolerable. Wow, that seems like a lot of work.

Luckily, you can get all the same functionality with only one install.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Mex]

Actually, the porn is what I'm taking screenshots of... I just don't want my friends to know I read Slashdot :(

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[gbjbaanb]

Snowgirl.. hmm. Swedish lesbians rolling about in the early morning pristine snowfall with only the heat of their bodies to keep themselves warm.. ..

ahem. ok, but really - if you want transparent effects, turn them on. If you don't turn them off. It is a bit much to expect the computer to realise you want transparency except when you don't. Alternatively, open a full-screen plain-coloured app (a paint app? blank-page IE?) and position your window inside it so you can see a plain colour through the effects. I doubt you take many screenshots so its not that much of a bind?

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[gbjbaanb]

I always wondered what MS did to the display subsystem thatused up so much memory, I thought they were just useless or 'untidy' programmers and they'd optimise it when they had the chance (ie after rushing Vista out). But now I know it uses the .NET runtime and it all becomes clear...

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[nine-times]

(I don't have Vista, but surely there's a way to turn off Aero if it's that big a deal?)

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Vista, but I don't get this complaint. There's a Vista theme that looks just the same but without the glass effect. If you don't like the glass effect for whatever reason, there's nothing requiring you to use it.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[snowgirl]

no, it was pretty simple enough to move it to another desktop (I have multi monitors) and take a screenshot that way.

But it would kind of be nice if things realized that they're painting to the clipboard, and they could avoid just doing a straight copy, and actually give a simple white or alpha-blended effect instead.

Wishful thinking, I know, but it's just kind of a quirk more than something really bothersome.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Hatta]

Oh hell yeah I know that. But if you're stuck with windows for some reason, be it work, games, whatever, you've got to make do.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[xenocide2]

The good news is that you can disable it. It' suggested to turn it off for weaker video cards, since it does potentially require a hell of a lot of calculations.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[BillyGee]

You can always easily use an app called TweakVI to easily change the colour and transparency of Glass. It also lets you do many more customizations and optimizations on Vista. Basic version is freeware.

http://www.totalidea.com/content/tweakvi/tweakvi-i ndex.html

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[h2_plus_O]

(I don't have Vista, but surely there's a way to turn off Aero if it's that big a deal?)

Yes, there is. You can enable or disable transparency altogether, and you can control the transparency such that varying degrees of transparency are available: there's a slider with which to adjust the color intensity, and sliders with which you can adjust hue, saturation, and brightness. this article goes into more detail than I needed, but if you look halfway down the page there's a screenshot with a checkbox titled 'Enable Transparency'.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[h2_plus_O]

It's kind of unfortunate that the Glass effect is transparent. If you take a screenshot of a single window, it will pick up whatever is behind the window.

FWIW, you can control the degree to which it is transparent, and you can turn off the transparency feature altogether.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[TrancePhreak]

Multiple virtual desktops pales greatly in comparison with multi-monitor. Virtual desktops are pretty clumsy for a number of reasons, including having to look around to find the one that has what you want on it.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Simon80]

oh yeah? well I use this product that removes the puffy border effect, has no crap installed at all. The inner workings of it are exposed and can be modified freely as I wish. It's called an abacus.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Siker]

Here's what "tabbed desktops" look like on a Mac: video of Virtue Desktops. So it's not exactly tabs but it sure saves you from stacking windows.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[Tacvek]

From a review: "This isn't a perfect simulation of what real Glass does - it won't blur the area behind the title bar. This is because there's no way of building a bitmap file that will have such an effect. But given the limitations of what you can do with existing bitmap formats, Kenny's utility is as good as it's possible to get".

Um.. unless i'm missing something the only way that could be true is if the blurring is done by the image on the screen not being constant, but changing to create a blur effect. In which case an animated image would be needed. Otherwise if it was static it would be prefectly possible to get a bitmap showing said effect as in someway.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[ChoppedBroccoli]

While I generally agrre that multiple monitors are a better solution, having virtual desktops costs $0. Having multiple monitors costs a lot more. ;) A virtual desktop manager with a well thought out live preview window can still be quite useful for the majority of us single monitor users.

Re:Glass Effect and Screenshots

[SEMW]

Um.. unless i'm missing something the only way that could be true is if the blurring is done by the image on the screen not being constant, but changing to create a blur effect. In which case an animated image would be needed. Otherwise if it was static it would be prefectly possible to get a bitmap showing said effect as in someway. I'm afraid I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. In Vista, both the transparancy and blurring is done by the desktop window manager. But in a bitmap screenshot, there's obviously no way to make a bitmap that blurs whatever it's in front of. So the screenshot utility emulates the transparancy effect by setting the alpha channel on the bitmap to the appropriate value, but does not emulate the blurring effect.

OS X not that bad.

[Hozza]

Of course, OS X also does live updates of windows in Expose, don't know why the article suggests otherwise.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[gEvil (beta)]

Of course, OS X also does live updates of windows in Expose, don't know why the article suggests otherwise.

From TFA: "The scaled windows that Exposé shows you are not merely static screenshots of those windows; they're the actual windows themselves, just scaled down. This means that they update live, and any changes in a window are immediately apparent to the user."

How do you read that as suggesting otherwise?

Re:OS X not that bad.

[Hozza]

OK, so the summary of the article suggests otherwise then....

Re:OS X not that bad.

[gEvil (beta)]

I read the summary as indicating that previous versions of Windows couldn't implement it properly, but that Vista would now allow it to be done right. I can see how it could be interpreted the other way, though.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[eno2001]

Actually... I'm a Beryl user and Beryl does this just as Mac OS X does. But just yesterday I was talking to the Windows admin here and he has Vista with Aero Glass on his workstation. He was highly impressed by Beryl when I showed it to him a while back, butI was curious about the live update of the scaled windows in Vista. So I asked him to pop open a CMD window and ping something, then display all the scaled windows. It worked. The ping was still visible. So... it appears that Vista CAN do it, (we didn't test with video or anything though) and maybe it's not as efficient as Mac OS X or Beryl, but it CAN do it.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[SScorpio]

Vista can do this with video as well. One of Microsoft's big things they liked to show off was video playing which in Flip3D. The video would remain playing and you could see it moving whether it was the front window or not in Flip3D, it also shows the running video from the thumbnail display when you hover over the minimized window in the task bar. It also doesn't appear to lag while your doing it either.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[DrXym]

And Vista does live updates. So I'm not sure what the point is trying to be made.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[Macthorpe]

I've actually tested this with World of Warcraft running in a window. Set a character to auto-run and then used flip 3D, and it updates the entire playing window continuously in Flip 3D, Alt-Tab and the miniature preview windows you get when you hover over a taskbar icon, with no noticable loss of performance.

Not only that, but it puts a small version of the program icon in the bottom right of the preview just in case you're confused as to which program you're using.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[mackyrae]

A Windows tech asked me if I was running Vista when he saw Beryl. He tried to claim Vista could do all that stuff (cube, burning windows, Expose). Obviously, he was wrong. He was also shocked by how low my RAM usage was.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[Alioth]

The summary is extremely badly written and takes this entirely out of context - the actual article is comparing Vista's capabilities with _earlier_ versions of Windows, where 3rd party programs could sort of emulate Vista (while pegging the CPU) - not a comparison to OS X at all.

As an aside, did anyone else notice the BitchX irc session (probably running over an ssh connection from a more unixy machine) on page 4 of the article :-)

Re:OS X not that bad.

[Moby Cock]

Windows Vista it will be possible to implement Exposé properly-with live window updates and low system overhead

That sentence on its own could be read to imply that Vista does these things in contrast to OS X. i.e. Expose was not implemented properly (although anyone that has used it, knows that is false)

Re:OS X not that bad.

[araemo]

Yes, but if you RTFA, you'll see that the context was referring to 'properly' in relation to the expose clones for XP, which cannot implement it 'properly' because XP does not support the same kind of off-screen window buffers automatically.

I just hope that the APIs required to implement arbitrary Aero effects (such as expose, or effects we haven't thought of yet) is a public API - IE, stable and 'allowed' to be used by programs from 3rd party developers.

If it isn't a public API, I think MS is shooting themselves in the foot by artificially limiting what kind of gee-whiz features can be added by third party applications. I think it's likely that your average home user will download 50 of them and try to run them all at once and then complain how slow everything is, but I don't want the rest of us to be that handicapped to satisfy the clueless.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[MMC Monster]

Previous versions of windows did not have expose at all. There is no technical reason that expose needs features available only in Vista. (Though, it may be more efficient in Vista)

Re:OS X not that bad.

[moonbender]

All of this is in the article: Vista doesn't have Expose either, hell knows why. There are reasons why implementing it in Vista is far more easy than in XP. It's technically possible to do it in XP -- there are in fact 3rd party tools which try to do so, but it's really slow and looks like crap. I know because I tried them, since I would really, really like to have Expose on Windows. It's, like, the only thing about compositing windowing managers which actually improves usability as opposed to just improving the looks.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[cronot]

He tried to claim Vista could do all that stuff (cube, burning windows, Expose). Obviously, he was wrong.

Sorry, but technically he's right. Vista has all the infrastructure (3d hardware accelerated GUI) and the APIs (DWM) to do it - it's just that Vista doesn't come by default with these effects (cube, exposé) available. But it can, in theory, be easily implemented by third-party applications. In fact, case in point, a good example is the Exposé functionality: That functionality doesn't come by default on Vista, but there are already a few applications available for Vista that adds this feature to the desktop, properly using the new video infrastructure on Vista to do it just as OSX and Linux+Beryl does: with the scaled Windows updated in real-time, with negligible performance hit. It's just a matter of time or will from developers to make other fancy new effects available.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[moonbender]

According to TFA it's not a public API and MS doesn't have any intentions of opening it up. I'm sure it'll be hacked, though.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[mackyrae]

Perhaps I should quote him. "Vista does that." Vista does not do that by default, and at the moment there is nothing in existence to make Vista do that. He said he'd seen some of that stuff before. He saw Expose on current Macs and virtual desktops on future Macs. There is software to make virtual desktops on current Macs and have the desktops switch animatedly. There is not a way to have "pretty" virtual desktops on Windows, though there are basic ones available. For some reason, everything shows in the taskbars of all of them though.

Re:OS X not that bad.

[aftk2]

You're getting flak for this, but I read it the same way:

Ars Technica takes a look under the hood of Vista, discussing the need for a new API and comparing the graphics engine in Vista to that of Mac OS X.

Ah, cool. We're going to compare Vista's graphics layer with OS X's. Interesting.

Now, very next sentence:

'With Windows Vista it will be possible to implement Exposé properly-with live window updates and low system overhead.

Oh. So we're comparing OS X and Vista. OS X has Exposé, but Vista's graphics system would be able to implement such a system properly, with live window updates.

Reading these two sentences it's pretty easy to see where the confusion lies. For a second I thought I was crazy, and loaded a quicktime movie and triggered Exposé, just to make sure.

Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[walterbyrd]

I don't know if Vista is a "train wreck" but I don't see any reason what-so-ever to upgrade.

I know some idiot is going post some "why don't you just use a horse and carrage" message. But, really, specifically, why on earth should I spend all that money, and go through all that trouble, for nothing?

W2K runs all of hw and sw. It's fast, and stable, it's not obtrusive, I know how to use it, and I don't need a new PC to run it. Not only do I not need that "eye candy" I hate it, I want my gui to look serious, not like a toy. W2K does not have all the DRM, WGA, and authentication cr@p.

So what does Vista do for me? How will Vista make me more productive? How will Vista save me money? Seems like paying money for an additional annoyance. I am not saying msft sucks, I am not saying vista sucks. But, this seems to be the worst "upgrade" imaginable.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Grashnak]

No offense, but you're obviously not the target market. Since apparently you intend to continue to run your existing hardware and software for the foreseeable future, and don't have any interest in the newer interface, then there is no compelling reason for you to adopt any new OS - VISTA or not. What exactly would it take from a new OS to make you upgrade? We've already established that you like the current interface and don't want to have to upgrade your computer, so what features are you looking for?

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Endo13]

Yeah. Kinda like as if you had to give up sex so your gf could get a face-lift.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I'm at the point where I hate computers in their current form. I'm pretty tired of the whole "window" UI paradigm. It's really a terribly inefficient human UI. I have to use tons of fine motor control to move the little mouse cursor around the screen and position it within a few pixels of what I want to use. If something I want is on the other side of the screen I have to move the mouse all the way from one end to the other, and use hand-eye coordination to get it to where I want. And if I have an application running that I want to use I have visually find the representation on the screen and then manipulate the mouse over to the icon to activate the application. Or if there is some application or file on my computer that I want to get to, I have to search through a bunch of folders and shit just to get to it. It's ridiculous the way it all works. I probably lose hours weekly just moving the mouse around the screen.
What we need is a completely new UI paradigm, something based on natural language and eye-tracking with some learning and AI, so I can just look at what I want and press a few buttons to activate it. If I want a folder, I can just say "accounting files" and the computer can get it for me instead of me having to go get it myself. I don't want to have to program the phrase "accounting files" into some crappy speech-recognition thing, the computer should be able to associate phrases with files based on context. It should learn as it goes along. Yeah I know, science fiction...

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[SEMW]

I don't know if Vista is a "train wreck" but I don't see any reason what-so-ever to upgrade.
I know some idiot is going post some "why don't you just use a horse and carrage" message. But, really, specifically, why on earth should I spend all that money, and go through all that trouble, for nothing? I don't want to sound abrasive, but -- don't. No-one's forcing you to upgrade. No-one's suggesting that you specifically should upgrade. If you don't have any reason to upgrade, then don't. But that doesn't mean it's necessary to comment on every single story about any aspect of Vista "I don't see any reason for me to upgrade". I'm not going to upgrade to Photoshop CS3, but I don't go on forums, search for topics about CS3, and post "I'm not going to upgrade!", because it adds very, very little to the discussion. If there are no new features that are relevent to you, and there's no reason for you to upgrade, just -- don't upgrade. Simple as that.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[smidget2k4]

I'm in the same boat though. It doesn't really seem that there are any UI improvements that would make a switch the Vista worthwhile. I was not happy with the XP interface, and I tried out Vista. It wouldn't run on my three year old laptop. Being a broke college student, I have no interest in dropping a grand so I can have some pretty new UI. But testing it on other computers, I couldn't see any real compelling reason to switch, unless I wanted to have a slightly prettier start menu and have needless, not-even-that-cool looking GUI effects. Those are not killer apps for me. WinFS, the only reason I was excited for Vista, is not there.

So then I tried Kubuntu on my laptop, looking for a XP replacement with actual changes to the UI that meant something, and I found it. This environment (for me) is FAR more productive than XP or Vista could ever be. I was their target market, unsatisfied with XP and looking for an upgrade, and they let me slip through the cracks. Not that I really care, I found Linux and will probably never go back to Windows. Nice job, Microsoft.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[SEMW]

If I want a folder, I can just say "accounting files" and the computer can get it for me instead of me having to go get it myself. With the full start-menu search, and speech recognition; as long as the folder with accounting files in it is named "accounting" (or all the files have "accounting" in their name) I'm pretty sure this is already possible in Vista. You may have to wait for the next version of Windows for eye-tracking, though :)

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[linguizic]

You know if anyone from Microsoft heard what you just said they'll come out with some press release saying that people are hesitant to upgrade to Vista b/c 2K/XP was just too good.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[svendsen]

So what your saying is you are happy with state A and don't want to go to state B? So don't. I mean it doesn't get any simpler that that.

So what does Operating X do for me? How does it make me more productive? This same question will be asked when the new Apple Os is, when a new Linux distro comes out, etc. Not everyone will need/want to u[grade. But for those that do there is another option.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[stubear]

How about a "why should I give a fuck what you're going to do" response? Honestly, why does every article like this have to turn into a mass geek therapy session on Dr. Phil or Oprah? I don't care if you plan to upgrade to Vista and I believe that just about anyone else on Slashdot cares even less - if that's even possible, because I truly don't care.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[neoform]

"If there are no new features that are relevent to you"

Other than the pretty new theme, is there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone?

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[dc29A]

Other than the pretty new theme, is there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone?

There are some interesting features of Vista, but none that can impress the computer illiterate folks other than: "Hey, it's pretty!". Tell computer illiterate people about UAC, SuperFetch, new IP stack, new driver model, display driver in User space, DX10 and whatnot and they'll stare at you as if you are talking some alien language. Of course once you mention they need to buy more memory (probably new PC so they see the "pretty") because their 256/512 MB laptop would crawl under Vista ... they won't upgrade.

But it's pretty! Then again, my mom would probably be lost with the new UI especially IE7, even if it's "pretty".

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[SEMW]

Other than the pretty new theme, are there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone? Obviously I can't know which (if any) new features you, or anyone else in particular, will find relevant; so I'll refer you to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista

And to a lesser extent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_ne w_to_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_safety_f eatures_new_to_Windows_Vista

If I had to highlight one or two particular features, I'd say the one that I find most useful is the much quicker, Quicksilver like way of launching applications, files etc. -- press the windows key, type a couple of letters from the application, and press enter.
Also, per-application volume control; and the much better native support for wireless networks and encryption.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[bberens]

Yeah, when you pay for the cheap $400 Vista license you get a free PC from Dell. If you shop for the right deal, you might even get a free printer to go with it!

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[rbanzai]

Posting that you are NOT upgrading is quite valid. This is not just some simple tech forum, people are forming opinions about technology here. It's just as important to know that someone is NOT upgrading to a new piece of hardware/software/whatever as it is to know about those jumping in and upgrading. That you are NOT upgrading to CS3 is informative in its own way and might make people question if it's worth it for themselves.

It's good to actually see different opinions, even if one doesn't agree with them. One day you might see that. :)

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Just Some Guy]

is there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone?

Well, there are the grammar checker...

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[asylumx]

Well, my opinion is that if you're running w2k or wxp then you probably have no compelling reason to upgrade. However, if you pick up or build a new machine, requiring a new license of your OS, you may as well upgrade since it is roughly the same price. There are a couple of nice new features that you'd probably enjoy. The one I use the most is the search option in the start menu. It is very handy. It is not worth spending $200-$500 on an upgrade, but if you're spending the money anyway, it's worth looking at. It's not so much a "must-have" upgrade, it's a "might-as-well" upgrade.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eye tracking just isn't accurate enough. You'd end up with a desktop that had 16 huge icons on it, and nothing else, because you couldn't hit anything smaller. Compared to a start menu + mouse where I can rapidly and precisely pick the right icon from 200 without obscuring the rest of the screen eyeball pointing would be a huge step backwards.

As for voice command - I share an office, thanks.

I agree that the current paradigms are pretty clunky but I haven't seen or heard of anything better.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[antdude]

If you're into games, DirectX 10 and newer games will require it if you want the latest enhancements. :( I will be forced too in a few years.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[RetroGeek]

ok, I'll bite.

Vista raises the bar on stability

This is yet to be determined. Until there are uptimes of over a year, you cannot say it has more stability. And more stabilty than what? I have seen Novell Netware machines with uptimes of over three years.

We had one Netware machine continue working after its drive fried (before the days of cheap RAID systems). We only found out because we were going to upgrade the RAM.

This switch to Windows servers is a step backwards.

Vista raises the bar on user interface

No, it just changes the way it works. I have not tried it so this is entirely form other posts and ads, but having little minature screens in some 3D effect showing me what is minimized is silly. Besides, I can get almost the same thing from the power tools. You ALT-TAB and you get little minature screens showing you what is minimized.

And as for the Office icon ribbons, yuk. I want to see and do what I want to do. I hate it when an application hides stuff from me. So yes, the first thing I do is turn off "personalized menus" in every MS app.

And I prefer WordPerfect to Word, mostly because I can have "reveal codes" show me exactly what markup codes are being used and where. Word just gets in my way. You turn something on, can't get rid of it, then wonder why your cursor and text are screwed up.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[AltGrendel]

Just post on /.

There are plenty grammar checkers there.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Hadlock]

Nice threadjack!

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[aztec rain god]

It has a funny spokesman on those mac ads.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[SharpFang]

The question is more general.
I don't see why ANYONE should upgrade.
Sure there are those who WANT to upgrade, because of the e-penis factor, because of the hype, because they are misinformed.
For now I haven't seen a single situation of someone who'd upgrade because Vista did something well, what XP did bad.
Sure it's your freedom to make stupid decisions.
It's my freedom to bitch about that just as well.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...is there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone?

Yes. For me the application level sound controls are a big plus. It is nice to be able to have audio alerts for chats at work, but be able to turn off sound from Web pages so they don't disturb my co-workers. This is actually nicer than Kubuntu or Mac OS X right now.

The indexed searching is a big plus too. I never thought I'd use it when it was added to OS X, but being able to quickly and globally find some string in the text of a PDF of Word file or ODF file or even photoshop image is a real life saver.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Well, there are the grammar checker...

Actually, the fact that the spelling and grammar checkers in Windows can only be used in a few programs is a big minus for me. I mean if you're going to all the effort to code these things, why not make them available to editors and Web browsers and chat clients and terminals and everything else? On of the reasons OS X is winning the war as my primary desktop OS is its ability to share arbitrary functionality like this among all programs.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[xtracto]

There is one feature that I find neat, and it is not available in any major linux distribution out of the box (yeah, theres something called polyaudio or whatnot which is in beta and has to be installed manually, that does not count) which is independent audio volume control for each application.

I know there are third party applications that work on Windows (indievolume I think one is named). But there is no easy to use solution for windows (of course I dont expect too much since there are still issues with *playing* audio in some linux distributions now... and applications that still use the $!"£$@ OSS driver).

Aside of that I like the idea of superfetch and other small nice tools. Personally the eye candy is in no way beneficial for me as I *always* turn off any kind of theme and use winduglys with the "classic" performance friendly skin.

But I could give it a long shot and say that there is one specific feature that is relevant to everyone and that is security. Even though we all laugh at the stupid and annoying YOU ARE TRYING TO BASH WINDOWS VISTA SECURITY MODEL (ALLOW OR DENY) security model of Windows Vista, I am sure there is a bit *more* than the annoying questions. Why is this relevant to everyone? well, as this new operating system is the one that everyone who uses Microsoft Windows will sooner or later migrate, there is hope that the number of zombie computers will decrease. That is nice a nice thing for me and for you Linux system administrators who need to admin Windows boxes.

Anyway, I wont buy it any time soon (the last time I bought a windows OS was when I bought my HP laptop and I payed for WinXP as the MS tax...) as I do not have a machine powerful enough to use it (in the end, I am a third world country poor student with a scolarship...) and FC6 and Windows XP are enough for all of my needs (Skype VideoConf., Latex, Java programming, video watching, OpenGL-SDL/DirectX programming, statistical analysis, etc).

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Endo13]

Problem is I liked her looks better before the face-lift, and the 'no sex' is permanent. :(

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[jandersen]

What all these new things tell me (not an illiterate) is that here ia a lot of SW that probably still needs to be debugged. There is a reason why old systems like MVS are still going strong, business-wise: They have been thoroughly debugged, simply because they have hung around for something like 40 years.

I remember something about Vista having to rewritten more or less from scratch not so long ago; or am I wrong? It may be that Vista will be great in a couple of years, but it is probably too much grief right now, I think.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[jim3e8]

Somehow OS X manages to include a bunch of interesting technical features, and still impress the computer illiterate and literate alike. You didn't answer the original question, which was "why should I, who am computer literate, upgrade?" The existence of a "new IP stack" is all well and good, what are the benefits and drawbacks?

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Just Some Guy]

On of the reasons OS X is winning the war as my primary desktop OS is its ability to share arbitrary functionality like this among all programs.

Same here. Well, that and the fact that I got a used eMac in great shape for $100. But the one thing about the global services that irks me is that there are so many of them. Is there a way to hide services? I'd only like to see a few: maybe spell check, grammar check, search Google, and a couple others. I don't need "upload to iPod", "translate to Ukranian (southern)", or "turn into crossword puzzle".

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Endo13]

Really? My primary use for my Windows machine is gaming, and I know damn well I won't be *forced* to upgrade to Vista, ever. If and when the time comes that new games will require DX10 (and therefore Vista) I'll see what the state of Vista is then. If I still don't like it, I'll simply do without those games.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[westlake]

W2K runs all of hw and sw. It's fast, and stable, it's not obtrusive, I know how to use it, and I don't need a new PC to run it. Not only do I not need that "eye candy" I hate it, I want my gui to look serious, not like a toy. W2K does not have all the DRM, WGA, and authentication cr@p.P

W2K was never a mass-market OS.
In the February W3Schools stats at a 2% share it barely edges out Vista. OS Platform Stats

W2K's strength wasn't in media play or gaming.
Licensing and rights management issues in-house were headaches for your employer, not you.
But if you want to watch Forbidden Planet in HD at home it won't matter much whether you chose the stand-alone player or the PC drive. The movie will still be protected against casual redistribution.

The pastels of Luna may have been an irritant for the Geek, but the felt green of corporate Classic was fatiguing for others.
On some fundamental level, the GUI will always be a "toy," since its job is to provide a relaxed, familiar and unintimidating connection between the user and the machine.

So what does Vista do for me? How will Vista make me more productive? How will Vista save me money? Seems like paying money for an additional annoyance. I am not saying msft sucks, I am not saying vista sucks. But, this seems to be the worst "upgrade" imaginable.

Most Windows users upgrade when they see significant advantages in bundling new hardware and software at OEM prices. The dual or quad core CPU. The 50 GB Optical Drive. DX10 Video. The 500 GB Hybrid SATA HDD. ReadyBoost Flash... There's no help for it. The Vista drivers will mature. The hardware will be cheaper and more advanced. Developers will push the limits of the new platform as it gains market share. Your W2K system will be "the horse and buggy."

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[cmacb]

I don't want to sound abrasive, but -- don't.

I don't want to seem insensitive (although I am rather), but--DO.

I mean I don't go on various forums and tell everyone what new operating systems *I'm" upgrading too. I don't hold press conferences and issue press releases about the wonders of *my* latest OS. Why can't Microsoft just STFU about Vista and let people just upgrade *if they want to*? Why does it have to come on every new computer I can find in almost any store?

Do *I* try and tell everyone else in the world what OS to run? Do I go to device makers and offer them incentives to NOT support other OSes? Do *I* dance around a stage until I"m about too have a coronary and dripping sweat from my armpits shout "Give-it-up-for ME"?

The average computer user DOESN'T CARE what OS they are running, nor do they care about glass interfaces, rotating cubes or anything else likely to be discussed on Slashdot (why are you even reading here by the way?). Slashdot is to computers what a classic 50's car convention is to transportation. If at such an event I ask you what you drive I don't want to know that it is a pink 57 Chevy coup, I want to know the freaking serial number!

But for the average computer user, the details of operating systems behavior are so... so... LAST CENTURY!

For average people the OS should be just part of the box, like it is on my TV set (yes there *is* and OS in there of sorts, even if it is defined by the arrangement of vacuum tubes). The company responsible for it (if it is a company at all) shouldn't even have their name on the box, much less be contributing a sizable portion of the cost to the thing. The OS, as an integral part of the box should JUST WORK, start up instantly (and not with the help of flash drives that further add to the cost), be impervious to viruses, not need monthly updates, and not put up splash screens reminding me what version it is, who wrote it, and what it's catchy cute name is. I DON'T CARE!

Looking at my home entertainment system I can think of three fundamental changes that have taken place in more than 50 years: The TV set is now in color. HDTV has raised the resolution a bit. The buttons and dial on the tuner now have fewer moving parts. Many of these devices will last for twenty years or more and NEVER need a repair during that time. My current equipment, which I've already had for more than ten years, will probably outlive me, and unless I spend too much time looking at the splashy ads in magazines or watch too much (aka any) TV I won't find myself lusting after upgrades. The sound quality is already beyond my ability to discern any difference, and the video is more than adequate (if anything I'd go to flat panel HDTV to save electricity).

So, why, would anyone who is not a paid member of the "computer industry" care about this new OS, or whether the company that produces it continues to exist? I can't think of a reason. Stop reading Slashdot and worrying yourself on what these geeks say about the latest MS OS. In fifty years, most people will not have heard of Microsoft and there will be no such thing as "personal computers". I hope I live to see it.

Now, how about those new cell phones with the built-in infra-red massage (no, not message) capability?

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[electroniceric]

Of the things you mention, only a couple are really improvements as opposed to overdue fixes:

driver model - fixes a design flaw from Win32
display driver in User space - basically still a design flaw fix (clearly not as bad as drivers in general, b/c X still runs as root)
UAC - fixes design flaws from Win32/Win95, suffers from various flaws in interaction with users
new IP stack - fixes bad design flaws from Win32 and adds incremental improvement

New stuff
SuperFetch - incremental and decent improvement in executable caching
DX10 - potentially interesting library for graphics, comparable efforts existing under X and Mac
Managed code for various parts of the API - distinct and innovative improvement, dunno if Mac does this
Vector-driven graphics rendering - distinct and somewhat innovative improvement, Linux is lagging, but I believe Quartz does this
UI changes - mostly cosmetic and some annoying, hard to really call this innovative.

Cancelled stuff
WinFS - profoundly innovative - would have been well ahead of anyone else. Still arguably vaporware.

All in all, not a ground-breaking release, but it has some good incremental improvements. I'll confess that I'm annoyed by having to pay again to get a number of these key design issues fixed, and that's a big reason for me not to want to move to Vista.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[antdude]

Yeah, I am doing the same too (use Vista at work on test machines -- I hate it). I hope it will be a LONG time (5+ years). Look at the newest games. Most of them don't even work under Windows 9x and 2000. :( I hope games were plentiful and natively ported under Linux and Mac OS X.

Right now, HL2 Episode 2 and Crysis support Vista with its new DirectX 10 stuff for those with the DX10 video cards.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

There are some interesting features of Vista, but none that can impress the computer illiterate folks other than: "Hey, it's pretty!". Tell computer illiterate people about ...

All the things you mention are not end user features. Its like trying to sell a new car by telling people it has a steel, helix manifold, instead of that it will go 10MPH faster than last year's model. Almost everything you list fits in the category of "it won't break as much" or "it will run faster." But any given feature does not determine the overall reliability or speed so those features may or may not allow vista to be of any overall benefit to the end user.

Aside from "it's pretty" why not try talking about how you can search quickly and for stuff that is inside the files, not just for the names. Or you could talk about the included software they won't have to buy now. Or you could talk about how you can set the sound for each application. You know, end user features, that people might care about.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[AeroIllini]

I don't want to sound abrasive, but -- don't. No-one's forcing you to upgrade. ...yet.

Then support for Win2K and WinXP is dropped, and suddenly, you're forced into it.

The fact of the matter is, you will be forced to upgrade at some point. Whether that upgrade is to Vista or to Debian is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Vr6dub]

It wouldn't run on my three year old laptop.

Purely anecdotal but I have Vista running on a 5 year old laptop. Runs just fine for what I use it for...internet and email. XP probably does the job a bit better but Vista will run just fine on old hardware. This was a Dell C610 1ghz 768mb of RAM.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[technicalandsocial]

I'm also strongly suggesting to my clients, that none of them upgrade either. In my case, this ranges from mom and pop shops to National organizations. And I know there are many other consultants like me. In fact several branches of federal governments in North America are like me as well.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[nine-times]

On the other hand, this article was (supposedly) about how Vista has more to offer than a snazzy new interface. If, after the article, the reader feels compelled to ask, "so what is it that Vista is supposed to offer?" then it seems like a fair question.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[BlindSpot]

You are very likely not in Windows' target market. I doubt anybody who reads Slashdot is. Their target market is ordinary users who want their computers to do what they need to do with minimal effort on their part. Microsoft understands this is the majority of computer users, and they target them accordingly. (Sadly, they also understand most users and businesses want support, so they gradually force upgrades by dropping support for old products. My workplace is going from Win2K to Win2003/XP for this reason alone.) I'm no fan of Microsoft's by any means, but I give them credit for understanding how most people use computers.

Also, I can't stand how the Linux crowd trots the "it doesn't do anything new" argument out every time a new version of Windows comes out, yet they want Windows users to switch to Linux because it does "more than Windows". Well I hate to break it to you, but for the vast majority of users Linux doesn't do anything new either. Most of what it does is too technical to understand or requires too much work for the average user, and that's why people won't switch. Honestly, I believe Linux has no chance in the desktop market until it stop trying to copy what Windows is doing and tries to do something totally new that is targeted at the average user and not at geeks. Linux does well in the server market because it does this, minus the non-geek requirement which isn't an issue for servers. But as far as desktop users are concerned, Linux is just a Windows clone that's harder to install and support, and has way fewer apps to run.

(Flame away.)

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[SEMW]

Then support for Win2K and WinXP is dropped, and suddenly, you're forced into it. IIRC, XP support ends in 2014, which is still quite a way off yet.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Fred_A]

You didn't answer the original question, which was "why should I, who am computer literate, upgrade?"

Some software you need might require Vista to run. That would be the only sane reason to upgrade IMO. Other than that, I don't see what the point would be in fixing what isn't broken.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[simscitizen]

The biggest UI upgrade by far is built-in instant search. It works like spotlight in tiger (although it has the optimization to find application shortcuts quickly, which is something that os x won't have until leopard, and a major pita in using spotlight).

Now, maybe it isn't new compared to os x, but that feature alone makes it a much better user experience than XP.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

This is what I don't get.
Slashdotters by and large orgasmed over OSX Tiger, whose only compelling feature over Panther was integrated search (and widgets/gadgets, for those that give a damn about that).

Vista adds integrated search (and widgets/gadgets, for thost that give a damn about that) and more over XP, yet the slashdot consenus is that Vista adds nothing compelling.

Which is it? Is integrated search (and widgets/gadgets, for those that give a damn about that) compelling or not? Anyone that thought that Spotlighe was compelling in Tiger must also agree that integrated search is compelling in Vista.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[EvilBudMan]

--Not only do I not need that "eye candy" I hate it, I want my gui to look serious, not like a toy.--

I have actually seen that the Vista gui can be turned on to look like Windows 2000 just like XP is also capable of.

Reason to upgrade, I can't think of one except Direct X 10.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv ista/features/details/directx.mspx

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[neoform]

I started writing something, then deleted a few words and continued. I rarely proof read anything I write. :P

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[walterbyrd]

I am not opposed to upgrading at all. I would be happy to upgrade. Just give me a reason.

What will Vista do for me, or anybody else for that matter?

Eye candy? Is that it? No improvement in speed, security, ease of use, stability, or anything else?

And I'm supposed to run out and buy a new PC for that? Is msft kidding? Could anybody be that stupid?

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Just Some Guy]

Oh, I know, and I do the same thing all the time. But please understand that it's a moral imperative to point these things out; nothing personal.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[TrancePhreak]

"This environment (for me) is FAR more productive than XP or Vista could ever be."

Loaded statement... Mark parent troll/overrated/flamebait. Even if Vista was Ubuntu then you would still not be as productive in Vista? Logic make you not sense.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Endo13]

Well, the one hopeful thing to keep in mind is that it's only in the last 12-18 months that they've started making games incompatible with Win2K. And even that is a "fake" incompatibility, where the only reason the games don't work is because they're coded to do a check for XP, and if they don't find it refuse to install. Most of them have work-arounds that do let you install them under Win2K, and then they work fine.

My personal prediction is that it will be at least 2 years before we see popular "must-have" games that include support for DX10 only.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[antdude]

Two years go fast. Time flies. :)

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[mgiuca]

So sick of "nobody's forcing you to upgrade" comments. It is extremely ignorant.

1. Future apps will require Vista. They wouldn't have required Vista if there was no Vista, and we'd be happy. As it is, if we want to use these apps (which may be perfectly good or desirable), we are forced to upgrade. (This is especially true of games, which will soon require DX 10 which should not be so tightly integrated into the kernel so as to "not be supported in XP").

Please do not give me the argument that "nobody's forcing me to get new apps or games". The bottom line is: I want new apps and games. I don't want Vista.

2. When companies begin rolling out Vista, people are going to be forced to use it at work. Developers are going to be forced to develop for it. A lot of them are not going to like it.

Sure, I can try to avoid upgrading for as long as possible. But don't give me this "just don't upgrade - it's simple" bullshit.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[SEMW]

1. Future apps will require Vista. They wouldn't have required Vista if there was no Vista, and we'd be happy. As it is, if we want to use these apps (which may be perfectly good or desirable), we are forced to upgrade. I would be quite astounded if there are any Vista-only (non-game) applications for a very long time (2014 at the very earliest). The main reason is that, although Vista does certainly bring in loads of new developer technologies (most notably the WPF API); MS allows you to install them on XP and Server 2003 as well. They get installed as part of the .NET 3.0 framework. So whilst there's already a surprisingly long list of WPF applications, they'll all run on XP or 2003 after you've installed the .NET 3 framework.

For games, I imagine that game companies will do what they've always done in the past -- probe your DX version and graphics card to discover what's supported, and enable the graphical niceties that your graphics card / DirectX combo supports.

2. When companies begin rolling out Vista, people are going to be forced to use it at work. Developers are going to be forced to develop for it. A lot of them are not going to like it. The GP was saying that they don't see any particular reason to upgrade, and so don't see why they should spend the money for what, for them, seems little return. That's hardly the same as having some kind of aversion to using it! To use the same analogy I used before, I'm not planning to upgrade to Photoshop CS3 (because the improvements for me don't justify the price), but if my workplace switches to it, I wouldn't exactly complain.

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[mgiuca]

I would be quite astounded if there are any Vista-only (non-game) applications for a very long time (2014 at the very earliest). The main reason is that, although Vista does certainly bring in loads of new developer technologies (most notably the WPF API); MS allows you to install them on XP and Server 2003 as well. They get installed as part of the .NET 3.0 framework. So whilst there's already a surprisingly long list of WPF applications, they'll all run on XP or 2003 after you've installed the .NET 3 framework.

Alan Wake

Granted, it is a Microsoft game. This only goes to show how bad it is to have the company that makes the OS making the games...

The GP was saying that they don't see any particular reason to upgrade, and so don't see why they should spend the money for what, for them, seems little return. That's hardly the same as having some kind of aversion to using it! To use the same analogy I used before, I'm not planning to upgrade to Photoshop CS3 (because the improvements for me don't justify the price), but if my workplace switches to it, I wouldn't exactly complain.

So if you ignore my point 2, and use this analogy, it's like all the plugins from now on being made only for Photoshop CS3. They could have been made for CS2, but the plugin designers decided to make it for the "latest and greatest". So you are forced to upgrade if you want to use those plugins, even though you don't want any new features of CS3 (besides artificial compatibility with new plugins).

Re:Can you give me one good reason to "upgrade" ?

[Identifiable Coward]

Linux has been able to do this for ages...

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-443324-highli ght-vol+volume+controls.html

I will spare you the trouble to read the article

[vivaoporto]

Talk about bait and switch! It says that is more than just a pretty face but shows nothing but the history of Windows APIs and Eye (and maybe Ear) Candy. I will summarize this 8 page long article for you (emphasis mine):

Page 1: This is Part I of Ars Technica's three-part Windows Vista review coverage. In the coming weeks we will be expanding on this coverage, culminating in an official review when our testing is finished.

(... history of Windows APIs, why Vista does graphics and audio better than XP, yada yada ...)

Concluding remarks

The new APIs and all-new graphics stack are not the only things new in Vista. There have been major improvements in Vista's approach to secure computing, and many low-level changes to improve the experience of using the OS. I'll talk about these--along with some of the much-vaunted features that didn't make the cut after all--in my next article.

Expose clone for the DWM already exists

[SEMW]

There already is an Expose clone for Vista using the Desktop Windows Manager (though of course not an official Microsoft one), here (performance is apparently rather poor on that version, but there's a new version coming out soon that improves this).

If you want something a bit different, there's another Vista DWM addon called Smartflip that presents the windows similarly to Apple's FrontRow.

I imagine as more and more people switch to Vista (or, more likely, get new PCs with Vista preloaded) we'll see more and more third-party addons to the DWM. Fancy-Effects-Eye-Candy war between DWM addons and Beryl, anyone? :)

Re:Expose clone for the DWM already exists

[xswl0931]

Microsoft has a Expose clone already. Just install the Intellimouse software and press the middle mouse button.

I don't understand the summary

[DrXym]

Vista does live updates. Not only in thumbnails when you hover over the taskbar, but in the 3d window browser and the Expose-like tiled preview mode. The system requirements are pretty horrible, but it does look very nice when its running properly.

Re:I don't understand the summary

[tuxedobob]

I didn't understand it either, since it seemed to imply that Exposé didn't do live updates, but it's only talking about in Windows. Watching movies play in Exposé (or in the Dock) is funny, if not entirely useful.

You can put lipstick on a pig...

[TWX]

...but it's still a pig, and you're still not going to want to kiss it.

Unless you're in to that sort of thing...

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[Paulrothrock]

And what I've found with Windows is that people take that pig and say "Well, it works well enough, and all the clothes I bought for it fit, so I don't think I should switch over to a real woman. Besides, I hear that real women are very expensive."

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[TWX]

I wouldn't think that real women would be more expensive assuming similar levels of food intake and environmental considerations. They just require more effort and time...

Hmmm... Kind of like Linux or any other Windows-replacing OS...

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[jusDfaqs]

And if you put enough lipstick on that pig, teach it a couple of new tricks, you can call it a pot belly pig. This allows for a higher asking price for the pig, maybe a better public response to you trying to sell them the pig in question.

"Better be on damn charming pig!"
Not really a quote but attributed to Samuel L. Jackson/Pulp Fiction

Enough said.

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[dfghjk]

"They just require more effort and time..." ...and stuff. There's a reason her closet is a lot bigger than his.

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[dfghjk]

...not to mention that the appeal of a "real woman" is somewhat selective. In fact, the penalties associated with one drive some to seek alternatives ;-)

Not that I consider OS X to be a "real woman", but at least a pig will love you regardless of how much money you have.

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[svendsen]

or what people are really saying is hey it works and it doesnt cost me a dime so why upgrade? The exact same reason people wont go to Macs or Linux or any other OS. If you have something nad it works most people aren't going to replace it.

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[Anonymous Coward]

*Real* women are free. It's the TCO that gets you!

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[TWX]

But it's also for a different use... *grin*

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[cmacb]

Operating systems, barnyard animals, blow-up dolls and real women...

And I thought I constructed bad metaphors!

For the average home user, if you could get beyond installation issues (and the average home user would have just as much trouble installing Windows as Linux) the cost of Linux would be bound to be lower, simply because it is free.

The "need" for constant upgrades to an OS are totally artificial, driven by desires to interface with new printers, camera, scanners, mp3 players (all of which *COULD* simply use existing standards for interface), or the "need" to have better performance (and I don't think any new OS, particularly Windows, has provided better performance), or the need to fix security issues (which shouldn't exist in the first place).

Now the often advertised comparisons of cost between Windows and anything else you might consider running are mainly aimed at businesses. But most businesses have even less real "needs" to constantly upgrade their OSs or hardware. Beyond a basic word processing and spreadsheet (the use most spreadsheet users make of the tool is a joke by the way) a business might occasionally need a tool specific to their business (cash register for gas stations, MLS interface for Realtors) and more and more these capabilities are once again seen as more appropriate on a server than on the end-users machine.

So in the period from the mid 80s to now, we have essentially reinvented the 3270 terminal. Somehow I think even IBM could have done it more efficiently! The new 3270 (aka PC) has color, sound, a couple of new standardized I/O mechanisms (mostly USB) and allows me to interact with the "server" just like the old ones did. Yipee!

My guess is that we long ago passed the point where the majority of PCs are being used directly or indirectly in support of developing new software... for PCs. Now all of a sudden, the industry is concerned about power utilization, and as of today, Bill G. is in Mexico trying to round up more immigrants to move to Redmond. Duh!

The dog has long ago caught up with its tail and is now busily chewing the thing off. Quite a sight. Oops. *Turning off my random metaphor generator.*

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[mgiuca]

And what I've found with Windows is that people take that pig and say "Well, it works well enough, and all the clothes I bought for it fit, so I don't think I should switch over to a real woman. Besides, I hear that real women are very expensive."

Wait, real women are free, if you take the time to get to know them properly. It's the pigs that cost you up front.

Re:You can put lipstick on a pig...

[Paulrothrock]

Sure, if you don't mind kissing a pig.

Re:Wait, I thought this OS was terrible!

[Stray1]

Its actually a well thought out article. I especially enjoyed the comparisons to similar features in OS X. Unlike for of the literature I read when both these operating systems are involved, the author seems to have no agenda but to inform. Its a nice change.

Nicer still I'm liking the comments here (so far). Unlike the site where i first heard about this article (Digg), people can argue without using excessive caps, exclamation points or using the word 'fanboy' over and over again.

I'm pretty distressed about the new audio stack in Vista, traditionally using onboard sound slowed the computers other functions (for games and such). It kind of sounds like theres now no difference between using a soundcard and using the onboard equivalent. Does anyone know if this is true? Moreover does this mean games will be that much slower?

Re:I will spare you the trouble to read the articl

[nine-times]

Well, in fairness, if you pick a topic like, "How Vista is more than a pretty face," you'd have a hard time staying on topic too. It'd be like if I set out to write a factual article titled "The Easter Bunny's trip to Mars".

Gnome + Beryl

[solevita]

My laptop does all the effects mentioned in the article summary and more, even though the specs of it are far below what Vista requires. And I owe it all to Ubuntu, Gnome and Beryl.

There's no easy to find minimum required specs for Beryl, so I thought I'd just try it anyway and see what happens; I only really wanted it for Exposé anyway, so I wasn't too worried whether the rest of it worked. It works better than I had hoped and all effects work with no noticeable stress on my system.

Ubuntu, Gnome and Beryl, more than just a pretty face. I'm very happy with it all.

Re:Gnome + Beryl

[slartibart]

Amen.

My girlfriend bought a cheap Presario laptop for her mother (who only speaks Portuguese) and wanted me to configure it. It came with Vista. It was the first time I had used Vista and I thought it was God-awful. The fancy UI effects were enabled and ran terribly slowly, and I got constant security prompts. I turned these off, but it was still unacceptably slow. I suspect 512mb is too little memory for it.

I planned on wiping the drive and going back to XP, but I decided to see how Ubuntu Edgy would run, since I couldn't easily find a copy of windows in Portuguese. It was a night and day improvement, it ran the way it should, even with Beryl. My GF thinks her mother will do just fine with it.

Honestly my first impression of Vista is "train wreck". It was so unusable right off the bat, that I couldn't even explore what might be nice about it.

Re:Gnome + Beryl

[AusIV]

I run beryl on an Intel integrated GMA chip. I have a Celeron M processor and 512 MB of memory. This is a fairly minimalist setup by today's standards, but beryl has no noticeable impact on the performance of my machine. I hate to think of how poorly Aeroglass would perform.

Re:Gnome + Beryl

[solevita]

Sounds like you've got a similar setup as mine; 1.6 Pentium M and 512 MB of RAM shared between the system and the onboard intel graphics card. Running XP I was always one click away from dropping another gig of RAM into it, but now I'm running Ubuntu I think I'll save my money for some more exciting purchases.

Re:Gnome + Beryl

[Splab]

Running Beryl on a somewhat faster machine with default install it runs smooth as you guys say, but when you start cranking up the eye candy the performance drops (especially blur effects).

But one thing I've noticed is it is very very VERY memory hungry, in fact I think windows XP might be a tad envious. (Currently Beryl et al. will eat about 300MB). I haven't tried vista so I don't know how much their eye candy eats up, and I'm not going to try it since nvidia won't make drivers for my MB chip set.

Re:Gnome + Beryl

[AusIV]

Um. Here's a little clue for you. CELERON chip owner = MORON BUYER.

It almost pains me to dignify this with a response, but I'd like to state the reason I have a celeron chip is that I don't need anything more. I bought the laptop with the intentions of using it to take notes, and compile some code for my classes. Occasionally I'll use it to play a video, music, or a flash game, but that's it. When I'm at home, the laptop is off and charging, and I use my P4 with hyperthreading and my Pentium D. A moron is the guy who pays hundreds to upgrade to a Core Duo when a celeron does everything they need.

New slogan...

[dark-br]

News for the amnesiac. Stuff that mattered.

Well in Beryl

[WaZiX]

I get to make this article burn in flames!!!

I just never get tired of it!!! (27th time and still going!)

Re:Well in Beryl

[WaZiX]

Never mind, I did get tired of it...

Re:It's not even "pretty"!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you even reading the links you post? The first one mentions "ugly" as a cultural reference, and all it says is ugly is the price. It explicitly calls Vista pretty -- that's the first goddamn entry in "The Good".

Your second link just errored. Did you really mean to cut if off at 56 there?

Your third link doesn't really address whether Vista is attractive. It mentions "eye candy" once when comparing performance to XP. It also mentions "view settings"

I'm not going to re-read the preview articles and look for mentions about visuals after that load of crap.

Take it from a Vista user -- it's pretty.

Here's what I think is not pretty: IE7 looks like crap to me. I don't know why people like it. The new Windows Explorer also looks ugly, but in its case that's partly because it is far more functional than it used to be and the ugliness is in the information overload.

Last visual thing: I hate the way the start menu doesn't fly-out anymore but instead rearranges itself over the same goddamn column. You can switch it to classic view, but then you lose the search field. WTF? Why should I have to choose between flyout menus and SEARCH?

Every other change I can think of: pretty. This is obviously subjective, but then again, you're full of shit, and subjective trumps full of shit.

Vista==more vendor lock-in

[UnknowingFool]

While there were some interesting notes about the history of Windows API, it hints at the real motives of Microsoft. It seems that at every turn, MS has created a proprietary technology to force vendor lock-in. Rather than use OpenGL, MS has developed DirectX. Rather than use Adobe's PDF printing subsystem, they developed XPS. While there might be technical reasons for those decisions, the pessimist in me says part of the reason was for vendor lock-in.

Re:Vista==more vendor lock-in

[SEMW]

Rather than use OpenGL, MS has developed DirectX. Rather than use Adobe's PDF printing subsystem, they developed XPS Whilst I completely agree with you about OpenGL; with PDF they did have the pretty good excuse that Adobe refused to license it to them for use in Office 2007 (which they were understandably pretty ticked off about, considering Adobe had freely granted it to every other office suite on the planet).

Re:Vista==more vendor lock-in

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Whilst I completely agree with you about OpenGL; with PDF they did have the pretty good excuse that Adobe refused to license it to them for use in Office 2007 (which they were understandably pretty ticked off about, considering Adobe had freely granted it to every other office suite on the planet).

Your statement with regard to PDF is factually incorrect. Adobe never refused to license it to anyone. They have an open license that applies equally to all comers and MS doesn't have to do anything fancy or sign anything to get such a license.

The quarrel with MS and Adobe was over the fact that MS was planning to break the law by illegally leveraging their Windows monopoly and Office near monopoly in order to promote their tools over Adobe's offerings. All of Adobe's complaints applied to both XPS and PDF and both of them were part of the plan and already written by the time Adobe said anything, so you can't claim MS created XPS as a response to Adobe's actions. Instead of risking the courts ruling that MS's office suite constituted monopoly power in that space, MS withdrew the features from that bundle, but they are still including the XPS features in Windows in violation of the law. Since Windows has already been declared a monopoly, this is just one more abuse and MS figures that by the time the courts take any action against them they will have already destroyed that market beyond any repair and they'll just have to shell out a few million bucks or take some pointless action that does not really help years after the fact.

I encourage you to please not continue repeating the MS FUD about PDF licensing, which is and has been open to MS and all other comers for a long time. It just doesn't mean MS can use that license in a way that violates criminal law.

Re:Vista==more vendor lock-in

[dpilot]

Sorry, but you're spouting the "Old Slashdot Meme" here, that Microsoft is a frequently anti-competitive company which uses it's monopoly position in the OS and Office environments to maintain that position and sell other products.

The "New Slashdot Meme" is that Microsoft is an oft-maligned, but innovative company with a robust research and development organization, and all-in-all they bring needed, well-received products to the market. That they have few/no viable competitors is because their products are, by and large, simply better for most uses/users.

Re:Vista==more vendor lock-in

[dpilot]

There appears to be more lock-in than you mention...

The native Vista APIs appear to have become .NET, version 3. Essentially, cross-platform development has to go back to the drawing board, perhaps even start from scratch. This may well force developers to decide, "Vista-only" or take the time and effort, including time-to-market of crafting a new portability layer. In other words, if they try to be cross-platform, their Vista-era products are going to be late.

Theoretically, Mono would be in the best position to adapt to this. But many of us thing that Mono is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Perhaps that's another reason to keep KDE around. (besides peoples' preferences) A good argument could be made that Microsoft could shut down Mono, and presumably GNOME right after, by enforcing patents.

Re:Vista==more vendor lock-in

[TrancePhreak]

DirectX has been around for a long time. Long before OpenGL was on the desktop. Direct3D may be competing with OpenGL, but we should all be glad for the competition. The OpenGL board stagnated and didn't update for a few years. In this time, MS updated DirectX and tried to keep one step ahead of video card makers. Whereas OpenGL was playing catch up with hardware that was a couple generations old.

Re:Vista==more vendor lock-in

[dpilot]

The situation becomes different when you're a monopoly. Last I knew, Microsoft was recognized as such, and Apple wasn't. They don't have to give away the farm, but they do have to provide for interoperability.

You grow up. Realize that there is a bigger world.

Why the New API will not help for years.

[LWATCDR]

It will be a long time before people write a lot of code that ONLY runs on Vista. Hell there are companies still using W2K just because it works, is as secure as XP, and doesn't use as many resources as XP. XP will be around for years and people will want to sell software to people that are still on XP for years.
Welcome to the world of Windows.

Re:Why the New API will not help for years.

[SEMW]

Why the New API will not help for years. [...] It will be a long time before people write a lot of code that ONLY runs on Vista. Uh, you can install the WPF API on Windows XP SP2 and 2003 Server: it's installed as part of the .NET 3.0 framework.

Even that given, though; considering it isn't yet installed on most XP machines, there are already a surprisingly large number of WPF-only applications. Copying-and-pasting from here:

Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista - New IM client (SCREENCAST).
New York Times Reader - Next-generation online reading experience for the NY Times (MSI).
Microsoft Calendar Printing Assistant - Generate printed calendars from your Outlook schedule (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Blend - Designer tool for building WPF experiences (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Design - illustration and graphic design tool (MSI).
Microsoft Windows Live for TV - 3D access to Messenger contacts from Media Center or IE (MSI).
Electric Rain Standout - High-end custom presentation software (SCREENCAST).
Wikipedia Explorer - 3D exploration of related articles from Wikipedia (APPLICATION).
iBloks - Mashup application for creating 3D movies (MSI).
RikReader - RSS Reader that integrates with Internet Explorer 7 (APPLICATION).
Nostalgia - Yahoo! Flickr browser and photo manager (APPLICATION).
Cine.View - Netflix movie queue manager (APPLICATION).
Cool Text Vector Draw - A vector drawing program with 1200 fonts available via a web service (XBAP).
Forbes.com Reader - News Reader Application from Forbes.com (APPLICATION).
Actipro Wizard - A control for building wizard dialogs in WPF (XBAP).
UniveRSS - A 3D Vista RSS reader (APPLICATION).
Xceed Datagrid for WPF Live Explorer - Hands-on demo of Xceed's free new Datagrid for WPF (XBAP).
DominoKen - Artistic 3D XBAP demonstration from Microsoft Japan (XBAP).
Denounce - Stand-alone podcast listener and blog reader (APPLICATION).
British Library Turning the Pages - British Library's 'virtual viewer' for some of their most precious books (XBAP).
ITN Hub Player - Video clips and news stories from ITN (APPLICATION).
Evolution Media Center - HTPC Front-end with stunning animations and dynamic XAML-skinning (ZIP).
OTTO - Online clothing shopping (APPLICATION).
Seattle Post-Intelligencer PI Reader - News Reader Application from Seattle P.I. (APPLICATION).
Roxio Central - Windows Vista Technology Preview - CD and DVD Burning application (APPLICATION).
Metaliq - Snowboarding data visualization (ZIP).
WeatherNews - 3D Weather visualization (XBAP).
Shiseido - Make up online shopping (XBAP).
DOSV - Computer Configuration (XBAP).
Warner - Movie Previews and Showtimes (XBAP).
Notescraps - Random information manager (MSI).
Valil.Chess.WinFX - Chess game (XBAP, APPLICATION).
NetAdvantage for WPF - Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 controls (APPLICATION).
fnac.com - French retailer shopping experience (set system to French locale to run) (APPLICATION).
DevComponents WPF Ribbon - DevComponents Office 2007 Ribbon for WPF (APPLICATION).
Daily Mail eReader - On line reading experience for UK Newspaper Daily Mail (APPLICATION).
The North Face In-Store Explorer - Retail kiosk (MUST GO TO STORE TO EXPERIENCE).
Windows Vista Magazine - Using the same viewer as the British Library app (XBAP).
TempWorks fx - Staffing industry line of business application (SCREENSHOT).
Ricciolo PaperBoy - A complete RSS Feed Aggregator (APPLICATION).

Re:Why the New API will not help for years.

[LWATCDR]

Interesting.
A few are Vista only application. But none are what I consider Mission Critical applications.
I guess if you are going to use .NET and have no w2k machines you can use it.

Re:I will spare you the trouble to read the articl

[gEvil (beta)]

It'd be like if I set out to write a factual article titled "The Easter Bunny's trip to Mars".

I'd read it!

Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[FltrGrpher]

I am a developer for a small software company and started using Vista on my workstation about a month ago.

I just switched back to XP sp2 for the following reasons:

        I/O performance for File Copy (HD to HD) was 5x slower than the same box running XP. No kidding. I was copying about 10Gb of files from one disk to another, and it took over 45 min to complete (and this was from a 10,000rpm RAID-0 striped drive to a SATA drive)

        Usability is total CRAP when UAC is turned on. This is the feature in the Apple commercial where the suit asks "Allow or Deny" at every exchange. This is NO JOKE.
        Something a simple as changing the DPI of your screen fonts requires that you click "Allow" on a dialog box before you do anything else.

        When you want to view processes from All Users in Task Manager, you have to do the same every single time.

        Copying or into a Program Files folder or Renaming a file requires 2 confirmation dialog boxes!

        Drag and Drop to some applications is disabled when it is "Run as Administrator", which you must do for some things to work correctly. This means no more double clicking on a txt file to edit it in notepad if that file is in a Program Files directory. Nope. You must launch notepad using "Run as administrator" then use the File-Open menu item to open the txt file.

        I would disable this but we develop software for enterprise networks and those machines will most likely have this 'feature' permanently disabled. I switched back to XP for my main workstation and I'm running Vista in a VM for now.

        Vista more than just a pretty face, it's a GIANT pain in the A$$ as well.

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[SEMW]

You probably already know this, but if you want anything that needs admin priveleges to be automatically granted them (without showing a UAC prompt), without losing all the other good features of UAC such as file and registry virtualization, use the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) to set User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode to Elevate without prompting.

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[FltrGrpher]

Thanks for the heads up, I've done that before, and would leave it that way if I were using it personally. But since we're developing for machines that will most likely have this on, or at least this is the worst case they would, I have to leave it enabled to work through the heartburn it gives our application.

This still doesn't fix the problem of editing of config files in notepad. Still have to run as admin, drag and drop is disabled... same for cmd prompt using drag and drop to cd to a specific directory...

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[Finni]

- use the group policy editor (gpedit.msc); huh, no .exe??? Sounds like you haven't used Windows in about 7 years either. The MMC (microsoft management console) has been around for quite a while.

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[EvilIdler]

>Vista more than just a pretty face, it's a GIANT pain in the A$$ as well.

So Vista is like a very convincing transvestite?

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[svendsen]

but I like trannies you insensitive clod...

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[HungWeiLo]

Wow. I switched back just because my wife and my daughter pounded on my left and right forearms to uninstall Vista and Office 2007 and put back XP and Office 2003 so they can get some work done. That was reason enough.

"Hey sweetie. Check out this cool Windows Key-Tab thingie!"
"I don't care! I hate it and I don't know how to do anything!"

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[Noke]

So you can't turn UAC off because you want to match the machines that you're developing for, but you're willing to switch to XP because it's too annoying? Are the target machines now going to be XP instead of Vista too?

Re:Abyssmal I/O Performance and Usability

[FltrGrpher]

No, I said I'm running vista in a VM. Read the original post before replying!

Aero isn't used to its potential

[Manuscript Replica]

What I don't understand is why MS went through so much trouble to implement Aero, only to leave the functionality which sits on top of Aero so lacking. That 3D window-flip thing is just nowhere near as useful as Expose, or something like it. Why would I want to put my windows into a serial line and then flip through them, one by one? I don't understand the usability win there. I feel like they could have harnessed the power of Aero to do something much more impressive.

Re:Aero isn't used to its potential

[svendsen]

maybe they will enhance it in the future?

my fiance (science whiz...phd) loves the 3d flip. she did not like expose on the mac. She liked how the flip 3d was more organized, could keep her eye in one spot and quickly flip through the windows vs. looking all over the screen. YMMV.

I think the bottom line is no matter what GUI design you come up with people will love it, hate it and not care. And there will always be people who complain it should have done xyz....

Re:Aero isn't used to its potential

[SEMW]

What I don't understand is why MS went through so much trouble to implement Aero, only to leave the functionality which sits on top of Aero so lacking. That 3D window-flip thing is just nowhere near as useful as Expose, or something like it You're right that they didn't bundle much useful DWM stuff in Vista, but the important thing is that the API is now there for anyone to harness. As I said in my other post, people have already started using it to write DWM extensions, including an Expose clone, and the FrontRow-like SmartFlip.

Re:Aero isn't used to its potential

[BlindSpot]

I've found 3D-flip useful for development sessions where I got lots of windows open. It's easier for me to see what I need in the shifted near-full-size 3D-flip perspective than it is to find it in the task switcher using the thumbnails and reading the long titles.

I agree though, there's a lot more that could have been done, but I guess they gotta get it out the door at some point.

Re:Aero isn't used to its potential

[DrPizza]

"but the important thing is that the API is now there for anyone to harness"

No it isn't. It's one of the things I touched on in the article (and I plan to write more on the subject).

The only thing we get (as developers) is thumbnails. We have no access to the D3D scene (i.e. the triangles and textures that make up each scene). Thumbnails don't cut the mustard. You can't do enough stuff with them.

OS X doesn't expose an API for that either (it's an OpenGL scene, but still triangles and textures), but Apple have at least done some reasonably sensible things with the facility--Exposé being the big one, but other stuff (like the ripples when you add a new gadget to dashboard) are nice too. Beryl does some interesting (not necessarily useful, but fun) stuff too--effects like the exploding windows really ought to be integrated into the scene (making more textured triangles and then animating them to "explode").

I could sorta live with DWM's lack of API if MS were at least doing cool stuff themselves. But they're not; they're just doing Flip3D. Which is, as mentioned, pointless.

It's extremely disappointing. MS have actually surpassed Apple's technology in many ways (MS are the first to have a stable, composited, 3D-accelerated desktop *with 3D-accelerated drawing primitives*--Apple don't have the latter because they can't get QuartzGL working, and Beryl/compiz/Cairo/etc. do not IMHO yet deserve the "stable" moniker--and as a practical issue, I'm sorry, but it's Apple who are the benchmark here, not the open source people, from a sheer practicality standpoint). But MS have done so much less with it than Apple. They've really missed a big opportunity, IMO. Rather than capitalizing on that advantage, they've squandered it. I think a similar complaint could be levelled at Apple (QuartzGL *still* isn't working?), but I think they've done much more with the capabilities their software has than MS. They're far better at using their latest and greatest technology, even to the extent of building whole new applications around it (e.g. Aperture and Core Image).

Re:Aero isn't used to its potential

[tuxedobob]

Cmd-Tab and Cmd-Tilde are also available on the Mac if your "fiance" prefers the flip.

Re:Aero isn't used to its potential

[I'm Don Giovanni]

You're showing your ignorance.
Go read a WPF book. I'll recommend one for you:
Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed, by Adam Nathan
The notion that you can't get to the 3D scenes, and that all you have is "thumbnails" is absurd.

And if you want to get lower level, D3D is there too.

Re:Aero isn't used to its potential

[DrPizza]

WPF has nothing to do with it.

WPF applications are D3D scenes, yes. But they get rendered to flat surfaces (and additionally, there's AFAIK no way to get at the underlying D3D primitves; WPF is D3D accelerated, but all the D3Dness is abstracted away).

GDI applications similarly get rendered (in software, no GDI hardware acceleration with WDDM) to surfaces.

But that's not what I'm interested in. I'm not talking about the stuff within each window (though even if I were, your comment about WPF makes no sense, because most windows are GDI windows, not WPF).

DWM creates a hundred-odd triangles for each window, and uses the aforementioned surfaces to texture each windows. But there's no programmatic access to those triangles or the surfaces or textures. The D3D scene that represents "the desktop" (and all the windows within it) is inaccessible.

Or to turn it on its head: which API call do I make to get a IDirect3DVertexBuffer9 and IDirect3DTexture9 for an arbitrary window on the desktop? If I can get to the D3D scenes, I can get to them, right? How?

references:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b970 17b-e28a-4bae-ba48-174cf47d23cd/PRI034_WH06.ppt slide 24
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3f e47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWPR05005_WinHEC05 .ppt slides 7, 9
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/04/Aer o/default.aspx

Emulate Coke.

[Yoozer]

The solution is naturally to bring out "Classic XP" again half a year after the New Taste of Vista, and use a corn-based substitute for the commandline.

Re:Emulate Coke.

[linguizic]

Why not, they already have diet XP.

Re:Wait, I thought this OS was terrible!

[Anonymous Coward]

It kind of sounds like theres now no difference between using a soundcard and using the onboard equivalent. Does anyone know if this is true? Moreover does this mean games will be that much slower?
Short answer, "Yes".

Long answer, games that use HW acceleration via DirectSound3D will see no benefit from having a dedicated soundcard anymore. However, games using OpenAL will be able to use the hardware-accel provided by your soundcard.
Creative Labs has a project called Alchemy for wrapping DS3D calls to OpenAL for "legacy" games.

The Alchemy page also has a lot more info on this topic.

Vector-based UI? Where?

[yeremein]

The article made a big deal about how Win32 and GDI are obsolete in Vista, and all the cool apps use WPF on the .NET Framework 3, and this makes them vector-based, so they're DPI-independent and magnify cleanly.

I use Vista every day at work, and I have never seen such an app. All the built-in Windows apps look just the same as they did in XP (with the notable exceptions of Minesweeper and Solitaire, which still appear blocky under the Magnifier).

Does Vista even come with any WPF applications?

And is the .NET Framework really the native API for this? Not a great way to encourage existing applications to be ported to WPF, as "managed code" does not play well with compiled languages like C++ (they can't even marshal bool properly, for heaven's sake).

Re:It's not even "pretty"!

[Zonk (troll)]

Take it from a Vista user -- it's pretty... Every other change I can think of: pretty. This is obviously subjective, but then again, you're full of shit, and subjective trumps full of shit. Vista is pretty by comparison to XP. But it's rather ugly compared to OS X Tiger or Ubuntu's Gnome.

Re:Biassed author

[torchdragon]

Point 1: Immature graphics drivers. It will get better in time, just like it did for Win95, Win98, WinMe, Win2k, WinXP, OSX, and *gasp* Linux.

Point 2: Ok, hard drive bloat is bad. I agree with you there.

Point 3: Vista caches commonly used programs in your free ram so they load quickly the next time you use it. That memory is still available at any time for any other program. Welcome to actually using the resources your computer has available.

Point 4: I don't understand why people are so bent out of shape over the damn popup window. I've been using Vista for a week and its already part of my work flow. Yes, a box comes up. Fucking click it and get on with your life. When's the last time you bitched about sudo requiring a password?

And then after all that you snake in that nice chestnut of "heavy DRM." So... how are those HD movies on your Linux machine anyway? Oh... right, nevermind. But I'm glad you came onto /. with your completely non-biased review of Vista, thanks. (queue the "must be new here jokes")

Unless X craps out

[iceperson]

X won't load at all on my machine (drops to a command prompt and gives me some cryptic error that no one on the Ubuntu forums had a real/working answer for.) It runs Vista fine though...

I figure I'll give linux another go when fiesty fawn is released.

Re:Unless X craps out

[mhall119]

Are you using 3D acceleration or not? Also what video card and driver are you using? Posting the error message and log from X here could probably net you an answer. The only times I've had problems with X have been related to incorrect drivers or my own screwups editing xorg.conf

I've been using Ubuntu since 6.06 with no problems. I've been running Feisty Fawn since the first of the year and it runs great, compiz using proprietary nvidia drivers were easy to install. My only complaint is that the standard "Desktop Effects" dialog has no options (just enable/disable wobbly windows and cube), and using gconf-editor required a lot of trial and error. But after learning the settings it is amazingly customizable.

Re:Unless X craps out

[iceperson]

I'm not sure. I was able to get it installed using 'graphic safe mode' or something like that, but now when it starts up it kicks me to the command prompt. I searched the forums for someone who had a laptop just like mine and tried to follow the instructions to get it working. They had me edit the .conf file you mentioned, but nothing worked. I've since decided that I'll wait for fiesty fawn before I try again.

Over the years I've tried to use linux several times because if it's as good as the people here say then I'm certain I'll love it, it just seems the price of entry if you don't know anyone who can actually help you get it configured properly is still a little high (I'm not looking for a lot of frustration, just an OS that works.) I get all my licenses for MS products free as part of MSDN/Partner program, but if there's something that's better I'm willing to try and spend some time on it (as long as it doesn't include getting cursed at by some kid on a linux forum...)

Re:Unless X craps out

[mhall119]

Have you tried the Ubuntu LiveCD? Do you have problems with X using that, or just when you install? You can get the latest Feisty Fawn beta here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/feisty/herd-5/ it's already quite stable (I'm using it to type this message). If the LiveCD works, it should install fine. Try it without proprietary drivers first, they can sometimes cause problems.

Re:Unless X craps out

[iceperson]

The live CD gives me the same problem. Selecting the safe graphic mode gets me to an x error and drops me to a command prompt. i downloaded 5, but i read somewhere that the "beta" was coming out on the 22nd.

Re:Unless X craps out

[mhall119]

It sounds like you have some video chipset problem. Can you post your xorg.conf?

Re:Unless X craps out

[iceperson]

I left my laptop at the house. I'm going to do a fresh install and try again sometime over the next few days (hopefully feisty fawn will be out of alpha by then) documenting everything I do using my digital camera along the way.

Re:Unless X craps out

[mhall119]

There Herd 5 CD is already stable, there will be a Herd 6 CD in mid-april that will be more like a release candidate. I wouldn't call the current state of Feisty "alpha" anymore.

Re:Unless X craps out

[iceperson]

I was going by the schedule here.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeistyReleaseSchedule

Re:Unless X craps out

[mhall119]

Unless you particularly want to wait for the Herd 6 CD, which probably won't have much changed from Herd 5, why wait? This isn't like a Windows "Beta", which won't be stable until SP2, I've been using Feisty since Herd 2 and have only had minor problems with package updates. Since Herd 5 was released, the updates have been mostly small changes, so I still recommend downloading it instead of waiting.

Chances are whatever is keeping X from working for you won't have changed even with the official release, it sounds like you are using some very new, very old, or very rare hardware combination that Ubuntu's automatic configuration is choking on.

Re:Unless X craps out

[iceperson]

I'm running on a Dell latitude 640m which is about 4 months old (the line is about a year old I think.) I wouldn't think that it would be too new/old/rare.

What about the daily releases? Would they be safe enough to try you think?

Re:Unless X craps out

[mhall119]

I'm not sure about daily releases, but the Herd CD would probably be more stable to install as they are checked for package dependency issues. Once you install, you can always "apt-get dist-upgrade" to get all the newest packages.

Re:Wait, I thought this OS was terrible!

[svendsen]

Games will run slower until Vista becomes more mature and the game companies learn all the ins and outs. When people went from 98 (lets forget about ME) to XP it was the same complaints that games ran slower. Then after awhile the issues where resolved and games ran better under Xp the 98.

When OS X came out people complained it was slow, had issues, etc. Now its a smooth OS. Why people assume a new OS will not have issues is beyond me.

I'm not sure about the audio stack, but the audio imporvement I want to see is application level sound control.

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[init100]

So what? Why would it need a GUI as part of the kernel?

Not what I found

[iceperson]

File x-fers on my test machine are easily 50% faster than those on an identical machine running XP.
Oh, and don't get me started on the network performance. Vista is leaps and bounds ahead of XP when it comes to transfering files accross the network.

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[Mateo_LeFou]

um, do you have a GUI for your kernel? What kernel are you using?

If ncurses counts as a GUI, doesn't linux have one? (make menuconfig)

Re:It's not even "pretty"!

[svendsen]

In your opinion....what do people state subjective things as facts?

Re:Vector-based UI? Where?

[SEMW]

I use Vista every day at work, and I have never seen such an app. All the built-in Windows apps look just the same as they did in XP I'm fairly sure that all of Vista's built in applications use WPF and are thus DPI-independant. If you're running at the default 96dpi, I'm not sure in what way you expect them to look different to in XP. I think the point is that when you change the dpi, they scale smoothly and unblockily (I assume you don't see it with magnifier because it just enlarges the pixels, it doesn't redraw everything). IStartedSomething has a nice gadget where you can see the same screenshot at different DPIs, if you want to compare them.

There's a list of WPF-based applications here.

Re:Vector-based UI? Where?

[dlim]

And is the .NET Framework really the native API for this? Not a great way to encourage existing applications to be ported to WPF, as "managed code" does not play well with compiled languages like C++ (they can't even marshal bool properly, for heaven's sake). The .NET Framework 3.0 has a full library and WYSWYG interface for building WPF apps using managed code. (It also runs WPF on XP SP2 and Win 2003) Why do you think that will discourage people from developing WPF applications? Are you talking about C++ apps exclusively?

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[iceperson]

The parent's point was that all "real" OSes have multiple desktops and I was simply pointing out that the GUI isn't part of the OS. I'm sure at some point you'll have multiple desktop support for Vista, and the changes in Vista's GDI it will actually work much better than the XP powertoy did.
Lastly, linux with no GUI at all is still a "real" OS, is it not?

Re:Wait, I thought this OS was terrible!

[Stray1]

"but the audio improvement I want to see is application level sound control."

Really? what type of improvements? I thought it was fantastic that you can control the sound levels of individual applications vs just turning the master volume up and down. What were you looking for? Thats really all i could ask for regarding 'app level sound controls'

Actually I don't

[iceperson]

I have ubuntu installed, but the GUI doesn't work at all. It drops me to a command prompt and says there's something wrong with x. I'm afraid that the only linux knowledge I have is from trying to get it working and I've never had much luck with getting the GUI functioning though.

Re:Actually I don't

[Hammer]

Ubuntu and Slackware are not recommended for people who are not very familiar with Linux....
Try Mandriva...

Re:Actually I don't

[Mateo_LeFou]

"says there's something wrong with x"

If you take that thing that it said and paste it -- prolly without quotes -- into your google search box, you'll be well on your way.

Re:Actually I don't

[iceperson]

Been there, done that. Even let the "gurus" on the Ubuntu forums give it a go, but none of their "fixes" worked. I spent much more time trying to get it working than I would have if it was Vista, but there simply doesn't seem to be a solution at the moment. I'll try again when feisty fawn is released next month.

Re:Vista, or "White Guy Dancing" for short

[majortom1981]

YEah , you also forgot the redone network stack, better dual core handeling, and the redone sound stack.

Re:Wait, I thought this OS was terrible!

[svendsen]

Come on you couldn't read between the lines of my poorly formed and not clear sentence? :-)

I meant to say: I am looking forward to using Vista's application level sound control feature.

Vista failed Windows classic theme lovers...

[Afecks]

Why oh why can't we have Flip3D and the mini-tab-previews without Aero?! Please don't tell me it's not possible to render the classic theme with WDM!

Re:Vista failed Windows classic theme lovers...

[TrancePhreak]

You can do it, but it's really slow and not hardware accelerated... There's a "3D" window manager addon that lets you tilt windows and do some other weird things. It's been around since at least Windows 2000 and I know it works on XP.

Multi Desktop solution for vista.

[zenmaster2008]

My computer is over 3 years old and I dont have any issues for any of the effects on vista. Regarding the memory issue, it uses loads of memory if available for cache, anyways if you needed it back for a game or something, its releases it back for you. This is a very good thing :) In regards to multi-desktops, I'm using Vista Virtual Desktops, which is brilliant. you can get more info here http://www.codeplex.com/vdm. I like vista. Speak soon Linux/Mac lovers ;)

Re:Biassed author

[Stray1]

I'd would like to know exactly when DRM restrictions got in your way when trying Vista. UAC (user account control) is not the same as DRM.

The network stack?

[iceperson]

My boss asked me to start testing Vista here at the office to try and find any incompatabilities with any in house and other common applications we use (none yet), and in my testing one thing that was a noticable improvement is network performance.

I have since installed it on a few machines at home where I have an external drive hooked up to my PC with all of my ripped CDs shared so my wife and kids can access it from their machines, and where iTunes would lockup in the past when I tried to open it from another machine with the library mapped back to the shared drive it now works flawlessly.

Cost/benefit??

[HangingChad]

Okay, I get it. Vista is better. Better security model, better UI, better API's...that's as much praise as I'm willing to heap on it right now, but overall I think that's pretty fair. And, all things being equal, I think Vista would be a good investment for a lot of companies.

But all things aren't equal. That pretty face comes with a pretty steep price tag and some pretty draconian restrictions. On top of the higher costs associated with Vista, you're STILL paying for anti-virus and firewall protection. For a business you still need all the overhead that goes into supporting XP. So, where's the win for business users with Vista? If by switching to Vista you could do away with the anti-virus subscription, that's a win. A big win. But you're still paying the anti-virus subscription with Vista on top of the higher costs for the base OS. And installing Vista is hugely disruptive. That will likely change, but today installing Vista would be a major productivity hit on an enterprise.

On the other hand if you switched to Ubuntu, you probably could do away with the anti-virus subscription. Ubuntu costs you $0.00 for the license and isn't any more disruptive to install than Vista. You don't need new hardware to run Ubuntu and there is a raft of very functional productivity software available.

This is not the first time Linux has come out on top of a fair TCO comparison. But the TCO margin with Vista is so big...at least right now...that Linux not only wins but it wins buy a huge margin. The justification for staying with Microsoft, at least in a business setting, is getting harder every year. And that completely ignores the shockingly one-sided MSFT EULA and ratty little snitching MSFT products do routinely in the background.

Re:Cost/benefit??

[svendsen]

Not trolling mind you..

"You don't need new hardware to run Ubuntu and there is a raft of very functional productivity software available."

What if your current hardware is not supported? What if a company has a lot of applications they need that are windows specific? What's the downtown and training time needed to go to Ubuntu (maybe more then vista, maybe less, just asking). If you hire a full time developer and they cost 50k, then the general rule of thumb is the total cost to hire them (time, benefits, etc) is about twice that. Employees are expensive and I think a lot of IT people see the initial costs of IT hardware/software still low compared to that (not in all cases I know this).

And the other question is why does the business need to upgrade to vista at all?

Re:Cost/benefit??

[Shados]

Whats totally ironic, is that while you're 100% right (minus the part where if you have must have apps not available on Linux, you're a bit screwed), Microsoft is becoming more attractive on the server side, and, as you pointed out, less on the desktop. Totally upside down.

Things like IIS (yes, IIS, I said it), especially IIS7 once its available as a real server, along with ASP.NET, are very attractive. SQL Server's business intelligence platform have amazing values for the cost, especially when you count that its free for small installs, and that for larger ones the cost is insignificant compared to equivalent alternatives (and superior alternatives are several times the cost in many cases).

While I don't think I'd have an issue switching to Linux as a desktop platform, it would be a cold day in hell before I move it away from my servers and development machines. Which is, a gain, totally ironic, considering Microsoft's track record on the server side. Hell froze over.

Re:Cost/benefit??

[quux4]

On top of the higher costs associated with Vista, you're STILL paying for anti-virus and firewall protection. For a business you still need all the overhead that goes into supporting XP. So, where's the win for business users with Vista? If by switching to Vista you could do away with the anti-virus subscription, that's a win. A big win. But you're still paying the anti-virus subscription with Vista on top of the higher costs for the base OS.

Well, this may be a contentious thing to say, but if you accept that running without root privs is all the AV protection you need in an OS, then you get the same level of protection in Windows if you run without Admin/PowerUser privs. While this was possible in prior Windows versions, Vista makes it a lot easier to actually accomplish, given that UAC allows for a much more seamless priv elevation when it is needed. So ... if the heart of 'I don't need antivirus' is the non-root user, Vista delivers it.

As to firewall. That's a nonstarter of an argument; XP and Vista both provide eminently usable and effective firewalls. There is no need to pay for a thirdparty firewall in either OS.

AC has already noted that there really is no price premium for Vista over XP in a business deployment, and (s)he's correct. $299 = $299.

Once the initial learning hump has been crested, Vista will lower support/maintenance costs as compared to XP. A small amount at first, with the new deployment options WIM brings. Increasingly over time, as the security effects of UAC begin to kick in, and the lowered rate of security incidents becomes apparent.

YMMV.

Re:Cost/benefit??

[quux4]

My apologies to steveodawg, whom I mistakenly attributed as AC in the above post.

Re:Cost/benefit??

[TrancePhreak]

Exchange.........callender.......scheduling.....

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[cparker15]

Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. Kernels don't have GUIs. I think you mean GNU/Linux (the GNU operating system running on top of the kernel called “Linux”), which does have a default GUI--called GNOME--although you most certainly can use a GNU/Linux system without a GUI. Most server installations of GNU/Linux have no GUI installed on them.

Huh?

[StarKruzr]

Ubuntu is terminally easy to use.

Re:Huh?

[Hammer]

My bad :-( I mixed up ubuntu with gentoo witch is not newbie stuff...
As the saying goes "sometimes it's better to be quiet and believed a fool rather than opening it and remove all doubt" :-)

Expose

[djelovic]

As the article states, it's straightforward to write an Expose clone in Vista. I've done it and my biggest headache was implementing a linpacking 2d algorithm to layout the windows in a manner that's pleasing to the eye. I assume Microsoft didn't because they were afraid of stepping on one of Apple's numerous patents.

There is a problem with Vista's thumbnail API, btw. After a window has been minimized for a while, Vista's unable to render its thumbnail and instead it just renders the non-client portion of the window and sticks a large window icon at its center.

I assume they are doing that to minimize the process' working set, but it still sucks if you want to support advanced Expose functionality like drag and drop.

Re:special effects

[robzon]

It's called monopoly and good marketing. Still too many people grow up thinking of windows as the only serious OS out there. I'd say they're just too afraid to learn anything new, they feel safe and cosy with the easy-but-sucky solutions.

Just Graphics?

[i0null]

I'd rather someone screw my wife, then install vista on my computer.

I completely agree. Microsoft have spent five/six years on producing a 'pretty face'. Personally, i think vista looks rubbish, there is too many colors and they look awful. Themes on sites like gnome-look and kde-look (etc...) look 100 times better, and they've mostly been developed by average users in there spare time.

Operating systems such as OpenBSD claims to have had 'Only two remote holes in the default install, in more than 10 years', these guys have nowhere near the amount of core developer's that Microsoft do. Then why, after so little time (or long) after vista's release, is there news about loophole's in vista's activation services?

Well done M$ for screwing up again

Re:Just Graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather someone screw my wife, then install vista on my computer. Now that's what I call adding insult to injury.

Re:Just Graphics?

[martin_henry]

rofl

Yes (was Re:Can you give me one good reason to "up

[Laebshade]

I've been pleased with quite a few features in Vista. I'll outline and expand on them for you below:

- file transfer rate. This is the first Windows OS to do this. It shows the actual data transfer rate when moving or copying a file.
- copying files. I don't recall WinXP or any other versions of windows doing this, but if you're copying files to a location where files of the same name exist, it will give you the standard options to overwrite, not copy, but it will also give you the option to copy and rename the file at the same time.
- search bar. If you have a lot of programs installed and their respective start menu shortcuts are installed, looking through them can be tedious. The search bar on the start menu is nice for this reason (for people who use the start menu frequently to open programs, I prefer rklauncher)
- sidebar. I love the sidebar. I have a floating widget that monitors/graphs my cpu usage and speed (PowerNow is great). On the right side I can glance at the weather and calender, I can glance at these before I leave for work to gauge what clothes I should wear.
- favorites bar. This is a favorites bar in explorer that gives a quick list of folders you can select.
- I know you mentioned the pretty new theme, but as others have mentioned, the glass effect is nice.

I'm going to go further than what the original poster requested: now, Vista isn't perfect; my number one complaint when you compare it to any linux desktop environment is no integrated support for virtual desktops. I'd also say the fact it doesn't support programs into categories in the start menu like Gnome does is a real let down, too. The fact that I don't have a fully functional command line sucks as well (which is why I have sshd setup on my Gentoo server). I also don't have anywhere near the programs available on windows that I would have on linux.

Still, when it comes to bleeding edge hardware (there aren't even drivers available for my video card yet), Windows operating systems (in general) win. Some might argue unless more people use linux there won't be better driver support, but I'm not going to be one to do that. I'm perfectly happy with running Gentoo linux on my server and Vista on my desktop. Vista for play, linux for serious stuff. Since I use Vista mostly for play, it's my best choice for a desktop OS. I use my server for QoS and performance graphing of my cable modem connection (and I use it to help me do my job via ssh).

Slower implementation than Mac OS

[WillAffleckUW]

And for this they want me to ditch my WinXP laptop?

Look, if I want all the effects, I'll install the Mac OS on my Intel motherboard myself, or buy a new machine from Dell with Linux preloaded.

But a few years late and a resource hog does not make me want to get it.

However, as the article points out, you can now port (finally) to a Microsoft OS a lot more easily than before - provided it will run WinVista in the first place.

Re:Biassed author

[Draconmythica]

Ok to start out I'm not going to try and say Vista is perfect but there are plenty of things to complain about without making them up. I wish people who didn't know what they were talking about would stop attacking Vista because they don't understand what is going on.

After running my own tests, I found most 3D-accelerated games run around 20-30% slower under Vista than XP. XP takes about 2GB of hard drive space, Vista takes over 12GB. I have 2GB of ram, but Vista uses about half of it without any apps running at all!!. Furthermore everytime you do almost anything in Vista it keeps popping up this REALLY annoying dialog box asking for your permission to do what you just asked. That get old really fast. JustNiz First of all he probably didn't bother installing a display driver(cause he sounds like that kind of person) and because my games play excellent on Vista usually with the same or up to 10% better frame rate than xp. Also Vista takes just under 8GB for a full install of the Ultimate version which contains all of the features from all the other versions combined. And as for the ram usage that is just Vista doing it's job. It will quietly build a profile on what you use over time and then when you start your computer it will load files based on this profile so that your apps will launch quicker and everything runs smoother. However if you launch something else the other stuff is immediatly overwritten and you lose no performance. And finally for the 100,000 or so of you complaining about UAC, look it serves a purpose for many people and if you aren't one of them JUST TURN IT OFF!!! Now will somebody please complain about something in Vista that really doesn't work so I can agree with them and not look like an M$ fanboy here.

The bigger problem

[aws910]

Complain all you want about Vista(I hate it!) but here's the reality:

Someone important to you will buy a Vista-loaded machine, things will crash constantly, and you will be called in to fix it. If you don't know how to fix it, you'll look like you don't know what you're doing. Happened to me when I tried to resist XP. Linux/Mac are great, but what are you gonna tell this person... "Hey, return this laptop and buy a Mac/Linux-loaded one just because I don't know how to fix Vista". That will make you look even worse! It wasn't always part of my job, but knowing how to fix Windows PC's has opened many doors for me(personally and professionally).

The moral of the story for most of us in IT is this: Love it or hate it, Vista is here to stay. You don't have to use it yourself, but unless you work at Ernie Ball or Google, you should at least be prepared to support this platform and its shortcomings.

Re:The bigger problem

[magicrobotmonkey]

As long as its not your job to support vista, just tell them "Sorry, I don't do windows." That stance has worked out fine for me.

Re:The bigger problem

[neil.orourke]

Someone important to you will buy a Vista-loaded machine, things will crash constantly, and you will be called in to fix it.
So, do you actually use Vista?

I do. It is my daily workhorse - and I'm running as a Standard User, not as an Administrator, and things are not crashing constantly. In fact, things are working just fine. There's software that isn't working, of course - what OS upgrade doesn't cause problems - but by and large, this is a super-smooth OS.

We upgraded my wife's laptop to Vista at the same time (about 7 days ago), and she isn't seeing crashing or anything, either. Now, her world revolves around Office, so she's unlikely to encounter many problems anyway, but your comment come across as unnecessary flamebait.

If you're seeing lots of instances of Vista crashing, then what are you doing about it? As a Slashdot reader, I'm guessing that you have better-than-average computer skills; heck, you might even be writing software. So, are you contacting software authors, or getting onto support forums, and carmly detailing your problems and a step-by-step to reproduce them, or are you just ranting?

Re:The bigger problem

[rtb61]

The biggest defect in Vista is the (FU)DRM. In your face, you don't control your device even though your paid for it and own it has always failed, DIVx was dead before it started. Vista is similarly encumbered, so matter how much it tries to copy the available Linux or Apple desktop environments or security or usability, it will fail.

These wishy washy lies about aero are just marketing hot air, the one that works best is the one the user is used to and is clear cut and simple. The average typical user fooling around with multiple transparent desktops, oh yeah, perhaps they also dip into calculus, and multiple divergent realities at the same time.

One of the worst reviews comparing performance of xp to vista was, Toms Hardware, it was painfully wishy washy, desperately trying to bring in aeros appearance as a performance level, or the amount of voltage used, lets just ignore how quick actual tasks were being done, and all of it was done on a machine with 4 gigs of RAM, the typical home user set up, hell the even stooped to insulting the user, what, you dare to want to get your work done in 'record times', WTF (Toms hardware is obviously drifting of into paid shill blog country).

M$ is desperate for (FU)DRM to succeed because their long term goal is to charge a licence fee for any hardware or software to be installed on windows, don't pay, then face a copyright/monopoly lockout.

Re:The bigger problem

[Mateo_LeFou]

"what OS upgrade doesn't cause problems"

The last dozen or so that I did (all linux distros) were smooth, except the one where I tried to put gnewsense onto a 2GB hard drive...

Re:The bigger problem

[Douglas Goodall]

"but knowing how to fix Windows PC's has opened many doors for me(personally and professionally)" I guess this is useful if he doors you want to go through have to do with fixing Windows. The last time I fixed a Windows problem for someone, they offered to make me responsible for their Windows Small Business Servers. I decided not to walk through that particular door, because I didn't like what was on the other side. Maybe more important than knowing how to fix it yourself is knowing someone who is professional while solving the problems for you or others. My father says if you are indispensable, you can't be promoted, and I aspire to be more than a Windows Technician in this lifetime. There is more to life than reloading Windows, which I have done hundreds of times. My Macs on the other hand have only been reloaded twice, when upgrading from Jaguar, Panther to Tiger.

Re:The bigger problem

[aws910]

Good point. That has happened to me as well. A better example for me would be when a "friend of a friend" needed help getting everything set-up on her XP home machine. When I was installing everything, the lady mentioned that her brother owns a local motorcycle shop. She put me in touch with him, and he offered me a bike at a big discount. I could have saved a couple grand on it, but I already had one, so he gave me a helmet for free for helping her out. Oh yeah, and she paid me a ton for setting up her stuff, which only took me like 30min to do.

Although, I suppose if she had bought a mac, then I wouldn't have been able to do much for her. Maybe she wouldn't have needed any help. The only mac I ever bought is collecting dust - mac mini, 1st generation base model - only has a 20gb HD. Still a cool conversation piece.

Re:The bigger problem

[Douglas Goodall]

I think I was a little too hard on you about it. I am 52 years old and I have been watching the computer industry go to hell since I was 30. I am trying not to be emotional about Microsoft, but I have come to believe they are the evil empire. For instance the Trusted Computing Initiative is a move to make Microsoft the only company that gets to write real code. To make a long story short, I am a Buddhist and I should be providing a good example (I switched) and not being so emotional in public. Helping people is good, I just feel strange about it when Microsoft is the ultimate recepient of the effort. Buddhists dedicate the merit of their actions to the enlightenment of all sentient beings. I haven't drank enough Microsoft koolaid to believe that Windows is the way to enlightenment. By the way, stick a firewire hard drive on the Mac Mini and you might enjoy it yet. At the very least it would make a safer machine to do email, and browse the web. Some people have observed that if Vista is a learning curve, why not learn about Mac OS X. Give the mini another chance.

Re:The bigger problem

[aws910]

I agree with the evil-empire reference. I've been learning Linux for a few months now(in my spare time) and it's hard not to be a MS-Basher every time the subject is brought up. Once you've seen "the light"(a non-ms os), it's hard not to get emotional about it, eh? Thanks for the tip on the Firewire HD.

Re:Biassed author

[JustNiz]

>> First of all he probably didn't bother installing a display driver(cause he sounds like that kind of person)

Jeez you are so wrong and also uneceessarily passimistic.
I'm a gaming nut, a perofiessional Software Developer, and all areound tech geek.
I built my own PC. Dont you think, after spending over $1600 just on a couple of watercooled 8800GTX GPU's that I'd at least know enough to download the latest drivers from nVidia?

>> because my games play excellent on Vista usually with the same or up to 10% better frame rate than xp.
Well your findings are completely contrary to what everyone else on the internet is saying, and also what all respected tech review websites like Tom's Hardware and Anandtech are reporting (which is the same as I'm finding... a 20%+ performance hit for running vista).

>> Also Vista takes just under 8GB for a full install of the Ultimate version which contains all of the features from all the other versions combined.
Not true. I installed the full ultimate version and the windows directory alone is over 11GB.

Missing Feature, Wanted Since Win95

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft, why the hell can we still not move items around on the taskbar (without 3rd party software)!?
How damn hard is that? I know many people that are freaks about the way taskbar items are organized (this is especially true in call centres), so why can we still not do it?
I know lots of people who have wanted that feature since anybody even knew about resolutions larger than 640x480... get on with it!

Who in the hell thinks

[Tweekster]

it is a pretty face in the first place...
Vista = ugly.

Re:Who in the hell thinks

[Tweekster]

you spelled momma wrong...

it isnt that hard of a word to spell you know

Agree WTF is up with I/O in Vista?

[bogie]

I shouldn't constantly be staring at the stupid green bar at the top of Explorer waiting for Vista to finish displaying the files in a directory. I love it when some of the photos never get thumbnails. Explorer in Xp for all of its warts is noticeably faster at displaying directories and copying data around.

You just know there is some insane DRM checker running 50,000 a second to check to make sure that your actually allowed to view you own files.

It Works!

[ProfessionalCookie]

It works...on a Mac- you can use the app Grab or just CMD-Shift-4 then press space. This will turn your cursor into a camera- hover over the window you want and click. The screencap is a png bounded by the window that includes all the transparent niceties like anti-aliasing to clear on rounded corners, drop shadows and transparency (try a transparent terminal window!). You can even snap windows that aren't focused or windows that are occluded and it will get the whole thing. Try it on Dashboard Widgets and Dock Icons too.

Pretty Handy. I'd be surprised if there isn't a way to do this in Windows Vista (since aero presumably doesn't use old school screen buffering)- though it may require some shareware. Good luck!
~Edified Ed.

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[ATMD]

No, GNU/Linux doesn't have a default GUI. I guess the default for GNU/Linux is not to have a GUI, since Linux (obviously) doesn't have one and to my knowledge GNU doesn't produce one.

Certain *distros* have a default GUI, which could be GNOME, KDE or any of the other myriad desktop environments/window managers out there.

Re:Biassed author

[Draconmythica]

Ok so I appologize about the display driver part, I just guessed that cause I know a lot of people do it. And I am aware of the reviews but it depends on the game. I play America's Army, Halo, CS, and FEAR the most. They all show very similar or slightly higher fps. I know some games are still slower though. Also the last driver version I installed (101.41 from Nvidia) was the first to show that kind of performance which is another reason I brought that up. It does go to show though that when newer drivers are released it could get even better. The last part I am sticking to though since I just re-installed on a new hard disk about 3 days ago and I just checked the size of the windows folder and found it to be 7.6GB. If you add in the User folders before adding my junk to them that puts you almost right at 8GB.

How about a comparison of..

[phorm]

Vista
OSX
Linux (say Debian/Ubuntu) /w Beryl

Compare on similar hardware, and use categories such as UI attractiveness, usefulness, hardware consumption (RAM/disk-space/CPU/GPU) etc

Personally, some of the best things I've seen have been with Beryl. The "ripple" effect when a tray icon flashes is rather good for grabbing attention, but less annoying than your standard speech-bubble popup, the varying eyecandy is impressive, and it does enhance ones ability to multitask in various aspects. I've also heard similar good things about Vista's ability to organize folders in a 3d fashion.

Re:How about a comparison of..

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't have a UI or performance comparison of the three, but I've had a list of advantages and disadvantages for each platform running for a good 6 months or more and I've twice posted it in Slashdot forums for comments and additions. If I was planning on picking an OS for some use I sure wouldn't be picking based just on how pretty it is. I'd want to know the feature set and what works and what doesn't and what is better on one platform than another. I've learned about a number of features in Vista I did not know about from the comments of several people, but the conclusion I've drawn is that for the most part, people just pick an OS and use it and don't have a good idea of what other platforms are capable of, even here on Slashdot. It makes for a lot of pointless arguments about how "surely my favorite OS is better at this even though I've never learned how to do that same task on any other OS made in this decade."

Re:How about a comparison of..

[phorm]

But then again, it depends on one's needs as well.

If you're a windows user, and you got Vista with your computer or whatever, and it does what you need it to, then there's no real drive to switch or investigate other options.

The same applies to linux users. Disregarding the tendency towards disdain of microsoft products in general, if you're using linux, why pay for a copy of Vista? Now maybe some users might play around with both if they were existing linux users and/or got a new machine that came with Vista... or if they find themselves having to service vista machines.

I don't personally have a need to buy Vista. If I got a new machine that had it, well then I'll probably play around with it a bit more here and there. What has always boggled me is the number of people who jump on one bandwagon or another... like those I know who bought Vista simply because it was newer. Windows XP isn't actually a bad OS, depending on what you need it to do, but if I really wanted fancy eyecandy I might be inclined to choose linux simply because it costs me nothing (other than time) to check it out.

That being said, I've still had no luck getting Beryl working on my Compaq nx8220 laptop... I'll have to play with it on my home one that has an Nvidia card... or the desktop that has an Intel i915 (which works nicely). I think perhaps one of the biggest drawbacks in the "eyecandy" realm of linux is the dubious hardware support. Sure, it'll look great and do lots of nifty things, but only if you can get the hardware to play nicely first. This is course, I will lay at the feet of the hardware manufacturers, but luckily that too is improving over time.

So overall, I use linux a lot, XP still fairly often, 98 fairly often (old work machines), Vista rarely, and OSX on the odd occasion that I play with a Mac at one of the sites at work.

Re:How about a comparison of..

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If you're a windows user, and you got Vista with your computer or whatever, and it does what you need it to, then there's no real drive to switch or investigate other options.

I agree.

What has always boggled me is the number of people who jump on one bandwagon or another... like those I know who bought Vista simply because it was newer.

This is very understandable from a psychological perspective. Humans are social critters. Anything the average person does that makes them different from the herd, like running Linux or OS X or even Vista right now, is something they are likely to be defensive about. Socially, different is bad. To compensate and to help justify their purchasing decisions and defend their ego, people tend to vigorously defend their difference to the point of becoming angry or being motivated to persuade others (ego again).

The problem is the combination of these two factors. People are vigorously defending a choice, but most people are ignorant as to the reality of the differences they are defending. Being ignorant makes people even more defensive and often louder in their opinions and you get the OS war type discussions so common on message boards.

So overall, I use linux a lot, XP still fairly often, 98 fairly often (old work machines), Vista rarely, and OSX on the odd occasion that I play with a Mac at one of the sites at work.

On my laptop right now I'm running OS X, with WinXP and Kubuntu running in VMs for particular applications. It works fairly well and gives me a good insight into all three platforms and how they differ. I tested Vista during the beta, but it is not stable enough yet for everyday work. I would like to comment on one particular OS fan phenomenon I like to call the "Mac switcher." Time and again I've seen long term Windows users buy a Mac for the first time and you can't get these people to shut up about it for about 6 months. It seems to me that in addition to defending their choice and being different these people are often amazed that they spent so long on Windows not knowing that a lot of the things they took for granted are actual problems with the OS, which they don't need to deal with on a Mac. They get so excited about this revelation they go into revivalist preacher mode and try to preach the message to the masses, usually with limited success. The next time you hear an OS X fan who just keeps going on and on, ask them when they got their first OS X machine. Odds are it was within the last couple of months.

"Pretty"

[3choTh1s]

In a slightly different note... First I heard people on the /. say "there is no visual difference in Firefox 2 compared to Firefox 1.5. Why the hell would I upgrade?" And then I hear "there is too much visual difference in IE7 compared to IE6. Why the hell would I upgrade?" Holy crap my ear bleeds from all this whining. Seriously.

Re:It's not even "pretty"!

[Champ]

Vista uglier than Ubuntu? Uglier than seven-shades-of-fleshy-brownish? I've had infections that look better than Ubuntu's default desktop. I rendered fonts better than Ubuntu back when I was in kindergarten.

Wasted RAM

[iceperson]

So you're saying that your OS wastes you RAM and that's a good thing?

Re:Wasted RAM

[mackyrae]

You can't read. I said a Windows user was shocked that running Beryl did not require much RAM. Unless you're saying I should be using all 1024mb at all times plus some pagefiles for good measure. I prefer that there is extra RAM in case I feel like starting up a DVD or if I need to start up Windows in a VM to help troubleshoot someone else's computer.

Re:Wasted RAM

[iceperson]

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.h tml

Vista uses all of your RAM all of the time. It lets go what it needs to for applications but uses the RAM that normally goes "unused" for caching. Every OS should do this.

Re:Wasted RAM

[mackyrae]

Are you joking? I'd rather my computer run fast than hog all of the resources.

Re:Wasted RAM

[mackyrae]

Maybe I should point out that under Vista my computer was so slow it couldn't properly run a screensaver. Vista's resource-hogging did not, as that link is guess trying to claim, speed things up. It made everything run at snail's pace. My computer is very responsive with Linux/Beryl.

Re:Wasted RAM

[iceperson]

yeah, because vista using UNUSED RAM for caching to speed up applications you actually use is clearly going to slow you down. /sarcasm
BTW, linux tries to do something like this already with the disk caching. Idle RAM is NEVER doing you any good. Oh, and when you try to open an app that's not cached it takes longer to copy it from the hard disk to memory than it does for the OS to release the memory it needs from cache.

Kubuntu installed on your laptop?

[iceperson]

Lucky you. I can't even get x to work on mine (I know, "I are a luser nub").

Vista runs without a hitch though...

Why not virtualize legacy apps?

[vrmlguy]

I'd love to see Windows make a clean break with the past; by dropping backwards compatibility, the codebase would become much smaller (and hopefully more secure). This could be done if you booted to a hypervisor and then ran new apps in one VM and old ones in another. A "seamless windows" mode such as is offered by Parallels would even allow old and new windows to live together on the desktop.

Separate volume controls

[holomorph]

In Vista, sound from each program can have its volume set independently. This means that an instant messenger client could have its volume turned down while still leaving an MP3 player nice and loud. Hey, this actually sounds like a nice feature to have.

Re:Vista, or "White Guy Dancing" for short

[TrancePhreak]

So you're saying that combining the two things you like in TWO seperate OS's into one is somehow bad? TROLL

And DRM/Spyware? Please... you might as well be citing Loose Change for information.

Re:Vector-based UI? Where?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

That "marshal bool properly" problem was simply a bug (God forbid, that a bug could occur in software!!), not a design issue. Furthermore it was over three years ago and has since been fixed.
You get an F in FUD'ing.

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[cparker15]

...to my knowledge GNU doesn't produce one.

GNOME (guh-nome) originally stood for “GNU Network Object Model Environment” and is a part of the GNU project. It is the only official GNU desktop environment. Some distribution vendors may (and often do) decide to use alternative environments, such as KDE, Xfce, JDS (based on GNOME), LXDE, Enlightenment (yes, can function standalone), CDE, et al.

Sources:

• http://www.gnome.org/about/ “GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project...”
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME (third paragraph) “GNOME is part of the GNU operating system, and is its official desktop environment.”
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#Origin (third paragraph) “The name "GNOME" was proposed as an acronym of GNU Network Object Model Environment by Elliot Lee...”

Oh!

[StarKruzr]

Yes, Gentoo is not recommended for beginners. That said, if you are computer-literate, going with Gentoo can be informative and interesting.

Re:Oh!

[Hammer]

That is true. I prefer Slack for myself and use Fedora and uClinux at work and my kids use Mandriva.

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[ATMD]

I stand corrected.

Mod this man informative!

Beauty ...

[PPH]

...is only skin deep.

But ugly goes right to the bone.

/. users

[Night Goat]

I barely ever read the articles (ha ha), I just go straight to the comments. I've learned so many things and have been exposed to a lot of different viewpoints by reading the /. comments. Slashdot comments are definitely the strength of the site.

XP has Indexed Searching (not WDS!)

[Sapphon]

Windows XP has had Indexed Searching for years as part of the Search Companion - it's poorly documented, and not nearly as flashy as Windows Desktop Search (or whatever it is that Vista uses), but it does the whole indexing thing just fine. After it's finished searching the index, it'll do its regular old-fashioned search, too, so you're getting the best of both words.

Here's how to get started.

Here are some more advanced intructions. Searching for particular properties, boolean operators asf; stuff that's in the Help File but, like I said, poorly documented.(You don't need to use that program)

If you've installed WDS, but would like to go back to using Search Companion by default, John tells you how.

Cheers!

Re:XP has Indexed Searching (not WDS!)

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I was not aware of that, but it makes no difference. We were discussing what features in Vista a normal user would understand and appreciate. A normal user would have no idea how to get XP's indexed search working and would probably be afraid to try. It might as well be a third party application like Google desktop which the average user might be willing and able to install (although many might not). Out of curiosity, what file types does it support? I actually use spotlight to search my "Windows" files since I run XP in a VM on top of OS X.

Re:XP has Indexed Searching (not WDS!)

[Sapphon]

We were discussing what features in Vista a normal user would understand and appreciate.

That wasn't clear, but fair enough.

The indexer supports all file types, as far as I'm aware, plus Boolean search operators and the like. The pages linked to in my previous posts should have more detail (in particular the second), or - if you're feeling adventurous - you can try the Indexing help file. The info is all there... just poorly structured.

Re:Vista, or "White Guy Dancing" for short

[straponego]

Microsoft has a long history, which continues to this day in the form of WGA, of writing software which sends undisclosed private information back to MS. That's what I meant by Spyware. When they're caught, they tend to lie about it, until they're caught again. They *may* be better about this than they used to be, but they've lied about this type of thing so many times that they can never, in my honest opinion, be trusted. Even the CEO lied in court, presenting falsified evidence.

And I didn't say that that getting better security and better visuals was bad. Just that it doesn't make them better than OS's which both have those already. SHILL.

Re:Linux doesn't even have a GUI

[iceperson]

So does this mean the linux that is installed on my laptop isn't a real OS? I'm confused, the person I replied to said

Real operating systems have virtual desktops so you don't have to layer everything 3 windows deep. Vista doesn't even have a power tool [microsoft.com] to do it.

Somehow I get modded flamebait and he gets modded insightful. Oh well, I guess considering the forum it should be expected. I look forward to another insightful article on why you can't even give linux away...

Is it a 286?

[iceperson]

I have a 4 year old desktop that's running it fine (1.4GHz and 1GB of RAM with the video card it came with.) Must be my leet 'doze skills...

While I'm sure you're quite happy with your shiny new OS, millions of people have installed and started using Vista since it came out. The desktop install base probably already dwarfs linux. It's amazing to me that somehow millions of semi computer literate people can somehow muddle through the upgrade/install process and end up with something that meets all of their needs, yet people who clearly aren't idiots when it comes to computers can't seem to get it working...

Re:Is it a 286?

[mackyrae]

It's a 1.6GHz Core Duo with 1GB RAM. And let me tell ya, working in a computer repair shop, people are having a bitch of a time with Vista. Apps don't work as well (or sometimes at all) on Vista when they worked fine on XP. Really, unless you know what you're doing, using Windows before SP1 is a bad idea. It's just not stable enough. Maybe the problem was that I have 8mb shared VRAM for my Intel graphics instead of the recommended 128mb dedicated VRAM, but the screensaver was slow as molasses.

Re:Is it a 286?

[mackyrae]

Wait which version of Vista are you using? If it's one of the "home" ones it has lower system requirements. I was using Ultimate.

Re:Vista, or "White Guy Dancing" for short

[TrancePhreak]

So you're worried about them sending back data that has been shown to not identify you in any manner? TIN FOIL HATTER

Re:Vista, or "White Guy Dancing" for short

[straponego]

http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/

That only goes back to 2001, so it misses a lot. But here's a typical example:

"The current Passport Terms of Use agreement not only fails to guarantee confidentially, but actually gives Microsoft and its business partners the right to own your information, and do pretty much what they want with it. That encompasses all your Hotmail and MSN Messenger communications today."

Of course, MS also has a long history of paying people to act as unbiased supporters in letter writing campaigns, forums, and other arenas. This is known as Astroturfing. ASTROTURFER :P

It was *in use*

[mackyrae]

There's usually a few hundred cached megs on here. That's fine. I was counting the in-use RAM, which is usually ~500mb. I'm not saying that Vista's stuff was in cache. It was all IN USE. Vista was using so much memory doing *something* that it couldn't render a screensaver properly. I have no idea what it could be using all that memory on, because I can't even get online at school with Vista, so Firefox's memory issues can't be doing it. Either that, or Vista's not so good at releasing cached memory.

Re:Vista, or "White Guy Dancing" for short

[TrancePhreak]

Because a MS Passport is required to start up Windows?

Re:Vector-based UI? Where?

[yeremein]

It's a bug that never should have made it into a shipping product, let alone gone unfixed for two major releases of the compiler (VS2002 and 2003). The fact that it took more than three years to fix a bug that completely b0rked unmanaged/managed interoperability shows how high a priority this must be to Microsoft (i.e., not very high at all).

AKSDFPAKSFOP

[StarKruzr]

I CAN'T GET ENOUGH! MORE! PLEASE!

Did you ever reconcile with your parents, APK? I promise they love you, you just have to give mom and dad a big hug.

Good luck with your profound case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Why won't I answer your question?

[StarKruzr]

Because the longer I go without answering it, the more of your time I get to waste, and the more I get to laugh at you, obviously.

If I had written any useful software (and I'm not saying I have or haven't), I CERTAINLY wouldn't tell you about it, because that would completely ruin my fun.

You're still incredibly narcissistic, btw. Please call your parents tonight and tell them how much you love them and need them to love you back. You really will feel better, I swear.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten

[StarKruzr]

Another classic APK trope: questioning the poster's manhood.

Hey, dipshit: how do you know I'm MALE? Maybe I SHOULD be acting like a woman because I AM one.

Hm. Hadn't considered that, had you?

And what "faulty logic" did I use?

Wow!

[StarKruzr]

A retard AND a misogynist!

Stop trying to pick me up, APK.